If they thought she was pregnant, and she started bleeding, the fact that they didn't immediately rush her to the Emergency Room makes the Sheriff's Department guilty of endangering the life of a fetus.
They would, except for Qualified Immunity. Cops are immune from prosecution for "doing cop stuff." These days, "doing cop stuff" has been expanded to "anything they damn well feel like doing."
So, they thought she was pregnant, but she had to sit and sleep on the floor, and they didn't bring her to an emergency room when she started bleeding, which, if she had been pregnant, would probably have been a sign that she was miscarrying. Clearly, their agenda had nothing to do with protecting fetuses, and everything to do with punishing women.
No I don't even think it's about punishing women. I do believe it's purely about profit. It would be interesting to see the budget for that county and what percentage of that budget relies on income derived from law enforcement activities.
@@kylestanley4734 If it were about money, they would've just let her go instead of wasting resources going after her and detaining her. The golden rule of Government is to do the minimum if you can't do nothing. This was just to hurt her.
Things like this happen more than most people realize. There's a similar story of a woman also from AL, charged with endangering a fetus. She had smoked marijuana before finding out that that she was pregnant. She admitted it, but was arrested and jailed, and refused bail. They wouldn't let her out until she went to a drug treatment facility, but no facility would accept her because she wasn't a drug addict! That would have required she post a 10k bond too. She had a high-risk pregnancy and started having complications in jail. She suffered hunger and fainting spells and was bleeding for 5 weeks, never receiving emergency care! She sat in jail for 3 months without ever being convicted of a crime! There's a story of a 14-year-old girl who was denied her routine medication because of the abortion bans. She had been prescribed Methotrexate for her painful and debilitating Rheumatoid Arthritis, and it was the only med that worked for her. Her pharmacy refused to fill it because the medication could terminate a pregnancy. She wasn't pregnant, or even sexually active! Unfortunately, there are plenty more similar stories, and it's likely that they'll only increase.
All these instances are a fearure of laws that deny women the basic human right to bodily autonomy...not a bug. The entire purpose is to criminalise the human female body.
arresting someone for "endangering" a fetus then making that person sleep on the floor for 36 hours is peak hubris. so is seeing any amount of blood from that area and ignoring it
The dark irony of her treatment, if she had been pregnant the combination of stress and her treatment over 3 days could have easily caused a miscarriage. I wonder how they would have tried to spin that.
I have pain that needs Tylenol 3 the smallest opiate dose possible... I've had doctors deny methat, and yet offer to hospitalize me and dose me with Fentanyl, the most highly addictive, strongest and most dangerous opioid, which means if they give me a dose too close together by mistake I would die... Needless to say, I had to refuse their "assistance" Moral of the story, there's a lot of idiots who graduated with D's from medical school, who's advice is full of shit. Lots of them still quote racist bull from 1970s medical textbooks as a reason to not treat anyone who doesn't look entirely white.
@@t_c5266 No the opposite actually happened there was one doctor who said it was the drugs and every other doctor said that conclusion was sus. Then Maryland looked at all like 1000 cases that guy determined then reopened 100 that followed a similar fact pattern.
They made a woman they believed was pregnant sleep on the floor of a jail and when that woman they thought was pregnant started bleeding they didn’t immediately call 911. I am sorry, who was in endangering who again?!
Yes, specifically, things like this are gross abuses of the nearly infinite power of qualified immunity. Something needs to be done to limit or entirely abolish QI. I understand that honest mistakes can be made by law enforcement, but there needs to be better accountability when the rights and freedoms of innocent people are being treated so recklessly.
@@Caffin8tor "honest" mistakes also get made by doctors, engineers, contractors, etc. and there is *no* immunity for them, rightly so. There is no such thing as "honestly" failing to do your due diligence.
Lock him up for endangering a fetus. I'd like to see him prove he's not pregnant or doesn't do drugs. "Sorry, chief. It's just the way things are done around here"
As far as they are concerned they left a pregnant woman bleeding on the floor for a day and a half. Either the prosecutor presses criminal charges for that or he is publicly admitting that he is not fit for his job.
He's a politician. Likely to praise police for prompt and decisive action, and to warn people about how seriously they take the law, blah blah. Because that will get certain people to vote for him.
As far as they were concerned, they weren't dealing with a vulnerable pregnant woman, they were just dealing with a worthless drug user. EDIT: Thought i should clarify that i don't support that opinion. Nobody should be treated as worthless & without respect, no matter what their story.
@@animerlon no, it was the Philippines where police were once given tacit permission to kill drug users. You might want to contact their embassy to ask about emigrating and job opportunities. Plus, you might ask how you can arrest someone for being pregnant without knowing you have to treat her as pregnant.
@@jefftitterington7600 From your comment about emigrating & job opportunities, i assume you think my comment supports that attitude & behaviour. My bad for leaving it to one sentence. My true feelings are the opposite. There are many reasons people turn to drugs & we should not negatively judge them until we've made a journey in their shoes. Also, no matter what crime a woman is being arrested for, if she's pregnant, she should be well cared for.
It happens in other us states too. Like when I pumped breast milk for my infant in the hospital for a week and they called me and said there wasn't enough and they had to give him some formula. Turns out they took out like 1/3 of it to test it for drugs against my knowledge or will! They did this numerous times and always called me and accused me of not pumping enough milk and even made me go to a lactation specialist. When they were stealing the milk. In California.
@@sandrasweeney798 They wanted me to provide timed deliveries of a certain amount of breast milk and increase it by a few ml a day as the baby grew, but they took some out of each bottle to test it for drugs.
There are consequences. You ever wonder why Steve talks about trying to put cops at ease when pulled over? Because they're on edge? They're on edge because we have a second amendment and many good people have lost faith in cops and rightly so. These days, when a cop pulls someone over, it's not just a young, black gang banger in a chevy that might snuff them. It could be the old, white doctor or engineer in the benz. They have a lot of chickens coming home to roost. My training is better than theirs. My equipment is better. I'm ready for them to try to make my day. That's the price they've paid and will in the future.
How about a male being arrested for drinking alcohol or,drugs,or bad diet would always do harm to your sperm that will become children some day so you should be arrested
Then, where do you draw the line: 1 Arrested and truly guilty but got off on a technicality? 2 Arrested and evidence looks like they did it, but they really didn’t? 3 Arrested by incompetent cop who doesn’t know what they’re doing? 4 Arrested by indifferent cop who doesn’t care if you’re guilty or not? 5 Arrested by cop who knows you aren’t guilty? 6 Arrested by cop who created evidence to make you look guilty? Remember, it’s already illegal to do 5 and 6.
Side point about menstrual cycle: it is totally possible to keep having bleeds even if you are pregnant. I did through my entire pregnancy, and a year of breastfeeding. 😬 Im not saying that's an excuse for the behavior we see here, there is still no good reason for treating her like this. Also, the whole "we think she's pregnant, lets stick her in a room with no bed for a day and a half" thing REALLY angers me. IF she HAD been pregnant, that would have endangered the fetus too.
Your missing the point. Nobody in the pro life movement gives a shit about lives, its about punishing women and keeping them in their place. Viewed like that this make perfect sense. They never cared about any "baby" they wanted to punish what they thought was another delinquent drug using baby momma
And here's the freaky thing. Bleeding during pregnancy usually means either miscarriage or fetal distress. And fetal distress can kill both patient and passenger. Those assholes we're hoping to KILL a 🍼 that didn't even exist.
This is the direct result of a qualified immunity. These officers know they aren't going to be personally liable so they put zero time or thought into doing their job properly or legally.
THAT^^^ See that^^^ Absolutely nailed it in two sentences. The concept of QI makes sense but its application is corrupt. Obviously you cannot expect law enforcement to know the entirety of the law off hand. But what's crazy is that the dividing line between what should be and should not be QI has already been defined. What any reasonable person would consider to be wrong. And if it were that simple it wouldn't be such a problem. But, idiots at the highest level decided that it also needed precedent, which would be impossible to obtain seeing as no precedent would exist to set a precedent. All of this I'm certain ties in with civil asset forfeiture, they have to protect law enforcement from everything because they are the cash cows now. They've become so dependant on the flow of corrupt cash, they're addicted to it and they have to keep it coming. Protecting the goons who collect it is their top priority, and this goes all the way to the supreme court. They no longer care what the cops do, or how they conduct themselves so long as the money keeps rolling in. Sound familiar?
@@solutionsforabrightfuture3579 Same way they packed people into railcars. The job attracts a certain type of person. As long as the checks keep coming and it's not them that's being abused they'll happily do whatever they're told to do.
It also illustrates another fundamental problem with qualified immunity. The facts of this case are so far fetched and ridiculous that there likely is not a prior precedent showing that the conduct is illegal- a necessity to overcome QI.
There is one very important thing that I have learned during my life about law enforcement. Their goal is NOT to find the truth. Their goal is to find a conviction. This is a case and point. Law enforcement at all levels is one of the most predatory organizations in existence and most of the time, they f'in get away with it and people's lives are ruined as a result.
If you're lucky a conviction is ALL they're after. They can also just steal your property. Oh I'm sorry, "seize" your property. And I mean everything from cash in your wallet to your home and vehicles.
Also, even worse, from what I read on this, they left what they assumed/believed to be a pregnant woman on the jail floor for 36 hours.... Why aren't THEY being charged with fetus endangerment?
The terrifying thing about this is what if it wasn't stupidity? What if it was completely intentional? I think they were hoping on the slight chance that bleeding they saw was her miscarrying and they were waiting until she begged to go to the hospital or passed fetal tissue to use as evidence against her. Or even worse, the stress of being arrested and incarcerated making her miscarry and them pinning it on her. Either way, their intentions were to endanger a life to obtain evidence. At least I see that as highly possible.
Scary but possible. If she had been pregnant and miscarried they could have tried to add the charge of homicide - for a miscarriage they knowingly contributed to. Interesting theory. Hope it isn’t true but there is evil in the world
Personally I'd look at the racial element. Usually when you see law enforcement abusing power, there's a race disparity, and certain minorities are disproportionately targeted. Alabama being Alabama, I bet those 150 women were NOT wealthy, white, married and living in good neighborhoods. They are using this to harass the non whites, poor, unmarried, in bad neighborhoods.
@@joew8438 not so coincidentally the first woman in the US to be set free from death row due to police negligence came from Alabama. They convicted Sabrina Butler at 17 of killing her child when a second independent autopsy from her appeal proved he died of natural causes and the secondary injuries were caused by her attempts at CPR. Makes you wonder how the 1st autopsy, when the child was recently deceased had so many errors but an independent autopsy after 6 years of decomposition was able to debunk the original completely. Alabama has a very long history of being obsessed with painting women as evil child murderers. Especially women of color.
So the police arrested someone based on hearsay and without any further evidence and without doing any actual investigation, then had solid proof that the woman either wasn't pregnant or was suffering a medical emergency but still insisted on bringing charges and failed to provide her with even the minimum level of care. That should be a slam-dunk lawsuit.
Very often,when these charges went to court, Roe vs Wade was their #1 defense. Now that's gone, these cases are only going to become more and more common. Our privacy is an illusion, but one that continues to be worth fighting for.
Reminds me of a story from a couple months ago where a pharmacy refused to sell a woman her prescribed pain meds because they could harm a developing fetus. Even though she was not pregnant, was on the pill, and had no intention of ever getting pregnant.
@@sparkyUSA1976 I’ve seen reports of women being denied prescription medication for gynaecology surgery because it could cause a pregnancy loss. Another woman because she might give it to her daughter to end a pregnancy. It’s insane.
@CantankerousDave When I went in the hospital for a mastectomy for breast cancer, and was lying on the gurney to be wheeled into the operating room already connected to the IV, someone demanded AT THAT POINT that I pee in a bottle so they could do a pregnancy test and I was informed AT THAT POINT that if they thought I was pregnant they intended to deny me the cancer surgery because the anesthesia might be harmful to the nonexistant fetus. BTW, I had had a tubal ligation and COULD NOT GET PREGANT and this was in my medical information that they got during the "pre-op" exam a couple days before the surgery date. The message was very very clear that as a woman my life was of absolutely no concern and no value to these people. This was in Ohio. All of this is part of making sure women never, ever qualify as full, free citizens of this "democracy". When I got the tubal ligation, I was told that I had to have my (nonexistant) husband's permission in writing. I only got the procedure done because I worked at the hospital with that surgeon and he was willing to fudge the paperwork. Has any man who asked for a vasectomy ever had to get any woman's permission in writing? This has not changed as of 2022, it is still being done.
