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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIf Abortion Is Illegal, Will Every Miscarriage Be a Potential Crime?
3 hours ago
If Abortion Is Illegal, Will Every Miscarriage Be a Potential Crime?
A woman in Oklahoma was recently convicted of manslaughter after having a miscarriage. She likely wont be the last.
Cecilia Nowell
snip//
Theres another reason this Supreme Court decision could lead to more miscarriage prosecutions: Self-induced abortions and miscarriageswhich occur in one in four pregnanciescan look identical. If someone shows up at the hospital and says theyre having a miscarriage, doctors might suspect there is more going on. In other words, pregnancies that dont result in birth become suspect in places where abortion is outlawed.
That might sound extreme, but consider El Salvador, where abortion is completely banned. More than 140 people, mostly impoverished women living in rural regions, have been incarcerated for illegal abortionsmany of whom insist they merely miscarried. In Poland, where a court last year imposed a country-wide, near-total ban on abortion, a new bill proposes requiring doctors to report all pregnancies and miscarriages to a registry controlled and monitored by the government, raising fears it will heighten scrutiny of and prosecutions over pregnancies that dont end in birth.
If you think that cant happen in the United States, consider this: In 2019, during a hearing as part of an investigation that threatened to close Missouris lone abortion clinic, the head of the states department of health testified the office had created a spreadsheet tracking Planned Parenthood abortion patients menstrual periods using state medical records. The purpose: To identify people whod and investigate failed abortionspeople who had gone in for an abortion but were still pregnant and not getting their periodin an attempt to prove that abortion complications are common (they arent). And since the leaked Supreme Court draft, Louisiana has taken the lead in saying whats coming next, via a bill saying people who get abortions can be charged with homicide.
more...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/roe-abortion-miscarriage-crime-murder-prosecution/

Lovie777
(16,567 posts)YES.
Haggis 4 Breakfast
(1,456 posts)have never read the HIPPA law. Disclosing the private medical information of anyone without their written consent is illegal. Anyone who violates this law can be tried and convicted. Let that sink in.
If police can have murder cases overturned on technicalities, then HIPPA is the law ALL health care providers must uphold.
durablend
(8,218 posts)Watch them say that.
jmowreader
(51,842 posts)If Trump gets back in and has a Republican Congress to back him up, the first two things they will do are to kill the filibuster and exempt abortion-related requests from HIPAA protection.
HIPAA will help us now, but when the evangelicals take over the country they'll end that quickly.
HighFired49
(399 posts)samnsara
(18,385 posts)..lawsuits..
we will make sure of that...
Scrivener7
(53,940 posts)Walleye
(37,578 posts)tanyev
(45,355 posts)Or so they believe.
louis-t
(23,963 posts)Peacetrain
(23,725 posts)and yes a stem can develop in the fallopian tubes and have a heartbeat..
Over 100,000 ectopic pregnancies' a year in the US..
We have entered a very scary place for women...
SoonerPride
(12,286 posts)But for poor white, and all brown and black women of all economic strata, yes.
wnylib
(25,183 posts)people who are not White wants to increase their numbers by denying abortion access to them.
solara
(3,876 posts)They sure don't want to use white folks for dirty & difficult labor.. so they make sure there are plenty of protected non-white embryos who will eventually grow into stupid very cheap laborers, because of course they won't educate them, either.
By the way, Rape, sexual slavery, and related actions including forced pregnancy, are now recognized under the Geneva Convention as crimes against humanity and war crimes; #ForcedBirthIsFascism Too cynical?
Just sayin'
Farmer-Rick
(11,645 posts)The filthy rich always get away with ignoring any law that annoys them, but not so the Middle Class.
Before Roe v Wade, middle class white women were a target of all the same abusive laws men can throw at women.
My female friends were all middle class and most of them were white. They all faced the same repurcussions for daring to have sex as poorer women did. Many of them had no access to money and transportation without going through their very controlling religious families. Pregnancy hung over their heads like the sword of Damocles, ready to ruin their lives forever if they slipped up.
LakeArenal
(29,935 posts)Poor people dont vote. They cant get off work, stand in long lines to get to the polls. Republicans are busy limiting access to polls in poor locations.
Lonestarblue
(12,226 posts)The determination to prosecute is based on the woman being responsible for the miscarriage, but it is usually impossible to determine what causes a miscarriage. Successful prosecutions could send women to jail for 10 to 30 years. This law is nothing more than a license for local prosecutors to target specific women (i.e., non-Republicans and non-white), and it will be replicated by other red states if Roe is overturned.
In order to determine if a woman is "responsible" for her miscarriage, Georgia prosecutors would be allowed to investigate. Drug and alcohol use during pregnancy have been cited by policy experts as ways a woman could potentially be held responsible for her miscarriage under the bill.
