On November 15th, Jennifer Fox was kicked in the stomach and pepper-sprayed by the Seattle Police. She was three months pregnant. Here’s a brief video of her sitting on the sidewalk in considerable pain.
She went to doctor and had a sonogram. Initially, everything looked okay. But she had a miscarriage on November 20th. She talked to The Stranger, and this is what she claims:
“Everything was going okay until yesterday, when I started getting sick, cramps started, and I felt like I was going to pass out,” Fox says.
A friend called for an ambulance near the community college campus. (Fox says she has been camping with Occupy Seattle since it first began in Westlake Park. She is homeless and says, “I don’t have a place. This is the place I call home.”) When she arrived at Harborview at 11:00 a.m., she says, a doctor told her that “there was no heartbeat” from the baby. “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.”
As for joining the protests, she says, “I was worried about it, but I didn’t know it would be this bad. I didn’t know that a cop would murder a baby that’s not born yet… I am trying to get lawyers.”
I repeatedly asked Fox if she could provide any medical records that confirm the miscarriage or that the clash with police officers caused it. She did not have copies but says she asked her case worker at Harborview to provide her with records (I’ll continue to ask for follow-up evidence and post if and when Fox provides those records). Harboview officials say they cannot provide any information, of course, except that medical records would mention those details. The Seattle Police Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.
I don’t expect the right to demonstrate their “pro-life” concern. I assume they will attack this unfortunate woman for being pregnant and homeless and unmarried and an anti-American left-wing loon. That’s just how they roll.
Of course, if there is proof that the fetus was negatively affected by the pepper spray or the kick, we have not yet seen that proof. But it’s something to think about before you go casually pepper-spraying college-age women in the face.
She was going to name the baby ‘Miracle’ and her parents were going to help her raise it.
Update [2011-11-22 21:57:36 by BooMan]: The original Stranger article has been updated with some information that raises a degree of uncertainty about Ms. Fox’s claims. She needs to clear it up tomorrow by getting the paperwork, if it exists.
Speechless. So they will say she was a big “threat” and they “feared for their lives”. Really??? Will they actually try to come up with some justification for this???
My question is how do we the people stop these rogue cops in all these cities? Can we? We are more of a police state than I ever realized til now.
Can we? Of course. There’s no easy way to do it, but it can be done.
The nonviolent discipline of many Occupy participants has helped enormously in bringing about for millions of Americans the same realization you’ve had, Jan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AbYHRg3qlw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHX7dSsVLms
If the UC Davis had responded violently, then this would be a story about a student riot, and the campus police and administration would—for the vast majority of Americans—have held the moral ground.
Instead, as James Fallows writes at “The Atlantic”, “as a moral confrontation, this is a rout”. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/the-moral-power-of-an-image-uc-davis-reactions/2
48778/
P.S. There’s lots of great writing and reflection about the UC Davis assault by Fallows and other writers at http://www.theatlantic.com.)
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See my new diary with the inconsistencies in the story of Jennifer Fox:
My Daughter Jennifer is a `Wannabe Drama Queen’
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."They will say that if she had followed orders from the police she would not have been sprayed and kicked. They will say SHE put the baby in harms way. Not really any different than if she had smoked crack or drank MD 20-20, which she probably did since she was homeless.
And that she is irresponsible to be pregnant and without health insurance and that her need for this neonatal care, brought on by her carelessness is driving up health care costs.
And they will doubt the medical accuracy of whether the pepper spray can pass into the blood and through the placenta to the baby. They will say she is overplaying the attack she got.
No doubt!
Some of them will also want to charge her with the crime of miscarrying due to her reckless behavior. Some states are moving in that direction.
This also highlights something I think all of us who’ve been participating need to understand. We need to be sure we understand our own medical/physical condition and what the range of police attacks has been and might involve.
I know a guy who has gone on a couple of marches but stays away from overnight occupations that would lead to police confrontation. He has asthma and is father to a young child. He’s convinced that a good dose of pepper spray and the predictably slow medical assistance would kill him.
I suspect the Lord has a special curse for someone who kicks a pregnant, homeless woman during the wintertime and causes her to miscarry a potential Miracle. Just something to think about, officer, whoever you are. 🙂
He has a special place in hell waiting for him. To be honest though, at three months he probably couldn’t tell she was pregnant BUT they shouldn’t be kicking and abusing ANYONE sitting on the ground. Obviously. What these cops don’t understand is all this violence is just making people madder and more enraged. Duh.
FYI, one purpose of these tactics (pepper spray, beatings with batons, etc.) is to, in effect, provoke a riot—that then justifies the need for virtually any amount of force and violence by the police.
To the extent that Occupy activists practice and absorb a discipline of nonviolence, and the practice of a range of nonviolent tactics, they’re able to render the violent tactics of the police counterproductive. (As did young people in Birmingham in 1963, as did the demonstrators in Tahrir Square earlier this year.)
P.S. Here’s a link to the work of Gene Sharp, the dean of nonviolent action theorists (at least in the English-speaking world). http://www.aeinstein.org/
See especially “From Dictatorship to Democracy”, arguably the single most influential political essay of the past 20 years. http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html
Jennifer Fox will always mourn her baby. The stress she went through while being sprayed and kicked hurt her also.
It is heartrending.
Do any of our resident law scholars know if there is potential for a civil rights action here someplace?
I know for a fact some of the victims of this incident last Tuesday are considering legal action and talking with lawyers. I’d be pretty astonished if they don’t reach out to Ms. Fox.
I was hoping a class might be put together from the many cities where these incidents have occurred.
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Visits to the pond have skyrocketed today. Amazing, good thing you upgraded the server recently! The increased attention to your writings well deserved Boo.
As to your update, I didn’t want to be harsh on Ms Fox, from the beginning I had an uneasy feeling. Nevertheless I wish her well, being in an awful personal predicament.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."This story is currently 6th on reddit/r/politics, so not surprised there was an increase in visits.
I don’t know if this woman’s story is true, but I have to note that we are being defended abroad by people like this: