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Vol. 80/No. 7 February 22, 2016
Attempted murder charges filed under anti-abortion law
BY SUSAN LAMONT
ATLANTA — A growing number of states have adopted laws expanding the
definition of “personhood” to include a fetus, part of broader attacks
on women’s right to choose abortion. The Tennessee government passed
such a law in 2012. Now it is being used to charge 31-year-old Anna
Yocca with attempted first-degree murder for allegedly trying to end her
pregnancy at 24 weeks.
“Whatever the exact circumstances, it’s clear she was in a desperate
position,” said Cherisse Scott, of the group SisterReach in Memphis, in
a Jan. 29 phone interview. “We’re afraid that the hostile environment
around abortion that’s been created by the Tennessee state legislature
will force more women into the situation Anna Yocca was in.”
Yocca, an Amazon fulfillment center worker, was arrested Dec. 9. She is
accused of using a coat hanger to try to induce an abortion. She went to
the hospital bleeding, and doctors eventually delivered a baby boy, who
weighed 1.5 pounds and has multiple serious medical problems. She
pleaded not guilty to the charges, which carry a possible sentence of
life in prison. Yocca is being held in jail on $200,000 bail, with her
next hearing scheduled for Feb. 29.
Tennessee allows abortions up to the “point of viability,” usually
around 24 weeks, with exceptions afterward for the life and health of
the woman. But no clinics in the state offer abortions after 16 weeks.
Last July the state legislature imposed a 48-hour waiting period, after
scripted “counseling” by a doctor, forcing women to make at least two
trips to a clinic to obtain an abortion.
“The legislature also enacted the requirement that clinics performing
surgical abortions must meet standards for ambulatory surgical treatment
centers,” Jeff Teague, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Middle
and East Tennessee, told the Militant. “There are six health centers in
the state that perform surgical abortions. Of those, two don’t yet meet
those standards.”
Planned Parenthood in Tennessee lost federal funds for family planning
services in 2011, when the state legislature voted that those funds
could only go to county and city public health facilities. “This means
people have to pay for their medical care or have insurance,” said
Teague. “We know that not everyone we used to help is getting served at
these public clinics.”
In Texas, where restrictions on abortion access have forced the closure
of 20 clinics in recent years, a study by the Texas Policy Evaluation
Project found that at least 100,000 women have attempted a self-induced
abortion, usually by taking hormonal pills, alcohol, illegal drugs,
herbs or homeopathic remedies or by getting punched in the abdomen,
according to the Washington Post.
“When abortions aren’t available that does not stop women from trying to
accomplish that goal, taking matters into their own hands,” said Willie
Parker, a doctor who provides abortions in Alabama, Georgia and
Mississippi, in a Feb. 2 interview on WNYC radio. This “potentially
leads them to have complications that are unnecessary when abortion is
safe and legal.”
The clinic where Parker works in Jackson, Mississippi, is the last one
left in the state. It is threatened with closure by a state law
requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at
a nearby hospital, which most won’t grant. The U.S. Supreme Court will
hear a challenge to a similar law in Texas this spring.
Meanwhile, a federal district judge in San Francisco issued a
preliminary injunction Feb. 6 ordering the anti-abortion Center for
Medical Progress not to release further secretly filmed videos that they
claimed showed Planned Parenthood illegally sold fetal tissue. These
claims are baseless, said Judge William Orrick. In January a grand jury
in Houston indicted the group’s director, David Daleiden, and an
associate on criminal charges of using false driver’s licenses to
infiltrate Planned Parenthood.
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