Liberty for Pregnant Women in the “Land of the Free”
By Farah Diaz-Tello, National Advocates for Pregnant Women
Last November, the Respectful Maternity Care Charter was first unveiled to the multi-stakeholder group tasked with bringing the Charter and its message to communities worldwide. At that meeting, I noticed more than one person puzzling over Article 7: Every woman has the right to liberty, autonomy, self-determination, and freedom from coercion.
“Liberty -- what a peculiarly American word,” noted one person. Another nodded in agreement. Is it? I wondered, searching my memory banks, Would the concept of liberty lack resonance in other countries and cultures? As a civil and human rights attorney in the United States, I may be precisely the wrong person to make that determination. Liberty, along with equality and due process of law, is one of the few tools I am given to defend the health, rights, and dignity of pregnant and parenting women.
From a historical perspective, the U.S. is a relative newcomer to the idea of liberty. Even the iconic statue that the United States so proudly displays as a tribute to liberty is a gift from the French, a depiction of Libertas, a Roman goddess of freedom. The history of liberty traces even further than that, appearing in ancient texts from Persian, Chinese, and Indian cultures. But what about the present day? The term “liberty” appears in international human rights documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but does the United States have the market cornered on liberty? What does liberty look like for childbearing women in the Land of the Free?
In its most literal meaning, liberty is a freedom from bondage and restraint. Even on this most fundamental level, incarcerated women in many U.S. states are denied this right and are forced to give birth in chains and shackles. Despite a widespread recognition that a woman’s ability to move freely is important not only to her ability to cope with labor but to her health and that of her baby, only a handful of U.S. states have passed laws that ban or limit the practice. The Anti-Shackling Coalition, a group of state-based human rights activists coordinated by the Rebecca Project for Human Right, works to challenge policies that allow such deprivation of women’s liberty and dignity with the idea that all people—regardless of whether or not they are incarcerated—are entitled to human rights.
But liberty runs much deeper. Decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States tell us that the concept means more than mere freedom from restraint. Certain rights, including the right to make decisions about one’s body and the right to start and maintain a family, are considered so “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” that “neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed.” For most Americans, it is unfathomable that women could be forced to undergo surgery or held against their will in a hospital for court-ordered bed rest, or that giving birth or suffering a poor birth outcome could lead to imprisonment or the destruction of a family. For others, it is an unfortunate reality.
In 2007, a New Jersey woman declined to pre-authorize a cesarean section before it became medically necessary. Unhappy with her exercise of informed refusal (Article 2 of the Charter), the hospital reported her to child protective services, tipping off proceedings which led to a termination of her parental rights. The termination was overturned by a state appellate court, but the case is still being litigated, and the family has yet to be reunited. Many people are shocked and literally disbelieving that the child welfare system has been used against women in this way, but this is merely a more overt and widely publicized example of a form of coercion many women report experiencing. While no state grants child protective authorities jurisdiction over children prior to birth, most women don’t have access to legal counsel when they are in active labor.
In spite of the deprivations of liberty that we see across the United States, the landscape is not necessarily bleak. We honor the maternity care providers and organizations who speak out on behalf of the women who give birth under less-than-ideal circumstances. Respectful maternity care is about more than surviving childbirth. It is also about more than being treated with kindness and dignity. It is about ensuring that no woman loses her liberty at any point during her pregnancy, not even during birthing. It is an idea that transcends borders.
Click the image below to see all seven articles of the Respectful Maternity Care Charter: The Universal Rights for Childbearing Women.
