Given the reliance of many anti-choice people to rely on their interpretation of "God's plan" to inform their beliefs, I presume they also accept erectile dysfunction as a part of this plan and don't use any manmade drugs such as Viagra to overcome His wishes.
On the related issue of money (also used bizarrely as an anti-choice argument, as if having an abortion is more expensive than raising a child to adulthood), I presume these people who are against insurance covering contraception also don't take advantage of ED drugs which are usually fully subsidised.
3
Yes, politics should be kept entirely out of miscarriages, but the cruel people who write these laws won’t listen to reason.
3
And where in this law over a woman's body is any mention of the contributor to the OTHER 50% of chromosomes? Can you imagine the outrage if the law passed included vasectomy or castration for any man who fathered a child 'illegitimately'? Quite a few lawmakers would be on the chopping blocks--so to speak.
5
What are the laws about ending life support in these states? What's the law in those states regarding refusal to donate a life-enabling organ to another person, including a child? If fathers (and men in general) will not henceforth be required to donate an organ or other part of their body to save one of their children, why should women be required to donate space inside their bodies, one of their organs to an embryo or fetus, particularly if she was raped or otherwise sexually assaulted or coerced into becoming pregnant?
4
This is about seeking political power to make the USA into a Christian State in violation of the Constitution.. Trump has drawn these people out of the woodwork - just like he has drawn out the racists and bigots who want to defile the words on the Statue of Liberty!
9
I always shunned politics because I felt I wasn't smart or informed enough. Clearly those qualities are no longer a pre-requisite to being a lawmaker.
10
Counterintuitively, I think these laws will reduce the number of children being born because women of childbearing age aren’t going to want to go near men.
14
What many of these 'Evangelicals' might not have considered is the possible mass exodus of ObGyn physicians form these restrictive/punitive states. What then? Rural areas already have sever shortages of doctors. Why would they stay and risk being accused of causing an abortion based on nebulous reasoning. We already know science doesn't play a leading role in evangelical lawmakers, only beliefs.
10
If it is difficult to tell if an abortion is happening before six weeks, or a miscarriage is a natural one, it is clear that the authorities will need to be present during the sexual act in the first place. I am surprised and slightly disappointed that an intercourse registry has not yet been established to police those wishing to perform potentially procreative intercourse. Clearly the state has the right of control. This would have the added benefit of policing those whose children would be "undesirable" for economic, racial, or other reasons. This is certainly less expensive then the traditional method of treating them as undesirable AFTER they are born. Wake up America, bold action is required.
6
So gun laws won’t stop most shootings, but abortion laws will stop most abortions? Therein lies backwards conservative rationale. Conservative evangelicals who believe in forgiveness also support the death penalty. Conservatives who disagree with gun control to stop the epidemic of mass shootings in this country, including those happening in our nation’s schools, suddenly pretend to care about human life? Conservatives want less government involvement in people’s lives but they’re comfortable with doctors being arrested and jailed for life for performing evidence-based medical procedures? They’re comfortable with jailing a woman for having a miscarriage? They’re comfortable with the government being deeply involved in a woman’s uterus? If you are not a doctor, public health official or a woman, you do not have any right to write legislation regarding abortion. We have a separation of church and state for a reason, and if conservatives have a problem with that, perhaps they’ll need to lose another civil war to be reminded that we have a Constitution that they cannot ignore and interpret anyway they please.
22
Criminal statutes have to be written with great care. The precise behavior that is proscribed must be detailed and exact. This is done to prevent laws that seek to punish offenders for "disturbing the social order" and various other offenses designed solely for selective prosecution.
The laws as written in the several states to prevent abortion are terrible not only in the obvious sense but every aspect of a pregnancy is now subject to amorphous interpretations.
One example will suffice. Who 'in law' is to decide the cases of women who will die if brought to term? Doctors appointed by the State? The woman's physician? A judge? The Governor?
Nightmare... Husband dies soon after time period in the statute. Pregnant. Women in peril for her life by this. Wants to abort. But her in-laws want to have a grandson by dear, dead Jimmy!
The permutations of mischief in the law are infinite.
The lawmakers in the several states should be sued for legislative malpractice.
6
There has been no mention of pro life lawmakers prosecuting women who suffer a miscarriage. Why would they ever punish a woman who has gone through this devastating event? The ones questioning this policy which will never take place are those who support abortion rights at every stage of pregnancy. No one who is pro life fears this will ever happen. Remember it is pro life women also who suffer miscarriages and they do not want to be charged with a crime.
The Republicans would never charge any woman who had a miscarriage. There would be strong condemnation from their base if this ever came up. They would automatically lose their female base. This is just not going to happen. Relax.
1
@KMW
Pro-life is the last thing these people are about. They are pro-political power for the hardcore Christian extremists. A woman governor already approved extremist anti-female legislation in Alabama. Relax? Be serious.
10
@KMW
" if abortion is outlawed, 'there has to be some form of punishment' for the woman."
Donald Trump
April, 2016
3
Google “woman jailed for miscarriage” and read the articles you find, including a NYT series from December 2018. You will find you’re incorrect.
6
Most people who comment about abortion have rarely met a woman who is about to have an abortion. I have. They are emotional distraught and torn about their decision. While many try to console them but I have always seen those efforts to be fruitless. It is not uncommon to see women postpone the procedure on the day it is scheduled at the last moment. In my experience it has never been an easy decision or experience for woman. Many suffer post traumatic stress. It would be the most cruel thing to even attempt to prosecute a woman about abortion. This is the most regressive step our society is embarking on. Stop it now! Even in a country like Bolivia, known for its atrocious abortion penal codes, abortion has been decriminalized before 8 weeks. Why us? Why now?
1
Actually, most women are relieved after an abortion. Which is a good thing.
7
No, most do NOT suffer from PTSD afterwards, though some may suffer post-partum depression and/or post-partum anxiety/stress after ending a pregnancy, just as about 1/4 of women whose pregnancy ends with childbirth do.
5
The lawmakers that have passed these ridiculous bills need to get their facts straight. Since they do not want to listen to experts on pregnancy and how it works, they need to spend some time in hospitals and clinics with women that do want to continue a pregnancy to term, but through no fault of their own miscarry or have to be delivered early because of Pregnancy Induced Hypertension, Cholestasis, HELPP Syndrome, Molar pregnancy or ectopic pregnancy.
Rather than following their religious edict of letting “God’s Will” play out and realize medical care is not able to ensure all pregnancies are perfect and go to term, they prefer to play God themselves. They assume that they know more than medical professionals and have more power than God or nature to make a pregnancy continue to term by passing laws that make it so.
3
This is the correct question to ask of EVERY one of these strict abortion law proponents. If human status is given to fetuses, and there is a miscarriage or an intrauterine fetal demise (which can even happen at full term), can the mother be held accountable?
It is the death of a “person.” But if we say that causing the death of another “person” doesn’t include these people because they are a different type of person, then they are no person at all. Therefore a fetus is not a person.
This is simple logic.
3
Where in the Constitution does it say the government may regulate any person's organs? Let alone the reproductive organs of an entire gender of adults?
6
Reading all of these heartfelt stories of miscarriage is so poignant. I’ve had two miscarriages, one at thirteen weeks that required a D&C. Both losses brought me so much sadness. What causes even more pain is that so many of us now are having to relive these wounds in public, a mass wail of protest. Republicans, mostly white males, want to assert patriarchal control over the rest of us. We must rise up to stop them. Vote every one of them out of office.
9
Gone are days where the scientific evidence and expertise we have in this nation even enter the debate of sound legislation. As the article states: It’s not clear that those who are writing many of these bills understand how pregnancy works. And who in effect bears the consequences of nonsense legislation? Women.
What other choice do women have when the government is coming after our bodies full scale with impunity? Fight I say, by any means necessary.
1
Actually, arresting women who miscarry isn't very far from the way pregnant women are treated in many states today. Fetal harm laws, which are on the books in 36 states, can and have been used to charge pregnant women with child endangerment, even though no child yet exists. Smoking, taking drugs and drinking are various behaviors that can get pregnant women in trouble. So, it's not hard to imagine that if a woman miscarries authorities would want to question her to find out what she might have done to cause it.
Actually, if these laws hold up, I don't see why any woman would want to become pregnant. There's no way to know if a pregnancy might suddenly end, and if women can be arrested for such a spontaneous event, why take the chance?
7
Laws like these in states like Georgia and Texas, among others are the strongest argument for far more of a focus on the Senate and the critical importance of flipping the three seats required for Democratic Party majority of that body which approves Supreme Court nominees. The Senate election map for 2020 favors Democrats.
If a vacancy were to arise anytime in 2020 and before 20 January 2021 do we really seriously think Mitch McConnell will say "2020 is an election year so we can't bring this nomination to the Supreme Court to the floor for a vote"?
For the life of me I cannot understand or accept the fact that Stacy Abrams and Beto both of whom ran credible statewide campaigns will not run for the Senate against Sonny Purdue or John Cornyn. Montana Governor Bullock has decided to run for President while a junior senator who is Republican is up for reelection in 2020. Among others issues (war with Iran?), abortion rights are ready made campaign commercials.
Have democrat politicians like Abrams, O'Rourke, Bullock, et al. lost their minds?
5
If you change when a fetus becomes a living human being then I could see legal challenges looming. If these new laws stand wouldn't a human legally be approximately 8 months old at birth?
4
We must stop rationalizing that although technically the law would allow an outrageous prosecution, of course police, AG's, and judges would never follow through on those awful things, of course that's not the intent. All evidence is that yes, indeed, the goal is to impose the most draconian restriction of women's rights and roll back of equality generally that any rational person can imagine.
Doesn't Margaret Atwood increasingly seem more prescient than merely creative or alarmist?
6
I’ve noticed that these new laws refer to a woman who is just a few weeks pregnant as the “mother” or “the baby’s mother.” I didn’t refer to myself as a mother until after my son was born. Until then, I thought of myself as a pregnant woman. I suspect the people writing these laws dislike using the word “woman” because then they might have to think of her as something other than an incubator.
12
I also did not consider
myself a mother until my first child was born, alive & breathing. In fact, according to my religion, in which I strongly believe, a woman isn't a mother, & an embryo or fetus a full human being child until the fetus' head is born. We don't name fetuses & some of us don't accept baby gifts until after the birth. Numbers of us don't tell others we are pregnant until after the 12th or 13th week because the chance of losing the pregnancy before then is so great & because before a certain point, our religion considers the contents of the pregnant woman's uterus to be "like water".
Why, per SCOTUS, must states respect the religious beliefs & not interfere with the free religious practice of a select group of Christian business owners when it comes to insurance companies they don't even own providing employees who don't share their religious views with contraceptives; and can't force a baker to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple if you s/he says her/his religious beliefs considers only hetero couples to be wed/married -- but somehow it's ok for the state to disrespect my and millions of others' religious beliefs and interfere with our religious freedom by forcing us to "bake" an embryo & deliver it, despite our religious belief?
The state should find that it has more compelling interest in keeping alive & well people who've already been proven viable who actually do breath air, than it does in ensuring that every single embryo remains inside a uterus.
5
I would suggest that every woman who has had sex has had a miscarriage. I had one after my husband died. A very heavy period and afterward, no pregnancy. It's nature's way of clearing the uterus when something has gone wrong. A late miscarriage is a serious medical problem, often. a very early one is not. We need to take this private matter privately. Do we need a law for that? Or do we just go back to minding our own business?
5
Actually, I suggest women of child bearing age avoid sexual activity with men, or at least anything that might result in any contact with semen, unless and until they are ready to get and stay pregnant no matter what may lie ahead. For women in states with cruel and unusual punishment even for crime Victims (ie, forced full term pregnancy and the rigors of birthing even for pregnancy resulting from rape or other sexual assault), you may find it prudent to harvest some of your own eggs, preserve them for later fertilization, and then get tubal ligation and perhaps use a secondary contraceptive daily as back-up -- just in case a man or teenaged boy rapes or otherwise assaults you.
Talk about UNDUE BURDEN!
3
Attempting to remove someone’s constitutionally provided rights should be prosecuted. That is - legislators passing laws that are known to be unconstitutional - should be charged with criminal behavior. If this isn’t already illegal... it should be.
6
I had 4 miscarriages and finally, fortunately, 3 healthy children. Bleeding profusely during one at 12 weeks, I went to the ER and they took me into surgery. They were calling it an “incomplete abortion” as they wheeled me in, a term I was not happy about as I desperately wanted my pregnancy and I associated the term with intentional termination. Just describing it in that way traumatized me. I can’t imagine if I were to be accused of causing it. Eventually a doctor solved my problem and I could stop blaming myself for my losses. I felt guilty enough that my body failed my unborn without others accusing.
My mother miscarried three times before I was born. As an octogenarian she remains devastated by each experience and has difficulty talking about them to this day. The thought that she might have the additional PTSD memories of being asked accusatory questions by law-enforcement in the aftermath of experiencing those soul-crushing losses if she were unfortunate enough to be that young woman today fills me with a deep, burning anger. This is a back to an even worse future nightmare. These thoughtless misogynists masquerading as pro-life legislators must be stopped.
7
I thought that a male was involved in starting a pregnancy. What are the laws about male bodies?
5
"John Becker, a state representative in Ohio, suggested that ectopic pregnancies, which are not viable, should in part be handled by “removing the embryo from the fallopian tube and then reinserting it in the uterus so that’s defined as not an abortion.”
This procedure is not possible. It’s not clear that those who are writing many of these bills understand how pregnancy works."
We have state representatives and others writing laws when they do not even understand the biology of pregnancy or any science related to it for that matter. What a bunch of ignorant hacks who can't even be bothered to learn anything while in government.
8
Of 35 countries listed, only Mexico and Turkey had infant mortality rates higher than the USA. The states with the most restrictive abortion laws have the highest infant mortality rate in America. Nearly 25% of children live at or below the poverty line. There is an assault on social services for these children. The anti-abortion fanatics are using government to legislate their religious beliefs leading to control of women.
This issue isn't about life at all, much less pro life.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/infant_mortality_rates/infant_mortality.htm
7
Prosecuting women who had a miscarriage is obviously barbaric, but let’s not lose sight of what the law actually does. It prosecutes doctors who perform abortions. The worst that could happen to the woman herself is that she would be drawn into an investigation of whether someone else had performed an abortion on her. I’ve had miscarriages myself and I know personally how awful it is. So I’m not cavalier about this. But I’m not worried that anyone would prosecute me. That’s not what that law does.
"But I’m not worried that anyone would prosecute me. That’s not what that law does."
Yet.
4
Are you speaking of the GA law or the AL one?
And being caught up in an investigation or any legal proceeding, especially for non-lawyers or paralegals, is almost always a fraught and expensive ordeal (unless you're a professional expert witness). To go through that shortly after suffering a major loss such as miscarriage (all the more so because of the physical/hormonal challenges as well) is an outrage.
3
Again, I ask where in the Constitution does it say the government, state or federal, has the authority to pass laws regulating adult womens' reproductive organs? The first Amendment gives free speech to practice ones personal religion. It does NOT give the right to FORCE those beliefs onto fellow citizens, regardless of gender of said citizens. The people pushing for these laws are no better than Taliban.
8
How will Georgia break the law and get the HIPPA protected health information for all the women in the state?
3
What is happening isn't a blip, it's not an anomaly, and it won't stop with abortion. And it might not stop with women.
But to make a woman or a couple prove that it was a miscarriage is barbaric. What is this Saudi Arabia? What will the religious police do next?
If this doesn't shake people out of their torpor then God help us all.
6
Bestowing person-hood at conception and various stages in utero will present a curious legal argument relative to Constitutional rights: The law (literally) of unintended consequences.
Carliss Chatman, an assistant professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law has presented a cogent argument. (www.washingtonpost.com).
As she states:
"It [Alabama's law] redefines an “unborn child, child or person” as “a human being, specifically including an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability.”
"We ought to take our laws seriously. Under the laws, people have all sorts of rights and protections. When a state grants full personhood to a fetus, should they not apply equally?"
Child support,Due process; tax laws (claiming a fetus as a dependent), insurance considerations....in essence all rights accorded a person residing on U.S. soil. Of course Alabama and , Missouri's *heart-beat" legislators never bothered to think this far.
Alabama's 25 men wanted a test case to bring before the U.S. Supreme Court...they may just have it.
2
What will Alabama and Missouri do when a rapist goes to court to claim custody rights to his child declaring the mother unfit due to her minor age? Or the incestuous father/grandfather claiming his *rightful* place in the child's life?
Will there be state supplied hidden cameras in every public restroom or home of child-bearing females focused on toilets for undeveloped *humans* spontaneously miscarried?
Absurdities? No. Just the realities of out-of-control men believing they own the bodies of females and doing their Lord's will.
3
The two new laws are bizarre ans absurd, but the notion that anyone will be prosecuted for a miscarriage is more so. This is the kind of moronic speculation that does not help anyone.
3
I wonder how many of the Georgia legislators know just how many zygotes fail to implant or many embryos abort through no fault of the woman carrying these. So now there are those who want to prosecute women who miscarry? Unbelievable!