@@coop5329 "Has any man who asked for a vasectomy ever had to get any woman's permission in writing?" Yes, actually. I have heard of men seeking vasectomies being asked for permission from their (nonexistent) wives.
@@coop5329 Approximately 1 in 200 women may still become pregnant after a tubal ligation. These are almost always ectopic pregnancies, owing to the nature of the procedure, but it's still possible, and if they didn't check for that during pre-op then they'd be liable for harming a human life (non-viable as it likely would have been). It's not that they didn't have concern for your health, they were just trying to cover their rear ends by verifying that only one person was going under. This saves them from potential criminal charges, and keeps the surgical center doors open for another day. The second part of that, where spousal permission is required to perform a surgery, is bonkers. I've seen financial forms, and post-op transport and care forms being given to spouses, but the thought of a spousal permission form sickens me.
Just flexing power over grudge or hate, without any real concern for the child gestating inside someone undergoing this persecution. Alabama, think if she was pregnant and addicted to drugs abortion would have been attainable?
Why would they refuse a pregnancy test *when her being pregnant or not is the entire basis of the criminal case against her?* Are they *trying* to get sued for false arrest???
Part of me is hopeful that this is indeed malicious compliance to get those broken laws repealed. But the reality is probably that they're testing how far they can push it to use it widely as an easy probable cause to detain people and dig out other crimes they can't get evidence otherwise.
OH bless your peapickin' little heart. They are in no danger of prosecution for anything. even if she had been pregnant and this treatment resulted in a miscarriage, the blame would fall completely on the 'female'. Just a bonus to their bondage game.
Never mind that there's probably no case law against arresting someone for being pregnant but refusing to test to see if they're actually pregnant, so that's qualified immunity to boot.
It’s supposed to be a punishment in and of itself to stop a certain behavior. The brutality is the point. They wanted to make an “example” out of her by torturing her, or possibly letting out frustration. A lot of COs do this.
When my wife and I lived in Alabama I saw something interesting in traffic court. My wife was stopped and cited for speeding. I don't believe she was but in this case, that is not the point. I went with her to traffic court and I looked around and there was only five men in the court room and they had driven their wives to court like me. I was there for about two hours and every case called was a female defendant. There were no men fighting traffic tickets. Interesting and strange..
@johnemerson1363 It is documented statistical fact that, contrary to common belief, cops will give another man a warning but nearly always give women drivers a ticket. My opinion is this goes right along with cops being the profession most likely to abuse their wives and girlfriends, again a statistical fact.
@@JosephKano No, I saw many different officers respond, but I never saw a male fight a ticket. I'm a retired cop and when I went to traffic court, most of my defendants were male. That is why I thought it was strange.
I was in the middle of a pregnancy scare, living in the same place this happened, right when this happened (or at least when the story first hit the internet) I saw this at the exact right time to scare the shit out of me. I've been with the same person for over a decade, neither of us want kids, and I was already nervous because of the legislation here. This is terrifying on so many levels to us. I'm not even on illegal drugs, but I'm on prescriptions I can't stop taking. And Alabama is stupid enough to take it that far. From what I've seen and heard, it seems like the plan is to put certain pregnant women in jail long enough that they can't get out of state to have an abortion. I believe our county has arrested the most pregnant women out of anywhere else.
"fetal personhood" is barbaric. It's tragic enough when a mother loses a future child, but to be threatened with a crime for situations that occur naturally (or miscarriages and stillbirths) and to then be forced to show she didn't do anything wrong (proving a nnegative) is just unconscionable to me. And yes, I *DO* value the life of a demonstrably viable person over that of a potential person.
Even worse the draconian anti-abortion laws are never going to be applied evenly. There just isn't enough time or money to investigate every late period and miscarriage so police and prosecutors are going to use the laws to selectively go after what they consider to be the 'Undesirables' in the community.
There really needs to be a law that if innocence can be conclusively proven by simply checking something/giving a test and the police fail to check or give the test as soon as possible, they are liable. It’s not just this case, but the guy in Orlando who was arrested for shoplifting despite having a receipt showing he paid for the items, and countless other cases that should have never gotten past a cursory examination of the facts.
This is the US. If you are a suspect, you are NOT ALLOWED to provide proof of your innocence prior to arrest. NEVER. According to police, it is actually against the law to provide proof of innocence. I was once arrested for wearing a blue T-shirt that was similar to a known suspect. We looked nothing alike, and the police knew the guy by name and MUGSHOT. When I was arrested, i tied using my state-issued photo ID to prove i wasn't the guy. The officer instead charged me with Forgery and several other made-up charges, and stuffed me into the back of the squad car. My ID was NOT fake, which i was only later able to prove.
@@calamityjean1525 In this case, it was a t-shirt from a popular local hangout, which is what the officer was looking for. The real issue here is, the cop in question saw a punk kid he could harass, and didn't real care if I was the right guy or not. Also, he was a plainclothes officer, and he grabbed me from behind without first announcing himself. This was a deliberate trap, meant to make me think he was a mugger or kidnapper, and I fell right into it by fighting back. That was all he needed to initiate the arrest. In short, he knew I wasn't the suspect within the first minute of our "interaction", but he had a quota to meet, and his massive ego wouldn't let him admit he screwed up, so he doubled-down.
Not just is this case insane from start to finish, but the idea that fetal rights that **supersede** the rights of the living breathing person to their own right to autonomy is beyond insanity, it’s beyond belief.
I don't think that was a mistake. That 36 hour lockup without a bed sounds like they inflicted a punishment upon her before any verdict could be made, to me.
Especially because they locked her up *without even confirming if she was actually pregnant or not.* They didn't even care if their accusations were true or not.
I'll never understand the people who say "they're a bad person so it doesn't matter if they're actually what they're charged with. Just convict them anyway."
They didn't pay attention in history class, they don't understand what happens next after you allow the freedoms of other people to be unjustifiably violated. You lose your own freedom when you seek to take it from others.
Like "they got al capone on tax evasion" but like he actually did the tax evasion, I'm okay with catching a bad guy with another crime *if they did the crime*, good lord. Some of these people just want gulags for anyone they suspect of a crime
@@darkshadowrule2952 I agree if you can get somebody on another crime they committed, that's good. That said, tax evasion should earn you a medal, not jail.
I'm 31 years old and while I have been 'regular' since my period started, last month I was late. My biggest fear was people thinking I was pregnant and just lying about it, so I just keep telling the doctors/nurses that you have to do the deed to get pregnant. I have a colposcopy tomorrow because abnormal cells were found and I'm still scared that like, if the doctor I had before isn't around another one will show up and try to insist that I'm pregnant when I'm not. Doesn't help that I carry most of my weight in my gut.
In my early twenties, I had a lot of health issues and some of the specialists were like “how often do you have sex?”, me: “I’ve never had sex or any kind of intimate physical contact”, dr: “sure, uhuh right. So do you use protection every time that you have sex?”
@@ladyj.9350 I literally had sex three times in my life, with the same guy, IN 2010! But like you tell people that and they just cannot believe there are people out there who do not like it or want it! Which is hilarious seeing as there are going to be some people who a) think no one who is not married should be having sex but b) also think it's impossible for people to not have sex????
Technically you could be pregnant without being inseminated I certainly had a "fake pregnancy" like your body can trick itself, believe it was terrifying and I was only 18. However one month isn't that big of a deal it does happen, (especially from my perspective because I usually have irregular periods) especially if you're going through a lot of stress or health problems in your case. But still I don't understand why they don't believe you, anyways good luck and I hope everything turns out good for your health. * I want to add it's called phantom pregnancy there is an episode on the house that has one on it. Though I personally didn't like how the episode made it look like it was a mental disorder when it's actually a physiological disorder.
@@KCH55 Thankfully it was more people not believing that someone just doesn't like s e x, and not them thinking I was pregnant. My mom said she had a phantom pregnancy before me. According to her, pretty much everything but the baby showed up, so it could have also been something completely different and she just called it that.
And even aside for everything you already pointed out, if they did actually think she was pregnant, they put her on the floor of a concrete cell for more than a day. So who would have been guilty of "endangerment to a fetus?" Rediculous.
@@zapazap a cold damp environment is unhealthy for anyone. And a hard floor is uncomfortable at best. Stress on the mother can hinder development of the fetus. For the mother to be comfortable and not subjected to unhealthy environments while under the custody of the govt is not unreasonable.
@@zapazap shut up. You've repeated this same bullsh*t over and over again. Why don't you go find a pregnant loved one (good luck with the loved one bit) and throw her to a concrete floor locked in a cage for 24 hours and come back and she how she is. Then be prepared for your ' reward' for doing it or supporting it in the first place. Real life this comment would be with you in the gutter!
it's also incredibly dangerous, if someone is pregnant, to take them cold turkey off of drugs w/out a doctor's assistance. not all drugs, but some, can cause real serious shock to the body and the baby and withdrawal can easily result one or both of their deaths.
It's not like your typical drug addict says without intervention, ok give me a doctor so I can slowly get off. Between getting off suddenly and not getting off at all, the latter is better
Do you expect cops to know anything medical-related? They held a guy because there was a home invasion, the actual perps shot and killed the girlfriend and severally wounded the boyfriend, don't remember where the wound was (it might have been to the head), but it wasn't immediately fatal. Anyway, they sat the guy in a room and several "detectives" grilled him for several hours about what their "investigative" skills said happened (which were WAY off). The guy was showing all the classic signs of bloodloss and a severe headwound (likely covered by his hair and large amounts of blood). Even the RN they brought in to do a blood test missed EVERYTHING that pointed to him having major trauma. It was only AFTER a senior nurse came in and actually did her job properly (doing a blood pressure test), did they find that the guy had lost a massive amount of blood, most of the blood on his head was his. I believe the guy was rushed to the hospital (still under arrest and cuffed to the bed), he survived barely, and they had to restart his heart at least once on the operating table. Not sure of the outcome, but it just goes to show that cops couldn't tell the difference between someone who had stepped barefoot on a piece of Lego and a person who had stepped on a rusty railroad spike (it should be obvious, the big ass sharp object sticking out the top of the foot is the more serious injury). Or the guy that just fell out of bed and bumped his head compared to the guy with a giant piece of rebar impaled through his skull (again, rebar through the skull is the more serious). And just like Major Frank Burns (MASH, Hawkeye, Radar, Hotlips etc), the cops would try to use a band-aid to close the exit wound left by a .50 BMG round at close range
I love that they are admonishing her to not get pregnant later or those charges will come back again. I think the “while” part of the law seems to be lost on these law enforcement personnel. This needs to be remediated so they actually understand the words of their law.
Just another day of law enforcement in America. It’s not about public safety its about the simplest people in society having vast powers over everyone else.
@@magicmarker7047 not really. Piggies do the corruption everywhere. They targeted that lady and they were determined to use whatever laws that could dig up to go after her
Honestly, that's as bad as pointing a finger at another person and declaring "He robbed a bank!" and having the cops arrest the named robber just because another person accused him or her of it without proof. Hopefully, that never happens - but yeah, that mentality does very little to gain the public's trust.
I was actually faced with that problem many years ago when I worked at our karate club. The bank down the street from us was robbed. I was friendly with the manager and she gave me a description of the robber when I went there the next day to make a deposit. While I was walking back to work I realized that the description of the robber fit one of our students. He had come in the day of the robbery, around the time of the robbery, to work out downstairs, something he had never done before and never did again. He was wearing a red bandana headband that day, which I commented on when he came in - he never wore it again. The robber had used a red bandana to cover his face. He was the same height, had the same hair color, etc. The last weird coincidence was the fact that he arrived on a bicycle and took it downstairs with him. The robber had taken off with a gym bag full of money on a bike. I told my boss what I thought and he told me to say nothing because I had no real proof. We argued back and forth and in the end I said nothing, because I was told that if I did I would be fired. The thief was never caught and to this day I know it was that student. I found out much later, through his girlfriend, that this guy had a record, she didn't tell me for what though.
