Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Justice

Topic: Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Justice

Case: Pregnant Woman Detained. In 1995, a woman who was pregnant and refused to discontinue her use of cocaine was reported by her obstetrician to child-abuse authorities. They obtained an order from the juvenile court to take custody of the unborn child, which, in this case, involved detaining the mother against her will. The court maintained that in order to protect the fetus, it had to detain the mother. The mother gave birth while in a drug treatment center. She sued the state for detaining her illegally. The case was settled after the child was born, with the court finding that the state acted wrongly in taking protective custody of the fetus while it was still in the womb. As a result of these sorts of cases, state legislatures have passed laws such as the Wisconsin law mentioned above, which define fetuses more clearly as children deserving protection. *

Write a 2 to 3-page response paper stating your own views and reaction to this case. Your essay should address the following questions:

If the fetus is regarded as a child who is being abused, then is it reasonable, in your view, to detain the mother? If the fetus is viewed as a person, should it have access to other rights and privileges? Would it also be reasonable for a pregnant woman to be able to use a car-pool lane by counting her fetus as a second person in the car? If a pregnant woman is killed, resulting in the death of the fetus, does that count as one murder or two? Explain whether you see the actions of the authorities in this 1995 case to be characteristic of patriarchy or not.

If you use any quotes, be sure to place them in quotation marks, with proper citation, and full information in a Work Cited list at the end. But supportive quotes are not required for this essay. The essay should be double-spaced.

* Case from: Barbara MacKinnon and Andrew Fiala. Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues. 9th Edition. Boston, Cengage Learning, 2018 (page 276).

For more information and background on this type of government intervention against pregnant women, see the following analysis “State Responses to Substance Abuse Among Pregnant Women” by Cynthia Dailard, Guttmacker Institute, 12/1/2000.