the abortion
uh... uh... debate
shifted after
my husband and i wan this major case in massachusetts which is
moe v. hanley its called which is uh...
uh... uh...
uh... established the right to choose abortion in massachusetts under the
state
constitution
so to some degree the right was protected
uh... in the ways we had been dealing with
yes the state had to pay for it they couldn't be criminalized
then all of a sudden uh... levey and another case pellegrini were cases of women
who were pregnant
who wound up in levey's case
get supposedly getting drunk hitting a tree she's eight months pregnant
the fetus dies 0:00:48.860,0:00:52.320 and she's being prosecuted for the death of the fetus
the other case was a woman which cocaine was found in her body
no one ever said these were good situations or that this was the way
one ought to be with ones
fetus with one's child it was just of course it wasn't the way
but the problem was that if you prosecuted
her levey and pelligrini
for the death of the fetus
you are now
creating women were being put put against their own
their own bodies yes and criminally prosecuted for what
was going for what they had done or hadn't done to their
the fetus within them
what was frightening about that is that it opened the door
to regulation of pregnant women it opened the door to oh
you shouldn't have sex in the third trimester and oh
because if you do it will be criminal
or it opened the door to
uh... in fact there had been a woman who had been forced to have a c-section in
california right
so it the opened the door to a regulation of a woman's body and to me
that's what it had always been about
in other words the genesis of sex discrimination had always derived
from women insofar as they were mothers could be mothers
that's where the core was the state believed it had a right to
intervene to keep us in that role and in these situations it was the state
intervening
uh... for the purposes of saving the fetus from the mother
uh... so i represented elizabeth levey and I did an amicus in the
other case
saying again this was not a good thing no one was saying this was
a good thing but the criminal law
was not the way
uh... to address this and the principles that were coming out of these cases were
tremendously dangerous there was also by the way a whole other public health
issue
which is
these women will not come forward for help
if they wind up in jail
so it made it made no sense and that's why that i started to do
just before i mean in the in the mid eighties
and she and she ultimate in in the levey case
what was shocking is you know the
uh... district attorney's office was coming in to save the fetus well what
had happened was
when she got to the hospital the fetus was alive
and was well it was believed but because they smelled liquor on her breath
they ignored her oh dear
the fetus died not because of her 0:03:17.209,0:03:19.430 directly but because of the hospital
so the case was dropped
and pelligrini wound up with the case being dismissed as well
but it was you know it's a complicated issue it's just
this is another issue that i will write about yeas criminal law is not the way
uh... we should address these kinds of very complicated social issues it's like
you know it's like using nuclear war
to deal with the uh... you know backyard battle
uh... and it's just not the way we ought to do it
yeah
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brought to you by the massachusetts school of law