I'm a social worker and work as a behavioral interventionist. The questions I've been asked for advice from my coworkers are insane. "Can this adult look at 'adult only' content on their phone in their own home?" "This seven year old has bruises on their knees, should I turn them over to CPS?" OMG, what seven year old doesn't have bruises on their knees? OMG, is it our business what adults do in their own home? I don't have a lot of faith in my own profession if these are the types of questions they brought to me while I was supervising them. I don't work for that company anymore. I moved on and am now with a company that uses a lot more common sense.
@@ThunderStruck15 kneeling on rice or frozen peas or something similar would leave a very specific type of bruising and/or skin damage. You'd be able to tell it from regular bruises or scabs from regular play.
@@ThunderStruck15 If there were other indicators of abuse, perhaps I would agree. But would you destroy a family on the off chance that they make their kids kneel on rice? I feel a far better explanation is it's a kid that plays.
My suspicion is that they didn't actually believe the charge but decided that it was a way to punish the woman because as a drug user she is "Bad (TM)". Hence being fine with her sleeping on the floor and delaying the pregnancy test. To be charitable this could be because they wanted to "scare her straight". But if this is true, they are ignoring why due process is a thing and essentially become vigilantes.
Unfortunately there are some people who bring a mindset of a woman's body not being her own and up for public interference to other countries. Some years ago I was told by an American tourist in a London pub I was putting my unborn baby in danger by drinking alcohol while pregnant. For starters I was drinking St Clements (not alcoholic) and I wasn't pregnant either. The bloke in question learned a lot of loud British swearwords that day, and not just from me either. He also learned it's a very bad idea to body-shame people in their local pub.
That's the price we pay for modern day abortion. These laws ironically wouldn't exist if abortion didn't exist. And I'm not talking about the morality here; none of these laws existed prior to the legalization of abortion. The government is over compensating because some people care about the moral issue of ending a life that has no agency for no other reason than not wanting the responsibility. They want to be reelected, and cater to the voters who want to end abortion, many of them being women themselves. This is what happens when you legislate morality in a society fighting against morality.
@@baronvonslambert well, I wouldn't consider anyone elected into government to be a 'fundamentalist zealot',which I know is a slight against Christians, even though Muslims and religious Jews are also against abortion too. But your hatred of Christians aside, do you trust anyone in government to have the moral clarity to be honest in their dealings? I don't. This is why innocent people like the woman in the article get poorly treated in prison. This is what happens when government tries to legislate morality against a population fighting it. Of course, you can't understand that I am against this. You rightly guessed that I am a 'fundamentalist zealot' or whatever. Yeah, I think breaking the necks off of unborn babies and twisting their limbs apart to get them out of a uterus is bad. But that doesn't mean I want the government to try and stop you from doing that. Innocent people get thrown in prison when that happens. The innocent blood shed, by abortion, will be sorted out by God rather quickly. Government does more damage than it helps. The people must decide if they will keep the morals imparted to them by our founders or reject them. That is what John Adams meant when he said 'This government was created for a moral and religious people. It is unsuited to govern any other'.
Not all law enforcement...don't include those that actually have a brain and do their job the right way...still, there is a lack of common sense that is getting to be more and more common in ALL areas of government and civil service...
Or live in alabama, georgia, mississippi, louisiana, and arkansas. The scariest states in the union when it comes to constitutional rights. They are effectively constitution free zones.
I live in Alabama. We are like a country,with its own laws. I am so used to the tyrannical ways, nothing surprises me. Why,or how,does Alabama get away with it? Because,most of the citizens are too poor,or illiterate,to defend themselves. But,we are in the process of building,not one,but 2,supermax prisons,to incarcerate these less fortunate people.
Good point though. If they try to use their belief that she was pregnant as a defense, then ignoring that bleeding would have endangered a life and they should be held responsible for that reckless endangerment. If on the other hand they believed it to be a normal menstrual cycle then they can be held liable for unsanitary conditions and unlawful imprisonment.
Not in Alabama. Since there have been 150 prosecutions, the top man or woman, i.e. the Sheriff, is equally responsible for improper training of the deputies, improper supervision of deputies, and denying basic medical care to women arrested on suspicion of pregnancy; there's no probable cause w/o the pregnancy test, and they have to prove she was using when pregnant. Having something in your blood may be proof in Alabama, but not in many other places. The purpose of this law is to keep the Jim Crow alive and well in Alabama
The other problem is even if everything is completely dismissed, it still shows up on your record that you have been arrested and charged with a crime... This can make it difficult to get some jobs and travel internationally...
150 pregnant women,,, chemical endangerment,,, and then they have the 'pregnant' woman sleeping on a concrete floor. Sounds to me like the county has endangered the child.
Wrote a paper about this law 2 weeks ago, was not expecting it to pop up on your channel. So ridiculous that no one even had her take a pregnancy test prior to jail, nor look at hospital records (which hospitals are required to turn over to law enforcement under the applicable AL law) to see if she had been seeking medical treatment related to pregnancy.
not seeking medical treatment for pregnancy is not prove of not being pregnant. Having seeked medical treatment related to pregnancy does not mean being pregnant at time of arrest - high stress situations like getting locked up in prison might cause miscarriages. So... how would hospital records help? Neither response would be definitive.
@@sarowie All I was saying is that those medical records (if they exist) must be turned over to law enforcement, which would include various drug test results. The results of the drug tests are often used as part of the evidence for/against the charges. Most often mothers are charged with fetal endangerment after they give birth, when the mother and newborn are required to be tested under Alabama law. Let's say hypothetically the woman in the video had a hysterectomy done, but the child didn't know about it. It would come out in discovery (if it got that far) via her medical records that the woman is incapable of having children, so they would have to drop the charges.
@@AlBundyOz Its 2022. It doesn't take DAYS to do a pregnancy test. This isn't the 1950's. They don't use rabbits. You can buy a reliable test at any drugstore or 99 cent store. And if you're in a medical setting - they can perform a professional grade test and have the results in less than an hour.
There is something inherently wrong with easily abused police access to someones medical rocords.That should be a case by case warrant issued by a judge. Maybe they rubber stamp it but at least it requires a judge to sign off on an invasion of privacy.
Accusing women of crimes involving pregnancy when you have no way of knowing if they are pregnant or not, is the clearest example of discrimination based on sex that can be thought of. This is a violation of federal law.
Having worked at a 1500 person jail of up to 300+ that were women. Ours had rubber "boats" if there were no bunks available. However toilet paper and almost worse cheap awful feminine products (kotex) that I think were worse than what was available 60 years ago were very sparsely distributed. We didnt test for pregnancy there but later I worked at the 2nd largest jail in the country. They gave a preg test within 2 weeks of booking and may have done one if a woman said she might be on the spot. It takes less than 3 min to dip the urine. All said I think Alabama has some stupid laws like this. Worse is the case of the man recently at Elmore Correctional facility there above Montgomery where they have some fairly horrific conditions and re ently Kastellio Vaughan was so severely emaciated related to their health care that it made the news. I know they are just inmates to some but they are not all horrible and they are all someone's father/brother/son/husband or mother/sister/daughter/wife.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a sequel to this story discussing the invoice she receives in the mail for her "accommodations" and "counseling session."
Wow! I would suspect that immediately after the arrest a blood sample SHOULD have been drawn in order to confirm both the suspicion of drug use (don't think that in and of itself is a chargeable crime, but who knows in Alabama) and for pregnancy. I have had pregnancy test run before (as a tumor marker for cancer) and it is a simple blood draw. They blew it and she deserves to get a large settlement.
The whole bail system is set up to coerce guilty pleas. Most defendants would have pled out to a lesser offense - possibly not involving pregnancy - signed up for the rehab program, and accepted whatever punishment to avoid indefinite pretrial detention.
I would plead guilty to shooting Abraham Lincoln if it meant I got to go home that same day. If the court doesn't care about the truth, then neither should I.
Or another way to look at it is that it encourages you to form roots and equity in the community so that you or someone else will put their house up for bond to assure you’ll show up. If you’re so unrooted, indigent, and pennyless that you can’t come up with even the 10 percent to get bail from a bail bondsman then almost by definition you’re a flight risk since you have little to lose.
@@EarthIsNotFlat Except who wants to put up $2000 bail money for someone who you know didn't do the crime only for the prosecutor ram it through to make a quota anyway? Then you are out 2k and nothing good has happened. Cash bail systems encourage police and prosecutors to get lesser sentencing instead of letting people have their day in court. It's the classic conundrum, is it better to have a good man and a bad man in jail, or is it better to have a good man and a bad man out of jail? The founding fathers chose the second one.
The punch-line here is that you can take any suspect who might be pregnant to a *Planned Parenthood* location and get both an immediate AND clinical pregnancy test done on-the-house.
Actually, it has nothing to do with the case. It solves nothing, and further, the jail and sheriff's department has a written protocol of where detainees are taken for medical procedures.
@@KB4QAA It... Solves nothing? Are you legitimately trying to claim that proving that she's not pregnant would have no impact on a case where the charge is based on her endangering the fetus that she is supposedly pregnant with? The fetus that she offered to prove didn't exist in the first place? I'm having a hard time following your logic...
@@tygerion4404 The fact that tests are available other places solves nothing. There was no lack of testing [availability] in this case. YOUR logic is lacking.
@@tygerion4404 BTW, I suspect not all information was presented in this video. I suspect the person who placed charges is not a police officer and not the person who investigates and prosecutes the case. Not to mention why she was in for three days. It is not unusual nor illegal to be arrested on Friday afternoon and not be further processed until Monday.
@@KB4QAA ... You are actively putting words in my mouth that I never said. I was refuting your point that the test would change nothing about the case. Availability has no actual relevance there... Furthermore, the comment you had been replying to had pointed out that there were ways they could have had her tested if they needed to. Is it standard procedure? Probably not. Does that matter? I mean, if they're able to get a court order for a blood test in, what? 30 minutes? I'm sure they could do something similar for something you can pick up from the store. As for my own point: Is it important to the case? Uh... Yeah? The lynchpin of their entire case was that she was using drugs (which they didn't test her for), while pregnant (Which they *also* refused to test her for... Even when she offered to take the test voluntarily). So. If they have zero evidence of her being on drugs not being pregnant... Is arresting her for doing drugs while pregnant reasonable? Is it reasonable to imprison someone for thirty six hours with no evidence that they did anything wrong? Because the 4th amendment says that any arrest must be reasonable. Oh, and just FYI? Maybe stop countering my arguments with points that are irrelevant to the arguments that I actually made? That's not a great debate tactic.
"If they think you're drunk, they will rush to … do those alcohol tests pronto" (5:14) unless you happen to be the husband of the Speaker of the House, in which case they will dawdle for more than four hours just to get your BAC under 0.15% and then they'll wake up a judge before dawn on a Sunday morning to get you bailed out in time for church. Equal justice under law.
@@lloydeaker7029 Don't be disingenuous, "just asking?". Paul Pelosi was singled out for his proximity to power, not for whatever political party he might subscribe to.
@@realtijuana5998 It is a fair question. There are a lot of people who will raise all kinds of hell people who side with the other party do something but when members of their own do the exact same thing say it isn't a problem. If it is a problem the party affiliation shouldn't matter but often critics will look the other way when their party is in the wrong.
It's a small town, it's not hard to keep the fact that you've been arrested quiet, it's impossible. The arrests are probably published in the local paper, like mine was when I was illegally arrested by the Taylor Police in 1976.
Why did they think waiting would improve the chances she was pregnant? Did they know of another crime the was committed against her and were hoping she would end up pregnant? It's also very strange they put her in an environment that endangered the life of the imaginary fetus.
I'm curious as to what happened to the children she did have while she was in the jail and where they are now. Edit: it is not curiosity. I want to know if they ended up in the care of Child Procurement Services. *This woman did nothing wrong but I believe they are going to make her jump through hoops, endure personal and professional interference from insufficiently educated personnel, be put through all sorts of drug and alcohol testing as well as 'education', endure despicable classes and 'counseling' to get her children back.* I am very aware of how these people operate. I want someone, in an official capacity, to assure those children are safe. No B.S. I'm sick and tired and fed up with these people. The good ones leave or get fired. CPS destroys more children than they save. *At least 90% of these creatures lie like crazy. Edit: I remember Ricky Holland.
When I was in high school in the 1970’s I worked in a bowling alley. My first time coming home my mother confronted me claiming that I reeked of smoke. I did, but never took a drag. As Steve says about that cloud of smoke, you could see it from behind the machines, but it stopped 10 to 15 feet before the machines, probably an air circulation condition caused by the actions of the pin setting machines. I still don’t smoke and never took up the habit.
