Black Mississippi Woman Faces Life in Prison for Giving Birth to Dead Baby at Fifteen

So I'm hearing that upon release, Casey Anthony will be whisked away to a secret location and a new identity. Oh the lenghts "certain people" will go to protect a baby killing white woman - sucks to be you O.J. Simpson. Speaking of baby killers, let's meet a little know "baby killer" who just so happen to Black. Her name is Rennie Gobbs, she's Black, and she lives in Mississipi. And of course you know how it is when it comes to justice and Black folks in the state of Mississippi, right? If you don't know you better ask somebody.

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

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

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."

First off, this case needs, and should be given more attention. Sure she didn't fail to report a missing child for thirty one days to authorities. This is a woman facing life in prison for the murder of her unborn child, when she was 15-years0old. I don't know about you, but there are several egregious issues with that scenario. First one being: she was a teenager with a drug problem at the time. But I guess that's no big deal since there's an epidemic of Black teens pregnant and hooked on drugs as some Conservatives would have you believe.

Please believe that without the necessary media attention, this young Black woman is doomed. Without the media spotlight, with her being Black, and this being a case that sets much precedence -- not to mention the political implications given the GOP's war on women of late -- this case is much bigger than the Casey Anthony murder trial. But like I said before, she's Black so who cares? She just did what every Black woman did in the 80s. That is, give birth to crack babies who have now all grown up to be the scourge of our society, right?

I know what you're thinking, "Nah, this isn't about the rights of women RiPPa. This is about protecting and seeking justice for unborn children. After all, they have rights too, right?" Sure they have rights; I mean I'm all about fetuses being protected from being kicked in the stomach, or risk death at the hands of a third party. But to criminalize a woman for drug use while pregnant when there's no evidence to support it as being the cause of death of her unborn child? Hello! That's bullshit! What, are we going to do the same for women who drink and smoke cigarettes while pregnant? Aren't those "legal abuses" found to be more harmful to unborn children? I mean, that's what the experts say, right?

Recently many of us in the Black community were outraged by the tactics of anti-abortion groups as they targeted the Black community with their billboards. We voiced our displeasure, and won. We should be equally disgusted and vocal about the indictment of Ms. Gibbs. We should let our voices be heard, and heard loudly. We all raised our voices and expressed our disgust when it came to the Scott Sisters and the state of Mississippi, and we were victorious. Today, we must do the same for Rennie Gibbs. We marched on Jena fighting for justice for six Black teenage boys. It would be a damn shame if we do not seek justice for one Black woman. Wouldn't be surprising; but disappointing.

Thankfully others are already on it:

[...] Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs' case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi's highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.

"If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is," Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.

McDuff told the Guardian that he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. "I hope it's not a trend that's going to catch on. To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme."

He pointed out that anti-abortion groups were trying to amend the Mississippi constitution by setting up a state referendum, or ballot initiative, that would widen the definition of a person under the state's bill of rights to include a foetus from the day of conception.

Some 70 organisations across America have come together to file testimonies, known as amicus briefs, in support of Gibbs that protest against her treatment on several levels. One says that to treat "as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering".

Another, from a group of psychologists, laments the misunderstanding of addiction that lies behind the indictment. Gibbs did not take cocaine because she had a "depraved heart" or to "harm the foetus but to satisfy an acute psychological and physical need for that particular substance", says the brief.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument put forward in the amicus briefs is that if such prosecutions were designed to protect the unborn child, then they would be utterly counter-productive: "Prosecuting women and girls for continuing [a pregnancy] to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties. The state could not have intended this result when it adopted the homicide statute."

Some of you are still angry about Casey Anthony getting away with murder as you se it. Well, you should be just as angry or even more, if this young Black woman goes to prison for the rest of her life, for the crime of being a troubled teen. Surely in good conscience you can't say that she deserves to be in prison.

