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Comment by NationalPark | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

Well newborns need to be breastfed by their mothers to be healthy… don’t underestimate motivated lawyers.

Baby formula exists, though, and is a totally viable alternative, so this one seems like it'd be thrown out pretty quick.

"My religion requires me to breastfeed my infant naturally."

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.

Might as well skip the middleman and go straight to "my religion requires me not to be imprisoned".

Why not? How is this rule any different than any of the others in a religion?

Any mother/wet nurse can breastfeed - it doesn't have to be the mother (formula notwithstanding).

Or even pump and freeze for pickup by the outside caregiver if need be.

This is already happens today in divorce proceedings to increase custody time and child support payments.

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.

That's not the case.

If you were imprisoned even though you hadn't committed a crime, the adequacy of the care you receive while in prison is completely irrelevant.

If the child is innocent it shouldn't be imprisoned, simple as. Assuming you believe an unborn foetus to be a full fledged human being of course.

The child is stuck in the womb of his/her mother either way, it makes no difference where that womb is.

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.

Either way, I love disruptive cases like these.

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