This sounds like something that happened on a Saturday afternoon or evening, threw her in jail immediately then did the paperwork on Monday morning. She should sue for millions of dollars just to prove a point.
@@sparkyUSA1976 It won't make it to trial, there will be some pretrial motions to dismiss and other attempts to get rid of it, but the moment it looks like it's headed to trial they will settle ASAP. It's why so few cases involving civil asset forfeiture or qualified immunity make it to the Supreme Court.
@@sparkyUSA1976 Her, and her lawyers, will accept the settlement if it's a big enough value. Lawyers are there to make money, and in this case they will off that settlement. It's why non-profits like Institute for Justice are so important, they would actually take something all the way through even if it's at a loss.
If you are running blood tests for drugs, it is also possible within the same drawing of blood, just needs a proper test tube to run a pregnancy test blood only as well. I'm going for some minor surgery myself soon and looked at the tests they ordered and as part of their standard is a pregnancy test because I'm female but I only had a blood draw.
@@karrenwebb3341 Yes that is what I meant by appropriate test tube. Just the system they use only have to do one needle stick and insert the correct test tube then switch it out for another without the needle being removed. I quite often for my blood tests require 6 different test tubes at most times but all can be drawn from one needle insertion.
Doctors used to tell pregnant women that smoked that they shouldn’t quit because the withdrawal could be dangerous for a baby. They also used to say drinking was ok. Regardless on how you feel, this is a huge miscarriage of Justice… pun intended.
Ah, but you see, according to extremist, sexist, assholes... miscarrying justice is perfectly normal while miscarrying a fetus deserves capital punishment! Ain't that a wonderful thing?
I was reading other stories there are hundreds of these horrific stories in the one area alone. It is truly disgraceful how people are being treated in America these days.
If you get pregnant later, we’ll get you??? WT….. Stupidity is incomprehensible. Thank you Steve, common sense need not apply. I was born in 2nd hand smoke. My lungs are garbage. ❤👏👏👏
Judge: "At any time during the 90 days that she was detained did anyone in law enforcement, or the prosecution ever perform a pregnancy test on the defendant?" "We really tried to your honor, but we're unable to obtain the necessary rabbit."
#1 mom should use this as a learning experience for her daughter to NEVER talk to those people again. #2 If mom gets a nice settlement she should start calling her daughter Jewel. 😬
One thing that bothers me about this story, is when Steve mentioned the Sheriff as saying (something like) "If she is found to be pregnant at any time within the next few months, she's going to be in a world of trouble." I mean, it shouldn't take a rocket surgeon to realize she wasn't pregnant at the time of her arrest, so what would a past alleged drug use, have to do with a theoretical future pregnancy? Surely any substance that may be in her system now... would have been filtered out by then. And even if she had ingested some illegal substance, maybe this arrest is a wakeup call for her and she turns her life around, goes clean. Again, no drug in her system if she gets pregnant in the future. More than a few variables & "what-ifs"... but stranger things have happened.
The scientific facts are irrelevant in these jurisdictions. Women who become pregnant are imprisoned for taking drugs years ago as it is deemed child endangerment. The entire purpose of foetal personhood laws is to criminalise the human female body. Which they have done. Anything a woman does can be deemed to endanger a foetus, including working 10 hr days on her feet to pay her rent. Yet if a born "person" endangers you, you can defend yourself...except if you are a woman and that "person" is a foetus. These laws are intended to give a foetus more rights than a born human, and to give women less rights than even a corpse.
😮😮I had 2 miscarriages when I was younger. They were Horrible. I don’t need the law getting involved in a private experience between me, my husband and my doctor.
A woman can have her period throughout her entire pregnancy. It isn't the majority of women, but it happens more often than you might think. Many women have one or two periods after they get pregnant.
Even a lawsuit against the department or the county for false arrest wouldn't excuse their illegal harassment of this woman! I've been in the county jail, it ain't no picnic! And I saw far too many people there that never belong there in the first place! It is they who should sit in that county jail for a while!!
Jails and prisons regularly treat pregnant postpartum or menstruating women like crap and don’t give them basic care. The reality that giving birth in shackles is barbaric.
Social services is the least trained law enforcement agency. I mentioned this to our family court judge who replied they weren’t law enforcement and I pointed out he literally had an entire criminal docket in his court based around social services allegations
What's crazy about this woman being arrested with charges of using and pregnant, is the jailers treatment of her, it was pure neglect. 1. Making her sleep on the floor, 2. She asked for feminine hygiene supplies. The fact that she needed hygiene products is one of two things, not pregnant and she is having her period, or having a miscarriage. They neglected both, if it was a miscarriage she needed medical attention pronto. The fact that she is having her period and needs hygiene products, means she not pregnant, and they should have provided her with the hygiene products and released her promptly, they had no case against her. She can't be both, on a period and pregnant at the same time. Pregnant and bleeding can and most likely a miscarriage, needs medical attention. I hope she files a law suit for being put through the criminal (justice system), that there is no justice in this system.
They waited the max time to force her to withdraw assuming she had been using drugs. It is a horrible way to go through withdrawal but that's likely what happened.
Ridiculous! They arrest her for endangering a fetus, but if she had been pregnant the way they treated her caused enough stress to result in miscarriage; if they believed she was pregnant why did they not call for medical attention when she was obviously bleeding? Forcing anyone to sleep on floor is inhumane. $10,000 bond? Sounds like money making scam! If she had paid the bond and agreed to attend rehab, as per their rules, would that be used as evidence of guilt? You don't need rehab if you're not a user.
I'm curious if they are trying to set some sort of precedent where the woman "Could have been" pregnant unless she has proof of negative test prior to using.
I'm sure the police will just start monitoring every womans cycle starting at age 12. If you're late, you have to report to the police for a birth certificate and drug test. If you don't have a live birth, you go to jail for murder
@@grahvis I've been wondering if they're planning on banning jacking off too. The bible says "no spilling seed upon the ground". Ah who are we kidding? They won't bother men.
If they thought she was pregnant, and she started bleeding, the fact that they didn't immediately rush her to the Emergency Room makes the Sheriff's Department guilty of endangering the life of a fetus.
Good point.
Right?!
But, the law is for controlling women!
They would, except for Qualified Immunity. Cops are immune from prosecution for "doing cop stuff."
These days, "doing cop stuff" has been expanded to "anything they damn well feel like doing."
@@FranSanTeeth90 Good point. She wasn't carrying a gun to protect the fetus.
So, they thought she was pregnant, but she had to sit and sleep on the floor, and they didn't bring her to an emergency room when she started bleeding, which, if she had been pregnant, would probably have been a sign that she was miscarrying. Clearly, their agenda had nothing to do with protecting fetuses, and everything to do with punishing women.
Right, so they should equally be charged with endangering a (non-existent) fetus
As usual.
Yeah it's between
No I don't even think it's about punishing women. I do believe it's purely about profit. It would be interesting to see the budget for that county and what percentage of that budget relies on income derived from law enforcement activities.
@@kylestanley4734 If it were about money, they would've just let her go instead of wasting resources going after her and detaining her. The golden rule of Government is to do the minimum if you can't do nothing. This was just to hurt her.
Things like this happen more than most people realize. There's a similar story of a woman also from AL, charged with endangering a fetus. She had smoked marijuana before finding out that that she was pregnant. She admitted it, but was arrested and jailed, and refused bail. They wouldn't let her out until she went to a drug treatment facility, but no facility would accept her because she wasn't a drug addict! That would have required she post a 10k bond too. She had a high-risk pregnancy and started having complications in jail. She suffered hunger and fainting spells and was bleeding for 5 weeks, never receiving emergency care! She sat in jail for 3 months without ever being convicted of a crime!
There's a story of a 14-year-old girl who was denied her routine medication because of the abortion bans. She had been prescribed Methotrexate for her painful and debilitating Rheumatoid Arthritis, and it was the only med that worked for her. Her pharmacy refused to fill it because the medication could terminate a pregnancy. She wasn't pregnant, or even sexually active! Unfortunately, there are plenty more similar stories, and it's likely that they'll only increase.
Maybe someday they will stop electing those who would oppress them. Education is critical.
All these instances are a fearure of laws that deny women the basic human right to bodily autonomy...not a bug.
The entire purpose is to criminalise the human female body.
Ask me if I feel sorry for the adult women facing this challenge? I do not. You get the government you elect.
@@Galworld761 Not every American woman voted for Fascist idiots.
@@Galworld761 How do you know that the woman in question voted for those in power?
arresting someone for "endangering" a fetus then making that person sleep on the floor for 36 hours is peak hubris. so is seeing any amount of blood from that area and ignoring it
The whole pd charged with endagering an unborn child.
She shouldn't be talking drugs.
Taking drugs also affects a man’s reproduction, and you don’t see them retroactively jailed.
@@cybersal7 Huh? Yeah that is a woman issue. Women should take care of their own bodies. Also the child is more at risk if the mother takes drugs.
Arrogance, not hubris. (They're similar, but have different connotations.)
The dark irony of her treatment, if she had been pregnant the combination of stress and her treatment over 3 days could have easily caused a miscarriage. I wonder how they would have tried to spin that.
They literally would just blame the drug use they do every time. Just look at George Floyd
@@pikapowns every single doctor on that trial said the dude was gonna die from overdose
I have pain that needs Tylenol 3 the smallest opiate dose possible... I've had doctors deny methat, and yet offer to hospitalize me and dose me with Fentanyl, the most highly addictive, strongest and most dangerous opioid, which means if they give me a dose too close together by mistake I would die...
Needless to say, I had to refuse their "assistance"
Moral of the story, there's a lot of idiots who graduated with D's from medical school, who's advice is full of shit.
Lots of them still quote racist bull from 1970s medical textbooks as a reason to not treat anyone who doesn't look entirely white.
@@t_c5266 No the opposite actually happened there was one doctor who said it was the drugs and every other doctor said that conclusion was sus. Then Maryland looked at all like 1000 cases that guy determined then reopened 100 that followed a similar fact pattern.
She could have been charged with murder, people have been.
They made a woman they believed was pregnant sleep on the floor of a jail and when that woman they thought was pregnant started bleeding they didn’t immediately call 911. I am sorry, who was in endangering who again?!
Alabama says it all.
Ummm, not providing sanitary pads while in custody is often seen as a human rights violation.
That's an easy answer. They would blamed the woman and tried to up the charges!
no
@@BlackJesus8463 does THAT offend you???!!! Elaborate on your gutless answer chump!!!!!
Yes it is considered unsanitary conditions to deny basic hygiene.
Intentionally bleeding in public = Vandalism
I think it is barbaric that they would make a woman they think is pregnant sleep on the floor.
Like they actually care about the fetus. They just want to abuse the woman
That is where the MAIN outrage needs to focus!
I actually hadn't thought about that... good point.
@@scotthewitt258 - Well, no. That should not be the MAIN part. The MAIN part is personal autonomy.
The main point should the welfare of mother and baby.
Things like this will continue to happen until Prosecutors, Police Officers and Judges start going to jail for false imprisonment.
Yes, specifically, things like this are gross abuses of the nearly infinite power of qualified immunity. Something needs to be done to limit or entirely abolish QI. I understand that honest mistakes can be made by law enforcement, but there needs to be better accountability when the rights and freedoms of innocent people are being treated so recklessly.
@@Caffin8tor "honest" mistakes also get made by doctors, engineers, contractors, etc. and there is *no* immunity for them, rightly so. There is no such thing as "honestly" failing to do your due diligence.
Vote straight blue tickets. The red states are all doing this.
Bleeding while pregnant can be a medical emergency. How do they think it's OK for them to neglect the woman and alleged fetus?
Because they don't actually care about the woman or the fetus. They are gaslighting us by SAYING one thing *and then DOING the complete opposite.*
Because they don't care. The chief point is that women understand that breeding is all they are good for.
Lock him up for endangering a fetus. I'd like to see him prove he's not pregnant or doesn't do drugs. "Sorry, chief. It's just the way things are done around here"
You really think they would care if they endanger a fetus?
It's Alabama !!!!!! What do you expect.
As far as they are concerned they left a pregnant woman bleeding on the floor for a day and a half. Either the prosecutor presses criminal charges for that or he is publicly admitting that he is not fit for his job.