3
If this were to be applied then every menstrual period would have to be accompanied by a investigation to find out whether there was a miscarried fetus and whether any artificial means were used to induce an abortion. The low level of though and education, and high level of religious zealotry, is obvious to all. I though that the USA abhorred religious extrmism, or is that only when it involves beliefs that are not of the extreme right wing god botherers?
4
Thank you again, New York Times -- Coverage like this is crucial to our understanding of important issues.
5
President Trump has cynically adopted the pro-life maximum belief that life begins at conception. His latest tweet has tried to soften that stance by granting exceptions for rape or incest. That is so intellectually dishonest. If the 1 month old life is the same as post birth 1 month old baby then you are just as guilty of permitting "murder" with those exceptions. If President Trump is going to endorse those exceptions, which the Alabama law does not, then he is implicitly endorsing the pro choice position that there is a difference between a fetus and a new born child. You can't have it both ways. A fetus is the equal of a new born, with all the human rights that this entails, or it isn't. Trump, as usual, is trying to have it both ways for cynical political gain.
2
Of course, the same states that enslaved blacks because of "state's rights" now want to enslave women for "fetal rights". If this isn't the Civil War all over again, I don't know what it is. And the south aims to win this one.
4
The United States and the Republican Party and religious zealots have declared war on women and girls.
The legal system is being used to cripple any female of child bearing age. In particular women and girls of few resources.
Even the thought of potentially accusing women who have a miscarriage of murder is unconscionable. The threat of prosecution for something you cannot control is an all out ludicrously, ominous and detrimental to the life and well being of women.
The sad part of this war is just how illegal and inhuman acts are becoming law because of greed. The government does not consider a woman or girl has equal rights to a man or boy. Our human rights and civil rights are being eroded.
The children that are born to women and girls who cannot afford to keep them are forever damaged by living a life in an abandoned state of mind. Becoming a foster child, or being locked up in detention centers, for profit prisons. This government is about putting bodies into prisons and destroying the foundation of this country.
The war should be on men who impregnate these women. A pregnant woman or girl had a man or boy who caused the pregnancy. Prosecute them. Make it their responsibility to cover the cost or be threatened with having a vasectomy. Pregnancy requires semen. If a man recklessly impregnate’s a female he should be prosecuted. Now, isn’t that just as oppressive? How many men would think this was fair and just?
4
This can only be seen as a power play by white extremists - because they only want to punish women and only hold women accountable.
Where are the men in this equation who are the reason these women even got pregnant?
Why aren't rapists and family members who commit incest held accountable? Without sperm there is no baby and no unwanted pregnancies. Let's put some of the burden onto men!
Right now I don't see anything that would stop a man from raping a women and then just walking away from it all.
It's all about suppressing women - it's all about taking away free choice - and it's all about dominance of rich, white, old men.
And I am so sick of religions trying to dictate how I should live my life - please only vote for presidential candidates who will not be controlled by religious interest groups!
4
Four, maybe five, years ago it would be difficult to believe that the world has become so utterly stupid and ugly.
9
Our nation is run by a pack of idiots and zealots with zero understanding of medicine and the lives of women. Make no mistake. None of these fetal heartbeat bills are about overturning a SCOTUS decision; they are all focused on reducing women to chattel status. So much for the libertarian streak in the GOP.
How many of these zealots would ban a daughter from having an abortion if she were raped? Would that rep from Ohio really want his wife or daughter to have an ectopic pregnancy handled in such a bizarre and medically unfeasible manner? We indeed are a warped country if this is who we elect.
6
Women, pack up and leave!!! It is beyond me how these states want to attract companies. Who wants to live there? Economically downright stupid! I did not even let my kids go to college in states where you can wear weapons on campus. I doubt my daughter would ever consider pursuing her education in a state that has such abhorrent laws. Back to the Middle Ages.
3
America needs fewer useful idiot, scientifically illiterate xtians who will vote to remove civil rights from existing humans to further their goal of a theocracy. The deliberate promulgation of such obviously anti-constitutional legislation should be a prosecutable offense.
1
We should have let the South secede. They are a cancer which we have nurtured. Toyota -Mazda are building a car factory in Alabama.
Both companies should be boycotted till they move their plant to a Blue State.
4
The Christian fundamentalists who want to make abortion under highly justified circumstances a crime are hypocrites of the first magnitude. These same people back Trump, a lying sexual predator who violates every principle of the Bible.
6
So, God aborts 10 to 20 percent of fetuses. Are conservatives now going to demand that God is prosecuted?
Boy, there are too many dumb people on this planet, going through their insignificant lives without any idea of what is going on here or where they even are.
6
Poorly written law trying to do the right thing. Define when a fetus/child is a life with rights. Most Americans believe it becomes a life sometime before birth. We, as a civilized society NEED to do this. The Idea of the child not being considered a life until birth is ridiculous.
@Tim
Yes, some supporting the new absurdities against abortion mean to do the right thing. But by now it’s he’d to imagine that this newest drive to end choice is a moral issue in the minds of many of the loudest.
More likely, a handful of antiabortionists believe that every fetus is a human deserving a chance to survive (with or w/o regard for survival of the woman).
The bulk of them seem to be a mix of political expediency, opportunists, despisers of women and/or fear of power in the hands of women.
10
@Jan
Can't disagree with you more. I don't know ANYONE that despises women or fears women being in power. That is what the political opportunist want you to believe and there definitely are political opportunist on BOTH sides of this issue. But almost all true pro-life believers are concerned about the life of the child ONLY. To them, or more correctly us, this is ONLY an argument about when life begins. The answer to that question is what all humans, men and women, should have a say in. Hopefully we can use some science, common sense, and heart in coming to an answer we can all live with. What i would like to say to both sides, stop calling people baby killers and women haters. Lets work on coming to an answer on when a life starts.
An amoeba is alive. A worm is alive. A dandelion plant and crab grass and pine trees and seaweed are alive. Mushrooms and other fungi are alive, as are E. Coli bacteria and even cancer cells. Horses, dogs, cats,rabbits, and chimpanzees are alive. Human eggs and sperm are alive. Being alive or having life does not make something a "human being" or a "person" although, apparently, some people on a bench in DC erroneously thought that a particular manner of organizing a conducting a business (both being abstract, non-tangible ideas) does somehow make it a person. So I guess the people on that bench and in some legislatures do actually think that they themselves are God -- turning things, even abstract ideas, into people. Blasphemy, much?!
Several years ago, I was working in a northern Virginia public health clinic. One of our maternity patients miscarried on the toilet while at a prenatal visit. Per protocol, we called 911 to transport her to the local hospital. As she was being assessed for transport, the police entered our clinic and asked to speak to the staff, saying it was necessary to investigate "the death." As you can imagine, it was scary for patients,most of whom were from another country, to see police in our clinic. It was also a bit scary for our staff. Miscarriages are common in early stages of pregnancy. The police were not particularly sensitive or pleasant. My understanding is that they went to the hospital to talk to the patient. It would be horrifying to see this as a normal occurence in our clinics.
16
@JH. It becomes normal if we allow the state to have this much power over women’s health. If you are in favor a women’s right to have access to legal and safe abortions its necessary to vote.
6
In parts of Latin America where abortion is illegal, woman seeking medical care for miscarriage are routinely treated as crime suspects, adding additional trauma to the grief of losing what is often a wanted pregnancy.
There are many effective ways to reduce levels of abortion in ways that respect women's rights. Inserting the criminal justice system into women's medical care is not one of them.
I wonder if it would help to change the narrative if the Democratic party stepped forward with a proactive plan to fully fund effective ways to help women prevent unplanned pregnancy while respecting women's right to bodily autonomy: access to medical care, sex education, violence prevention, and economic empowerment.
6
I don’t think it would help, because many of the same people who support these prohibition laws also wish to prohibit effective birth control measures.
2
Is taking a morning-after pill subject to the same charges against the mother? Is taking birth control pills also subject to criminal charges? Honestly, I cannot believe there are NO women in these states that are against this ban. When other states sign laws or bills of this nature that effects a single gender or religion, or just doesn’t pertain to other citizens, citizens of those states do something in the privacy of their own home, doesn’t protest others following that specific law, what happens to them? Planned parenting by consenting couples, i.e., either of the above pills, any contraception, including IUD’s, condoms, vasectomies or whatever their choice for preventing conception, does this ban cover that? Are pharmacies still allowed to sell these products? Are doctors permitted to prescribe IUD’s? What are the limitations of this ban?
3
"The new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, gives a 6-week-old fetus the legal status of a human being"
This is a clear violation of the 1st Amendment's mandate that government stay out of religion (and religion out of government).
It is in effect the government dictating and endorsing a particular religion and religious perspective; and government targeting and contradicting specific other, long-standing (like for centuries, millennia) and widely held religious and ethical beliefs and practices.
I and millions of others were given the impression that , in addition to the 1st Amendment and due process and illegal search & seizure and quartering clauses of the US Constitution, the fairly recent Hobby Lobby and Masterpiece Cakeshop SCOTUS decisions prohibit such government interference in and intrusion on religious doctrine and the free practice of religion.
The "Choice" or Roe v. Wade decision position allows people whose religious doctrine says a zygote or embryo is a full human being with all attending rights and responsibilities to avoid aborting a pregnancy. It also, rightly, allows people whose religious doctrine says a zygote or an embryo is not a full human being with all attending rights and responsibilities, or that say nothing on the matter, or something altogether different, to avoid the substantial risks and harms a pregnancy may present. It allows all to avoid violating their strongly-held and legitimate religious spiritual beliefs. New laws do not.
20
There is an interesting analysis: If the pregnancy (and thus the embryo or fetus) is unwanted or dangerous and therefore unwanted, then the AL, MO, OH, etc. governments are essentially claiming the embryo or fetus as a ward of the state whom they are demanding be quartered inside a woman's body (and if one's body isn't one's home, I don't know what is). However, the government is forbidden to force citizens to provide quarter in their homes to unwanted others and especially to others who do or may endanger the home owner(s) or their family.
6
It is hard to understand why the media's reporting of these draconian anti-abortion laws never mentions Griswold v. Connecticutt (1967) which found the privacy rights in the constitution, in particular regarding intimacy issues. When these new laws are enacted, voters should be reminded about the over reach the government has shown a willingness to go to stop specifically women from rights afforded to men. When government begins to prosecute women for smoking or having a glass of wine while pregnant, you will begin to hear the voices of silent moderates scream
loudly. By that time it will be too late.
29
Does this law apply to abortions that are necessary to save the life of the mother?
If so, any woman or doctor—or indeed any human being—who has the means to move out of this barbaric state but doesn’t is morally corrupt, stupid, or both. Let’s crowd fund evacuation money for those who don’t have the means.
I intend to do my own research with regard to goods and services that come out of these diseased American states and will never buy anything from them again, no matter what it means I have to do without or pay more for.
24
Please Proceed, GOP. I’m ready to rumble.
2020.
18
Speaking as someone who has had an abortion, a miscarriage, been pregnant and has had children, the full gambit of a woman’s lifecycle - there’s one common denominator - it all happened INSIDE MY body, with MY genes and not with that of an Alabama legislator. Why is it that a certain part of this country pretends to have no clue about science when discussing Climate Change which will and has killed way more people than their attempt to save a fetus but when it comes to MY body, MY uterus, MY cells these people suddenly become gynecologists. Enough is enough. And FYI I do believe you roll back women’s rights or enslave them, civil rights come next.
68
Alabama is a culture of slavery, segregation, Jim Crowe, lynchings, KKK, poverty obesity, gun violence.
We must totally isolate this entity from our country with economic boycotts. Do not even watch their football games on TV.
If corporate entities pay the price of associating with Alabama things may change.
Same with Missouri.
8
Not just that, but open the door to non-consensual organ harvesting or forced incubation of things other than embryos.
I mean, if the government can force you to grow, inside your body, a zygote into a full-term fetus, what's stopping them from, for example, forcing men to grow inside their bodies and then "deliver" additional organs that would save the lives of other human beings? Maybe an extra kidney or heart? (Sure wish some people would grown another brain! ;) ). The risk of surgical "delivery" would be the same or less that of a c-section or vaginal delivery, and the "gestation" period wouldn't be more stressful on the body than is pregnancy. Or maybe the government could require men to incubate certain non-lethal viruses that so far can not be cultivated for study in laboratories -- that incubation could also help preserve human lives. Is that the direction these anti-choice/pro-life people and the Supreme Court Justices believe is best for our country, our world?
3
So...now the state has the right to treat women like brood mares because that Depkote for migraine, lithium for bipolar disorder, Accutane for acne, the wine spritzer at the wedding or few bumps of coke might/can all cause abnormalities and miscarriages. So now you have to prove you did absolutely nothing wrong, and lived a godly, upright life style to avoid prosecution? Not a cigarette, a glass of white wine or prescription medication?
The only ones who make out on this deal will be attorneys, the prison industrial complex, and Anti Choice maniacs feeling superior that they are "Doing Gods Work".
39
America needs more women, a lot more women in government.
42
@dconaty More Democratic women!
4
But hopefully not more of Kay Ivey's ilk.
3
@dconaty Hold on a second. Look at how many women in the Republican party and the female population nationwide support anti-abortion laws and then help them to be law. Doesn't anybody read the constitution: separation of religion and state.
If Georgia law now gives “a 6-week-old fetus the legal status of a human being,” Georgia law also needs to recognize that the 6-week-old fetus inherits, along with the rights of personhood, the responsibilities that all American persons observe under the law. And among those responsibilities is the imperative that an individual will not infringe upon the freedom of any other person. As the 13th Amendment wrote into the U.S. Constitution, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States.” By hijacking the mother’s body for its protection and stealing its nutrients for its development, the fetal person has clearly enslaved its host mother, which may be acceptable if the mother consents to this servitude but is intolerable and criminal if that mother withholds her consent. Accordingly, under the law, the fetal person should be prosecuted for enslaving its unwilling host mother for the duration of the pregnancy, and, if found guilty, upon birth should be sentenced to the fullest extent of the law: I'm thinking that incarceration in a state prison for at least ten years is a just punishment for such a grievous crime.
Does this sound stupid? You bet it does. But drastic times require drastic measures—and prosecuting a fetus for being a slave-owner is no more stupid than investigating miscarriages as second-degree murder—or, for that matter, granting legal personhood to an embryo. So bring it on.
44
The converse is also true - should a human being be prosecuted for actions they take that directly kills another? The abortion debate is healthy. With rights come responsibility. Freedom isn’t free. The problem with the heartbeat laws is that many women do not even know they are pregnant at six weeks. The more this subject is publicly debated the more educated we will become as a society and hopefully, the result will be we are more responsible as it relates to our actions and choices.
We need to defeat the Grand Ol' Party in the next presidential elections! They are taking us back to the last century, where a small, very rich minority set all the rules.
We also need to stop the power of religion in anything that is political and make them pay their fair share in taxes!
The religious (also in New York and New Jersey) are clearly abusing their powers, bribing politicians, and have way too much influence in everybody's way of life.
I want freedom of religion - I want separation of church and state!
What is happening in this county? Will we face more riots and deaths on the streets before this gets any better?
28
Such laws are passed by fortunate folks. And descendants of fortunate folks. Supported by the same fortunate type of human being who never had to experience a miscarriage or abortion.
13
@Wonderworld Remember that rabid anti-abortion guy,"Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy has resigned after a report surfaced earlier this week that he had asked an extramarital lover to end her pregnancy.
Murphy, a Republican who co-sponsored a 20-week abortion ban that passed in the House Tuesday, allegedly asked his lover to terminate her pregnancy, according to text message records acquired by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Shannon Edwards, 32, whom Murphy recently admitted to having an affair with, messaged the 65-year-old congressman after an anti-abortion statement was posted on his office's Facebook account in January.
"And you have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options," allegedly wrote Edwards in a text exchange that was a part of a number of documents obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
A response from Murphy's phone number allegedly read, "I get what you say about my March for life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don't write any more. I will."
According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the exchange was over "an unfounded pregnancy scare."
Murphy has a record of supporting legislation to cut federal funding for abortion and Planned Parenthood, and co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act on Jan. 24, one day before the text exchange
3
Citing their scriptural references to justify forcing childbearing on women ill-prepared is the first step. Next as seen recently in another story from . . . some middle eastern country or other, will come the prosecution of women who "lose" their fetuses if they cannot prove it was an accident.
Next come other issues forced upon the majority of society who do not espouse religion in any form. Held by authorities for not believing in one religion or another. These people force their ideas upon society. We cannot, nor would we, force a single one of them to terminate a pregnancy. How can they, based on their perception of some religious morality force their ideas upon us?
If this movement toward religious extremism is not stopped DEAD we can see what happens by observing the state of many mid-east nations who were progressive in the 50s and 60s and are now pretty much sand piles today thanks in large part to religious nut jobs taking over government.
17
Don’t get me wrong, I think all religions are nonsense but there is not a single passage in the old or New Testament that supports the anti-abortion agenda. Not one.
