Police brutality induces miscarriage? Better blame the victim!

Those of you who have been following the Occupy protests have probably heard about the recent incident in Portland, where Jennifer Fox, a 19-year-old young woman in Seattle, suffered a miscarriage after being beaten and sprayed by the police. On November 15th, at the Occupy protest, Fox, who is homeless, was assaulted by the police, receiving kicks to her stomach and pepper spray directly into her face even while trying to tell the police that she was pregnant. She was seen later that day being carried while in extreme pain by another Occupier. She was taken to the hospital, where doctors found the fetus to be healthy, but several days later she began to experience pains again. According to Fox, “They diagnosed that I was having a miscarriage. They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too.”

Now that we’re up to speed, I want to share some of the comments that have been made about this:

“It was totally irresposible of this woman to put her unborn baby at risk in this way,”

“Why don’t we charge her instead for putting her baby in danger,”

“is it just me or does anyone else think that it is irresponsible for pregnant women to go to protests that have had numerous cases of police brutality? like the occupy protests for example.”

And, of course, the homeless-bashing:

“I don’t suppose her being homeless, likely having no prenatal care and not taking care of herself could have caused her to miscarry? Or perhaps she JUST HAD A MISCARRIAGE. It happens all the time. Hell, she could be a junkie. Plenty of junkie street kids in Seattle.”

The fact that the Seattle protests have up until then faced less violence than other protests and it was by no means a given that Fox could expect to be pepper sprayed is, at this point, irrelevant. What matters here is that a woman was beaten, subjected to chemical weapons, and suffered a miscarriage as a result- her freedom and her choice was taken away, both at the moment of the beating and in the miscarriage that followed it. Jennifer Fox was victimized by the police, and she is being blamed, just as we have seen victim-blaming again and again against women who suffer violent abuse and assault. This is not acceptable. Why can’t we focus, instead of what the victim did wrong, on a more basic question- why should a pregnant woman not have every right to stand in public and express dissent against her government and criticism of the social order? The people here with a choice were the cops- and they took away her choice.