He's a politician. Likely to praise police for prompt and decisive action, and to warn people about how seriously they take the law, blah blah. Because that will get certain people to vote for him.
@@jefftitterington7600 it feels weird to thumb up a comment that says something so distasteful even though I agree...
As far as they were concerned, they weren't dealing with a vulnerable pregnant woman, they were just dealing with a worthless drug user.
EDIT: Thought i should clarify that i don't support that opinion. Nobody should be treated as worthless & without respect, no matter what their story.
@@animerlon no, it was the Philippines where police were once given tacit permission to kill drug users. You might want to contact their embassy to ask about emigrating and job opportunities.
Plus, you might ask how you can arrest someone for being pregnant without knowing you have to treat her as pregnant.
@@jefftitterington7600 From your comment about emigrating & job opportunities, i assume you think my comment supports that attitude & behaviour. My bad for leaving it to one sentence. My true feelings are the opposite. There are many reasons people turn to drugs & we should not negatively judge them until we've made a journey in their shoes. Also, no matter what crime a woman is being arrested for, if she's pregnant, she should be well cared for.
It happens in other us states too. Like when I pumped breast milk for my infant in the hospital for a week and they called me and said there wasn't enough and they had to give him some formula. Turns out they took out like 1/3 of it to test it for drugs against my knowledge or will! They did this numerous times and always called me and accused me of not pumping enough milk and even made me go to a lactation specialist. When they were stealing the milk. In California.
I do not understand what the state's interest is in measuring how much breast milk a mother is producing.
@@sandrasweeney798 They wanted me to provide timed deliveries of a certain amount of breast milk and increase it by a few ml a day as the baby grew, but they took some out of each bottle to test it for drugs.
I would have threatened them with a visit from a lawyer.
OMG that is incredibly tyrannical!!! The war on drugs has got to stop!!!
Even if the lady wins a lawsuit for a bunch of money, there are no negative consequences for law enforcement, none at all.
no shit... sigh....
These police talk about how they want the teach lessons, maybe they need some of that a good old "their own medicine" to come upon them.
Why do private citizens need to be held accountable for our actions *if government actors don't need to be held accountable for their actions?*
@@ianbattles7290 "The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime."- Max Stirner
There are consequences. You ever wonder why Steve talks about trying to put cops at ease when pulled over? Because they're on edge? They're on edge because we have a second amendment and many good people have lost faith in cops and rightly so. These days, when a cop pulls someone over, it's not just a young, black gang banger in a chevy that might snuff them. It could be the old, white doctor or engineer in the benz. They have a lot of chickens coming home to roost. My training is better than theirs. My equipment is better. I'm ready for them to try to make my day. That's the price they've paid and will in the future.
The same laws should apply to cops who falsley arrest people as anyone else who kidnaps someone at gunpoint.
It's about punishing women
@@niyablake but this is exactly what the weirdo Republicans want to do to all pregnant American women or anybody who is associated with them.
How about a male being arrested for drinking alcohol or,drugs,or bad diet would always do harm to your sperm that will become children some day so you should be arrested
Then, where do you draw the line:
1 Arrested and truly guilty but got off on a technicality?
2 Arrested and evidence looks like they did it, but they really didn’t?
3 Arrested by incompetent cop who doesn’t know what they’re doing?
4 Arrested by indifferent cop who doesn’t care if you’re guilty or not?
5 Arrested by cop who knows you aren’t guilty?
6 Arrested by cop who created evidence to make you look guilty?
Remember, it’s already illegal to do 5 and 6.
@@rh451 No 5 is not illegal 6 is rarely prosecuted
Side point about menstrual cycle: it is totally possible to keep having bleeds even if you are pregnant. I did through my entire pregnancy, and a year of breastfeeding. 😬
Im not saying that's an excuse for the behavior we see here, there is still no good reason for treating her like this.
Also, the whole "we think she's pregnant, lets stick her in a room with no bed for a day and a half" thing REALLY angers me. IF she HAD been pregnant, that would have endangered the fetus too.
Your missing the point. Nobody in the pro life movement gives a shit about lives, its about punishing women and keeping them in their place. Viewed like that this make perfect sense. They never cared about any "baby" they wanted to punish what they thought was another delinquent drug using baby momma
They still should have given her a pregnancy test.
@@alannajones330 absolutely agree. 👍
And here's the freaky thing.
Bleeding during pregnancy usually means either miscarriage or fetal distress.
And fetal distress can kill both patient and passenger.
Those assholes we're hoping to KILL a 🍼 that didn't even exist.
@@FranSanTeeth90 not entirely true... It can also just be a a hormonal thing.
This is the direct result of a qualified immunity. These officers know they aren't going to be personally liable so they put zero time or thought into doing their job properly or legally.
Or morally.
THAT^^^ See that^^^ Absolutely nailed it in two sentences. The concept of QI makes sense but its application is corrupt. Obviously you cannot expect law enforcement to know the entirety of the law off hand. But what's crazy is that the dividing line between what should be and should not be QI has already been defined. What any reasonable person would consider to be wrong. And if it were that simple it wouldn't be such a problem. But, idiots at the highest level decided that it also needed precedent, which would be impossible to obtain seeing as no precedent would exist to set a precedent. All of this I'm certain ties in with civil asset forfeiture, they have to protect law enforcement from everything because they are the cash cows now. They've become so dependant on the flow of corrupt cash, they're addicted to it and they have to keep it coming. Protecting the goons who collect it is their top priority, and this goes all the way to the supreme court. They no longer care what the cops do, or how they conduct themselves so long as the money keeps rolling in. Sound familiar?
This is an example of how law enforcement has failed us. How could any cop enforce such a law instead of quitting.
@@solutionsforabrightfuture3579 Same way they packed people into railcars.
The job attracts a certain type of person.
As long as the checks keep coming and it's not them that's being abused they'll happily do whatever they're told to do.
It also illustrates another fundamental problem with qualified immunity. The facts of this case are so far fetched and ridiculous that there likely is not a prior precedent showing that the conduct is illegal- a necessity to overcome QI.
There is one very important thing that I have learned during my life about law enforcement. Their goal is NOT to find the truth. Their goal is to find a conviction. This is a case and point. Law enforcement at all levels is one of the most predatory organizations in existence and most of the time, they f'in get away with it and people's lives are ruined as a result.
If you're lucky a conviction is ALL they're after. They can also just steal your property. Oh I'm sorry, "seize" your property. And I mean everything from cash in your wallet to your home and vehicles.
Also, even worse, from what I read on this, they left what they assumed/believed to be a pregnant woman on the jail floor for 36 hours.... Why aren't THEY being charged with fetus endangerment?
The terrifying thing about this is what if it wasn't stupidity? What if it was completely intentional? I think they were hoping on the slight chance that bleeding they saw was her miscarrying and they were waiting until she begged to go to the hospital or passed fetal tissue to use as evidence against her. Or even worse, the stress of being arrested and incarcerated making her miscarry and them pinning it on her. Either way, their intentions were to endanger a life to obtain evidence. At least I see that as highly possible.
Scary but possible. If she had been pregnant and miscarried they could have tried to add the charge of homicide - for a miscarriage they knowingly contributed to. Interesting theory. Hope it isn’t true but there is evil in the world
You might have something there and thats terrifying
I'm assuming you are correct. Probably "teaching her a lesson". It certainly sends a message. Respect their authority.
Personally I'd look at the racial element. Usually when you see law enforcement abusing power, there's a race disparity, and certain minorities are disproportionately targeted. Alabama being Alabama, I bet those 150 women were NOT wealthy, white, married and living in good neighborhoods. They are using this to harass the non whites, poor, unmarried, in bad neighborhoods.
@@joew8438 not so coincidentally the first woman in the US to be set free from death row due to police negligence came from Alabama. They convicted Sabrina Butler at 17 of killing her child when a second independent autopsy from her appeal proved he died of natural causes and the secondary injuries were caused by her attempts at CPR. Makes you wonder how the 1st autopsy, when the child was recently deceased had so many errors but an independent autopsy after 6 years of decomposition was able to debunk the original completely. Alabama has a very long history of being obsessed with painting women as evil child murderers. Especially women of color.
So the police arrested someone based on hearsay and without any further evidence and without doing any actual investigation, then had solid proof that the woman either wasn't pregnant or was suffering a medical emergency but still insisted on bringing charges and failed to provide her with even the minimum level of care. That should be a slam-dunk lawsuit.
Very often,when these charges went to court, Roe vs Wade was their #1 defense. Now that's gone, these cases are only going to become more and more common. Our privacy is an illusion, but one that continues to be worth fighting for.
Reminds me of a story from a couple months ago where a pharmacy refused to sell a woman her prescribed pain meds because they could harm a developing fetus. Even though she was not pregnant, was on the pill, and had no intention of ever getting pregnant.
@@sparkyUSA1976 Pharmacists have repeatedly and frequently denied prescribed medications based on their own personal moral/religious reasons.
@@sparkyUSA1976 I’ve seen reports of women being denied prescription medication for gynaecology surgery because it could cause a pregnancy loss. Another woman because she might give it to her daughter to end a pregnancy. It’s insane.
@CantankerousDave When I went in the hospital for a mastectomy for breast cancer, and was lying on the gurney to be wheeled into the operating room already connected to the IV, someone demanded AT THAT POINT that I pee in a bottle so they could do a pregnancy test and I was informed AT THAT POINT that if they thought I was pregnant they intended to deny me the cancer surgery because the anesthesia might be harmful to the nonexistant fetus. BTW, I had had a tubal ligation and COULD NOT GET PREGANT and this was in my medical information that they got during the "pre-op" exam a couple days before the surgery date. The message was very very clear that as a woman my life was of absolutely no concern and no value to these people. This was in Ohio. All of this is part of making sure women never, ever qualify as full, free citizens of this "democracy". When I got the tubal ligation, I was told that I had to have my (nonexistant) husband's permission in writing. I only got the procedure done because I worked at the hospital with that surgeon and he was willing to fudge the paperwork. Has any man who asked for a vasectomy ever had to get any woman's permission in writing? This has not changed as of 2022, it is still being done.
@@coop5329 "Has any man who asked for a vasectomy ever had to get any woman's permission in writing?"
Yes, actually. I have heard of men seeking vasectomies being asked for permission from their (nonexistent) wives.
@@coop5329 Approximately 1 in 200 women may still become pregnant after a tubal ligation. These are almost always ectopic pregnancies, owing to the nature of the procedure, but it's still possible, and if they didn't check for that during pre-op then they'd be liable for harming a human life (non-viable as it likely would have been). It's not that they didn't have concern for your health, they were just trying to cover their rear ends by verifying that only one person was going under. This saves them from potential criminal charges, and keeps the surgical center doors open for another day.
The second part of that, where spousal permission is required to perform a surgery, is bonkers. I've seen financial forms, and post-op transport and care forms being given to spouses, but the thought of a spousal permission form sickens me.
This is when you realize they're "enforcing" laws so loosely...
Because they CAN...
All cops are terrorists in a society as subjugative as this
Naive or brainwashed, pick one.
Just flexing power over grudge or hate, without any real concern for the child gestating inside someone undergoing this persecution. Alabama, think if she was pregnant and addicted to drugs abortion would have been attainable?
Only to those who are in no position to fight back.
Don't these tyrants know about second amendment rights?
I'm not sure I can even count the number of things morally and ethically wrong with this case. It's mind boggling.
Why would they refuse a pregnancy test *when her being pregnant or not is the entire basis of the criminal case against her?* Are they *trying* to get sued for false arrest???
Part of me is hopeful that this is indeed malicious compliance to get those broken laws repealed. But the reality is probably that they're testing how far they can push it to use it widely as an easy probable cause to detain people and dig out other crimes they can't get evidence otherwise.
OH bless your peapickin' little heart. They are in no danger of prosecution for anything. even if she had been pregnant and this treatment resulted in a miscarriage, the blame would fall completely on the 'female'. Just a bonus to their bondage game.
Never mind that there's probably no case law against arresting someone for being pregnant but refusing to test to see if they're actually pregnant, so that's qualified immunity to boot.
Because it's about punishing women
It’s supposed to be a punishment in and of itself to stop a certain behavior. The brutality is the point. They wanted to make an “example” out of her by torturing her, or possibly letting out frustration. A lot of COs do this.