30
The anti-abortionists don’t care about any of the harm they may cause. The goal is not “life”, the goal is to control women.
They don’t care to learn even the basics of reproduction, because the goal is not health, the goal is to control women.
I no longer even believe they are following their religion. There were never funeral rites for miscarriage tissue in the past, Jesus never mentioned abortion, and they don’t seem very eager to help children that are born. The religious groups that are pushing this also have no women in power.
The goal is to control women.
33
I think the goal is, or also is, for the laws' supporters to control or dictate the religion or practice of religion of others while declaiming anyone else's attempt to compel them to change their ways.
In short, they want to allow nuns to avoid paying for insurance that then, as a 3rd party, helps pay for contraception; but not allow pacifists (eg Buddhists or Jains or Quakers) from opting out of having their mandated government payments (taxes) pay third parties to make, buy, or utilize the killing machines of war.
Put differently, they want to be able to deny gay and couples their wedding cakes, but be able to deny doctors and others their own right to follow their own strongly-held religious beliefs that say an embryo/fetus is NOT a a full human person and is not to be considered such when making or applying criminal law; and that it is sinful to deny a (already-born) woman the right and ability to defend herself from something that, if not stopped, will very likely do her great harm.
4
The issues of abortion are more about issues of the empowerment, or rather the disempowerment of women. Another element of abortion is religion and religious dogma. Religion is critical because it is used to legitimatize the claims that abortion is anti-Christian and against the laws of god. That also is part of the claim that women should homebodies, raising children and being subservient wives. Working women are denigrated because they seek abortions (a terrible canard) to be able to put their career and personal interests first. Underlying anti abortionists claim of moral superiority is a belief that women should not be working and should be home raising children. There is no recognition or understanding that abortion is a medical issue and not a political issue.
The anti-abortionists have succeeded in creating great political power for ultra-right wing conservatives, mostly white men, who embrace them because of the power they gain from the anti-abortion movement. Those conservatives take advantage of the conservative religious and political beliefs to further empower themselves regardless of the impact to women and rights of women.
I don't have a cure for this. Women's rights advocates need to organize, vote and act in concert together before more women's rights are lost forever.
11
The tragic irony is that the very “pro-life” people attempting to overturn Roe V Wade oppose Planned Parenthood, increasing access to birth control, and social programs to help support women and children.
I,like many moderates, would love to see abortion be a rare, legal procedure between a provider and patient.
The lack of medical knowledge is astounding.
24
The suspicion of a woman causing a miscarriage and subsequent refusal to perform a D&C was experienced by me in 1986 at a Catholic-run Jackson, MS hospital. My husband and I did not know that I was pregnant. I had a severe, uncharacteristic migraine the night before and woke up the next morning hemorrhaging hand-sized clots every 15 minutes. Having traveled from Texas for the holidays and being concerned about what was happening to me and getting treatment in a strange town, we evidently did not show enough remorse when told that I was pregnant so the doctor said, "We can not help you here." Luckily, we found another hospital who did. This was the first of 3 additional miscarriages due to malformed uterus. The current Georgia law and others like it will compound the difficulty for women in my situation to receive life-saving treatment and be treated with compassion rather than suspicion.
52
That such a conversation is even occurring in a supposedly modern and technologically advanced nation is surreal.
23
In some states right now, women who worried about walking at night in badly lit and unsafe neighborhoods have something far more frightening to worry about.
Getting pregnant is going to be dangerous if there is any possibility that it would self-terminate. How will the state know if they don't turn doctors into "1984" types who have to report every miscarriage to the state?
Do all Republicans believe that a life conceived by vicious rape or impregnation by a family member is more important than a woman or child being forced to go 9 months with that burden and then expected to be welcoming to the child? Maybe some women can do that, but I'm inclined to believe that most of us would not.
16
If the law reads "he or she causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice" then presumably it opens the door to charging husbands, boyfriends, really anyone who causes stress to the woman , thus contributing to a miscarriage.
Oh, if only a handful of police and DAs would step up. We need to see men (and I'm not referring to the physicians) arrested under these ridiculous laws. Only then might this insane campaign of cruelty against women be reversed.
15
This article is thoughtful, factual, reasonable and discusses the many gray areas involved in pregnancy and miscarriages.
Unfortunately, the extremist zealots who push for and enact these laws don't have these adult-like traits; they also don't care about facts or women's health and mortality.
40 years of this willful ignorance and misogyny has brought us here. I fear that nothing short of mass intervention will change the situation.
9
Are women in these states going to be allowed to have elective c-sections and will they be able to find, at little or no cost, adoptive parents willing to take on the massive expenses a FB risks of those super-preemie babies?
4
I nearly died from my painful, devastating miscarriage, at 13 weeks pregnant. I came so close to bleeding to death that the ER Ob Gyn told me she was glad the hospital was so close by, as the D & C she performed saved my life.
Had that happened to me in Alabama, how would the doctor have reacted? Would there have been hesitation or refusal to perform that procedure, given the risk of a jail sentence?
This is a terrifying time for women in our country.
43
According to the Mayo Clinic;
"About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. But the actual number is likely higher because many miscarriages occur so early in pregnancy that a woman doesn't realize she's pregnant."
I was wondering when they would criminalize miscarriage. Imagine this: A woman runs a marathon, miscarries and she is investigated and goes to jail because she might have known she was pregnant, even though the miscarriage was probably due to different factors.
So where does this all lead? This is very dangerous territory regarding control of women. Fertility rates are dropping......
16
@Deborah
" Fertility rates are dropping......"
The next step being banning contraception, but they have already started that trend by allowing organizations to opt out of paying for health insurance to cover it and trying to destroy health coverage through the ACA.
2
If the republicans continue with this latest version of the war on women they will overplay their hand and all be heading to the exit door in the next election.
9
A friend’s daughter went in for a 12 week checkup. The physician detected no heartbeat. She was administered drugs to induce a miscarriage to abort the dead fetus. They could take a week to work. Then she may or may not have a D&C. Retaining part of a placenta could lead to a rare but aggressive cancer. How will Georgia govern her medical care? Better yet, why should Georgia intervene in her medical care? One in four women have an abortion and roughly the same percentage have had a miscarriage. Obstetricians and gynecologists need to start speaking up, leaving the state or declining to follow this law. These strictures are inconsistent with ensuring women’s health.
18
This is the level to which we’ve descended, that this is debatable?
15
Giess which debate we WOULD’T be having, if that tewwible, corporatist, warmongering neo-conlib Hillary Clinton had been elected?
‘Course, she IS a gril, ao I guess those stayed home or threw their vote in the general direction of Jill Stein made the right, uh, choice, huh?
2
The pro abortion crowd is overacting. No woman will be prosecuted for having a miscarriage. They may investigate a doctor who has performed past abortions but nothing will happen to the woman. Most doctors will not risk their reputations or medical licenses for an illegal abortion. You can stop worrying folks. Women who miscarry are safe.
1
Who is in this “pro-abortion,” crowd, exactly? Never met even one.
By the way, those of us who want women treated like thinking adults are pretty much onto the fact that whatever you...people...say you won’t do, you’ll do.
4
Your mouth to God’s ear.
You’re overlooking rights these laws confer on the “fetus” (actually, embryo). Person is person: the “death” of the “fetus” is, legally, loss of human life. Liability obtains.
Your assurances should reassure no one. Unless you’re suddenly made DA everywhere the laws might be enforced, you cannot know how they will be interpreted.
These laws are imprecisely written — to the point, unsurprisingly, of using incorrect medical terminology — and ignore both biology and the 13th amendment. They trample rights while inventing new ones. Their cavalier disregard for facts and for the woman’s autonomy may well presage holding her responsible for “fetal death”.
4
Really? Can you provide any ironclad guarantee? The statute as written doesn’t include any exceptions, so I seriously doubt it will be restricted to doctors who are suspected of providing abortions in the past. I doubt “those” doctors would even report a miscarriage. The bill is a travesty, an over reach. To borrow from a Billie Holliday classic “Ain’t no body’s business...”.
3
My Mother miscarried in the 1950's, it was not complete, so she needed medical intervention to complete the process. So what will they classify that as? A crime for the Doctor to complete the natural abortion process?
12
Besides the repugnant intrusion into women's lives that these laws promulgate, they also create a legal thicket that no court in saner times, would ever deign to enter. For instance, the fifth and fourteenth Amendments have due process guarantees which cover the right to life, liberty and not to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Consequently, any zygote, embryo, fetus, under these laws would have those rights, and could demand that its mother never be incarcerated because the stress of being incarcerated, could be life threatening to said person. This is only one example and there are probably hundreds which could be brought up. In other words, this is a legal morass into which we are sinking that is ethically, morally, and legally repugnant to a democratic society.
12
The law may be interpreted as "whoever facilitates" the abortion is subject to criminal charges (up to 99 yrs). So, if the woman "does it herself", then she is the guilty party. What about those who take the pill - there are anti-choice individuals who view that as a crime? Using the pill, women are aborting fertilized eggs prior to implantation.
There is no argument for these efforts that isn't rooted in religious fanaticism and male patriarchy. We are headed down a very slippery slope that is being greased by the views of religious fanatics and mostly old male politicians.
10
Commenters, especially the women, make excellent and often gut-wrenching points about the insanity of what we're seeing coming out of Alabama and Georgia, in particular. My former wife and I had an abortion in the pre-Roe days at the hands of a vindictive and cruel doctor that is forever seared into my memory (and hers.) One aspect of this current "revival" I can't get over is the unacceptable imposition of peoples' religious beliefs on others who may not, or do not, share their beliefs or, have no religion at all (some estimates suggest this group is as large as one-third of the adult population). If we must have yet another conversation about whether women should have decision rights over their bodies, I'd prefer the "anti-" crowd leave their god out of it. Even the U.S. Constitution demands you do this.
16
Actually studies in the 1960s had just married women with blood draws every month until pregnancy/ Results? Women were unaware of their first pregnancy until the third month on average, and 30% miscarried before the 3rd month. Before they were aware they were pregnant, they miscarried and thought they had a strange period. 10% of recognized pregnancies means, the person knows they are pregnant. Not a very useful number in the context of abortion.
Miscarriage numbers are much higher than the Times is recognizing.
And if you want to blow your mind, look at what happens in a molar pregnancy. I saw one the other night. Pregnancy test is positive throughout the pregnancy, but a nonviable fetus with no heartbeat. What is to be done then?
14
It's been pointed out that Brown was a court decision, not a law, and it too could be reversed.
The reversal would be seen very favorably in Trumplandia.
5
This law is more about power than religious conviction. The preachers have gained political relevancy and more power over the decades since this debate began. The legislators have used the issue as a wedge to gain and retain power in a male dominated society. And in Georgia, as with everything else, there is a racial aspect. You can be sure the people most affected by this law will be the poorest citizens of Georgia, many of whom are people of color.
The good news is that women are beginning to assert their own brand of power in the state and this kind of anti-woman law may speed along the change.
11
Yes, this is an anti-woman law. But don’t forget that the bill was introduced by a woman legislator, and signed into law by a woman governor. The head of the Republican Party is a woman, and many, many Georgia women vote to support politicians who openly campaign against abortion rights. I think it’s more about religion than power, but then there’s little separation between the two in states like Georgia.
14
If the state has any compelling reason to legislate women's reproductive lives it is only to provide and promote as stress-free experience as possible, since we know that stress not only compromises women's Heath and welfare, but also that of caring partners and other family members (eg, existing children) and the developing embryo/fetus.
All of these new and draconian laws promise to make pregnancy a much more fraught experience for all -- with women, doctors, and others all being scared that if something goes wrong it will be terrible not only for all of the awful but
natural reasons (eg, grief and mourning, physical pain, etc), but also now because of fear, terror even, that any of them could land in prison or at least have to endure the undue financial, emotional, time, and other burdens that undergoing questioning, criminal or professional ethics board investigations entail.
8
My daughter went through a hideous miscarriage in December. There was no heartbeat and she elected medical vs. surgical vs. nature-take-its-course due to concerns about future fertility.
She was inconsolable.
It was an agonizing decision made after securing a second opinion. The idea that some prosecutor or judge would be empowered to scrutinize or even second guess her decision is simply intolerable. I can't imagine the emotional damage.
44
Due to this uncertainty of miscarriages, Roe v Wade established abortion on viability. It is very well known that the first trimester (full 12 weeks) is the most dangerous one for both the fetus and the woman. Anything can happen because, scientifically, the fetus is still not a baby. It is still making the basic connections of life and miscarriages may happen for many reasons, even because the women’s body rejects it, like my body did. I had 2 miscarriages because of this and my sister as well. If anti abortion groups do not know the basics of pregnancy, they will only make life for women impossible.
32
I am not an expert on the South, but my understanding is that Atlanta is a diverse cosmopolitan city. Are young people there going to stay and live in this environment? If the young people opt out of Georgia, will the corporations, too? It seems like Georgia may become Alabama in this process, and maybe that's just what the elders want.
30
@CJ your understanding of Atlanta is correct. If this were up to Atlanta this law would never have passed. Atlanta is indeed a diverse cosmopolitan city. If Stacey Abrams had won the governor's election (see voter suppression in GA) which she prob did this law would never have been signed. And if Georgia legislators are so concerned with preserving life why do we still have capital punishment in this state?
8
We have heard repeatedly the phrase “innocent lives” in arguments against abortion. That is a purely theological formulation. Remember that Individuals subjected to the death penalty are “criminals” and therefore not “innocent” by definition.
1
Ignorance prevails in the anti-abortion community. At bottom is the protection of white male power as the "male is the head of the family". It's certainly not the female. Females are too morally weak to make these decisions so the anti-abortion community wants our government to make those decisions for them. This is an appalling anti-freedom attitude. T
26
If the mother dies, and the fetus lives, is the fetus guilty of murder? Is the father guilty of murder?
52
@Robert Or guilty of (wo)manslaughter? Particularly if doctors/others failed to contemplate, assess, recognize, diagnose, and properly treat all potential and actual risks to the pregnant woman's health and safety.
By the way, there's widely-accepted religious doctrine allowing abortion of a pregnancy that seriously threatens the woman's/girl's health and well-being for the reason you imply: in those circumstances, the pregnancy (ie, embryo/fetus) is considered a "pursuer" against which/whom the woman may defend herself by ending the pregnancy.
One could also conclude (and respected religious thinkers have) that it would be sinful NOT to allow a woman/girl (via her healthcare provider) to defend herself in these circumstances. One is not supposed to stand idly by while one's neighbor (the woman) suffers.
Furthermore, there's long-established religious doctrine and well-considered religious law holding that until birth (or perhaps viability outside the uterus), the killing of a fetus or embryo is NOT homicide, but more like killing another's beloved pet -- the person who caused the end of a wanted pregnancy did indeed do wrong, but not a wrong so severe as murder, and should not be punished as if he committed murder.
These states' laws seriously violate the religious freedom of millions of Americans and forces them to chose between disobeying state law or disobeying God. Makes having to bake for a gay wedding seem like a cakewalk!
1
If a woman miscarries without a doctor being present, would there be a coroner's inquest?
25
I know a few things about miscarriages; I've had three. One when I was 14 weeks pregnant (past the end of the first trimester when it was supposedly "safe" - it was a long time to be pregnant) and two very early, like at 4-5 weeks.
Sorry to be graphic here, but I feel like I need to be. Miscarrying is not fun, to say the least. Terrible cramps and pain from cervical dilation, heavy bleeding that lasts for days, passage of big clots and clumpy "products of conception" (aka the baby), the sudden ramp-down of hormones that were just ramping up, the lingering effects of said hormonal ramp-up and ramp-down that last for weeks afterward (to include: sore breasts, irregular bleeding, random cramping, etc.). And those are just the physical effects! You also have to deal with sadness, anger, depression, questioning why it happened (and knowing you'll never get an answer), lingering questions (should we even try again, because what if this happens again?). Etc. It is really hard.
The only thing that could make it harder on women who miscarry would be some law enforcement officer questioning their choices and behavior afterward, to determine whether they "caused" the miscarriage. The idea is barbaric. Awful. Ridiculous. Terrifying. I can't come up with enough negative words to describe it.
Anyone advocating that we live in a world where women will be investigated for having a miscarriage has something seriously wrong with them. For shame.
124
They won't both determining cause of miscarriage, they'll just charge every one.
9
Nobody should have to read their morning paper and think, “Gee, good thing I had all my miscarriages 14 years ago!”
These laws are cruel, heartless, and will lead to women not seeking proper prenatal care for fear of persecution should something go wrong with the pregnancy. I had three miscarriages before having my first child, and a fourth after that. They all occurred in the 6-9 week range, but were devastating as we were desperate to start a family. I cannot help but think that had laws like this been in place then, I may not have gone to my OB early, and I may not have felt comfortable electing a D&C to remove the lifeless cells from my body and shorten the time I had to deal with the physical aspect of the loss. I cannot imagine having to live in fear of being questioned by the authorities about what I might have done to cause the miscarriages! The grief was enough to deal with at the time.