Between 10% and 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Despite this, the medical community has been unable to pinpoint exactly what causes miscarriages, especially those that occur during a woman's first-trimester.
https://www.insider.com/misguided-science-behind-georgias-abortion-miscarriage-law-2019-5
malthaussen
(17,923 posts)The GOP has decided to rule by terror. Pregnancy gives them a golden opportunity to terrorize women, and that's half the voters right there. They're banking on the terrorized being more numerous than the outraged. They may have a surprise coming.
-- Mal
tirebiter
(2,610 posts)Thats whos law you would have to worry about.
kskiska
(27,125 posts)Each neighborhood would be appointed a "granny" who'll visit each family and find out who's pregnant, but rather than forcing abortion, they'd personally force the birth of each and every pregnant woman's child.
Martin68
(24,938 posts)ThoughtCriminal
(14,419 posts)"Why would Sarah Palin, thinking her amniotic sac might have ruptured, wait more than 20 hours to seek medical attention, thus putting the life of her baby at risk?
Why would Sarah Palin, after the onset of contractions, board an airplane for a 3,000 mile trip?"
The rumors were that Sarah Palin's pregnancy was fake and Trig was actually her daughter's child, but I always suspected that the baby really was Sarah's and she was hoping that Trig would not survive birth.
Nululu
(1,000 posts)Hekate
(96,103 posts)Alwaysna
(577 posts)Until of the availability of the home pregnancy tests, women didn't know they were pregnant when they experienced a late but heavy period.
Approximately 26% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage .
This is truly a witch hunt!!!!
HighFired49
(399 posts)If they want to arrest women for having "aborted" fetuses i.e. miscarriages, lets start sending to the Health Depts., police, district attys., courts, or whatever enforcement agency they choose, all of our used tampons, and pads, etc. so that they can check them out. What ya wanta bet they back off of that stupid idea really fast?
While I'm on the subject of helping, I also think that if the State is going to force women to have children, the State should be responsible for them, and have to at least pay child support, and maybe college tuition, etc. Either that, or have completely no-fault orphanages, or state institutions. We'll see how long that lasts when the system is overrun in a few months. Yeah! Back to the '50s! (1850's)
I haven't read or heard of, in any of the state laws (haven't read all of them yet) any reference to to the responsibility of men in causing unwanted pregnancies. I guess that's because this is all about controlling women. Make the men take the offspring, or pay for them, and i'll bet this entire bullshit Roe decision gets reversed asap. I'm really just kidding about giving children to men who don't want them, but the very thought of the repercussions of having to take on an unwanted child should scare crap outa lots of lawmakers and judges, especially if it isn't their wife's. It's really too bad that the results of this stupid and ignorant decision won't be felt equally. Everybody just gets to walk away, except for the women who have to give birth and suffer all of the consequences for years. Ultimately though, many children will suffer, also.
DinahMoeHum
(22,657 posts)Many of these miscarriages occur naturally, without drug inducement, ie.by Nature/God.
", , ,hey, he made us to be just like Him / so if we're dumb / then God is dumb / and maybe ugly on the side. . ." - Frank Zappa / Dumb All Over
LiberalFighter
(53,544 posts)LiberalFighter
(53,544 posts)or escapes somehow be considered murder?
sop
(12,514 posts)sop
(12,514 posts)We've gone from the War on Drugs to the War on Abortion; "Just say no to abortion" will be the new slogan of the forced birthers. The intended victims will be the same, and the devastation to communities of color will be similar.
RayStar
(417 posts)Have any of these men who want to punish women ever once said they will not have sex with a female.
dlk
(12,557 posts)Republicans will be monitoring menstrual cycles, like they already have in Texas, with girls as young as 12 who are immigration detainees. The fascists are just getting warmed up.
yellowdogintexas
(23,012 posts)Her rotation is OB/Gym. Her husband came to a party without her and he told us she was too depressed to go out and have fun because she had delivered a 10 year old.
Another friend was director of The Rape Crisis Center in Ft Worth. She has many stories. but the worst one was the mom who came home sick from work to find her husband raping her 12 year old daughter. Turn out it had been going on since the kid was 9. She had never had a period, because she got pregnant on her first period. The mom did take the child for an abortion, thankfully.
Nearly as bad was the friend's sister, who got pregnant at 16. This was before Roe, so the mom and daughter traveled to Mexico City. The procedure was in a doctor's office, under sterile conditions. However the doctor raped her when he did the pre op examination.
This is what young women have to look forward to now. We have time traveled back to the 1960s.
Emile
(32,364 posts)to explain what happened?
JohnnyRingo
(19,629 posts)Like it wasn't traumatic enough of an experience, add some CSI drama to it, because until the "murder" is investigated we won't know for sure.
Of course they won't do that. What are they, zealots? "Yes"
marie999
(3,334 posts)He can't be tried because he can't be served. Charge the person in charge of each house of God for every miscarriage.
Smackdown2019
(1,274 posts)If that is the case, seatbelts, car accidents, bumb in grocery lines, husband hugging, wearing clothes, horn blowing, loud music and listening to Trump spill lies should all be potential cases of miscarriages... especially the stress of Trump Lies.
DFW
(57,175 posts)Those who made it illegal are guilty of a crime.