When my wife and I lived in Alabama I saw something interesting in traffic court. My wife was stopped and cited for speeding. I don't believe she was but in this case, that is not the point. I went with her to traffic court and I looked around and there was only five men in the court room and they had driven their wives to court like me. I was there for about two hours and every case called was a female defendant. There were no men fighting traffic tickets. Interesting and strange..
@johnemerson1363 It is documented statistical fact that, contrary to common belief, cops will give another man a warning but nearly always give women drivers a ticket. My opinion is this goes right along with cops being the profession most likely to abuse their wives and girlfriends, again a statistical fact.
Wonder if it was all the same cop.
I wouldn't even want to fly over that state. I'd ask the pilot to go around... the globe if necessary.
@@JosephKano No, I saw many different officers respond, but I never saw a male fight a ticket. I'm a retired cop and when I went to traffic court, most of my defendants were male. That is why I thought it was strange.
@@johnemerson1363 that is odd.
I was in the middle of a pregnancy scare, living in the same place this happened, right when this happened (or at least when the story first hit the internet) I saw this at the exact right time to scare the shit out of me. I've been with the same person for over a decade, neither of us want kids, and I was already nervous because of the legislation here. This is terrifying on so many levels to us. I'm not even on illegal drugs, but I'm on prescriptions I can't stop taking. And Alabama is stupid enough to take it that far. From what I've seen and heard, it seems like the plan is to put certain pregnant women in jail long enough that they can't get out of state to have an abortion. I believe our county has arrested the most pregnant women out of anywhere else.
Never move to Alabama...noted.
🎶 Sweet home Alabama 🎶…
@@TomJakobW...doom...😮
"fetal personhood" is barbaric.
It's tragic enough when a mother loses a future child, but to be threatened with a crime for situations that occur naturally (or miscarriages and stillbirths) and to then be forced to show she didn't do anything wrong (proving a nnegative) is just unconscionable to me.
And yes, I *DO* value the life of a demonstrably viable person over that of a potential person.
It's all part of putting women back into chattel status.
Even worse the draconian anti-abortion laws are never going to be applied evenly. There just isn't enough time or money to investigate every late period and miscarriage so police and prosecutors are going to use the laws to selectively go after what they consider to be the 'Undesirables' in the community.
A fetus can't even have personhood by definition
Yes 100% absolutely
Tbf it is a real think to purposely kill your unborn baby like running into the side of a table or in Hollywood it's falling down the stairs.
There really needs to be a law that if innocence can be conclusively proven by simply checking something/giving a test and the police fail to check or give the test as soon as possible, they are liable.
It’s not just this case, but the guy in Orlando who was arrested for shoplifting despite having a receipt showing he paid for the items, and countless other cases that should have never gotten past a cursory examination of the facts.
This is the US. If you are a suspect, you are NOT ALLOWED to provide proof of your innocence prior to arrest. NEVER. According to police, it is actually against the law to provide proof of innocence. I was once arrested for wearing a blue T-shirt that was similar to a known suspect. We looked nothing alike, and the police knew the guy by name and MUGSHOT. When I was arrested, i tied using my state-issued photo ID to prove i wasn't the guy. The officer instead charged me with Forgery and several other made-up charges, and stuffed me into the back of the squad car. My ID was NOT fake, which i was only later able to prove.
Agree
@@nispelsm That's insane! As if blue T-shirts aren't as common as water. I'm sorry that happened to you.
@@calamityjean1525 In this case, it was a t-shirt from a popular local hangout, which is what the officer was looking for. The real issue here is, the cop in question saw a punk kid he could harass, and didn't real care if I was the right guy or not. Also, he was a plainclothes officer, and he grabbed me from behind without first announcing himself. This was a deliberate trap, meant to make me think he was a mugger or kidnapper, and I fell right into it by fighting back. That was all he needed to initiate the arrest. In short, he knew I wasn't the suspect within the first minute of our "interaction", but he had a quota to meet, and his massive ego wouldn't let him admit he screwed up, so he doubled-down.
@@nispelsm that is so screwy, it's backwards. A cop should check the basic facts before making an arrest.
Not just is this case insane from start to finish, but the idea that fetal rights that **supersede** the rights of the living breathing person to their own right to autonomy is beyond insanity, it’s beyond belief.
Anyone who is voting Republican is responsible for these crazy laws attacking women.
It's all about controlling the little ladies.
I don't think that was a mistake. That 36 hour lockup without a bed sounds like they inflicted a punishment upon her before any verdict could be made, to me.
Exactly
Especially because they locked her up *without even confirming if she was actually pregnant or not.* They didn't even care if their accusations were true or not.
...as has been posted elsewhere....the process is the punishment....😎
I'll never understand the people who say "they're a bad person so it doesn't matter if they're actually what they're charged with. Just convict them anyway."
People who don't believe in justice, due process nor the constitution. Its astounding how many "patriots" don't believe in the rule of law.
They didn't pay attention in history class, they don't understand what happens next after you allow the freedoms of other people to be unjustifiably violated. You lose your own freedom when you seek to take it from others.
Like "they got al capone on tax evasion" but like he actually did the tax evasion, I'm okay with catching a bad guy with another crime *if they did the crime*, good lord. Some of these people just want gulags for anyone they suspect of a crime
@@darkshadowrule2952 I agree if you can get somebody on another crime they committed, that's good. That said, tax evasion should earn you a medal, not jail.
@@kritsadventures nah, you get caught for tax evasion? Amateur hour, you deserve the hat of shame 🤣
I'm 31 years old and while I have been 'regular' since my period started, last month I was late. My biggest fear was people thinking I was pregnant and just lying about it, so I just keep telling the doctors/nurses that you have to do the deed to get pregnant. I have a colposcopy tomorrow because abnormal cells were found and I'm still scared that like, if the doctor I had before isn't around another one will show up and try to insist that I'm pregnant when I'm not. Doesn't help that I carry most of my weight in my gut.
In my early twenties, I had a lot of health issues and some of the specialists were like “how often do you have sex?”, me: “I’ve never had sex or any kind of intimate physical contact”, dr: “sure, uhuh right. So do you use protection every time that you have sex?”
@@ladyj.9350 I literally had sex three times in my life, with the same guy, IN 2010! But like you tell people that and they just cannot believe there are people out there who do not like it or want it! Which is hilarious seeing as there are going to be some people who a) think no one who is not married should be having sex but b) also think it's impossible for people to not have sex????
Technically you could be pregnant without being inseminated I certainly had a "fake pregnancy" like your body can trick itself, believe it was terrifying and I was only 18. However one month isn't that big of a deal it does happen, (especially from my perspective because I usually have irregular periods) especially if you're going through a lot of stress or health problems in your case.
But still I don't understand why they don't believe you, anyways good luck and I hope everything turns out good for your health.
* I want to add it's called phantom pregnancy there is an episode on the house that has one on it. Though I personally didn't like how the episode made it look like it was a mental disorder when it's actually a physiological disorder.
@@KCH55 Thankfully it was more people not believing that someone just doesn't like s e x, and not them thinking I was pregnant. My mom said she had a phantom pregnancy before me. According to her, pretty much everything but the baby showed up, so it could have also been something completely different and she just called it that.
When the process becomes the punishment.
And the only crime.
@@AFloridaSon if a cop abuses someone in the woods and a DA is too conflicted in interest to prosecute did it really make a crime?
“Mistakes” were not made, tyranny was.
Exactly!! This was fully intended. It seems to be a feature of these anti bodily autonomyblaws, not a bug.
I cannot imagine attorneys not lining up and fighting for the representation of her lawsuit…
And even aside for everything you already pointed out, if they did actually think she was pregnant, they put her on the floor of a concrete cell for more than a day. So who would have been guilty of "endangerment to a fetus?" Rediculous.
Does sleeping on a floor endanger a fetus?
@@zapazap a cold damp environment is unhealthy for anyone. And a hard floor is uncomfortable at best. Stress on the mother can hinder development of the fetus. For the mother to be comfortable and not subjected to unhealthy environments while under the custody of the govt is not unreasonable.
@@zapazap shut up. You've repeated this same bullsh*t over and over again. Why don't you go find a pregnant loved one (good luck with the loved one bit) and throw her to a concrete floor locked in a cage for 24 hours and come back and she how she is.
Then be prepared for your ' reward' for doing it or supporting it in the first place.
Real life this comment would be with you in the gutter!
Sleeping on the floor does not endanger a fetus.
@@KB4QAA sleeping on a concrete floor is bad for everyone, not just fetuses and pregnant people.
it's also incredibly dangerous, if someone is pregnant, to take them cold turkey off of drugs w/out a doctor's assistance. not all drugs, but some, can cause real serious shock to the body and the baby and withdrawal can easily result one or both of their deaths.
They don't care, they would have spun it as her own fault
they didn't care about a potential baby, they wanted to punish a druggie
It's not like your typical drug addict says without intervention, ok give me a doctor so I can slowly get off. Between getting off suddenly and not getting off at all, the latter is better
@@xpusostomos i guess the cops made the right call, then???
Do you expect cops to know anything medical-related? They held a guy because there was a home invasion, the actual perps shot and killed the girlfriend and severally wounded the boyfriend, don't remember where the wound was (it might have been to the head), but it wasn't immediately fatal. Anyway, they sat the guy in a room and several "detectives" grilled him for several hours about what their "investigative" skills said happened (which were WAY off). The guy was showing all the classic signs of bloodloss and a severe headwound (likely covered by his hair and large amounts of blood). Even the RN they brought in to do a blood test missed EVERYTHING that pointed to him having major trauma. It was only AFTER a senior nurse came in and actually did her job properly (doing a blood pressure test), did they find that the guy had lost a massive amount of blood, most of the blood on his head was his.
I believe the guy was rushed to the hospital (still under arrest and cuffed to the bed), he survived barely, and they had to restart his heart at least once on the operating table.
Not sure of the outcome, but it just goes to show that cops couldn't tell the difference between someone who had stepped barefoot on a piece of Lego and a person who had stepped on a rusty railroad spike (it should be obvious, the big ass sharp object sticking out the top of the foot is the more serious injury). Or the guy that just fell out of bed and bumped his head compared to the guy with a giant piece of rebar impaled through his skull (again, rebar through the skull is the more serious). And just like Major Frank Burns (MASH, Hawkeye, Radar, Hotlips etc), the cops would try to use a band-aid to close the exit wound left by a .50 BMG round at close range
I love that they are admonishing her to not get pregnant later or those charges will come back again. I think the “while” part of the law seems to be lost on these law enforcement personnel. This needs to be remediated so they actually understand the words of their law.
"Don't get pregnant" to a citizen of the United Effing States of America. For the state's own mistake.
They cared more about a hypothetical fetus than the well-being of the woman, ignoring all facts along the way. Very exemplary of the general mindset.
They didn't even care about the hypothetical fetus cuz why in the world are there having her sleep on the floor?
@@UlexiteTVStoneLexite She had a mattress on the floor probably because of overcrowding and not enough bunks.
Red State at its finest.
@@BlackJesus8463 how the F does that make it acceptable?
These Fascist government goons need to be destroyed.
All cops are terrorists, this is fascism
Just another day of law enforcement in America. It’s not about public safety its about the simplest people in society having vast powers over everyone else.
It is always been about Terror and control and reducing us to property
All we need to say is that it is a Republican state. Explains everything!
Wish I could give you a billion thumbs up!!
@@magicmarker7047 not really. Piggies do the corruption everywhere.
They targeted that lady and they were determined to use whatever laws that could dig up to go after her
Religious TALIBAN .
Honestly, that's as bad as pointing a finger at another person and declaring "He robbed a bank!" and having the cops arrest the named robber just because another person accused him or her of it without proof. Hopefully, that never happens - but yeah, that mentality does very little to gain the public's trust.
I was actually faced with that problem many years ago when I worked at our karate club. The bank down the street from us was robbed. I was friendly with the manager and she gave me a description of the robber when I went there the next day to make a deposit. While I was walking back to work I realized that the description of the robber fit one of our students. He had come in the day of the robbery, around the time of the robbery, to work out downstairs, something he had never done before and never did again. He was wearing a red bandana headband that day, which I commented on when he came in - he never wore it again. The robber had used a red bandana to cover his face. He was the same height, had the same hair color, etc. The last weird coincidence was the fact that he arrived on a bicycle and took it downstairs with him. The robber had taken off with a gym bag full of money on a bike. I told my boss what I thought and he told me to say nothing because I had no real proof. We argued back and forth and in the end I said nothing, because I was told that if I did I would be fired. The thief was never caught and to this day I know it was that student. I found out much later, through his girlfriend, that this guy had a record, she didn't tell me for what though.