An earlier Texas law that has since been struck down would have also forced the hospital to keep the material from the D&C so that I would have had to pay for a burial! I understand that this is a transparent effort to overturn Roe v Wade, but as a woman I just feel under attack on a daily basis.
63
That is exactly what I was thinking. Thank goodness I had a miscarriage 20 years ago. It was devastating. I could not have handled an investigation into whether or not I caused it. The only thing that eases the pain is that the D&C made the subsequent successful pregnancy possible as I was having difficulties prior to the doomed pregnancy. Things happen for a reason. Women must have their own agency to make private health care decisions. Placing the government as the arbiter of those decisions is mere power politics.
2
The anti-abortion movement is basically another excuse to use cruelty in treating people who are different from the "pro-life" movement. The underlying Republican Party and administration policy driver is clearly cruelty. How else to explain the caging of children, reduced benefits for the poor, tariffs that raise the cost of living disproportionately for those on the lower end of the economic scale, tax cuts mainly for the rich, abrogation of voting rights and the attempt to outlaw abortion?
35
"It’s not clear that those who are writing many of these bills understand how pregnancy works." Of course it is...they don't have a clue and they don't care. The end is getting all the power and money into the hands of big oil (Koch brothers) and big business (Mercer...and pun intended). The means is religious fanaticism, white supremacist terrorism, and electoral cheating in all its various guises. Science--or compassion, honesty, or even morality--has nothing to do with it.
33
i object to this in general. one of the saddest aspects of this is: who cares for these children once they are born? it was suggested to me by a friend that states that support these bills should pay an extra $10,000 in income tax per person for this purpose. support not just the unborn, but the born
20
It’s sad to see the US take such a giant leap backwards.
33
It seems rather dubious to prosecute someone for this since they'd have to prove there was criminal intent in the mind of the pregnant woman, and that she acted on that intent in some way. How can that be proven if they don't have any evidence about what caused the miscarriage. To commit a crime, you have to have intent and you have to act on that intent.
7
@Alan Feuller: not to worry, women can be charged under second degree murder, manslaughter, or simply child neglect.
5
Considering the argument that an assemblage of cells that may later develop into a fetus, or that God (for His mysterious reasons) may deem unworthy of continuing on a path toward birth, is a person, it occurs to me that perhaps a cancerous tumor, having individualized within a person's body, might be a person distinct from its host. And thus may sue the host to prevent removal and thus its certain death.
So, in the future we may see a whole legal specialty,tumor advocates.
I bring this up because I have become exasperated at the rhetoric at the extreme ends of the abortion debate. On the not so extreme right*, life and personhood seems to begin with dinner and a movie, and on the left, a very few contend that a fetus is merely a parasite that may be removed for any reason.
But there is a middle, perhaps comprising most Americans, holding that abortion is a serious business, often necessary for the good of the potential child or the mother for various health and economic reasons, and therefore sad but needed. This is where a compromise is possible, to let reason rule.
*The really extreme right appears to be working on bringing on the End Times (viz., the Red Heifer Project) , so that they, and they alone, will be raptured into the divine presence. These folks are beyond caring, I think, about such petty matters as life of death of a clump of cells that will die anyway in the fires of Armageddon.
Sure, this may be snark but there is some truth in it,sorry to say.
13
Well, in America, according to the Supreme Court, an inanimate legal concept called a corporation is a person, so it's true: In America, anything can happen.
2
Perhaps Ohio Rep John Becker could have a brain transplanted from someone who oases one,
These ignorant "leaders" have staff members. Can't they be given a coloring book or something so they understand how the body works.
18
The problem is that they do understand (at least some things, if not up to the level of what one would expect from someone working on the topic)—but they just don’t care...
3
I suffered two 12 week miscarriages. To have to face possible criminal investigations during the mourning periods would have made the experience for my husband and me much, much worse. And I could easily get medical attention, but under this law would doctors have undue burdens in treating women who are miscarrying? This law definitely puts women at risk and should be discussed in that way.
28
People have no idea what it is like to carry a pregnancy through when you know there is a serious deformity including. This is a serious and terribly sad situation for a woman or a couple to have to deal with without dumping other peoples beliefs on them. Keep religion out of our personal lives. This is supposed to be a secular country!
29
Governor Brian Kemp and the Georgia GOP MEN are forcing their beliefs on every woman in the state. Even if she goes out of state for an abortion (think Zika babies), she'll be arrested and jailed when she comes home.
I say it's time to remove lifetime SCOTUS appointments from the party in power and require 67 Senate votes for confirmation. End of story.
21
If a fetus is a human being at six weeks, will death certificates be required for miscarriages? Funerals? Who decides?
14
@Farmer Pete, Texas did have a law stating that the “remains” must be buried by the mother at cost to the mother. Thankfully was struck down.
7
The Roberts court will not use the Alabama law to overturn Roe v Wade; it is too much of an overreach. It is unfortunately wishful thinking that responsible, moral people in Alabama will vote out the legislators who passed this horrible legislation.
While most business interests assume a court with a sane judge will overturn this law, there should be an outcry about the men holding seats in the legislature who voted for this irresponsible, expensive bill when Alabama has so many needs in health care and education.
The quality of worker businesses get by locating plants in a"right to work" state at the bottom of the ranking of states in education is a "get what you pay for" as far as a quality product. Check your "Made in Alabama"autos for defects.
12
This article discusses Georgia’s and Ohio’s bills.
I think the male contributor to the pregnancy should also face prosecution or consequence of some type. How do we really know if his sperm was strong enough, determined enough, etc?
The male would certainly be at fault, just as much as a woman whose body fails her.
Whatever consequence a woman ultimately faces, 50% of that consequence should be foisted on her male partner. If she gets a sentence of 10 years, they each serve 5 years.
While we’re at it, why don’t we all make a list of the laws that our government imposes on the health/body choices made by men. Yeah, just what I thought. There is no list.
If the government is so pro-life, men seeking vasectomies should be imprisoned, and every male in America should be court ordered to take Viagra. We need more fetuses to protect!
Hail to the unborn fetus!! More power to ya!
Have these pro-lifers lost their minds?
27
Prosecuted for miscarrying? It's already happening. I'm surprised the NYT didn't have a link to their own recent story:
nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/28/opinion/abortion-pregnancy-pro-life.html
9
Anyone who can believe that a woman would elect abortion instead of, or as a form of, birth control--has never had an abortion.
Abortion has physical and emotional costs, and when it's chosen, it's because the consequences of trying to carry the pregnancy to term would be graver.
Abortion is not some easy remedy taken lightly by a woman who undergoes it. Suggesting otherwise is a demonstration of ignorance. and to make this remedy illegal??
Simply malign.
22
This is really frightening. When I was a young wife I had three healthy babies, but before and in between those births were six
“spontaneous abortions”. Miscarriages, but medically named
spontaneous abortions. We have a lot of less than brilliant people
in positions of varying degrees of authority who might’ve misconstrued those events and considered me guilty of a crime
where none existed. And today? In this mess? Are you kidding?
I worry about today’s young, and particularly its young females.
24
It's terrifying to have clueless morons such as John Becker (a state representative from Ohio) sponsoring bills about our bodies and our health. He suggested ectopic pregnancies should be handled in part by removing the embryo from the fallopian tube and then reinserting it in the uterus. An impossible procedure.
My own ectopic pregnancy blew up my fallopian tube, caused extensive internal bleeding and resulted in my being rushed to the ER for emergency surgery, and emotionally devastated. (Followed by a happy ending with the birth of our daughter a few years later.)
Let's hope ignorant idiots like John Becker are thwarted at every avenue.
43
@Andrea Sand
The happy ending is that you survived!
Your daughter is a bonus.
16
interesting how the US States with the lowest standards of living are the most restrictive and treat women as second class citizens. Hey, next thing, they’ll be stoning women for adultery. Tells me those in the Legislature want to keep it that way. So women, what would the State of Alabama do if all the women moved to another State?
17
Several women in my family have suffered miscarriages over the last 71 years. It was so painful for them to have lost these pregnancies that one of them refused to tell even her closest relatives. The other two told only a few.
There is no good reason to put women in the position of proving they had a miscarriage rather than an abortion. I doubt such laws would exist if women were the majority in legislatures.
13
People seem to forget that there are women legislators who introduce and vote for these draconian laws. The governor of Alabama who signed the bill into law is a woman. Having a mostly female legislature in places like this would not guarantee legislation supporting women. Some religious women are just as bad as old white men when it comes to supporting women’s rights.
2
Not an hour ago on NPR the author of one of these antiabortion bills quoted very different and erroneous statistics about the number of miscarriages and used that for supporting his bill (that they were negligible and not really a big consideration). There are the statistics quoted here. Then there are the quite variant ones I found in a cursory Google search. Working in women’s health it was my understanding that as many as one third of all women have a known or unknown to them miscarriage during their reproductive life. To potentially criminalize being a woman who is sexually active at all, in or outside of marriage, due to nature’s taking its course, is to put all women in jeopardy. Then again, keeping them in their place, at the whim of men and power, is probably the point. And women who are complicit are a great part of the problem.
29
The law will drive more women not to seek help, which is a great political advantage since these women's circumstances won't be on record. How can we be the 'Greatest nation on earth' if the world knows our dirty little secrets? As Uncle Joe once, said, "It isn't who votes that counts, it's who that counts the votes. The same goes for all the dirt that we want hidden under a silent carpet so we won't feel the need to spend money that would otherwise go to corporate America, instead of doing right.
5
I'm interested in what punishment is to be accorded to the father of the aborted/ miscarried child? Prison? Castration? Surely it's not about punitive action against only one of the two culprits who made a child.
24
Alabama has apparently seceded from the United State by denying all its female citizens the right of liberty without due process, thereby instituting a new form of slavery based on gender instead of race.
17
Hey, I could really get into this mandatory vasectomy thing.
For all males, at whatever age most of them are already sexually active -- if you wait until they're 30, they'll already have procreated like crazy.
Then you could tack all kinds of socially useful legislation to the base law. The vasectomy could be reversed upon application to have a child. A 12-page application, a la Georgia's WIC application, should be able to cover most of the qualifications for parenthood. Upon completion of a parenting course, this male would then be licensed to father up to 3 children.
Shows what a creative government could do when it wanted to really meddle into the private lives of its citizens.
21
Zeus doesn’t forbid abortions so I guess that makes it okay? The obvious problem with these kind of laws is that the Judaic/Christian God wills this or that stuff isn’t a sensible way to practice modern medicine.
5
There are too many people on the planet to begin with. Get your tubes tied. Make your partner get a vasectomy. The Christian ISIS is taking hold. Fight back in every way possible.
11
These monsters cannot stop themselves. They want to control the bodies of women at any and all costs.
15
Fetus= Person.
Woman= Livestock.
Welcome to Trumps New Confederacy.
41
It was an incident just like this that pushed forward the Irish campaign to repeal the 8th amendment, our constitutional ban on abortion. An Indian woman living in Galway began to miscarry in the first trimester of her pregnancy and was hospitalized with heavy bleeding. Because a faint heartbeat could still be detected, she was denied a D&C procedure as that would have technically been an abortion, although the pregnancy was no longer viable anyway. The doctor didn't want to take the risk with what was then murky legislation. Within 24 hours Savita Halappanavar was dead from septic shock.
Legislation like the new law in Alabama is based on ignorance of basic reproduction and medical best practice and can only end in suffering for women. Either the legislators pushing this forward are ignorant or they hate women and wish us to suffer. Neither of those two options bode well for the future of the United States.
44
The present federal government bends backward to deregulate every possible safety measure to gratify unhampered corporate business while its mistake in doing so leads to disasters in lives lost and on land blighted. At the same time, it transfers the more significant burden of harassing regulations to control American citizens. History may well discover that the universal law against abortions is less about quality of life and more about megalomania and fabrication.
15
In 1974, after I lost twins around 5 months gestation, an elderly former teacher wrote a condolence letter:
"You did too much," she informed me. "Next time around, you'll take it easier and your baby will live."
My husband and I were smack dab in the middle of renovating a dilapidated 1830 when I unexpectedly fell pregnant. Yes, I'd kept wielding a crowbar, hammer, nails, staple gun and so on. That house had to shelter us through a Maine winter! Millions of women do far harder physical labor and bear a living child.
In an instant, that letter was soggy with my tears. She was blamed me for my twins' deaths. I sobbed hysterically for hours, emotions swinging between rage and guilt, while my breasts drenched my shirt with milk.
In 2019, mobs of pregnancy enforcers are planning to sic law enforcement on women who miscarry, accusing them of "doing too much" of one thing or another. They yearn to inflict incalculable damage on millions of grieving women. And they consider themselves "pro-life." Ha!
41
Boycott doing business in Alabama
Boycott vacations in Alabama
Boycott any connection to Alabama
and any other jurisdiction even considering passing such laws.
39
As a male, my opinion on abortion is that a male was 1/2 the equation in the pregnancy and we must stand with our sisters on this human right to control our own bodies -male or female.
These anti-abortion laws are an affront to all humanity.
Repeat: this is NOT a women’s issue, this is an issue of humanity and we are all involved, brother.
39
@inkspot While I commend you standing with the sisters, the 50/50 responsibility for pregnancy is incorrect. Women are only able to get pregnant when ovulating, which is about 24 days in a year. Men are fertile 365 days a year. Women quit being fertile after menopause. Men are fertile until they die. Women's access to birth control is difficult and expensive. Men can get a condom inexpensively anywhere. Men are far, far more responsible for unwanted pregnancies than women. Women just bear the evidence.
42
“Not legally a person” under what jurisdiction? Apparently the wise legislators of Alabama don’t think Alabama nor federal law defines viability that way or they are even greater fools than I already believe.
As to SCOTUS eventually ruling against this abomination of legislation, thousands of women’s lives will be in jeopardy in the meantime. This needs to be stopped here and now before the governor signs it.
10
"Even if the Supreme Court reverses course on abortion, law enforcement authorities with scarce resources may not investigate women this way."
In 2015, Purvi Patel was charged, convicted and sentenced for ‘feticide’ in relation to her own pregnancy. The case was overturned a year later, but I'm guessing Patel would have preferred not being charged, tried, and convicted in the first place.
And since the early 70s, at least 45 states in the US have sought to prosecute women for exposing their ‘unborn child’ to drugs. Some of these women are still in prison.
Do not underestimate the tenacity with which these lawmakers -- male and female -- seek to punish women for the crime of living their own lives.
36
And these plans for new abuses of women and planet appear along with news of Population explosions, devastating fires through ever-longer forest fire seasons, melting arctic ice that shrinks land masses, as we continue to breed like bunnies in a breeding farm for rabbit fur and meat, and fill earth’s land and sea masses with waste that kills creatures who swalllow it and lasts millions of years.
Instead of arguing for and against abortion, the argument should be for responsible sex, including deciding when and how many babies.
Instead of attempting to control women’s behavior (Though not men’s) via government, we should insist on leaving religious morality to churches and families instead of laws created by politicians aiming to attract the religious right to the corporate will, for their reelection efforts.
Instead of spending dollars to insist on more births, those government dollars should make birth control affordable; make giving birth safer; make food for those who make it into the world available; make sure that children who arrive in this world can eat, learn, function as useful humans.
Etc.!
21
It's time for a loud public campaign to de-invest in states like Alabama. States that oppress women and other community members don't deserve our business, our tax dollars, or our support for public events like conventions, concerts, and sports contests.
(FWIW, Alabama is also a 'right-to-work' state, i.e. anti-union. In 1998 it also passed the Alabama Religious Freedom Amendment meant to legalize discrimination against the LGBTQ community.)
Alabama's leading industries include auto plants (Mercedes -SUV's and C class sedans, Honda - Odyssey and Pilot, and Hyundai - Sonata, Elantra and Santa Fe); chemicals (BP America, Bayer, Dupont, 3M, BASF); aerospace (Airbus, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, GE, Raytheon); and forestry (Georgia Pacific, International Paper, Louisiana-Pacific, Weyerhaeuser). And there are others easily googled.
Similar outrage and threatened boycotts forced Mike Pence to reverse Indiana's anti-LGBT 'Religious Freedom Restoration Act' back in 2015. Social conservatives are mostly pawns used to empower the business wing of the Republican Party. Boycotts are an effective wedge telling us where the true power lies.
34
It seems that this “law” (what an insult to justice) requires that someone snoop on their neighbors and then report them to the abortion police. So what does that sound like...Hitler, Stalin, name your favorite dictator.
21
The GOP in Alabama was OK with Roy Moore being a 30 something fooling around with underage girls as well. And aim to put him back on the ballot.
They have reached Full Hypocrisy.
33
John Becker should be censured by the Ohio Congress.
Suggesting made-up surgery for Americans, like placing an ectopic pregnancy in an unprepared uterus, is criminal medical malpractice.
That he is a legislator is a sad and pathetic comment on his state.
38
Let’s pass a bill that makes it a felony to introduce bills that cannot be supported by fact.
