This month’s NOW below the belt column reveals some incredibly atrocious laws and their use:
Ancient Laws, Current Consequences
Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy
March 6, 2007
Happy Women’s History Month! And how nice to be celebrating with a female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and a female front-runner for president, Hillary Clinton.
But even with those important firsts, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover to rid our communities of entrenched sexism. The real herstory will be made not when a few women ascend, but when all women are freed from injustice and have equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities. Treatment of women in the courts is a good place to start.
NOW has forty fearless years of history with this country’s legal system. From arguing the first sex discrimination case appealed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in 1969 to years of action and litigation to get rid of sex-segregated employment ads and stop clinic violence, to decades of defending abortion rights and civil rights for all in state and federal courtrooms, NOW activists have demonstrated that the legal system can be a powerful conduit for the advancement of women’s rights.
But recent news shows how easily that same system can still force us backward, with lawyers, judges, and often juries combining forces to undercut justice for women.
You’d think that when it comes to laws that affect women’s rights and, more specifically, women’s bodies, prosecutors would think twice before relying on statutes that pre-date the Emancipation Proclamation.
Exhibit A) In Maryland, advocates are urging the state appeals court to consider a lower court ruling that has angered women across the country. Last fall, the Court of Special Appeals decided the concept of “deflowering” has a legitimate place in the contemporary U.S. legal system when it said that it’s not rape if a woman withdraws consent after penetration and the man continues. The court’s decision actually acknowledges that it’s referring (or rather, deferring), to “ancient” laws:
“The concept … rooted in ancient laws and adopted by the English common-law, views the initial ‘de-flowering’ of a woman as the real harm or insult which must be redressed by compensating, in legal contemplation, the injured party—the father or the husband. This initial violation of the victim also provided the basis for the criminal proceeding against the offender. But, to be sure, it was the act of penetration that was the essence of the crime of rape; after this initial infringement upon the responsible male’s interest in a woman’s sexual and reproductive functions, any further injury was considered to be less consequential. The damage was done.”
Stunning. So as long as she initially consents, even if she regrets it right away and tries to get away from him — he’s within his rights to pin her down, kicking and screaming and sobbing, and take as long as he wants until he decides he’s done with her. Somebody wake me up.
Unbelievably, the appeals court found this ancient sexist precedent compelling. As a result of its decision, first-degree rape convictions were reversed. It’s just bone-chilling to know there are some people — even judges — who believe that consent can never be revoked once given, and would follow a precedent that identifies the “father or the husband” as the real victim in a rape of a woman.
Thankfully, women’s rights advocates in Maryland have been and are still fighting to have this decision reviewed by a higher court, and women legislators are considering a new law. Check out your own state’s rape law, and take action to change it if you find that it is as archaic as Maryland’s.
Exhibit B) Maybe Massachusetts state attorneys were taking their cues from Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals judges when they whipped out an obscure 1840 law to charge a teenage Dominican immigrant with “procuring an illegal miscarriage.”
Amber Abreu was unable to afford a legal abortion, so she did something common in her home country — she took Cytotec, an anti-ulcer medicine, to induce a miscarriage. The drug induced labor, and she delivered a 20 oz. fetus that was not viable, even after four days of extraordinary medical intervention. She was immediately sent to a maximum-security prison, and it took her family several days to raise bail money from the community. Now she may face murder charges as well, for doing something herself that an English-speaking 18-year-old with money could have obtained safely and legally.
“What is clear is that an inner-city teenager who is still studying English made a desperate choice when a safe and legal one proved inaccessible,” said Eileen McNamara in a Boston Globe column.
Of course, little is being made of the fact that Abreu — and many young women like her–face considerable linguistic, cultural, and economic barriers to reproductive health education and care. No, what’s more important is “Abreu’s irresponsibility,” says one editorial in the Massachusetts Eagle-Tribune.
Archaic attitudes, an archaic charge — today’s news. And one more reason that we can’t stop working toward equal justice for women.
Exhibit C) A woman we only know as Lucy from Orange County, California, is another example of the archaic attitudes that threaten women even today. Lucy was stalked and sexually assaulted by a police officer, and then was further victimized by that police officer’s unabashedly sexist lawyer. According to news reports, one night when Lucy left her job at a strip club, a police officer waited for her on a secluded section of highway outside of his jurisdiction, pulled her over and propositioned her, and sexually assaulted her when she refused. No one, not even the defense, disputes that he ejaculated on Lucy — the DNA tests proved it — and the prosecutor (who called him a “predator”) presented a mountain of evidence that he had previously stalked and harassed her.
After Lucy reported what happened and the case went to court, the officer’s attorneys argued that she “got what she wanted. She’s an overtly sexual person.” A jury of 11 men and one woman found the officer not guilty.
Evidently, if you are a stripper, you deserve to be violated and victimized by the very people whose job it is to protect you. It’s not just one beastly police officer who thinks so — but his defense lawyer and a so-called “jury of her peers.”
While it’s scary to contemplate, just imagine: if this kind of unmitigated sexism can happen in California, Massachusetts, and Maryland, what is happening to women in less “enlightened” states? Think about it.
As long as police officers, lawyers, judges and juries take their cues from the nineteenth century, we’ve got to stand on the shoulders of countless women before us who didn’t hesitate to fight for ideals that were far ahead of the curve.
Women’s History Month isn’t just about remembering, it’s about recognizing and making the connections. We have to identify today’s sexists, call them out, and fight them just like our feminist foremothers did.
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