Oh, it happens. Karen is alive and well.
I'm a social worker and work as a behavioral interventionist. The questions I've been asked for advice from my coworkers are insane. "Can this adult look at 'adult only' content on their phone in their own home?" "This seven year old has bruises on their knees, should I turn them over to CPS?" OMG, what seven year old doesn't have bruises on their knees? OMG, is it our business what adults do in their own home? I don't have a lot of faith in my own profession if these are the types of questions they brought to me while I was supervising them. I don't work for that company anymore. I moved on and am now with a company that uses a lot more common sense.
Bruises on knees could be a sign of kneeling on rice- something quite a few abusive parents do.
@@ThunderStruck15 or they could just be a kid playing which is 1000x more likely.
@@ThunderStruck15 kneeling on rice or frozen peas or something similar would leave a very specific type of bruising and/or skin damage. You'd be able to tell it from regular bruises or scabs from regular play.
@@ThunderStruck15 If there were other indicators of abuse, perhaps I would agree. But would you destroy a family on the off chance that they make their kids kneel on rice? I feel a far better explanation is it's a kid that plays.
@@joshuaghan9279 asking questions shouldn’t destroy a family. Good parents should be happy to have someone concerned about their kids
My suspicion is that they didn't actually believe the charge but decided that it was a way to punish the woman because as a drug user she is "Bad (TM)". Hence being fine with her sleeping on the floor and delaying the pregnancy test. To be charitable this could be because they wanted to "scare her straight". But if this is true, they are ignoring why due process is a thing and essentially become vigilantes.
Unfortunately there are some people who bring a mindset of a woman's body not being her own and up for public interference to other countries. Some years ago I was told by an American tourist in a London pub I was putting my unborn baby in danger by drinking alcohol while pregnant. For starters I was drinking St Clements (not alcoholic) and I wasn't pregnant either. The bloke in question learned a lot of loud British swearwords that day, and not just from me either. He also learned it's a very bad idea to body-shame people in their local pub.
That's the price we pay for modern day abortion. These laws ironically wouldn't exist if abortion didn't exist. And I'm not talking about the morality here; none of these laws existed prior to the legalization of abortion. The government is over compensating because some people care about the moral issue of ending a life that has no agency for no other reason than not wanting the responsibility. They want to be reelected, and cater to the voters who want to end abortion, many of them being women themselves.
This is what happens when you legislate morality in a society fighting against morality.
Well, you SHOULDN’T drink alcohol if you are pregnant. There is nothing wrong with that fact.
Whether doing so should be a crime, is another matter.
@@baronvonslambert well, I wouldn't consider anyone elected into government to be a 'fundamentalist zealot',which I know is a slight against Christians, even though Muslims and religious Jews are also against abortion too. But your hatred of Christians aside, do you trust anyone in government to have the moral clarity to be honest in their dealings? I don't.
This is why innocent people like the woman in the article get poorly treated in prison. This is what happens when government tries to legislate morality against a population fighting it.
Of course, you can't understand that I am against this. You rightly guessed that I am a 'fundamentalist zealot' or whatever. Yeah, I think breaking the necks off of unborn babies and twisting their limbs apart to get them out of a uterus is bad. But that doesn't mean I want the government to try and stop you from doing that. Innocent people get thrown in prison when that happens. The innocent blood shed, by abortion, will be sorted out by God rather quickly.
Government does more damage than it helps. The people must decide if they will keep the morals imparted to them by our founders or reject them.
That is what John Adams meant when he said 'This government was created for a moral and religious people. It is unsuited to govern any other'.
@@orppranator5230 She wasn't doing either, and suggesting that a woman is pregnant when they aren't isn't likely to get a positive response.
@@Primalxbeast I never said she was drinking nor did I say she was pregnant.
I believe Leonidas said it best: “If”.
Another day and another reason not to trust law enforcement!
Or are Representatives
Another reason to run far, far away from Alabama.
Not all law enforcement...don't include those that actually have a brain and do their job the right way...still, there is a lack of common sense that is getting to be more and more common in ALL areas of government and civil service...
OINKITY OINK OINK OINK SNORT OINK OINK!
Or live in alabama, georgia, mississippi, louisiana, and arkansas. The scariest states in the union when it comes to constitutional rights. They are effectively constitution free zones.
I live in Alabama.
We are like a country,with its own laws.
I am so used to the tyrannical ways, nothing surprises me.
Why,or how,does Alabama get away with it?
Because,most of the citizens are too poor,or illiterate,to defend themselves.
But,we are in the process of building,not one,but 2,supermax prisons,to incarcerate these less fortunate people.
If she was bleeding and they actually believed she was pregnant, they would have called an ambulance.
Only if they cared.
Good point though. If they try to use their belief that she was pregnant as a defense, then ignoring that bleeding would have endangered a life and they should be held responsible for that reckless endangerment. If on the other hand they believed it to be a normal menstrual cycle then they can be held liable for unsanitary conditions and unlawful imprisonment.
I would probably try to pursue all of the charges, which could force them to make a statement about their state of mind one way or the other.
Google woman gives birth alone in jail, they really don’t care. If they did, it wouldn’t happen over and over again.
Not in Alabama. Since there have been 150 prosecutions, the top man or woman, i.e. the Sheriff, is equally responsible for improper training of the deputies, improper supervision of deputies, and denying basic medical care to women arrested on suspicion of pregnancy; there's no probable cause w/o the pregnancy test, and they have to prove she was using when pregnant. Having something in your blood may be proof in Alabama, but not in many other places. The purpose of this law is to keep the Jim Crow alive and well in Alabama
The other problem is even if everything is completely dismissed, it still shows up on your record that you have been arrested and charged with a crime... This can make it difficult to get some jobs and travel internationally...
150 pregnant women,,, chemical endangerment,,, and then they have the 'pregnant' woman sleeping on a concrete floor. Sounds to me like the county has endangered the child.
I'm not sure any of the correctional officers in the jail knew what a "menstrual" cycle was, let alone what to do for it...
"Menstrual cycle? What a great way to get around town."
@@ianbattles7290 But does she have a menstrual cycle license? 🚲
@@mxplixic Even if she did, she wasn’t wearing a helmet.
I got a moped. Maybe we can ride together sometime.
@@ianbattles7290 dang, you beat me to it
How could they even think of placing her in rehab without having her tested?
They are stupid hillbillies did you expect them to act reasonably?
because they don't care about her.
Because they are psychopaths who don't care about the truth or reality.
it's not about law or rehabilitation or even the health of a fetus, it's about cruelty and punishment
You DARE accuse them of thinking!?
Someone needs to be aggressively punished for such a case, but sadly it will never happen...
Wrote a paper about this law 2 weeks ago, was not expecting it to pop up on your channel. So ridiculous that no one even had her take a pregnancy test prior to jail, nor look at hospital records (which hospitals are required to turn over to law enforcement under the applicable AL law) to see if she had been seeking medical treatment related to pregnancy.
not seeking medical treatment for pregnancy is not prove of not being pregnant. Having seeked medical treatment related to pregnancy does not mean being pregnant at time of arrest - high stress situations like getting locked up in prison might cause miscarriages. So... how would hospital records help? Neither response would be definitive.
@@sarowie All I was saying is that those medical records (if they exist) must be turned over to law enforcement, which would include various drug test results. The results of the drug tests are often used as part of the evidence for/against the charges. Most often mothers are charged with fetal endangerment after they give birth, when the mother and newborn are required to be tested under Alabama law.
Let's say hypothetically the woman in the video had a hysterectomy done, but the child didn't know about it. It would come out in discovery (if it got that far) via her medical records that the woman is incapable of having children, so they would have to drop the charges.
@@asdlfkj23oij4 The problem with your comment is that can take DAYS to perform and complete.
So, with all due respect, sit down!
@@AlBundyOz Its 2022. It doesn't take DAYS to do a pregnancy test. This isn't the 1950's. They don't use rabbits. You can buy a reliable test at any drugstore or 99 cent store. And if you're in a medical setting - they can perform a professional grade test and have the results in less than an hour.
There is something inherently wrong with easily abused police access to someones medical rocords.That should be a case by case warrant issued by a judge. Maybe they rubber stamp it but at least it requires a judge to sign off on an invasion of privacy.
Accusing women of crimes involving pregnancy when you have no way of knowing if they are pregnant or not, is the clearest example of discrimination based on sex that can be thought of. This is a violation of federal law.
Specifically, exactly WHAT federal law does that violate?
@@maxsdad538 are you trying to be cute or just trolling?
@@maxsdad538 The civil rights act is what makes this illegal, specifically Title 6
Oh please. The cops are pigs and treat everyone horribly, they are just using her maybe being pregnant as an excuse. No discrimination necessary.
@@maxsdad538 Equal protections clause of the 14th amendment for one.
Having worked at a 1500 person jail of up to 300+ that were women. Ours had rubber "boats" if there were no bunks available.
However toilet paper and almost worse cheap awful feminine products (kotex) that I think were worse than what was available 60 years ago were very sparsely distributed. We didnt test for pregnancy there but later I worked at the 2nd largest jail in the country. They gave a preg test within 2 weeks of booking and may have done one if a woman said she might be on the spot. It takes less than 3 min to dip the urine.
All said I think Alabama has some stupid laws like this. Worse is the case of the man recently at Elmore Correctional facility there above Montgomery where they have some fairly horrific conditions and re ently Kastellio Vaughan was so severely emaciated related to their health care that it made the news. I know they are just inmates to some but they are not all horrible and they are all someone's father/brother/son/husband or mother/sister/daughter/wife.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a sequel to this story discussing the invoice she receives in the mail for her "accommodations" and "counseling session."
Wait! So you think she's pregnant and you have her sleeping on a floor?! What? Was the back alley full?
Wow! I would suspect that immediately after the arrest a blood sample SHOULD have been drawn in order to confirm both the suspicion of drug use (don't think that in and of itself is a chargeable crime, but who knows in Alabama) and for pregnancy. I have had pregnancy test run before (as a tumor marker for cancer) and it is a simple blood draw. They blew it and she deserves to get a large settlement.
The whole bail system is set up to coerce guilty pleas. Most defendants would have pled out to a lesser offense - possibly not involving pregnancy - signed up for the rehab program, and accepted whatever punishment to avoid indefinite pretrial detention.
I would plead guilty to shooting Abraham Lincoln if it meant I got to go home that same day. If the court doesn't care about the truth, then neither should I.
And this too is WRONG.
That's why Illinois is getting rid of cash bail, yet so many are fighting it to stay in place.
Or another way to look at it is that it encourages you to form roots and equity in the community so that you or someone else will put their house up for bond to assure you’ll show up. If you’re so unrooted, indigent, and pennyless that you can’t come up with even the 10 percent to get bail from a bail bondsman then almost by definition you’re a flight risk since you have little to lose.
@@EarthIsNotFlat Except who wants to put up $2000 bail money for someone who you know didn't do the crime only for the prosecutor ram it through to make a quota anyway? Then you are out 2k and nothing good has happened.
Cash bail systems encourage police and prosecutors to get lesser sentencing instead of letting people have their day in court.
It's the classic conundrum, is it better to have a good man and a bad man in jail, or is it better to have a good man and a bad man out of jail? The founding fathers chose the second one.
The punch-line here is that you can take any suspect who might be pregnant to a *Planned Parenthood* location and get both an immediate AND clinical pregnancy test done on-the-house.
Actually, it has nothing to do with the case. It solves nothing, and further, the jail and sheriff's department has a written protocol of where detainees are taken for medical procedures.
@@KB4QAA It... Solves nothing? Are you legitimately trying to claim that proving that she's not pregnant would have no impact on a case where the charge is based on her endangering the fetus that she is supposedly pregnant with? The fetus that she offered to prove didn't exist in the first place?
I'm having a hard time following your logic...
@@tygerion4404 The fact that tests are available other places solves nothing. There was no lack of testing [availability] in this case. YOUR logic is lacking.
@@tygerion4404 BTW, I suspect not all information was presented in this video. I suspect the person who placed charges is not a police officer and not the person who investigates and prosecutes the case. Not to mention why she was in for three days. It is not unusual nor illegal to be arrested on Friday afternoon and not be further processed until Monday.