(FULL STORY HERE)

Slave Catcher of the Week: Alan Keyes, Life Always, & Conservatives Who've Co-Opted Blackness on Abortion & Gay Marriage

Since we're down to our last day of Black History Month here in our third year of post-racial bliss. What would yet an unnecessary month of recognizing Black achievement be without heralding a couple slave catchers among us. I mean, why recognize the brother who invented the Super Soaker and leave out fellow Black people, who are bent on holding up progress; and, who would possibly go as far as to say that slavery never happened, and the Middle Passage and all that went with it is a lie, much like the people who deny the Jewish Holocaust.

So, apparently things have gotten pretty dangerous and, "The Safest Place For African Americans is in the Womb." I don't know just how it got that way all of sudden; and just why we were never given this information before now. I mean, this information could have come in handy just before the slave-ships landed on the African coast, you know? But at any rate, though many several centuries late, the important thing is that we now know:


Now I have to be honest: when I first read the above story I automatically assumed the people behind the ad were your typical white right-wing group. I figured since we're all post racial now, and white conservatives now care about the well being of Black folks, that the strategic use of it in Black History Month was genius. Shit, they had me so convinced that I was looking for a vagina to dive into, and curl up like a fetus in a Black womb just to be safe. Shit, forget Black on Black crime, HIV/AIDS, and bad credit, son; I wanted to be safe.

Abortion Issue Revisited... Again?

by Sayntj

Here we go again, one man with psychological issues that has the pro-life up in arms!

Under Pennsylvania law, abortions are illegal after 24 weeks of pregnancy, or just under six months, and most doctors won't perform them after 20 weeks because of the risks, prosecutors said.

In a typical late-term abortion, the fetus is dismembered in the uterus and then removed in pieces. That is more common than the procedure opponents call "partial-birth abortion," in which the fetus is partially extracted before being destroyed. Prosecutors said Gosnell instead delivered many of the babies alive.

He "induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord," District Attorney Seth Williams said.

Gosnell referred to it as "snipping," prosecutors said. (source)

Now we need to have the same damn debate. How late is too late? Should we go have the Supreme Court revisit this? Kermit Gosnell is proving that legalized abortion will not stop unhealthy procedures!

Wait a minute! One man with obvious mental deficiencies doesn’t disqualify the legalized abortion point. Why are you being so short-sighted in your approach? If Sarah Palin didn’t have any responsibility with Loughner killing anyone, how does a man with the sociopathic tendencies of Hannibal Lecter prove the pro-life stance? By that line of thinking, Scott Roeder should make pro-choice the land of the law forever.

First, the issue isn’t about abortion, it’s about the right to privacy! Its not about your religious beliefs being the law of the land!  If you are able to find a lawyer to help you with understanding that, please do so. Roe v. Wade is not about the possibility of pro-life or pro-choice, it’s pro-constitution.

Next, let’s be honest, if abortions were made illegal tomorrow, the rich would still have access to it! Paris Hilton (sorry Paris) would still be able to go and have an abortion if she so saw fit. So let’s not get into an issue that banning the law would stop abortions.

For those that are pro-choice…stop fighting a fight that isn’t your own. Domestic violence, sexual abuse, and the possibility of dying should not be the argument of pro-choice proponents. It’s the law, it’s in the constitution, and doctor/patient privilege is all you need.

But there is more, isn’t it?

Kermit the Killer?: Abortion “Doctor” and Staff Charged With Murders

by Alissa Griffith

Would you put your lunch next to THIS in the refrigerator at your job?The picture above is a fridge in Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic. Workers put their lunch in there…squeezed next to bags of dozens of frozen dead babies!

In Pennsylvania alone there are  30-40-thousand (reported) abortions performed per year and authorities say the above gruesome picture is just a snapshot into the horror that has been going on uninspected for 17 years in one Philadelphia clinic. Gosnell allegedly slit the necks, severed the spinal cords, and suctioned the brains of hundreds of born, living, viable babies, sometimes joking along the way.

Pure F*ckery: Put Your Abortion on YouTube?!

I have seen so much fuckery on YouTube this week, that I'm starting to get a headache.  Matter of fact, I've already bought tickets on Virgin Galactic, only I don't think we're coming back.

Here's the definition of TRIFLING: lacking in significance or solid worth: as a : frivolous b : trivial c chiefly dialect : lazy, shiftless .  The Urban Dictionary defines trifling as someone pathetic.  Enter AngieTheAntiTheist...

Joseph Stack: It's not called terrorism, it's called having a bad day, and then you get a Facebook group in your honor - that's if you're white, of course

So lemme get this straight; a white male angry at the government flies a plane into a government building in Houston, and it is not considered an act of terrorism? What, terrorism or terroristic acts are only considered as such if the perpetrator is black or if his name sounds like you're hacking up a lung?  Is that right? Is that how it is? So when it's a white guy, he's just considered to be having a bad day, right? Yep, he was "Falling Down". Hopefully the next time I have a bad day and I get a speeding ticket, my Willy T. Ribbs impersonation isn't seen as a personal Jihad or an attack on America.

Of course Joseph Stack didn't just have a bad day. Not when right-wing nutjobs start a Facebook group in your honor and you're heralded as a hero, and a true patriot. You know, sorta the same way abortion doctor murderer, Scott Roeder, was recognized last year? Sure Stack wasn't a terrorist or an extremist; he was an "activist". Yep, to be a terrorist you have to first be of another ethnicity and be proficient in wielding box cutters, and throwing rocks.

Look at this crap:

The Palins Chose Life So Should Everyone Else

Okay, so the Palin ladies chose life.  Good for them, however I am tired of them using their decisions like a battering ram to shame women who decide for various reasons that motherhood is not for them.  I can give Bristol a little bit of leeway because she is clearly under her mother’s thumb but eventually my patience is going to run out.

What these women fail to recognize, is that when women choose abortion, they are also choosing life.  Women who make the painful decision to abort are doing so because making themselves a priority is important and it is something that we have been  taught to forgo from birth.  Let face facts shall we, ovaries and a functioning uterus do not make one a mother.  Perhaps if more people realized that they were incapable of dealing with the responsibility of raising children, there would not be so many of them abused and neglected.

The pro birth movement uses women like Sarah and Bristol to suggest that women who choose to abort are chronically depressed and living with shame.  Simply because they are happy in their decision, does not mean that women who choose not to become mothers are not happy in theirs.  Motherhood is not a biological imperative like breathing or eating, it is simply one option out of many that we may choose in our lifetime.

God hates abortion; murder? Not so much.

Just when Black folks have finally put to rest the image of the D.C. Sniper, and the shame and embarrassment of him being Black, here comes this shit. Yeah, that brother in the pic above is named Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad. Yes his hands behind his back means he’s doing the now infamous media perp walk that Black men are bound by the constitution to do. If you have yet to hear of his crime; he was the person responsible for the drive-by shooting at the military recruitment center in Little Rock Arkansas. Yes, his actions lead to the death of one military recruiter and the wounding of another.

As of right now, there is no clear motive as to why this brother did what he did, but I find it funny he’s already considered a terrorist in the media. I don’t know, but if his name was “Tyrone Jenkins”, I sincerely doubt that the label terrorist would be attached to him. Black men run around shooting other Black men everyday but they’re never referred to as terrorists. But nevertheless, he is now sitting in jail charged with one count of murder, and 15 counts of committing a terrorist act.

So the brother is a terrorist. Why because he has a funny sounding name and is a convert to Islam? Or is it because he shot up a military recruitment office? I mean is he a part of that silly New York Muslim terrorist cell who were dumb enough to buy fake bombs after being entrapped by an overzealous FBI informant? I don’t know if this guy is a terrorist folks, but I do know that guy who shot that abortion doctor in Wichita Kansas definitely was. But then again, maybe he’s not given that title given the fact that religious clowns on the far right side of the political spectrum are applauding his actions.

