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Human rights are interlinked and interdependent; to protect one we have to stand up for them all. If that sounds like empty rhetoric then consider how, in the US, the anti-abortion movement is making damaging progress every day. So effective are they that activists believe there's a very real chance of abortion becoming illegal in the not-too-distant future. One particularly effective strand of this attack on women has come through what the anti-choicers have realized is a weak link in the reproductive rights chain: the rights of pregnant and birthing women.By repeatedly pitting mother against fetus outside of the abortion debate they have made huge legal inroads. Women in the US are being arrested, prosecuted, and jailed for stillbirths, for drinking during pregnancy and for trying to end their lives while pregnant. Mentally competent women like Laura Pemberton are being dragged from their homes, while in labor, to have court-ordered caesarean sections. The number of these legal attacks is escalating rapidly and this is no coincidence. Anti-choice judges and prosecutors are pushing cases through deliberately and explicitly because they've realized it furthers an anti-choice cause. A recent case in England around fetal alcohol syndrome had significant involvement from the Pro-Life Research Unit for similar reasons.Once we start interfering in, dictating to, and punishing women for their choices, choice itself becomes a sharp and dangerous political weapon.
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