Russia is seeing a return to informer-based prosecution, where people denounce other people for dissenting thoughts. These “snitchings” that inform on others to law enforcement for statements against the war in Ukraine or other “political crimes” are landing people in penal colonies for years!
The way Trump fawns over Putin and wants to be like him, and the way he has said he will crack down on his political opponents, there is a very real possibility that this could happen in the United States.
In the first year after Roe v Wade was overturned (June 2022-June 2023), over 200 women have faced criminal charges for conduct associated with their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. The majority of these charges are in just six states: Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. All run by Republicans and operating under abortion bans.
Trump said in an interview that “there has to be some sort of punishment” for the woman. And it’s already happening.
Researchers have found that pregnancies and pregnancy loss are more highly scrutinized in these states. And it’s more about the ramifications of giving full legal personhood rights to a fetus than it is about actual abortions. Read below:
“Almost none of the prosecutions documented by researchers were brought under state abortion laws. Instead, researchers found that law enforcement most often charged pregnant women with crimes such as child neglect or endangerment, interpreting the definition of “child” to include a fetus. In doing so, authorities relied on a legal concept called fetal personhood — the idea that a fetus, embryo or fertilized egg has the same legal rights as a person who has been born.
“If we focus only on abortion laws, we miss a crucial part of the picture in the fact that pregnant individuals are being criminalized for allegedly endangering their own pregnancies, for pregnancy loss and, in some cases, for conduct related to abortion. What’s driving pregnancy criminalization is the expansion of fetal personhood.’
“Charges of child abuse or endangerment carry stiffer penalties — higher fines and lengthier prison sentences — than the low-level drug charges the women likely would have faced had they not been pregnant.
“‘Pregnancy-related prosecutions don’t generally charge crimes that, on the face of the criminal statute, have anything whatsoever to do with pregnancy,’ said Wendy Bach, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law and the report’s principal investigator. ‘Instead, using the idea of fetal personhood, or more specifically the idea that the fetus can be the victim of a crime perpetrated by the pregnant person, they use that theory to charge general crimes.'”
Judge Eileen Cannon has decided to dismiss the case against Trump for stealing top secret documents, lying about having them, and violating the Espionage Act, not because he didn’t do it, but because she decided that the appointment of a special counsel was unconstitutional.
Special Counsels have been used in the U.S. since the 1800s and this decision was based on Clarence Thomas’s unprecedented advisory opinion that was not even related to the case they were trying. He threw out a suggestion that these special counsels could be unconstitutional (despite 150+ years of precedent) in an effort to help Trump.
But the dismissal CAN BE APPEALED, and that would take it out of Judge Cannon’s biased courtroom (she has been giving special treatment to Trump from the beginning) and into an appeals court. Eventually it could get to the Supreme Court, where Thomas has already said what he would do, but there are 8 other justices.
Brian Tyler Cohen and Glenn Kirschner discuss it in this video:
