Justice, Florida-style

If you ever needed to see a microcosm of wingnut policies at work, here you go:

NAPLES — It was a girl.

Doctors removed the dead fetus from Joan Laurel Small on Thursday, a day after her release from the Collier County jail.

The 22-year-old mother cradled baby “Elena Laurel.” Nurses cut a lock of the baby’s hair for a keepsake.

“They cleaned her up and allowed her to hold her,” said Small’s mother, Jennifer Graeber of New Jersey. “The hospital is making her a little remembrance book. They’re putting in a lock of the baby’s hair.”

Graeber said when her daughter arrived at The Birth Place at NCH North Naples Hospital, her blood-pressure had risen and she had a fever.

“That’s the beginning signs of septic shock,” Graeber said of leaving a dead fetus inside a mother.

Because the baby had been left in her womb more than a day, she said, Small could not deliver the baby, but had to undergo a C-section.

[snip]

She’d been held since Dec. 22 after she violated probation by returning home after her nightly 10 p.m. curfew. Small said she’d been attending a parenting class in Naples and couldn’t get a ride home; she has no car. Records show the probation violation involved a 2007 drug charge; an adjudication of guilt was withheld. It’s her only criminal conviction and records show it occurred when she was caught with drugs in the car of her former husband, Ken Enright Small, during a traffic stop; his record includes drug convictions.ock,” Graeber said of leaving a dead fetus inside a mother.

Where the hell does one even START with this? Here's a woman being held in jail on probation for a drug violation that is in itself questionable. On a day when some lunatics in South Carolina are considering prosecuting Michael Phelps based on nothing but a fucking PHOTOGRAPH, perhaps we might at last get some discussion going on the insane "war on drugs" which in Naples, Florida -- a state with more than its share of fetophile lunatic wingnuts -- is now responsible for infanticide. It's all here -- the gap between rich and poor, our appalling criminal justice system, the inherent misogyny in busting this woman for a probation violation BECAUSE SHE WAS LATE COMING HOME FROM A PARENTING CLASS, the double standard of so-called pro-lifers who think nothing of risking the life of a WANTED baby while trying to force women who don't want to carry to term to do so.

As you watch the Republicans behave as if they won the November election, and the Democrats crouching again in a fetal position in the corner, as the economy crashes and burns around us, and as the Joe Scarboroughs and Chris Matthewses of the world decide that a failed presidency makes good copy -- preparing the country for perhaps a Republican triumphant restoration in 2010, go back and read this article about Joan Laurel Small and her dead baby -- and look at what "conservative values" do to those who aren't in their little club.