"says the jail staff has endangered the fetus by refusing proper prenatal care and putting her in situations like the incident in the inmate transport van."
"That would require Harrell to be released until the child is born, the writ argues."
I'm inclined to believe that the lawyer really does have the child's best interest at heart, and anything they're asking for that helps the mother is really intended to help the child.
I think it's more of a sovereign citizen "hail Mary" type move to get her out of jail. Even in states that don't have a constitutional notion of "fetal personhood", a pregnant inmate is still entitled to adequate prenatal care, and that's the relief they should be seeking, not habeas corpus for the unborn child.
> I think it's more of a sovereign citizen "hail Mary" type move to get her out of jail.
It would only delay the inevitable by a few months at most, right? Trials regularly get delayed for years anyway, so they may as well delay her sentence for a few months.
Even if that worked, it would still only get her something like a 6-12 month reprieve. She's been convicted of murder, none of these ploys will get her out of going to prison eventually.
If it can be legally proved that the jail is incapable of providing adequate care (seems pretty likely, considering how terrible American prisons are generally), then they’re within their rights to enjoin the court for other remedies.
Time to see if the courts actually care about unborn personhood, as much as they’ve been crowing about abortion.
I mean, sunlight exposure, nutrients, prison violence... The fœtus is exposed to all of this, and more.
Tbh I don't care, except if she wants to carry the future baby to term.
Then you'll have a carrenced baby without mother contact during his first three months, probably fed with powdered milk that does not contain any antibodies. Nice start in the world.
Exactly. This feels similar to the type of "hail Mary" when a woman tried to argue that she should be allowed to drive in the carpool lane alone because she was pregnant and thus her fetus should count as an extra passenger. In that case, though, a judge agreed with her and her ticket was dismissed, and a bill was even filed in the TX House to explicitly allow pregnant women to use the carpool lane.
If you have to sue to get adequate prenatal care, then only pregnant inmates who know that will get said prenatal care.
If precedent is set that demands the fetus' legal innocence must be accounted for, this basically forces the legal system/corrections into a position where they have to make a move to really telegraph what is more important. That an innocent not be subjected to the penal system, or that the incarcerated are afforded the dignity of reasonable medical care, which then has to be factored into cost of incarceration. It'll also test the will around really upholding fetal rights once it starts manifesting in the form of $$$ required on the Government's part to pay for it's own externalities w.r.t. incarceration. This is actually a neat little wedge that'll get driven in between the social/fiscal conservatives in that the last thing the fiscal's want is more needs for entitlement funding, especially if it involves the incarcerated; all of which could be elided by ignoring the thorny issue of a fetus claim to personhood. Without that, the social conservatives lose a leg of their anti-abortion stool.
Either way, I can see the headlines/arguments now:
>Shit, 3 square meals a day, work, and government funded medical care, sign me up!
>Inmates get better care than law abiding citizens...
...Might even force everyone to realize this whole "no one can compete against a Medicare that can negotiate" is a sign of the retarded levels of inefficiency in the healthcare space so we can actually get some scrutiny on why the hell things are so janked in that department.
"That would require Harrell to be released until the child is born, the writ argues."
I'm inclined to believe that the lawyer really does have the child's best interest at heart, and anything they're asking for that helps the mother is really intended to help the child.