Along with the rest of the Canadian blogosphere, we at Birth Pangs have been following developments surrounding the Tasering of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski.

On the web, there are lots of reports of Taserings of all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. With our special interest in promoting and protecting women’s rights, we wondered how pregnant women have fared as Taser targets.

We found that a few police departments, including Miami-Dade and Clearwater, Florida, have prohibitions against using Tasers on pregnant women. Good. That seems sensible.

But we looked further. And we found.

Here’s a story from Seattle in 2005.

She was rushing her son to school. She was eight months pregnant. And she was about to get a speeding ticket she didn’t think she deserved.

So when a Seattle police officer presented the ticket to Malaika Brooks, she refused to sign it. In the ensuing confrontation, she suffered burns from a police Taser, an electric stun device that delivers 50,000 volts.
. . .
Brooks’ run-in with police Nov. 23 came six months before Seattle adopted a new policy on Taser use that guides officers on how to deal with pregnant women, the very young, the very old and the infirm. When used on such subjects, the policy states, “the need to stop the behavior should clearly justify the potential for additional risks.”

“Obviously, (law enforcement agencies) don’t want to use a Taser on young children, pregnant woman or elderly people,” Davis said. “But if in your policy you deliberately exclude a segment of the population, then you have potentially closed off a tool that could have ended a confrontation.”

Brooks was stopped in the 8300 block of Beacon Avenue South, just outside the African American Academy, while dropping her son off for school.

Here’s another from Florida this past August.

The Alachua County Sheriff’s Office says a Lieutenant didn’t know a mother was pregnant when he tasered her stomach.

A pregnant Leslie Donaldson says she was trying to help break up a fight between neighborhood kids. That’s when the sheriff’s deputy showed up. He tazed one of the boys fighting then said he had to taser Donaldson.

“She raised her arm to the deputy. The deputy felt threatened like she was going to hit him potentially,” said Alachua County Sheriff’s Lieutenant David Clark.

Clark is a certified taser instructor with the Sheriff’s Office. He says when he tasered her stomach, he didn’t realize she was 8 months pregnant.

This one is from Chicago, 2004:

A man and his daughter have filed a lawsuit alleging a couple of Evergreen Park police officers assaulted them with a Taser gun at the woman’s backyard wedding reception.

Clarence Phelps, 54, and Romona Madison, 32, filed the federal civil rights lawsuit Tuesday against two officers and the Village of Evergreen Park.

According to the lawsuit, a black female officer on Sept. 18 told Phelps outside his home at 9124 S. Francisco Ave. that the police department had received a noise complaint after 11 p.m. and that he should turn down the music at his daughter’s wedding reception, NBC5′s Renee Ferguson reported.

Phelps, who is also black, said he turned off the music, but the officer did not leave, according to the lawsuit. When Phelps approached the officer to ask why she was still on his premises, she demanded his identification and called for backup, the lawsuit states.
. . .
Another officer arrived and tried to arrest Phelps, who police claim pushed the officer. That’s when Phelps was shot with a Taser gun. According to Phelps’ attorney, the officer used the stun gun without provocation.

Phelps, who is a part-time state police officer and truck driver, was then taken into custody, Ferguson reported.

In court documents, Madison states she saw what happened to her father, screamed, and asked the officer to stop. The officer allegedly turned the Taser gun toward her and threatened the bride with it, according to the lawsuit.

Madison ran into the home, and one of the officers followed. That officer then allegedly shot Madison with the Taser gun twice in the abdomen, despite being told by witnesses that she was pregnant.

A prong from the stun gun reportedly became lodged in Madison’s stomach and had to be removed by paramedics, Ferguson said.

A third officer allegedly held a gun to Madison’s head as she was being arrested.

And another from our favourite benighted USian state, Kansas.

Tianesha Robinson was about four months pregnant last fall when she was jolted with a Taser stun gun while resisting arrest during a traffic stop.

After experiencing cramps for several weeks, the 33-year-old Wichita, Kan., woman miscarried. Her family insists there is a connection between the miscarriage and the roughly 50,000-volt shock that subdued her, though doctors said the link would be more clear had she miscarried immediately after the shock.

“There is one thing we know,” said Fabrice Czarnecki, an emergency physician and staff doctor for the Police Policy Studies Council, a law enforcement research training and consulting group. “If you are hit by a Taser you are likely to fall. We know even minor trauma during pregnancy, like a fall, is dangerous and could be fatal to the fetus. Again, we don’t know whether the risk is 1 percent or 5 percent. We don’t know. But we know it’s there.”

Taser itself warns on its Web site that people who are infirm or pregnant may be at higher risk of secondary injuries, such as those due to falls.

“As far as the electricity on the fetus, I think it may be dangerous,” Czarnecki added, noting there’s an absence of peer-reviewed research on the subject.

At the website for the Police Policy Studies Council, Dr Czarnecki makes a number of recommendations including this:

If possible avoid using TASER on pregnant women, elderly and very young

‘If possible’. Well, sure. But clearly when police officers are dealing with such depraved criminals as these women, they need all the force they can muster. Traffic violations! Noisy weddings! Breaking up fights between kids! (Um, we’re actually kinda unclear what the crime there was, but any pregnant woman who would wade into a kid-fight has got to be some scary person, yes?)

As we reported here, being pregnant in Vietnam can exempt a woman from the firing squad.

But, sadly, it seems that being pregnant does not exempt a woman from falling victim to the paranoia deliberately foisted on us by emerging police-states. Like Canada and the US.

Still, a really obvious pregnancy might give a trigger-happy cop pause. Perhaps an investment in the pregnancy-similating Empathy Belly would be wise. Yes, we realize that criminals such as traffic violators and noisy partiers will take advantage of the protection an Empathy Belly might afford, but that is something we would address later, in a Empathy Belly Registration Program.

One last word: Juding by the hints or outright statements in the above stories, we suggest that people seeking the protection of an Empathy Belly chose a white one.