7
So when women die of septic shock or complications from a miscarriage and lack of treatment out of fear of being falsie prosecuted can their families in turn sue the state and legislators for manslaughter?
42
Having lost six pregnancies, all of them wanted, due to a medical problem, I’d like to know if legislators who’d prosecute me for having lost those babies would pay for the medical care and medicine I needed to maintain a viable pregnancy. When one great doctor figured out how to treat my pregnancies, I went on to have healthy babies, but it cost thousands of dollars my insurance wouldn’t pay, saying it wasn’t “medically necessary.”
I guess this law would change the definition of what’s necessary, and what insurance would be obligated to cover.
38
@Anglican I am so sorry for your losses, but what an amazing point you have raised. I assume Alabama's law would mandate that insurance companies cover any and all measures that would enable a doctor to prolong a troubled pregnancy? And if denied and the pregnancy results in a miscarriage, could a woman then sue her insurance company for murder?
33
Actually, the state should assume all the burden of the cost to maintain a healthy pregnancy. If it’s state mandated that every pregnancy is a live human, then it should be the burden of the state to pay for bringing it to birth.
6
"The possible problems of a new Georgia law, including causing further pain."
This is your misconception, right here. This isn't a problem as far as those legislators are concerned, it's a feature.
31
I don't see the problem. A caring government can help:
1. Since females enter puberty at varying ages, all females shall report weekly to their local Office of Unborn Children's Health (OUCH) for inspection to determine their ability to become pregnant.
2. All females who can become pregnant shall report weekly to their OUCH for a physical examination to determine their pregnancy status and whether they have used birth control or abortion drugs or devices.
3. To facilitate accurate record keeping and cross-agency access to data - e.g., police departments, district attorneys, OUCHs - all females shall receive at birth an implanted chip that records their mandated reporting, sexual activity, pregnancy status and any means taken to prevent or abort pregnancies.
4. Local police and OUCHs shall conduct random sweeps of private and public spaces to scan the implanted chips and to provide immediate medical inspection to determine females' pregnancy status and any methods to prevent or end pregnancies.
5. Females shall submit weekly to their local OUCH the names and contact information of their male sexual partners.
6. All males shall submit weekly to their local OUCH the names and contact information of their female sexual partners and the number and type of sexual encounters with said partners, and reveal whether they or said partners used any means to prevent or end pregnancies.
7. All females crossing state borders shall immediately register with the local OUCH.
Easy-peasy!
29
@William LeGro
Nicely done.
6
The problem is that Repubicans can work this out and make it happen.
9
These religious authoritarians actually don’t care about your fetus or embryo and it’s well being. They care about you subverting “god’s plan” and going against what they think is the “natural” order of things. And women who feel they have rights to undermine this arrangement by acting like autonomous bodies should be shamed and punished. The (likely) male DA knows you best interest is in accepting your place and role in society. Sheesh.
20
Good luck attracting new Ob/Gyns to Alabama. Maybe lawmakers could be trained as midwives and do something useful.
20
@Jack - Ick. I wouldn't let one of those jerks within 100 yards of any part of my body.
19
Former CEO of Planned Parenthood was right when she said in her How To Be Amazing podcast interview (paraphrase) "This all goes back to puritanical beliefs that women should not be having sex at all." The kind of black and white thinking about these issues among the religious right is shocking. Women's lives matter.
36
As a woman I sure wouldn't agree to live in the South.....not even temporarily for education (oxymoron in the South, apparently) or employment.
19
I have suffered from several miscarriages over the years. All I can say is that the heart rending pain and grieving lasts for years. I was fortunate to have a daughter 18 years ago. Until that moment, my heart ached when my friends became pregnant. I watched through the years as they shared their precious moments with their children. I was on the outside looking in. When my daughter was born, all of that pain was washed away.
The worst miscarriage lasted almost six months. I went to my regular physician and he did something called a D & C. But it didn’t help. He sent me to a gynecologist in a town about 35 miles away. He was able to help me. He is the reason I have my daughter today. My next pregnancy resulted in her because he cared about me and understood my pain.
So now I wonder, if this law was in effect 18 years ago, would that D & C put me and my doctor in prison?
I am reminded of a passage in Matthew (how I empathize with her):
20 Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak.
21 She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”
22 Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment.
Jesus healed her. He did not judge her.
To the Alabama legislature: I know the majority of you call yourselves “Christian”.
You lie.
31
First of all, the fetus that is not viable outside the womb is not legally a person. Therefore, fetuses do not have legal standing in so far as laws about child abuse and neglect are concerned. The Alabama law is religious speculation about life unhinged from any real knowledge of reality. It could be found valid by a Supreme Court dominated by fools but eventually it will not be.
17
Wow! In other words tell all daughters, nieces and every woman of child bearing age to not have intercourse unless you are ready to have a child and are super healthy with little risk of miscarriage... or it could get you persecuted! Is that what Republicans and conservatives trying to convey to us? We should tell this message to the boys and men as well and tell them it’s the law!!! No intercourse unless you want a baby! After all they are trying to restrict birth control access and there is never a full proof way to prevent pregnancies. Let’s see what happens.
11
Why not hold the men who created the pregnancy responsible.
19
Genetic testing will determine which man helped commit this “crime”.
This is the sad, new reality and they’ll get away with it so long as it’s poor women or women of modest means. These weasels couldn’t get away with it with wealthy people.
12
The next logical step from laws like the ones in Georgia and Alabama would be to deny any woman who is of childbearing age (age 12 - 55-ish):
The right to drink alcohol, because a woman who doesn’t know she’s pregnant might drink and harm the fetus.
The right to drive a car, because a woman who doesn’t know she’s pregnant might drive, get in an accident, and harm the fetus.
The right to participate in sports, because a woman who doesn’t know she’s pregnant might exercise too much or get knocked around and harm the fetus.
The ability to move about without a chaperone, since AL wants to deny abortions to women who are victims of rape. (These women are kind of on their own for incest. )
Essentially do anything at all, because a woman who doesn’t know she’s pregnant might harm the fetus.
This is what Republicans want for America?
16
@M
In a word, yes.
Get ready.
15
@M
Sounds like Saudi Arabia to me.
11
What as birthrates continue to go down and we are heading to a time when govt and corporations will start to produce babies in artificial wombs as women will either move out of the country to have children or not have them at all. Smart move
5
How about punishment (castration?) for all those men who had unprotected sex outside of marriage and were complicit in an unwanted pregnancy?
It’s unbelievable that it is the white male “Christian” community that wants to decide what a woman can do with her body. On top of that, these male politicians should at least learn the physiology of the female reproductive system.
13
If these laws stand then it is time for Dems to act for true "life". We must guarantee for ALL children, from birth to 18, free healthcare and even monthly subsidies to ensure a healthy, stable life.
You cannot be pro-life but then allow children to wither and die in a safety-net-less society.
We all love kids so, if this is to be the way of America, welcome to full socialism for kids. The stats are clear and the repubs cannot force life in all cases if they are not willing to take full responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
Family planning is something done with sacrifice as the main underlying value. Again we all want kids but if the repubs throw personal planning/responsibility out the window then here is too endless babies, let all kids eat cake, lots of it, on the state. Dems lets do this, call their bluff...and then let's see where the repubs fall...
We all know repubs are not "pro-lifers" but women enslavers to their power whims, as they bible study without scruples or morals??!!. They are the anti-good-lifers, lovers of incarceration for poor kids, immigrant kids, for all the others...there is not a good life or hope for it...
12
@KiKi. Just to clarify, there are many women who have made an active decision, for many different reasons, to not have children.
3
Several comments predict that it will be poor white women and poor women of color who will the most likely victims of these grotesque laws. I'd go further and suggest it's a return to eugenics and a deliberate attempt to reduce poor women's, especially black women's chances of having babies by sending them to prison if their first pregnancy fails for whatever reason.
9
The state of Indiana had Mike Pence in charge when a young woman there from a traditional Indian family got pregnant and she first of all could not tell them and then turned to the internet to try to order a powder from China in the hopes of aborting her pregnancy. We are already in the territory of fear-base healthcare. The powder did not work because it was fake.
Then this young woman did later miscarry. Her doc turned her in, as she had not known what to do with the miscarriage. She was arrested, put on trial, and even though there was no medication in her system or the system of the fetus, she was convicted and put in prison for not wanting the child.
If you build a healthcare system for religious fundamentalists, then expect these preventable outcomes. This woman served some time basically for a crime she did not commit. Mike Pence went all in for it.
If orthodox people want their own healthcare they should build it, and leave American citizens out of their labyrinthine requirements for a holiness that they themselves do not ascribe to.
33
The issue of miscarriage and possible child neglct is an excellent jumping off point for considering how radical, how bizzare, the Alabama legislation really is.
Here are some other brain teasers: 1) Will gametes, embryos and fetuses be counted in the US Census? 2) Would a law enforcement officer facing a firearm in the hands of a woman of child-bearing years be obliged to assume pregnancy--essentially that there might be a human person with the same status as a hostage inside her--and not defend him or her self? 3) Given the reality of cloning, are we then obliged as a society to submit e.g. oral tissue from a dental procedure for cloning into as many "human persons" as possible?
126
@Juvenal451
Would a miscarriage be considered a death of a human thus being presented with a death certificate and counted as such?
9
“It’s not clear that those who are writing many of these bills understand how pregnancy works.”
On the contrary; I think it’s very clear that they do NOT understand. Or care to.
13
Audrey Hepburn suffered 3 miscarriages because of the trauma and malnutrition her body suffered early in her life living through WWII. She desperately wanted to be a mother, but her body physically was not able to carry a baby to term. Under the context of this law, should she have stopped trying? Should she have given up the dream of having a baby because another miscarriage could get her in trouble with the law? If she got pregnant anyway, could she be charged with pre-meditated murder because she knew there was a chance the fetus wouldn't make it? Are women at high-risk for miscarriage (as the article states, obese, smokers etc.) in a similar legal position? The "with or without malice" clause here is just terrifying. Women are vilified any which way you can draw it. I am just in awe at the cruelty and ignorance in Georgia, Alabama and neighbor states. It just seems like they hate women, it really does.
19
The fact that the Georgia law would permit (or require?!) law enforcement questioning of any woman who miscarries shows that it violates the US Constitution and international human rights law.
Almost every adult woman I know has miscarried, including myself.
Stop the insanity, gentlemen, or we women will have to stop it for you. Final warning.
16
Regarding chromosomal abnormalities, don't forget that the quality of sperm declines as men age, so if the law wants to punish, they should also look to older fathers.
Of course, that won't happen. Poor women will take any of the grief these laws produce, as usual.
35
I read this with fury and great misgivings. As someone who suffered two "missed abortions" in the first trimester, which required D&C's and a miscarriage at 21 weeks, resulting in a stillbirth, I wonder what would happen to someone like me in a state like Alabama. All those pregnancies were wanted and the miscarriages were devastating. To add a police investigation to it would have been horrific. I would have had the resources to fight charges, but many poor women would not. I have read of women in jail for this in central America. Jesus wept, and the Handmaid outfits are all appropriate here.
77
@Leslie M I think the answer is that there would be no one to perform a D&C in this situation because the doctor does not want to be subject to criminal prosecution. Perhaps there would be some Court procedure established such that you could offer "proof" to a Judge that you had miscarried, and only then could you get a D&C. Given the standard Court waiting times in most places, this would mean if you had complications you'd be in septic shock by then unless you could afford to travel to another state. Good times! Alabama and Georgia == El Salvador in terms of prosecuting women who miscarry. I have had 4 D&Cs following miscarriages, one at 16 weeks, for very much wanted pregnancies after years and years of IVF treatments. You can bet any IVF providers still left in Alabama or Georgia will also leave given similar concerns.
8
What happens in this case: an ultrasound at 10 weeks shows that there is no longer a heartbeat; 10 days later, however, no miscarriage has occurred; the woman has a DNC. Will doctors in Georgia and Alabama continue to feel comfortable with this approach?
23
I've posted over the years the dangers of this scenario becoming reality. Imagine, in the so-called pro-life people's ideal society, a woman who miscarries can now expect a visit from the sheriff's department, just in case it did not occur naturally; the law must be enforced, don't you know.
Folks, this is from the party of small government.
12:45 EDT, 5/15
63
@mancuroc. Yes, and of course there will be plenty of money for law enforcement but non for maternity or child care.
15
Women in this country have already been prosecuted for miscarriage and still births.
Having recently lost a stillborn grandchild it is tough to imagine anything so cruel: women always blame themselves unfairly. Prosecutors will use that.
Will women in America ever be persons under the law? I’m seriously doubting it will happen in my lifetime.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/28/opinion/abortion-pregnancy-pro-life.html
34
@Chickpea apparently the prison lobby realizes they can make more money from putting more women in prison.
13
To those forced pregnancy advocates, I would say to be careful what you wish for. If the State has unlimited power to define “life” pursuant to whatever ideological or religious preferences it has at that moment, then one also accepts the corollary that, in the future, perhaps one of over-population and scarce resources due to climate change, the State likewise retains the power to change its definition of what is in the interest of protecting “life” to compel abortion or worse.
18
@J. That’s right. Or forbid women from having children so that they are all born in a state run baby factory chip already embedded in the brain to obey the potus
5
The New Trump Confederacy : Women are slaves, to their bodies. And the slavemasters are white Males.
Wake up, People. VOTE.
65
i will never set foot south of the Mason Dixon line ever again,for any reason, and fly-over land is pretty much on my no-go list as well. Who are these people who revel in their ignorance?
54
Really? haven't lived there for years - used to be a Levittown, Sears houses in rows, worker paradise..Phoenix is charming, always a good idea to put a huge population where there is no water and life without AC is impossible..
11
@michjas Have you been to Syosset? I'm originally from a town very close to Syosset and what you're saying really isn't true.
12
The next logical step is to establish public squares in all large communities. Women who have suffered a miscarriage can be quickly and conveniently executed by public beheading there. Or maybe the Republicans would prefer the guillotine? Disembowelment? Hanging, drawing and quartering?
44
@A Cynic Oh, they would prefer the stocks, to prolong the humiliation.
3
You forgot. First you need a database of all pregnant women in the State so you can monitor their pregnancy. I recommend some form of stigma so that pregnant women can be seen a mile away. Some country tried that about 80 years ago..... Let me think. Who was that again? (keep the sarcasm)
8
How about this scenario: A woman who smokes miscarries. Is she potentially criminally negligent for smoking? If so, what if she works in a smoking environment (say, a bar). Does the management of the bar, and the patrons, bear criminal responsibility for her miscarrying because of the effects of secondhand smoke? If no to the second, why yes to the first? This is wrong in so many ways.
26
just a thought on the picture that heads the article. Is that trooper "keeping watch over protesters" or playing on his phone? good photo op there, G state.
8
As a male, this is my opinion on abortion:
Nothing
I cannot have one, I do not have the biological prerequisites to have any opinion
68
If all those who are against abortion would adopt the unwanted children, or the medically challenged children that are brought to term because of restrictive abortion laws, then they would at least be doing their so-called "christian duty". But how many pro-lifers actually adopt such a child?
221
@R.F. If all the secular humanists opposed to poverty gave a tithe of their income to the poor, they would be doing their humanist duty. But only Christians tithe. Humanists like their money too much.
2
@michjas. Tithe only helps the church. They can distribute it to whomever they want, but the tithe goes to the church, not the poor. They just use the poor to encourage you to give more.
62
@michjas - Seriously? Do you really think that charitable giving only happens through churches?
68
Tough-on-crime DA’s with political aspirations already have too much power to bring cases for personal aggrandizement. Publicly going after illegal abortions in the Bible Belt is a no brainer. But how to do it...
Well, you could start by tracking all women’s menstrual cycles with random verification.
Or requiring women to report all missed periods or periods more than two weeks late.
Or requiring autopsies, death certificates, and burials on every purported miscarriage.
Or tracking the purchase of every pregnancy test and requiring the completed test be turned over to local law enforcement.
Or intercepting random packages to search for illegal abortifacients.
Or searching and questioning state citizens leaving or returning from out of state looking for evidence of intent or actions to abort a pregnancy.
Or searching and questioning all visitors to the state for evidence of intent to provide pregnancy tests, abortifacients, or abortions.
Or requiring certified pregnancy test results for every women of child bearing age who travels out of state.
Or requiring medical providers to notify the state of every pregnancy test or verified conception.
Or requiring state pre-approval for all D&C’s and hysterectomies on women of child bearing age.
And taking anonymous tips from nosy neighbors, virile boyfriends, or abusive partners on a hot line.
They’re going to need a ramped up police state or a religious police force if they want a real sanctuary for fetuses.
53
@Michael Tyndall
Yes and they will need more taxes to pay for all of the surveillance. What will GOP do then?
5
@LES Tax pregnancy tests.
2
You should know that extraordinary miscarriages are already subject to criminal investigation nationwide, including in New York. A repeated fact pattern is when a woman drops the miscarried fetus into a toilet and it is found. These bizarre and uncommon cases are regularly the subject of police investigation. And it has happened at least once in New York, on an airplane, no less.
