Miscarriage equals murder?

What is wrong with people in the US?

From Alternet, posted (without irony) on US Independence Day, July 4, 2011

Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence

When this article was posted on Reddit, there was a number of comments, but I'd particually liked this one from 'icarusone'

Prison terms are generally used as either a deterrent or a rehabilitation program.

As a deterrent, it probably doesn't work. (Lots of articles have shown that abortion rates do not differ substantially regardless of legality. [And yes, that was the first article Google spit up. However, if you keep searching, you'll find that it's not an isolated idea.])

As a rehabilitation program, I think it's self evident that this is not going to "teach them a lesson." At best, they will emerge from prison with a criminal record, shattered employment prospects and a difficulty reintergrating into regular society. At worst, think prison assault, loss of family and social support, potential suicide.

If your aim is truly to help anybody the only reasonable options to support are health and sex education. Criminalizing these women is ludicrous.

Freedom

Source

Ironic

I love the irony of the Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika expelling the UK HIgh commissioner because he wrote that the autocratic would-be dictatator does not tolerate criticism.

Britain ordered the acting High Commissioner of Malawi to leave the UK in response to the move last month.

According to the diplomatic cable published by the local Weekend Nation newspaper last month, Mr Cochrane-Dyet described President Mutharika as "becoming ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism"

To add insult to injury the report notes that "Britain was the country's largest aid donor"and:

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, with an estimated 75% of the population living on less than $1 (60p) a day.

The UK recently expressed its disappointment with Malawi and reduced aid after the government purchased an extravagant presidential jet.

It is also among the countries which condemned a new law which gives ministers power to ban publications deemed not to be in the public interest.

Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13327013

Politics & principles

Politics and principles seem to be mutually exclusive terms all too often. However, you gotta have respect for the Greens on that front. Their policies have hardly changed in the years, even back when being green was a fringe counter-culture notion.

This add sums it up for me.