Sky Views: What happened in Alabama is like an episode of The Handmaid's Tale

Sky Views: What happened in Alabama is like an episode of The Handmaid's Tale

By Hannah Thomas-Peter, US correspondent

A pregnant woman who was shot in the stomach by someone else has been charged over the death of her unborn baby.

This is not an episode from The Handmaid's Tale.

It actually happened, just a few days ago, in Alabama.

Marshae Jones, 27, got into a physical fight with another woman called Ebony Jemison.


According to police officers, Jones initiated the fight and was winning, before Jemison produced a gun and fired.

Image: Ebony Jemison, who fired the gun, will not face charges

A grand jury declined to charge Jemison for murder or attempted murder, because she was acting in self-defence.

But it decided that Marshae Jones should be indicted for the manslaughter of her five-month-old foetus, because she started it.

Of course Marshae Jones shouldn't have allegedly picked a fight with her co-worker.

But does that mean she bears legal responsibility for not foreseeing what was going to happen?

More importantly, does that really mean she forfeits the right not to be shot in the stomach?

It does in Alabama - home to some of the most restrictive reproductive laws and most permissive gun laws in the country.

Image: Marshae Jones, who lost her baby, is being charged with manslaughter

So while everyone seems to be able to earnestly agree that the case of Marshae Jones and Ebony Jemison is utterly tragic, the response of state officials seems to simply be 'them's the rules'.

Well those rules defy common sense.

By extension, the same warped principles could apply to almost anything that happens to an unborn child.

Neurological defects at birth? Definitely could be your fault for living next to a motorway and breathing in fumes, or perhaps ingesting toxic household chemicals while you clean your floors.

Miscarriage due to assault from an abusive partner? Definitely could be your fault. You chose to live with him after all.

Where does this end?

Alabama's laws are a creepy manifestation of the policing and criminalisation of women's bodies.

And those same laws, according to campaigners, will disproportionately affect low income and minority populations.

While everyone seems to be able to earnestly agree that the case of Marshae Jones and Ebony Jemison is utterly tragic, the response of state officials seems to simply be 'them's the rules'

To me, this awful case also neatly lays bare the most confounding paradox of socially conservative thinking.

That is, that the right of the individual to exist as free from government intervention as possible is absolutely sacred.

This especially applies to guns, freedom of speech, the right to home-school and so on.

But all of a sudden this sacred principle stops applying in the case of a gay person's right to marry who they love, or a woman's right to self-determination once they are pregnant.

Using the justification that life begins at conception, Alabama law dictates that the criminal justice system can set up camp in a woman's uterus and stay there until the baby is born.

I find that system very hard to understand.

I also think that no amount of shrugging and referral to the letter of the law excuses those who have ignored the spirit of compassion and humanity.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Martha Kelner - The difference between Megan Rapinoe and Kim Kardashian