I haven't been keeping up with "illegal" abortions of late. I didn't know that desperate women who can't avail themselves of safe, or legal, abortions now shoot themselves instead of using coathangers.
But here in America, it does not surprise me to find that the response to an act of desperation by a depressed 22 year-old is to punish the bitch by throwing her in prison. If the State really wants to rub her nose in it, it can always assume custody of her children. That'll really teach her.
For some obvious rightwing reasons, a safe and legal abortion is increasingly not an option for the many poor and desperate women of America.
One of these days, a whole lot of angry women are going to rise up in outrage and demand justice in this rightwing nation we call America. Until then, the insanity continues.
SUFFOLK -- A 22-year-old Suffolk woman was arrested again Monday morning and charged with shooting herself in the stomach and aborting her own child in February.
[Tammy] Skinner was scheduled to give birth to her third daughter on Feb. 23, when she called police to say someone shot her. Investigators later found that she had shot herself. She was charged with illegally inducing an abortion, filing a false police report and using a firearm in the commission of a felony.
The case could be precedent-setting in Virginia because a woman has never been tried for aborting her own baby. The dispute between the prosecution and defense now centers on whether, according to Virginia law, a mother could face criminal charges if she aborts her own child.
[Skinner's attorney,] Martingayle said he will also cite Florida and Georgia cases in which courts ruled that pregnant women can't be convicted for killing their fetuses.
In the Florida case, a teenager was about 26 weeks along in 1994, when she shot herself. The child lived for 15 days. In the Georgia case, a woman shot herself in the stomach in 1998, killing her unborn child.
Skinner, who lives on welfare, has two girls, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. During the bond hearing Monday, prosecutors argued for a $10,000 bond, saying Skinner is a danger to herself and to her children.
She was released on a $5,000 bond. Her next day in court is scheduled for Aug. 3.
Skinner is taking medication and going through therapy to battle depression, said her mother, Betty Powell, who threw a baby shower for her daughter a few weeks before the shooting.
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Abortion Help for Low-Income Women
Politics Abortion Reproductive Rights Roe v. Wade Feminism Abortion help Abortion Funds Virginia Illegal Abortions