@@KB4QAA ... You are actively putting words in my mouth that I never said. I was refuting your point that the test would change nothing about the case. Availability has no actual relevance there... Furthermore, the comment you had been replying to had pointed out that there were ways they could have had her tested if they needed to. Is it standard procedure? Probably not. Does that matter? I mean, if they're able to get a court order for a blood test in, what? 30 minutes? I'm sure they could do something similar for something you can pick up from the store.
As for my own point: Is it important to the case? Uh... Yeah? The lynchpin of their entire case was that she was using drugs (which they didn't test her for), while pregnant (Which they *also* refused to test her for... Even when she offered to take the test voluntarily). So. If they have zero evidence of her being on drugs not being pregnant... Is arresting her for doing drugs while pregnant reasonable? Is it reasonable to imprison someone for thirty six hours with no evidence that they did anything wrong?
Because the 4th amendment says that any arrest must be reasonable.
Oh, and just FYI? Maybe stop countering my arguments with points that are irrelevant to the arguments that I actually made? That's not a great debate tactic.
What a story!! Thank you for presenting it.
The level of incompetence in law enforcement in America is astonishing... and getting worse.
"If they think you're drunk, they will rush to … do those alcohol tests pronto" (5:14) unless you happen to be the husband of the Speaker of the House, in which case they will dawdle for more than four hours just to get your BAC under 0.15% and then they'll wake up a judge before dawn on a Sunday morning to get you bailed out in time for church. Equal justice under law.
Do you apply yourself to Republican family members as much as you do a Democrat, just asking?
@@lloydeaker7029 Don't be disingenuous, "just asking?". Paul Pelosi was singled out for his proximity to power, not for whatever political party he might subscribe to.
@@realtijuana5998 It is a fair question. There are a lot of people who will raise all kinds of hell people who side with the other party do something but when members of their own do the exact same thing say it isn't a problem. If it is a problem the party affiliation shouldn't matter but often critics will look the other way when their party is in the wrong.
It's a small town, it's not hard to keep the fact that you've been arrested quiet, it's impossible. The arrests are probably published in the local paper, like mine was when I was illegally arrested by the Taylor Police in 1976.
That arrest and detention WITHOUT CONVICTION are commonly used as punishment is a problem.
Why did they think waiting would improve the chances she was pregnant? Did they know of another crime the was committed against her and were hoping she would end up pregnant? It's also very strange they put her in an environment that endangered the life of the imaginary fetus.
The police would probably enjoy "planting" their "evidence" in her. Especially if she's hot.
You used a word that gives them too much credit….they don’t ‘think”.
prosecuting a woman for having a miscarriage or a stillbirth. What the hell kind of country are we living in?
They need to wait for at least 36 hrs because everyone knows spontaneous pregnancy occur every time you're in jail.
Something spontaneous defiantly happened there
EXACTLY. And drinking water. Remember Jesus? And his mom?
She could have caused her own abortion
I did not know that. Indeed, I doubt that it us so. Are you being facetious? Are you trying to bullshit us?
If it did occur, that would be a solid defence that it occurred after incarceration
I'm curious as to what happened to the children she did have while she was in the jail and where they are now.
Edit: it is not curiosity. I want to know if they ended up in the care of Child Procurement Services. *This woman did nothing wrong but I believe they are going to make her jump through hoops, endure personal and professional interference from insufficiently educated personnel, be put through all sorts of drug and alcohol testing as well as 'education', endure despicable classes and 'counseling' to get her children back.* I am very aware of how these people operate. I want someone, in an official capacity, to assure those children are safe. No B.S. I'm sick and tired and fed up with these people. The good ones leave or get fired. CPS destroys more children than they save. *At least 90% of these creatures lie like crazy.
Edit: I remember Ricky Holland.
When I was in high school in the 1970’s I worked in a bowling alley. My first time coming home my mother confronted me claiming that I reeked of smoke. I did, but never took a drag. As Steve says about that cloud of smoke, you could see it from behind the machines, but it stopped 10 to 15 feet before the machines, probably an air circulation condition caused by the actions of the pin setting machines. I still don’t smoke and never took up the habit.
This sounds like something that happened on a Saturday afternoon or evening, threw her in jail immediately then did the paperwork on Monday morning. She should sue for millions of dollars just to prove a point.
@@sparkyUSA1976 It won't make it to trial, there will be some pretrial motions to dismiss and other attempts to get rid of it, but the moment it looks like it's headed to trial they will settle ASAP. It's why so few cases involving civil asset forfeiture or qualified immunity make it to the Supreme Court.
@@sparkyUSA1976 Her, and her lawyers, will accept the settlement if it's a big enough value. Lawyers are there to make money, and in this case they will off that settlement.
It's why non-profits like Institute for Justice are so important, they would actually take something all the way through even if it's at a loss.
If you are running blood tests for drugs, it is also possible within the same drawing of blood, just needs a proper test tube to run a pregnancy test blood only as well. I'm going for some minor surgery myself soon and looked at the tests they ordered and as part of their standard is a pregnancy test because I'm female but I only had a blood draw.
Drug screen testing and pregnancy test may require a different type of tube. Not all lab tests can be done from the same type of vaccutainer.
@@karrenwebb3341 Yes that is what I meant by appropriate test tube. Just the system they use only have to do one needle stick and insert the correct test tube then switch it out for another without the needle being removed. I quite often for my blood tests require 6 different test tubes at most times but all can be drawn from one needle insertion.
That's crazy! I hope she wins BIG and is able to use it wisely to make a good life for herself. 😔
Doctors used to tell pregnant women that smoked that they shouldn’t quit because the withdrawal could be dangerous for a baby. They also used to say drinking was ok. Regardless on how you feel, this is a huge miscarriage of Justice… pun intended.
A drink or two is fine, they have just pushed the abstinence route to avoid confusion for those who probably shouldn't have kids.
Too soon..
Ah, but you see, according to extremist, sexist, assholes... miscarrying justice is perfectly normal while miscarrying a fetus deserves capital punishment! Ain't that a wonderful thing?
I was reading other stories there are hundreds of these horrific stories in the one area alone. It is truly disgraceful how people are being treated in America these days.
If you get pregnant later, we’ll get you??? WT….. Stupidity is incomprehensible. Thank you Steve, common sense need not apply. I was born in 2nd hand smoke. My lungs are garbage. ❤👏👏👏
I'd think her attorney would be pursuing a case for false arrest, given that they lacked any probable cause.
"i'll take a pregnancy test" - Not even a warrant required, let alone a showing of probable cause
You have beautifully dissected this poor woman's situation!
Judge: "At any time during the 90 days that she was detained did anyone in law enforcement, or the prosecution ever perform a pregnancy test on the defendant?"
"We really tried to your honor, but we're unable to obtain the necessary rabbit."
#1 mom should use this as a learning experience for her daughter to NEVER talk to those people again. #2 If mom gets a nice settlement she should start calling her daughter Jewel. 😬
One thing that bothers me about this story, is when Steve mentioned the Sheriff as saying (something like) "If she is found to be pregnant at any time within the next few months, she's going to be in a world of trouble."
I mean, it shouldn't take a rocket surgeon to realize she wasn't pregnant at the time of her arrest, so what would a past alleged drug use, have to do with a theoretical future pregnancy?
Surely any substance that may be in her system now... would have been filtered out by then. And even if she had ingested some illegal substance, maybe this arrest is a wakeup call for her and she turns her life around, goes clean. Again, no drug in her system if she gets pregnant in the future.
More than a few variables & "what-ifs"... but stranger things have happened.
The scientific facts are irrelevant in these jurisdictions. Women who become pregnant are imprisoned for taking drugs years ago as it is deemed child endangerment.
The entire purpose of foetal personhood laws is to criminalise the human female body. Which they have done. Anything a woman does can be deemed to endanger a foetus, including working 10 hr days on her feet to pay her rent.
Yet if a born "person" endangers you, you can defend yourself...except if you are a woman and that "person" is a foetus. These laws are intended to give a foetus more rights than a born human, and to give women less rights than even a corpse.
“We’re not all Sherlock Holmes” I guess you got a point there lol
Sherlock Holmes was famously smarter than the police detectives.
They're not even Inspector Clauseau, heck not ever Maxwell Smart or Inspector Gadget smart.
All jackals think they're Sherlock Holmes, but obviously don't have the brains to be one.
Everyone involved in that arrest and locking her up as well as not helping her medically when needed should go to prison!
you should specify "as inmate". The guards of the prison are already there.
😮😮I had 2 miscarriages when I was younger. They were Horrible. I don’t need the law getting involved in a private experience between me, my husband and my doctor.
You said she began her (discharging) period upon arrival at jail. What other non- pregnancy test is needed?
A woman can have her period throughout her entire pregnancy. It isn't the majority of women, but it happens more often than you might think. Many women have one or two periods after they get pregnant.
If not evidence of not being pregnant, potentially of a medical emergency (miscarriage if she was)
Even a lawsuit against the department or the county for false arrest wouldn't excuse their illegal harassment of this woman! I've been in the county jail, it ain't no picnic! And I saw far too many people there that never belong there in the first place! It is they who should sit in that county jail for a while!!
Jails and prisons regularly treat pregnant postpartum or menstruating women like crap and don’t give them basic care. The reality that giving birth in shackles is barbaric.
Social services is the least trained law enforcement agency. I mentioned this to our family court judge who replied they weren’t law enforcement and I pointed out he literally had an entire criminal docket in his court based around social services allegations
The idea that anyone other than a doctor or pee test kit has the power under law to label someone as pregnant is horrifying
I'm horrified by that as well-- also that cops routinely give arrestees ketamine injections!!!
What's crazy about this woman being arrested with charges of using and pregnant, is the jailers treatment of her, it was pure neglect. 1. Making her sleep on the floor, 2. She asked for feminine hygiene supplies. The fact that she needed hygiene products is one of two things, not pregnant and she is having her period, or having a miscarriage. They neglected both, if it was a miscarriage she needed medical attention pronto. The fact that she is having her period and needs hygiene products, means she not pregnant, and they should have provided her with the hygiene products and released her promptly, they had no case against her. She can't be both, on a period and pregnant at the same time. Pregnant and bleeding can and most likely a miscarriage, needs medical attention. I hope she files a law suit for being put through the criminal (justice system), that there is no justice in this system.
They waited the max time to force her to withdraw assuming she had been using drugs. It is a horrible way to go through withdrawal but that's likely what happened.
Nah, they just wanted her to show that the only value she has for society is as breeding cattle.
Ur right, they evil as fk.
Also withdrawal is horribly dangerous for the fetus if you are pregnant, increases the risk of miscarriage.
The question that should be asked, "Where is the evidence?"
Apparently the only "evidence" was the word of a child.
Ridiculous! They arrest her for endangering a fetus, but if she had been pregnant the way they treated her caused enough stress to result in miscarriage; if they believed she was pregnant why did they not call for medical attention when she was obviously bleeding?
Forcing anyone to sleep on floor is inhumane.
$10,000 bond? Sounds like money making scam!
If she had paid the bond and agreed to attend rehab, as per their rules, would that be used as evidence of guilt? You don't need rehab if you're not a user.
I'm curious if they are trying to set some sort of precedent where the woman "Could have been" pregnant unless she has proof of negative test prior to using.
I'm sure the police will just start monitoring every womans cycle starting at age 12. If you're late, you have to report to the police for a birth certificate and drug test. If you don't have a live birth, you go to jail for murder
There are some in the US, who think a fertilised egg that hasn't even implanted, is a baby.
@@grahvis I've been wondering if they're planning on banning jacking off too. The bible says "no spilling seed upon the ground". Ah who are we kidding? They won't bother men.
Her treatment just goes to show you , they don't care about anyone .
The process has become the punishment. Doesn’t matter if you even win against your charge or not, you’ll have lost everything before then.
A blood test is highly accurate for very early pregnancy. 🙄😶😖 Hope she gets a very nice settlement!
Technically we're not innocent until proven guilty. Otherwise there would be no pre-trial detainees. Regardless of the crime of the accused.
If you're a woman, different rules apply. In 2022 we're all pregnant and guilty until proven otherwise........several days later.
They need a court order to keep someone in jail, so there is still a review by a judge to determine probable cause.
@@notpoliticallycorrect4774 nope, not even close. You can be held for days without going infront of a judge. It all depends on the state.