screenshot of man holding plastic fetus models
By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 9 years ago

The Daily Show takes on Alabama’s new law that provides fetuses with lawyers

Last week on The Daily Show, Jessica Williams reported on the new Alabama law allocating state funds to provide fetuses with court-appointed attorneys when a minor is seeking an abortion without her parents’ consent. 

 

As a recent article in Mother Jones described, Alabama is not the only state where teens are literally put on trial if they want to end their pregnancies. And in Alabama, whose public defender system is so broke that actual, born human beings are regularly denied their right to an attorney, it’s a particularly egregious use of funding. “If you can’t afford an attorney, Alabama has got your back,” Williams notes. “Until the day you’re born.”

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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