Truthout Interviews Ayanna Banks Harris on Stand Your Ground Laws and Reproductive Justice

Protesters demonstrate in support of Marissa Alexander in Oakland, March 2014. (Photo: Daniel Arauz)

Also see: The Forgotten Mothers

Ayanna Banks Harris talks about Marissa Alexander, a jailed mother who faces a possible 60 years in prison – in a state that has Stand Your Ground laws on the books – for firing a warning shot to keep her estranged husband from attacking her.

A woman tries to defend herself from being attacked by her estranged husband and fires a warning shot from a gun to keep him away. She’s arrested, jailed, and faces 60 years in prison in a state that has Stand Your Ground laws on the books. Yet George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, is a free man. Why the unequal treatment in a self-defense case? In this Truthout Interviews segment, Ayanna Banks Harris talks about Marissa Alexander – the woman at the center of this Stand Your Ground case – and highlights the details of the incident and the importance of Reproductive Justice in a world where 70 percent of women imprisoned in the United States are mothers.

Ayanna recently interviewed Monica Simpson of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective about Marissa Alexander and the cause of Reproductive Justice. SisterSong works to ensure basic human rights for women of color and indigenous women who are also mothers, and the case of Marissa Alexander is one where Reproductive Justice, self-defense and domestic violence are at the center of the legal battle winding its way through the courts in Florida.