A prison guard says she was forced to stay at her post during labor pains. Texas is fighting compensation for her stillbirth.
A prison guard says she was forced to stay at her post during labor pains. Texas is fighting compensation for her stillbirth.
The anti-abortion state is fighting a lawsuit from a prison guard who blames TDCJ for...
The seven-months-pregnant officer reported contraction-like pains at work, but said she wasn’t allowed to leave for hours. The anti-abortion state is fighting her lawsuit, in part by saying her fetus didn’t clearly have rights.
On a warm November night, Salia Issa had just begun her shift as an Abilene prison officer when she felt the intense pain of what she believed was a contraction.
Seven months pregnant, Issa said she quickly alerted her supervisors. She told them she needed to go to the hospital but knew prison policy wouldn’t allow her to leave her post until someone could replace her.
No one came for hours.
Issa kept calling for relief, but her supervisor repeatedly refused her, even telling her she was lying, according to a federal lawsuit filed against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and prison officials.
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Nearly a year later, Issa and her husband, Fiston Rukengeza, on behalf of themselves and their unborn child, sued TDCJ and three of Issa’s supervisors — Brandy Hooper, Desmond Thompson and Alonzo Hammond. They argue the state caused the death of their child by violating state and federal laws as well as the U.S. Constitution, and they are seeking money to cover medical costs and funeral expenses and to compensate for pain and suffering.
But the prison agency and the Texas attorney general’s office, which has staked its reputation on “defending the unborn” all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, are arguing the agency shouldn’t be held responsible for the stillbirth because staff didn’t break the law. Plus, they said, it’s not clear that Issa’s fetus had rights as a person.
“Just because several statutes define an individual to include an unborn child does not mean that the Fourteenth Amendment does the same,” the Texas attorney general’s office wrote in a March footnote, referring to the constitutional right to life.
For more than two decades, in legislation passed by lawmakers and defended in court by the attorney general’s office, Texas has insisted “unborn children” be recognized as people starting at fertilization. And although it has traditionally referred to all stages of pregnancy, from fertilized egg to birth, as an unborn child, the state repeatedly referred to Issa’s stillborn baby as a fetus in legal briefings.
Of course they weren't going to stick to one moral definition. It has never been about morality. It's always been about control. At least his time, they said it openly.
Exactly what you said. It has always been about control.
Of course they weren’t going to stick to one moral definition. It has never been about morality. It’s always been about control. At least his time, they said it openly.
To make it worse, if the couple wins on the premise that the fetus was an individual and had rights (and it's not clear to me that they need to prove that premise to win, but IANAL), I imagine that ruling will be used as justification for anti-abortion measures in the state.
And also to prosecute them for the stillbirth.