And you know what else is ridiculous? I have yet to see in the MSM the perp walk of Mr. Anti-Abortion /Pro-Murder White guy in the news. Hell, if it wasn’t for the picture of his mug shot from a previous arrest, I would have never known what he looks like. I guess at the end of the day it all comes down to the fact that God hates abortions, but not so much murder. Yeah, when you kill somebody and you have God on your side when you do, you’re a hero and not a terrorist. Oh well, so much for prosecuting George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes. After all, wasn’t it God who told him to invade Iraq?

As I mentioned before, unlike the crazy White dude, there is no motive for what the brother did in Arkansas. If it were determined, that he was opposed to war. The question I’d like to ask, is: would he be considered a hero, or revered as was that guy in Kansas in the eyes of those God loving God fearing folks who call themselves real Americans? I known dissent is the highest form of patriotism, but when did committing a crime as heinous as murder make one a hero.

ABORTION: WHERE DO YOU STAND?

Some people think that Black people are stupid for their unanimous support of the Democratic Party as opposed to the Republican Party. This is an ongoing debate for which I'll be blogging about real soon. Voting is not a stupid thing. Its actually our civic duty. And if you consider yourself a patriot, then its in your best interest to cast your vote in the upcoming presidential elections.

Now, whats stupid is the reasons people have for their choice in candidate, or even the political ideology they choose to identify with. I say its stupid, but hey, people wanna be a part of something, and that's why they identify themselves with certain voting blocks, or groups. Personal choice is one thing, but when you choose to identify with certain groups, and be influenced by them in your voting decision, I think you're foolish, and clearly unable to think for yourself.

Like evangelicals for example. These people are supposed to be the moral compass of our society because they have box seats in heaven. People like this always try and influence the ballot with their issues. In 2004, it was gay marriages, and from the looks of it, this year its gonna abortion. Well I don't know, but I don't think the reason gas was almost $5 per gallon was because of all the women who exercised their right by law to abort a pregnancy. With the appointment of three new Supreme Court justices by the next administration this is slowly becoming an issue for hard line social conservatives, and Evangelicals.

For many, this is why they find favor with the McCain-Palin GOP ticket. Not that its not an important issue for women to have the right to abort a pregnancy. But is this the sole issue that should serve as a deal breaker when casting your vote? Though an important issue for debate, I don't think it should even be in the top five of concerns, or issues facing the American public today. But don't tell that to evangelicals. To them its a very important issue as they for the most part advocate the right to life. But they're so stupid, that they're prepared to cast a vote for McCain because he's pro-life. Sure, give him your vote because he all about saving babies. Yup, the same guy who is all about going to war, or chasing Bin Laden to Hell as he put it. Lemme guess, innocent people don't get killed in war? Even more ignorant, is the fact that some people are pro-life and support the death penalty. If you're one of those people, and you feel up to it, please explain in your comments how you came to that decision. I guess that would explain all those hypocritical people who chose to bomb abortion clinics in protest back in the 90's.

Last week in a U.S. attack over in Afghanistan, they killed 90 people. Of whom, 60 of them were children. The U.S. Gov't refuses to acknowledge the death count, but the U.N. investigation sure has shed some light on it. Woo hoo for those pro-lifers who support McCain! But like I said, Evangelicals are stupid. You'd think that by believing in Jesus, and his ability to provide for them, that they wouldn't even care about what the gov't does. Or what other people do for that matter. But then again, its their job to gain as many souls as they can to have that big bash in heaven when its all said and done.

So they make gay marriages and abortion the real issue in America. Never-mind the economy, the mortgage crisis, unemployment, or that Maury Povich is still doing paternity shows. That shit isn't important; Jesus is the answer. Whats important is what women do with their bodies or their vagina. Well I got a message for you Evangelical, bible thumping, anti abortion women: Just because John McCain has added a vagina to his ticket, doesn't mean that he cares about yours. Personally, for the record, I think abortion is as much a personal choice, as a woman choosing breast implants, or breast reduction. In my opinion, I do not think that it should even be a legal issue.

Whats your take on the abortion issue?