{"id":185549,"date":"2014-10-13T21:25:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T02:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/10\/13\/the-handmaidens-tale-is-alive-and-well-in-tennessee\/"},"modified":"2014-10-13T21:25:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T02:25:00","slug":"the-handmaidens-tale-is-alive-and-well-in-tennessee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/10\/13\/the-handmaidens-tale-is-alive-and-well-in-tennessee\/","title":{"rendered":"The Handmaiden&#8221;s Tale is Alive and Well in Tennessee"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>That&#8217;s where <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/blogs\/xx_factor\/2014\/10\/13\/lacey_weld_case_tennessee_woman_gets_six_extra_years_in_prison_for_being.html\">Lacey Weld got 6 additional years in prison for being pregnant<\/a>:<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Does being pregnant when you commit a crime make you guiltier than someone who is not pregnant? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vice.com\/read\/a-woman-got-six-extra-years-in-prison-because-she-was-pregnant-1010\">Vice reports that a group<\/a> of reproductive rights organizations, <a href=\"http:\/\/advocatesforpregnantwomen.org\/DOJ%20Weld%20Letter%20-%20signed.pdf\">led by the National Advocates for Pregnant Women<\/a>, wrote to the Department of Justice recently to protest the sentence of Lacey Weld of Dandridge, Tennessee. Weld was picked up in an undercover sting at a methamphetamine manufacturing plant. As Kristen Gwynne of Vice writes, \u201cdespite her cooperation in the case and testimony against co-defendants, Weld (who pleaded guilty) was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison and five years of supervised release for her involvement in meth manufacturing.\u201d Because of \u201cenhanced sentencing\u201d guidelines, six of those years were tacked on simply because Weld was pregnant at the time.  <\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\"><\/p>\n<p>As the NAPW&#8217;s letter states, giving a person an extra-long sentence because of her pregnancy status constitutes \u201cseparate and unequal treatment of pregnant women.\u201d The justification offered by the judge in Weld&#8217;s case is that Weld is extra guilty because she put her \u201cunborn\u201d child at a \u201ca substantial risk of harm.\u201d But Weld was not convicted of smoking meth. \u201cAccording to the press release, the DOJ justifies the enhanced penalty in part because Ms. Weld apparently used methamphetamine while pregnant,\u201d writes NAPW in its letter. \u201cDrug use (rather than possession), however, is not a crime under either Tennessee or federal law\u2014and as the press release admits, Ms. Weld was convicted of manufacturing, not possession of, methamphetamine.\u201d Tennessee law allows enhanced sentencing if the victim is especially vulnerable, but Weld was not convicted of victimizing her son. Those six extra years were for a crime that isn&#8217;t a crime in Tennessee at all.  <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is contemptible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s where Lacey Weld got 6 additional years in prison for being pregnant: Does being pregnant when you commit a crime make you guiltier than someone who is not pregnant? Vice reports that a group of reproductive rights organizations, led by the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, wrote to the Department of Justice recently to &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1013,969,972,1122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drugs","category-evil","category-justice","category-reproductive-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}