My point is that the police routinely investigate highly unusual miscarriages. Routine investigation is unheard of. So the issue isn’t whether any miscarriages can be investigated. They already are. The issue is whether the Georgia law authorizes specious and frequent investigations.
9
Who in their right mind with loans up to their ears would open an OB/GYN practice, or be part of one, in these retrograde states?
Who will be left to practice?
A complicated pregnancy that no one with skills will dare to touch. god willed them both to die for the sin of living in such a state?
What happens when someone is criminally charged over a spontaneous abortion and has to explain themselves to an anti science jury that believes the bible is the literal truth?
As does the prosecutor.
Do your best to boycott all of these anti woman states.
And welcome those who flee and bring with them skills and compassion.
I take no joy in the health divide growing larger.
45
I live in Iowa. There is already a shortage of OB-GYN practitioners.
2
Legislators may not understand pregnancy or women's reproductive health issues, but it is willful and politically motivated misunderstanding.
Just as with Kavanaugh, it wasn't that the senate judiciary committee didn't understand the truth of what Dr. Ford was saying. Its that they really didn't care. McConnell said, "We're going to plow right through", before the sham FBI investigation even began.
Legislators don't care to understand such inconvenient truths like ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage. It is their male privilege not to have to understand. No medical explanations will change their minds. This is about dominating women and is a reaction to women's (and some men's) demands for equality.
99
What about employers that disregard doctors' notes when a pregnant employee must stop doing physically demanding things? I'm thinking about WalMart, Amazon, and any warehouse that refused to accommodate working conditions for pregnant women. The employees risked losing their jobs and feeding their families if they didn't continue to lift heavy boxes, stay on their feet, etc.
68
@L They don't care about the well being of the mother or the embryo. This is just about controlling women and ensuring the patriarchy and the white oligarchy lives on.
39
@LRight, Yes, Walmart would not be prosecuted for causing the death of this "citizen."
4
Lack of knowledge never stopped anyone from having very definitive views on how other people should behave. Give those same people legislative powers, and you have a truly frightening situation.
Morality and medicine or science don’t really mix well. They speak separate languages. Anytime we start mixing them together, the results are almost always damaging. This issue has become so far beyond anything rational or justifiable I don’t know anymore how it’s to be resolved.
41
If these legal quandaries are inadvertent results of "trying to do the right thing", it's because the people who write the legislation are ignorant of reproductive biology and unconcerned with the well-being of women and girls. The point of all such legislation is controlling -- and for some, punishing -- women. That's it, really; too many of the anti-choice groups operate in bad faith for their concerns for fetuses or women to be taken seriously. Nothing better demonstrates the fundamental misogyny in our society than these sloppily written and irrationally argued attempts to restrict a woman's right to her own body.
44
@Maggie Mae
Pass the equal rights amendment.
5
This is obscenity to attack half the population with a willful ignorance that is sheer legislative hypocrisy. Women are going to have to get rid of these bought-off Congressmen.
The maternal death rate belies the empty "love" of humanity. It is not possible to value a fertilized egg over the life of an American citizen who is female. It is not possible.
48
The new South looks a lot like the old South as it is a land devoted to hate and disregard for women’s rights.
Hugh Massengill
39
CSI Atlanta. Special Miscarriage Unit. A lot of poking around women’s bathrooms, surveillance of the Tylenol and feminine hygiene aisle and ...actually this is getting even ickier. I can’t imagine the scenario that would lead to prosecution being brought forward. What is evidence? How do you establish what caused an event doctors cannot explain? Was it the potato salad? Did you ride a bicycle today? Someone tell me. Abortion is safe, funded and legal where I live. We don’t pry into miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies wither. Anti abortion protesters must maintain a wide exclusion zone and distance from
clinic entrances.
38
So if a 6-week embryo is legally a person, and the mother either dies or suffers harm from being forced to carry it to term- can she (or the state?) then press charges against the embryo for attempted murder or battery?
It’s all about punishing and subjugating women for any sexual activity, consensual or otherwise. Not much of a surprise from the state that brought us Roy Moore.
77
@Rojee and remember, if it’s a 6-week pregnancy, that embryo’s been in existence for about 4 weeks.
1
“removing the embryo from the fallopian tube and then reinserting it in the uterus so that’s defined as not an abortion.”
> This procedure is not possible.
Given the growing number of organs that can be transplanted, why should it not be possible to transplant the placenta, to which the fetus is attached during the first trimester? Has this ever been tried?
@Radames This is not possible because there is no way to remove the embryo from its life-threatening position in the fallopian tube without destroying the placenta. As someone who has suffered an ectopic pregnancy in the past year, I wish that this was an option, but it's not.
23
@Radames we should not be in the business of doing human experiments like this.
10
@Radames There is no placenta in the first trimester, read a book some time. It takes the full first trimester to grow a placenta. Detaching a placenta causes the mother to die of hemorrhage by the way. The resection of a woman's tube would cause infertility and the embryo wouldn't survive either. Also, why would a person (women are people) be subjected to such an invasive procedure, against her will? The issue here is not abortion, but controlling women's lives.
54
What happens if a woman from Alabama goes to another state for a legal abortion and returns home? Will she be prosecuted by Alabama law upon her return? Will the person who accompanied her be prosecuted? Will the father, rapist, or incest creep be prosecuted for not stopping her? Will the doctor who told her she was pregnant and then discovers she is no longer be required to report her? If they don’t report her medical status are they liable for prosecution? If they do report her medical status are they liable for prosecution by HIPA laws? If Roe v Wade is overturned will these same questions apply if a US citizen goes to Canada for a legal abortion? The black market drug dealers must love these laws. The abortion pill will be in great demand. Just take the regimen every five weeks to be sure. Pandora’s box if I ever saw one.
36
@Lee Godfrey And I'm curious...how do they determine the pregnancy status of any woman crossing the state border? They'd have to seal the borders (maybe they'll build a wall that Mexico can pay for) and test every single woman of child-bearing age for pregnancy before they leave the state. Then test them again when they re-enter. If they're found to no longer be pregnant, I'd assume they'd then be arrested.
The entire law is insane.
10
"Without randomized controlled trials, which really aren’t possible here, we can’t know for sure what is causing many miscarriages not involving chromosomal abnormalities." - how would a randomized trial help understand this?
5
@Jstring Hiya! I'm a nurse and an epidemiologist. I think what the author is getting at is a commonly misunderstood difference between causation and correlation.
Observational studies can't say "Smoking causes miscarriages" because it's possible a third factor associated with both smoking and miscarriage is influencing the measurement, like low socioeconomic status influencing poor prenatal care.
A randomized control trial is considered the only way to protect against these influencing unmeasured factors, because the randomly selected groups are as close to exactly the same as we can get without a time machine. They approximate the exact same population differing only in the factor we're interested in. In the case of miscarriage, because we know smoking is correlated with increased miscarriage risk, we can't ethically select 30 pregnant people and make a 15 random smoke. So we have to settle for observational studies.
tldr; Observational studies can't ever say something caused something else. Randomized control trials can but it is unethical to put people at risk to prove causation.
14
This hasn't been the only disruptive possibility of such nonsense Women are already being shortchanged in scientific medical studies so this will make it even less likely that women of childbearing age be included because of future liability to fetal damage. Which of course will then mean that while one fetus is being protected, studies that could improve health of women and other fetuses will not be done.
A car accident that causes a miscarriage will be manslaughter. So will deliberately pushing or any physical action to a woman of childbearing age.
Nobody should be allowed to smoke around any pre-menopausal woman; medical procedures, such as the everlasting controversy over vaccines will be ripe for litigation so they will not be administered to women; the chemical, petrochemical, food supply companies will be liable for fetal damage.....
I suppose they can write the laws to say it is only the woman who is responsible for anything that happens. But then they will be placing their cards face up, won't they?
32
@Christine
Come to think of it, since any woman of childbearing age might be pregnant and sexual relations with her might damage the fetus, sex will itself be ripe for criminalization.
21
This law violates the 14th Amendment which requires that all persons (in this case women) be treated equally under the law. By removing any choice from her, they violate all women's 14 Amendment rights because her ability to choose is removed while that of the state (and whoever got her pregnant) remain. After all, who would speak for this fetal 'person'? The state? The father? The religious fundamentalists and extremists? If they say the mother, they are simply saying she should have been allowed to choose in the first place. If they say anyone else, they are violating her rights.
This law violates the 1st Amendment. Not all religions hold that life begins at conception (in fact most don't) In passing this law, Alabama (and others) are picking one religion and its justifications and elevating it over all others - a direct violation of the 1st Amendment.
This law violates the 4th Amendment which protects personal and private property (in this case the woman's own body) from unwarranted intrusion.
This law violates the woman's 13th Amendment rights by removing any say she has over her own body, thus making her a slave to some authority (which is currently nameless).
I was taught that one's rights ended at one's skin. What took place inside that boundary was your choice and no one else's. None of us has a privilege or right to foist our views upon others.
68
My wife miscarried at the 5 month mark last year. The emotional impact it had on us is difficult to explain in words. We knew the sex, we named him (Noah), and we would give almost anything to for him to be here right now. The idea of targeting any woman in this situation is beyond belief. What are we (Alabama) even trying to accomplish here?
363
@Omni Rest assured well to do women won't be affected by this law, only the poor and more than likely women of color will suffer from such barbaric laws.
62
@Omni, I am so sorry for yours and your wife's loss. I carried my first born to term but he died the next day, so I truly understand your loss. My daughter-in-law miscarried last month (she was 8 weeks along) and she was devastated. I just can't imagine being questioned by the law and FORCED to relive the pain of miscarrying. Women who miscarry already stress over wondering what they did or how it happen and if being questioned by law officials after miscarrying will only reinforce that they "must" have done something to hurt the fetus.
97
@Omni
Alabama, Georgia etc want to fill the for-profit prisons. If they target miscarriages, they can get 10-30% of women of childbearing age into the jails. Undoubtedly, some poor black woman raped by her boss will end up there for decades thanks to these vile new laws.
74
So women need to keep in shape, no smoking or drinking, no obesity, nothing that might impede the growth of a fetus, or they may be charged with murder.
Men, on the other hand, can drink and smoke and eat themselves to death, and they're always safe from being charged with murder because of a miscarriage.
Nice.
47
@Glassyeyed - Men can jump up and down, hoot and holler at football games, too, both at the stadium or at home while the wife is cleaning, doing dishes, cooking dinner, raising kids, etc.
10
@Steve - I wish I could shake your hand and buy you a drink.
3
A woman does not get pregnant by herself. Why are the men responsible for pregnancies never mentioned? Time to involve the men whose sperm is responsible for abortions. Some suggestions: mandatory vasectomies, make Viagra illegal, make it illegal for a man to have sex with a woman without a signed contract filed with the police department saying he will pay all the mother and child's living and medical expenses through college.
Or perhaps all the women living in these states should just leave and move to places where women aren't criminalized simply because they are women.
53
If you are truly against abortion, then why not make vasectomies mandatory?
You can reverse it if you want children. That way you can almost eliminate abortions. Problem easily solved!
Of course that would never occur because the "pro life" movement isn't about "abortion" it is about controlling women's bodies, not men's.
70
The idea that politicians might understand that many women miscarry (aka spontaneously abort) through no action on their part is laughable. These guys wonder aloud whether an ectopic pregnancy could be re-implanted in the uterus (the technology does not exist) or whether a woman could get a gynecological exam by swallowing a camera. Their ignorance has no limits.
28
Please. No one believes the headline will ever come true. Pure fearmongering.
@Bret Thoman
Clearly, you have never been pregnant, had a miscarriage, and don’t understand the personal trauma involved. I had two live births and four miscarriages of wanted children, one at twenty weeks.
This was a trauma of nightmaric proportion. When I became pregnant again (an intrauterine device (IUD)had failed and perforated my uterus). My gynaecologist asked what I wanted to do, I wouldn’t have an abortion. I said, let’s see. My children were afraid I would die, and the fetus lived to only to 16 weeks.
The doctor and I decided,, due to other issues, I should have a hysterectomy. 50 years later my passwords are often based on the “birthday” of that child.
For those who have been through the trauma of any miscarriage, the very idea of a potential investigation into the loss of their child is offensive.
19
@Bret Thoman In Central America, such prosecutions are happening. Why not in Georgia and Alabama, if there are votes in it?
'It will never happen here' is delusional complacency.
12
Alabama I'll make you a deal. You promise to keep your religion out of my life and I will promise to keep science out of yours. Is that a deal Bubba?
37
This is not another step towards banning abortions. This is an all out assault on the right of a woman to control her body.
321
Not just her body...that only lasts 9 months. It also has a huge impact on her whole life.
3
This law will go into effect 1/1/20, just ten months before the next general election. Women in Georgia, and in the other 49 other states, might want to think very carefully about who they vote for.
54
Business leaders take note, establishing/expanding/continuing offices in these repressive areas impacts your employees & their families.
If these areas want to return to the Dark Ages they should not get our support nor business.
54
All women who miscarry in Alabama should be indicted for murder.
Chilling?
That's what this law could be used for.
27
The header on this story reads "The New Health Care." Really? Is the NYT assuming that such restrictive controls on women's health is the new normal? These laws are nowhere near normal.
18
Yet they are being pushed through in several states.
10
Call companies and tell them to leave Georgia and Alabama. Call sports teams. Boycott products and do not travel there. When they lose their almighty dollars they will change their tune. It’s all about money and controlling women.
59
It's like reading amusing anecdotes from the Middle Ages, except that such "well-meaning" management of women, by Christian men, is happening now; today.
34
Implant an ectopic pregnancy into the uterus? What an embarrassment of a human being. This is a viable political candidate in America - an actual elected politician. Breathtaking.
85
To prosecute a woman who has miscarried?
And they call those who support abortion morally handicapped?
275
All these states know full well that the new laws will get struck down.
They just want this issue to get to the Supreme Court.
Even though such conservatives as Clarence Thomas have publicly stated that Roe is settled law, they harbor the pipe-dream that Roe will get reversed after almost 50 years.
Just as democrats cling to their own pipe-dream that Trump will be removed from office.
Fantasy and pique. That is all that politicians have to offer these days, but it sure does work wonders for bringing in the cash donations...
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
12
' ... prosecutors would have a lot of discretion, and it would be “completely up to” them. '
Shall we take bets as to how much higher a percentage of prosecutions would be women of color rather than white women?
38
"It’s not clear that those who are writing many of these bills understand how pregnancy works." Indeed. Back to the days of dark alleys and drinking "bluing" to rid thyself of thy sin.
24
Holy suffering cats. Who on earth is John Becker and how do we get rid of him? This is one of the most horrendous things I've ever heard of.
37
Yet the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services requires filing a complicated 12-page application form, and often meeting with a processor, and proof of citizenship and identity, to receive Food Stamps, TANF or Medicaid services.
Yet the death penalty is enforced in Georgia.
Yet no permit is required to purchase a gun, no firearm registration is required, and open carry with a permit is allowed at any age, no magazine restrictions.
Sanctity of Life? I don't think so. The cult worship of fetus, and the attempts to reduce women's rights as full humans, are sickening. It is far beyond time we ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to give women equal rights to men.
92
A miscarriage could be a crime? I'm just a gay male and probably don't know as much about pregnancy as others but it has been my observation in life that miscarriages are about as common as my seedlings dying from damping off. Life happens...and then it doesn't.
27
If circumstances at work can cause miscarriages, could the company be charged with child abuse? My fear is that the law will only be applied to "troublemakers" since it is politically impossible to apply it to everyone.
21
Supposedly, there is a separation of church and state. Supposedly.
31
Research suggests that between 10 percent and 20 percent of women with a medically confirmed pregnancy will end in miscarriage. Eighty percent of these will occur during the first trimester.
As a women that had two miscarriages in my life I find this concept offensive and appalling. As if women are to blame. Many women who miscarry live in the shadows, feeling shame, feeling less. Compassion is what they need, not prison time.
Politicians need to get out of our medical affairs. Sadly these are the same people that will defend the unborn, but not families in need of a social safety net. Isn’t that both ironic and hypocritical!
Better hope you go full term and your baby comes with sturdy bootstraps!
🙄
52
Will the man or woman who drive a woman to an abortion clinic or "back-alley" doctor who performs the abortion be charged with a crime as an accomplice to "murder". Seems only fair.
I'm not sure if there are ways a woman could self-abort a fetus using drugs designed for that purpose or another means that would make it appear to be a miscarriage. Does the new law address that, I wonder?
In all of this, if the law is finally implemented and woman are charged, I would almost guarantee that women of color or women in the lower economic brackets would bear the full burden of the law. It's the way it works in this country in some many other areas
21
How many OBGYN physicians and NPs will leave Georgia should this pass fearing loss of license or prison due to the vagaries of this law? Health practioners won't be able to provide sound care when censored.
How will this affect womens reproductive health care in the state?
Will GA Dept of Public Health obtain data on this as well as related maternal - infant morbidity and mortality?
If they obtain it will it be available for review at national levels as well as to the public?
19
I would believe this was about fiercely protecting babies/children if there was just as vigorous legislation for robust family leave, good public schools and affordable health care.
48
Well if anyone thinks that "The Handmaid's Tale" could never happen, here you go. Given them a few more years, they will pass state laws that will allow government workers to deny same sex couples marriage licenses. And then after that who knows.
30
John Becker, a state representative in Ohio, recently sponsored a bill that would also change how pregnant women with unsustainable pregnancies are treated. He suggested that ectopic pregnancies, which are not viable, should in part be handled by “removing the embryo from the fallopian tube and then reinserting it in the uterus so that’s defined as not an abortion.”
Wow, I am sure the American Society of OB/GYNs are so thankful for this sage piece of medical advice. Perhaps tumors could be similarly removed and reinserted into the stomach, so they could be eliminated more naturally as well?
35
Time to also regulate Georgia's and Alabama's testicles....not just its uteruses.
What's good for the state's females is also good for the state's males.
Equality for all.
249
@Socrates
agreed.
If women are forced to have babies against their will, then the men who impregnate them should have vasectomies against their will.
That way no more pregnancies.
74
Yep. Forced vasectomies all around. Let’s see how men like having control of their bodies and their reproductive functioning legislated by the state
57
@Socrates - All males upon their 30th birthday should be required by law to have vasectomies, under penalty of imprisonment, fine or both. Proof of vasectomy submitted at the time of applying for Driver's License or else see above. Women have to provide a certified Marriage License due to name change as proof of citizenship in order to vote. Insult to injury. It's only fair, no?
23
So, the goal here is that all women should be pregnant all the time? What’s the point? Aside from the fact that I ain’t your prize sow, we can’t take care of the living as it is. Perhaps those oh-so-concerned legislators should invest a bit more in feeding and educating the current population before getting so uppity about other people’s gynecological status.
76
Is there a provision in there to charge the MEN who impregnate these wayward girls and women and sentence them to a flogging, life in prison or the death penalty perhaps? I have never been in Alabama and hope never to step foot there.
68
@RC
Agreed, this article mentions Georgia and I don't voluntarily go there either.
Business leaders take note, establishing/expanding/continuing offices in these repressive areas impacts your employees & their families.
If these areas want to return to the Dark Ages they should not get our support nor business.
26
Women could stop these laws in their tracks if they just voted for the political party not obsessed by criminalizing abortion.
79
And so could men.
41
This would be an excellent time for the NYT to republish its series on the actual causes of fetal and maternal death in the anti-abortion South. As I recall, the leading cause of death was the murder of pregnant women by their boyfriends and husbands. Often for being pregnant. Often by the "pro-life" boyfriend who didn't want to pay child support.
181
Men get to choose whether to be a parent or not, but apparently (pun intended) not women.
39
@Just the Facts - Actually, you have it backwards. If two people copulate and there is a pregnancy, the woman can decide if the man will be a parent and pay support or not. She can abort (in most states) just because the pregnancy would interfere with her life. But the man never gets the option to "abort".
2
@tom harrison Actually, you have it backwards. She doesn't "get to decide" if he'll pay support; she can only petition for it.
The man can just disappear at will, leaving the woman with the entire responsibility on her own, and never acknowledge his part in it. He doesn't carry a pregnancy to term and go into a potentially life-threatening situation to give birth. He isn't discharged from the hospital with a newborn and precious little physical, emotional, or financial help. He can go out the next night and make whoopie with someone else and repeat ad nauseum. If a guy were really into "being a parent," he'd put more than just his anatomy into the necessary relationship.
25
tom harrison — For that reason, a man must be darn sure he is ready and willing to be a father before having sexual relations with a woman; and if he’s not ready, to abstain. That is the only way he can make the choice his, not hers.
17
If every woman who suffered a miscarriage, her partner, and her doctor would turn themselves in to law enforcement in order to be criminally prosecuted, the politicians concocting these laws might understand the absurdity of their actions.
15
I wonder if I would have been prosecuted under this law: "One definition of second-degree murder in Georgia includes cruelty to children during which 'he or she causes the death of another human being irrespective of malice.'"
I had recurrent early miscarriages when I was trying to get pregnant. So after the third or certainly the fourth miscarriage, I knew that if I got pregnant again it was more likely than not that I would miscarry. I wasn't malicious, I wanted the embryo to grow into a baby, but with this new definition of person I created a person when I knew it would probably die. This was necessary in order to keep trying new treatments and finally one did work and I now have children. Still, Georgia's law would've made me guilty of at least seven second-degree murders.
56
So how do any aspects of these laws not violate physician-patient confidentiality ?
47
Does anyone remember Romania in the 1960's under Ceausescu? Romania had a very liberal abortion policy before a declining birth rate led to it being outlawed. Contraception was forbidden for most women and they were required to have monthly gyn exams. Pregnant women were closely monitored and followed by the secret police. The resulting baby boom resulted in an orphanage boom for children abandoned by women who could not care for them. The conditions in those orphanages were absolutely hellish, resulting in permanent physical and mental disabilities.
167
@Marcia
Yes, this is one of the first things that comes to mind, all the unwanted children in orphanages. I wonder if all these states have begun to build orphanages or if they plan to cage the babies in jails, or perhaps all the religious lifers will take the children as their own.
9
Politicians get votes for asserting that a zygote is a human being.
The consequences are ridiculous.
Alas
25
Appalling. Simply appalling.
34
Maybe these Georgian male politicians should just put all women in jail from the time they start to menstruate to menopause. This way, they can be sure that they are punishing all women who might have a miscarriage.
49
This is such a dystopian law. Let’s reverse the tables and view the males among us solely as seed sources.
36
In the ancient Greek play "Lysistrata" women discuss withholding sex from their men unless and until they refrain from going to war. How about that? The way I see it, the Alabama legislature seems to think that allowing an execption for rape or incest is being generous. Tell your men it's HANDS OFF until this madness ceases!
50
@Dave Reitman
Except the Alabama legislature voted down the amendment that would have allowed an exception for rape or incest! And, considering the attitude of many Alabama legislators, if women reacted like the ones in "Lysistrata" there would probably be a lot more rapes!
10
so what happened to the concept of "getting the government out of peoples' lives?" Does that only apply to men? rich, white men? millionaires? Who?
148
@Mole man
Of course. Like the billionaire who was convicted of abusing underage girls and got a slap on the hand and lives part time in Palm Beach. Or the football team owner wo was caught using prostitutes but the courts are protecting him. Florida, Georgia and Alabama are now all on my travel ban list!
42
Politics should be kept out of any conversation regarding a woman's reproductive agency. Period.
95
I teach high school biology and 11th/12th grade Anatomy and Physiology. I taught comprehensive sex education for 11 years at the 7th grade level, as well.
Clearly my colleagues and I are not doing a good job teaching biology for legislation like this to pass.
97
@Suzanna - You're in Oregon. That kind of education is frowned on and often forbidden in red states.
23
Unbelievable. I am living in an entirely different universe from these conservative male politicians - their ignorance and malice is shocking.
157
I don't know how to express in grave enough terms that even this article, which is clearly on the side of women's rights, feels normalizing.
We are in crazy town. I feel like anything written on the subject needs to reflect that. Little, snippy suggestions that they don't understand how pregnancy works is not enough.
These are extraordinarily dangerous people with depraved minds using the issue of abortion to stave off any threat to their power. They don't care about babies or fetuses. They care about power and this is their strategy to keep it. They are the greatest threat our country has seen in a long time. They must be stopped. Period.
274
@Jane L - I wish I could recommend your comment a thousand times. You hit the nail on the head. It should have been an editor's pick. This kind of bland response to an insane, depraved attack on women's health and right to autonomy needs to be loud and urgent enough to figuratively hit all of US in the head. We are under siege.
40
I dare you to prosecute a mother who recently experienced a miscarriage. Political consequences? Any lawyer who attacks a grieving mother on the stand has more to fear than political consequences. You'll need the law to stop the jury from hanging the prosecutor.
As a more technical point though, I think we need to discuss what we actually mean when we say "miscarriage." The medical definition is essentially derived from Roe v. Wade's determination and vice versa. Look at the CDC website and you'll see what I mean.
A miscarriage is infant mortality before the fetus is viable. By "viable" we mean: Capable of surviving without the mother's womb. No womb, no life, no human. Ergo, the infant is not a human being during miscarriage.
Once the fetus becomes viable, we call infant mortality within the womb a stillbirth. The fetus is human regardless of when the death occurs. You might lose the heartbeat on the delivery table or it might happen at your 20 week ultrasound. For recording purposes, the death is still considered a stillborn.
The distinction therefore concerns viability more than cause of death. What Roe v. Wade established, is the 20-ish week benchmark for fetal viability. Why? Because there is no consistent legal judgement to make about the cause of death before 20-ish weeks. Exactly the point the Upshot is making.
Conservatives might overturn Roe but they're only making a bigger mess for themselves. There's a good reason the judgement was made in the first place.
60
I hate to tell you this pal, but this already happens, quite regularly. I will direct you to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women. They have some white papers you can read.
24
I don't think we should differentiate between spontaneous abortion and intentional abortions. If miscarriage is "a common, natural and unavoidable health outcome for many heartbroken people," so is abortion for women with unintended pregnancies that they are financially, emotionally, mentally or physically unable to continue. In either case, a fetus is a fetus and not a person, and women are entitled to compassion, privacy and the right to make their own decisions about childbirth.
112
@sgrimes2 Thank you for stating it this way. In El Salvador, this line has become murky (abortions were previously legal, but that changed in the last decades). Now women have been prosecuted and jailed due to misunderstood miscarriages. Is this really happening in my country? I feel so disoriented by this...
24
This is what happens when schools don't teach reproductive biology. Inserting the products of an ectopic pregnancy into a woman's uterus "so it's defined as not an abortion" is butchery. I suggest that if Mr. Becker has an appendectomy the appendix be inserted in his rectum so it's not defined as removing a God-given organ from a human body.
353
@DramaLlama This is what happens when men are grasping at straws as they see their dominant place in society being challenged. Plain and simple...Understanding biology would not suddenly change these peoples minds.
46
@DramaLlama Thank you so much for the laugh.
36
"Becker earned his Bachelor of Science in Management from Northern Kentucky University and his MBA with an emphasis in taxation from Xavier University. Representative Becker has over 30 years’ experience in the private sector, including the manufacturing, managed healthcare, banking, and finance industries. He is a Certified Treasury Professional who currently operates a tax preparation business for individuals and small businesses. Additionally, Becker holds a school district treasurer’s license."
source: http://www.ohiohouse.gov/john-becker/biography
11
@Karen Dunnam when it comes to medical and healthcare issues, he's an educated fool.
48
@Karen Dunnam
So, he has absolutely no background qualifying him to make any statement regarding medical technique.
Just another sanctimonious, ignorant man who thinks he should make decisions regarding women's health. Will this ever end?
83
@Karen Dunnam
I’m assuming you’re listing his professional achievements to show that he has no standing to make medical assessments. I certainly wouldn’t want my accountant to diagnose my x-rays.
33
Um hmm. Pro-birth but not pro-life.
60
I absolutely believe that women will be prosecuted if this law goes into effect. If a woman seeks medical care because she is miscarrying, her doctor could be a supporter of the law and decide to test her for drugs such as misoprostol , mifepristone, drugs of abuse, or any drug that shouldn’t be used by pregnant women. If any of these drugs were found, she could be charged with murder or manslaughter. Even if doctors do not want to do this, how long before legislators demand it?
There are other implications as well. A short time ago there were stories about frozen embryos that were accidentally destroyed at different facilities due to equipment/ electrical failure or something similar. Who will be charged with murder or manslaughter in these cases? How many counts will they be charged with- one per embryo? Will some type of burial or cremation be mandatory for any miscarriage (they’re people, after all). If a woman commits suicide because she’s distraught over her unwanted pregnancy will she be charged with murder? What about if she attempts suicide, but didn’t know she was pregnant, what’s the charge then?
58
Reductio ad absurdum. Turned around, more so. Is this "person" (zygote, embryo, fetus) guilty of breaking and entering? Trespassing? Causing pain, suffering and great bodily harm? Assault and battery (I think labor and birth would qualify)?
26
A lot of the comments talk about men not understanding women's bodies and pregnancy and men writing laws to have dominion over women's bodies. I think it is important to point out that there are female politicians supporting and voting for these laws and women voting to put these "pro-life" politicians in office. I think it's important that we focus on combatting ignorance rather than the "blame men" tack that gets people to shut their ears to reasonable complaints.
41
@Laura Agree. There are women out there who are against a woman's right to control what happens to her body. But I think the blame should be placed upon the republican party. I don't see a lot of democrats jumping on this bandwagon.
52
@Spencer
I don't see any strong democratic political protest of the horrifying laws being proposed in Georgia, Ohio, Alabama, and other states following.
It is true that many women are in favor of this insulting abuse of their fellow women. Why? they are able to explain from their experience what giving Birth is. Is it possible tht they their families and friends have all had births with no problems, entiotic pregnancies, miscarriages?
8
@mmmlk
There have been protests in these other states. And this isn’t only an issue to be examined on the grounds of the mothers health and ‘births with no problems.’ Women are. It biological machines in service of the State.
7
This column is interesting, informative, and (as Dr. Carroll probably realizes) hopelessly naive.
It suggests that the problem the politicians want to solve is "How can we protect fetuses from being terminated?" Many would still find this objectionable, but it would at least represent a position that could potentially be negotiated with.
In fact, the problem that the politicians here are trying to solve is "How can we gain and hold power by using fear and anger to motivate people to vote for us?" When you understand this, cruel and seemingly conflicting elements of the "pro-life" agenda become crystal clear.
88
This reminds me of a piece of fiction I read back in the 1960's that theorized a dystopic future where every woman who was fertile had to have a monthly pregnancy test and if she was determined to be pregnant the state assigned an attorney to represent the resident of the womb and that attorney had full control of the life of that woman, what she could and could not do, eat, go, wear, et cetera. If a miscarriage or anything that ended the pregnancy happened the woman was prosecuted for murder or manslaughter.
Maybe it wasn't fiction at all, just a visitor from the future giving us a warning of what was coming our way.
95
@George N. Wells The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, now a terrifying series on Hulu. Under his Eye and Blessed be the Day. We're seeing a newly emboldened radical religious fundamentalist movement whose goal is to impose its beliefs on the entire nation. As Joni Mitchell sang back in 1970, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone."
45
@Amy Goldberg, et al.,
As in "The Handmaid's Tale" religion is the cover story for the desire to gain and hold power. The language used by those who write these laws is religiously based and the publicity campaign is clearly using religion but the actual people behind the law are simply about maintaining their power over everyone other than themselves.
Once absolute power is gained nobody other than the privileged elite will be safe to run their own lives. But by focusing on women and unborn children, most people don't think they are in danger. "...and when they came for me, there was nobody to speak up for me."
28
Disparate Impact: when a facially neutral law unintentionally impacts or causes harm to one group. Carroll notes "A woman who has health problems in general is more likely to suffer early pregnancy loss than one who does not. Women with high blood pressure, diabetes and thyroid disease are at higher risk. So are those who have hormone problems, immune disorders or infections." These medical issues occur more often in women of color than white women, so while the intent of this law may not be to discriminate, it may have that effect, impacting women of color more than white women.
Or, maybe this isn't a case of contextual intent, but one of malicious intent. It certainly impacts more women than men and is directed toward women. Just a thought...
46
Of course they will prosecute women who miscarry. This is not about children. It’s about getting misogynist religious zealots (of all genders) to vote. Once they get this, they’ll have to keep them interested.
72
@Laura
Indeed - those who are pro-birth, but not pro-life.
17
@Laura I think you’re right about this. If a woman is convicted of attempting to harm her fetus, she would be a felon and therefore unable to vote in future elections. One less vote for left-leaning humanistic policies or candidates.
19
Once again this is a political game of “Holier Than Thou” where women are persecuted as sinners.
Bu taking this elevated stance, politicians hope to earn the votes of citizens who promote patriarchy.
Where are the sperm donors in all this? They escape any moral responsibility.
51
Welcome to Gilead.
45
Praise be!
"It’s not clear that those who are writing many of these bills understand how pregnancy works."
That little statement speaks volumes. Too many laws are being made by ignoramuses.
85
There is no such thing as a 6 week old fetus. It's an embryo. It doesn't become a fetus until it's 8 weeks into gestation. Georgia's law shows exactly how ignorant some politicians are when it comes to pregnancy, miscarriages, and reproduction in general. Their ignorance fuels others as well. Perhaps before enacting or even proposing such laws, these people should take a course in reproductive biology, real reproductive biology, not faith based reproductive biology. It's a disgrace to our country that we're willing to force women to fear going for needed medical care if there are complications in their pregnancies, they want an abortion, or they merely want to determine what method of birth control is best for them.
This sort of law has the potential to create a Spanish Inquisition about pregnancy in general. All that's missing is the bonfire.
5/14/2019 12:35pm
201
@hen3ry
The bonfires will be done with clean beautiful coal.
19
It's important to recognize the pregnancy dating is done from the last menstrual period, which is typically approximately two weeks prior to ovulation and possible conception. Therefore this is not 6 weeks into a pregnancy or a 6-week old fetus, but 3-4 weeks into pregnancy, at which point many women may not even realize they are pregnant, particularly since menstrual cycles can vary in length and many women have irregular cycles. Legislators without medical training or knowledge and driven by their own religious beliefs unfounded in science or evidence should stay out of making laws that endanger women's health and autonomy.
189
It is also being discussed that one can be prosecuted for getting medical care (which is what an abortion is), out of state. I live close to Tallahassee FL, and see several physicians there. So, I am now required to seek medical care in GA only??????
56
@Vicki - It is patently, explicitly unconstitutional to arbitrarily forbid American citizens from moving between states.
It violates the Interstate Commerce and Privileges and Immunities clauses of the Constitution.
This is why SCOTUS will never see the Georgia law. 8 justices are required to vote to grant certiorari to any case. There's no way 3 liberals will grant cert to such a blatant violation of the Constitution's immutable text.
21
@Rast Abmob It takes only four justices to grant certiorari.
8
If you want the GOP to stay out of your womb- vote.
158
@reader123 To the point and well-said!
1
I am blown away that articles like this have to be written. We are living in an age where male politicians, many of whom do not understand female anatomy, are making ridiculous laws that could have life changing consequences for millions of women and families. I live in Georgia and I'm screaming from the rooftops and I don't feel like anyone is listening. I have also lived through two miscarriages, the pain of those I carry with me a decade + later, I am just so depressed by this and I hope people are paying attention. GIRLS... get to the polls, our lives are literally at stake.
291
@Katie I hear you , Katie, loud and clear, and I completely agree. I, too, feel people are not listening. I want to scream from my rooftop. The news media is focusing on the Alabama abortion law, but it is Georgia's that sends terror in my heart.
I do not know the statistics about how many legal abortions are performed for rape and incest victims, but I strongly suspect there are far more American women who have abortions for an infinite number of reasons, including health reasons, other than rape or incest. The Georgia law will mean that any Georgia female resident who travels out of the state for an abortion can be tracked down and prosecuted for murder. Anyone who helps her, such as driving her or arranging assistance, can be charged as an accomplice to murder. This is head-shaking, gape-mouthed crazy and should strike terror in any Georgia woman's heart.
Vote, boycott, move. We must do all we can.
5
When I was a nurse in a large Labor and Delivery suite in a large city, we had a rash of miscarriages, one year, during the months of October and November. The only thing that we could figure out was it was flu season, particularly deadly that year, that MAY have been the cause, or another type of virus was going around.
When they start prosecuting women for miscarriages, we become a country without human rights. This happened in Ireland, and could happen here too. Get the Church out of the bedrooms, and out of women's bodies.
361
@Joy B:
You said: Get the Church out of the bedrooms, and out of women's bodies.
and get the churches- ALL churches - out of our government.
119
@Joy B: Get the church and in particular the Republican Party out of the bedrooms and out of women's bodies.
62
@Joy B This is not just the church, this is men hiding behind the church, using it as their reason to try to regain some kind of power they think they are losing to women. If the church went away, there would still be men peddling this legislation. When I drive by our Planned Parenthood, 80% of the time it is men only who are protesting against women's health care rights. When there are women present it is just a few. Let's be sure we raise our young men to know better.
63
If the Georgia GOP hadn't disenfranchised so many African-Americans last year, Stacey Abrams would be the Governor now and vetoing this nonsense. Elections and voter disenfranchisement have consequences, people! Fight for everyone's right to vote.
225
I propose that all ectopic pregnancies be "transferred" to John Becker's body, or that of any other male politician promoting these bills.
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I had a early pregnancy loss (around 6--8 weeks) after many year of primary -- and then, after the birth of my son, secondary -- infertility.
It was devastating. But an additional problem was that I wasn't actually "miscarrying". Instead, there was a tiny dead fetus that wouldn't come out and an active placenta.
This is a huge risk to the mother, who faces the risk of sepsis and potentially even death if the decaying fetal matter is not removed somehow.
My OB sent me home with a prescription intended to basically "induce abortion at home". I bled on and off, but still the fetus and placenta didn't come out.
I ended up having to have a D&C.
I am very grateful that no one was threatening me or my doctor for taking an action that likely saved my life while I was grieving the baby that would never be.
435
@Rose Your sad story also happened to me. I was lucky to get a D&C in a good hospital. I shudder to think what will happen to women in the same situation today.
145
@Rose I had a missed miscarriage too. Mine was discovered at 11 weeks 5 days. Thankfully I was able to have a D&C the next day. I have never grieved so hard for anyone or anything. Not even when my dad or my very beloved grandma died. I was deeply depressed for months and I still can’t talk about it or even think about it without tearing up a little. I can’t imagine being prosecuted for miscarrying. To be told that this was my fault. I honestly think I might have committed suicide if that had happened.
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@Rose I had a similar experience. This law scares the heck out of me.
67
Who would have benefited if I had been charged with murder? At age 14 in the late 1950s I was seduced by a man of 32. A doctor told me "You've made your bed, now lie on it." Pregnant and parentless, I went to a drug store and bought multiple medications labeled "Not to be taken by pregnant women" and took them in large quantities. The minuscule fetus was aborted. I was fortunate that I neither died nor had a deformed child, and that 12 years later I could bear a wanted and loved child within a happy marriage.
755
If what you state is true, S, then wouldn’t it follow that anyone in Georgia who is alive and who either had an abortion or participated in an abortion could similarly be prosecuted?
16
@S
Please don't write things like this. I understand why you do, but Ms Anderson really doesn't need your adding to her undoubted distress about all this. Thank you.
39
@mary
No, I'm sorry, you are wrong. It is essential to illuminate the full consequences of these evil woman hating laws.
27
I’d be interested in a follow-up article on additional implications of the human designation at 6 weeks. Could the fetus be considered a dependent for tax purposes? Will the birth certificate be superseded by a “human certificate”? Etc.
46
@Dean Harris Exactly!!! Medical care should begin, support for the child should begin, work duties should reflect the change, etc etc..... And should the mother miscarry, she should be granted bereavement and social security benefits. Yep, it's totally over the top --- thought was put into the NO abortion law, but no thought at all to the reality of this. You fall down the steps, miscarry, go straight to jail!!!!
34
@Dean Harris At 6 weeks there is no fetus. Maybe an embryo. So early in a pregnancy, there may not even be a visible embryo, just placental tissue. There are many points of view whether or not this is human. Would the IRS make the ruling?
I had a miscarriage like that 55 years ago. The doctor apologized for asking if I'd tried to abort the pregnancy. In Massachusetts that was the law. I was very young, but married and wanting a baby. The experience was devastating.
37
Imagine how lawmaking would differ if these legislators were willing and able to take the time to learn basic biology, not to mention the history of pre-Roe v Wade (when illegal procedures led to the deaths and maiming of at least thousands of women a year). Instead, they poke their heads in the sand and pretend to be adhering to some kind of morality or faith, but what kind of morality or faith precludes knowledge and thoughtful, reasonable behavior? None that I would ever be part of.
97
@Susi The people writing and passing these laws don't want to know basic biology or history or facts of any kind. Those would get in the way of the outcome they want.
30
Do you know what a missed abortion is? I had three. None took place before 6 weeks; two out of three were toward the end of the first trimester, but the third was over the line. In all three cases, I did not miscarry but instead had to have the remains scraped surgically from my womb. I am less concerned that the GA law and others like it might result in my prosecution than I am that it might result in my having to carry dead tissue that could fester and turn septic while causing even more mental trauma than a miscarriage already presents. The people making these laws have zero understanding of pregnancy and its complications.
517
@Ivy
Precisely what happened to that Indian woman in Ireland who died because she could not get an abortion to save her life!
31
Yes. I had this happen at 11 weeks after my failed fourth (and final) IVF attempt. I was physically and emotionally fragile (eg crazy)from the meds, hormones and the loss. If someone had come nosing into this I probably would have ended up in the psych unit instead of a surgical floor (where I was placed after pitching a screaming fit when they first planned to put me on the OB floor) . Or the state hospital for the criminally insane after I viciously assaulted said “investigator.” Miscarriages (and D&Cs when the embryonic material fails to naturally expel) are common. What sort of expensive, dystopian bureaucracy would need to be set up to question the hundreds of thousands of women who naturally miscarry but need to have a D&C every year? And what physician would be left to perform this necessary surgery? (Was I supposed to walk around with a defunct embryo and other tissue until it went septic?) Btw, this medical situation is actually called “a missed abortion.” I can just see the nut jobs’ eyes lighting up if they see that term in a record.
14
@Ivy
I have a friend who had a missed abortion in the 1980's and her female MD wouldn't do the D&C for a month because "let nature take its course." For a month my friend traveled as a consultant knowing a dead fetus was inside her and wondering when (in a business meeting? in a plane?) nature might expel the tissue. But it never did, and finally a D&C was needed.
It was her first pregnancy and she seemed healthy in every way, married and monogamous and happily expectant. But her own mother asked "what did you do to cause the miscarriage, was it because you have a career?" If a mother can ask those questions, imagine what nosy zealots can ask.
My friend was never able to bear children, perhaps from sepsis or complications of the "missed abortion."
3
I’d be interested in a follow-up article on additional implications of the human designation at 6 weeks. Could the fetus be considered a dependent for tax purposes? Will the birth certificate be superseded by a “human certificate”? Etc.
13
How in the world does Georgia get to violate HIPAA to get a woman's medical information if she has a miscarriage?
211
@Terry Because we are talking about women, not men, and women continually have fewer medical rights than men :(
104
@Terry
HIPAA has exceptions which allow disclosure for law enforcement.
A lawyer told me that HIPAA was written not for the benefit of patients, but for the benefit of hospital administrators who wanted to disclose patient information without incurring legal liability.
Typically, everything medically significant that you tell a doctor goes into an electronic patient record. Any judge can issue a subpoena to disclose that information "in the interests of justice." The policeman hands the subpoena to the hospital administrator, not your doctor.
A doctor who was treating AIDS patients told me, "I will burn my records before I violate my promise of confidentiality." As your doctor if he or she will make that same promise.
23
@Terry - Well Terry, it's a republican thing. Women's personal medical history can be had for the asking. But a corrupt to the bone sitting president's tax returns? Nope, no how, no way. Because "we" republicans say so. The heck with the law.
30
Georgia's legislature exist in the dark ages. Women of the state should start running for office in large numbers or be doomed to a life as third class citizens. Men first class ,embryos second class, and women third.
72
The women of Georgia should move and take their tax dollars with them.
32
@Laura And the rest of us should avoid that state and the products of the companies who locate their corporate headquarters there. There are other states that have more respect for women.
30
Years ago, I had a miscarriage. It wasn't a quick thing, but a protracted process of more bleeding, less bleeding, no bleeding, more bleeding. I had been excited about my pregnancy, but as the chances of it ending with a healthy baby decreased, I became miserable, particularly when talk turned to babies.
After the miscarriage was over, the doctor had said there was no reason to expect a future pregnancy wouldn't be normal, so I perked up.
Some coworkers observed that I was visibly unhappy about my pregnancy and then it ended and drew the conclusion I'd had an abortion. So, I understand how easy it is for outsiders to jump to conclusions. If you're poor and didn't trot to the doctor about the bleeding 3 times, what proof would you have that the miscarriage wasn't the result of an abortifacient?
165
I was prescribed Avelox when I was 4.5 months pregnant (it is an antibiotic than prevents cell division). The baby I was carrying died. Can I sue the doctor?
11
"It’s not clear that those who are writing many of these bills understand how pregnancy works."
Actually, it's clear that they do not. Worse, they have no desire to learn.
338
@Pat Engel "worse, they have no desire to learn" - well said, sad but so true.
59
@Pat Engel Of course they have no desire to learn. Facts might get in the way of the outcome they so fervently desire.
48
@Pat Engel
This is what happens when you learn reproductive biology from the bible or Xtian school.
4
This is grotesque:
"John Becker, a state representative in Ohio, recently sponsored a bill that would also change how pregnant women with unsustainable pregnancies are treated. He suggested that ectopic pregnancies, which are not viable, should in part be handled by 'removing the embryo from the fallopian tube and then reinserting it in the uterus so that’s defined as not an abortion.'"
An ectopic pregnancy threatens the life of an existing person and cannot ever result in the birth of a new one. It makes me sick to think that doctors might be prosecuted for addressing this error of implantation or any other reproductive crisis.
I'm past my reproductive years, but my daughter is not an incubator. Now that she's out of college and I no longer have to worry about school shooters (thanks to Republicans leaving them free to flourish), I can switch to worrying that her life might be cut short by Republicans forbidding sound medical practice.
Whatever side of the abortion debate you're on, this is madness.
As a young woman in 1950s Appalachia, my mother agonized through several miscarriages before she found an ob-gyn with the expertise to make my existence possible. Let's be blunt: a miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion. It's often undesired, while a medical abortion is sought as a remedy. Politics should not intrude on questions of how and why a pregnancy ends. If the state has the power to ban abortion, it can also compel abortion. Either way, the individual loses autonomy.
449
@C Wolfe
That is a very good point: if the state can forbid abortion,it also can compel it.
I recall China's now reversed one child policy and forced abortions, and further recall a Chinese friend 15 or so years ago whose wife was getting her PhD in Hong Kong and managed to circumvent the policy by her giving birth there. Very smart people whose children will do China proud, or any country they moved to.
It cuts both ways. Better let women, their families and their doctors decide what is best.
17
Dr. Carroll brings the facts, but these legislators aren't interested in facts, this is simply putting women back in second place so that rich white men can continue to ruin our world.
These people aren't "pro-life", they're "forced birthers".
Do they provide food stamps and WIC to mothers in poverty? Not without drug testing and 200 other hoops they make you jump through to get maybe a couple of hundred dollars a month in food stamps. Housing? Child care?
Their "pro-life" stance is thrown out the door once "the innocent baby" becomes a person with rights.
113
This article talks a lot about the uncertainties. Would police departments devote resources to this? Which ones? Which prosecutors would go after miscarrying women? How far would they go? Would women just be pulled into investigations, or would they face criminal penalties themselves? What evidence would be used? What statutes would they prosecute under? Which women would be suspected? Will they use scientific evidence, pseudo-science, or straight-up Creationist dogma?
The ambiguity is kind of the point. It is saying to women: "maybe we will, maybe we won't" so you best be on your good behavior. It is saying that you should try to be the kind of woman that won't be suspected in the first place. It is saying that if you miscarry, people will be watching to see how sad you act, how maternal, how bereaved. It is saying that maybe the law won't be used against the good girls, just the bad ones - now which kind are you, sweetheart?
When there are no rights - when there is no rule of law - your freedom is at the pleasure of those in power. Women are being told by this ambiguous, scary law that they had better be pleasing to the right men.
304
@Arvind Or move out of these states. If I lived there and were of reproductive age, I would do so immediately. If I lived there at my age, I may still move, and would certainly be vigorously protesting.
52
@Arvind Frightening and true!
26
@Susi I completely agree with your desire to move, but unfortunately the women most likely to be targeted by these laws, the "bad girls" as Arvind mentioned are poor, or WOC, or otherwise unable to meet the specifications of a "good girl" and that also means are likely unable to move to another state. I have moved across the country twice and was as frugal as I could manage to be and it still cost thousands of dollars, something many women don't have. I definitely agree that the women of these states should be vigorously protesting, and yes, if able, to move. I just wish they didn't have to leave their homes to be safe.
84
It isn’t really politics that is being inserted; it is religion. Our nation was created with a clear separation of church and state to prevent one religion from oppressing people not of that sect. The anti-abortion movement is clearly based on the dogma of one religion. The current crop of laws violate the spirit of the Constitution, if not the letter of the law.
Lets apply the same principle to men and require that all men be circumcised, no matter their age. Of course, most are and had no choice in the matter, but forcing it on them because one religion requires it would give them a taste of what it is to have no autonomy over their own body.
The arrogance of the anti-abortion crowd is matched only by their ignorance. Do as you wish with your body but keep your laws off mine.
124
@nora m
Let's require all men to be circumcised ... at age 18.
9
Circumcision doesn’t go far enough-forced vasectomies for all!
4
As usual the extremes get the squeaky wheel oil here instead of the moderates on both sides of the issue.
What I mean by this is when the right see an advantage or a threat they will double down on abortion and try to outlaw it in any form or even ban birth control.
The left does it also. NY Times State in their zeal for abortion protection , just pretty much legalized late term partial birth abortions if you can get a few doctors to agree which you always can or pass laws to the point of banning just about every gun.
Support a candidate who agrees with the spirit of Roe/Wade not abortion on demand.
Support a candidate who respects the right to own a gun but also has a plan of legality, regulation, responsibility and non promotion of the gun to dramatically lower the death toll.
1
@Paul There is no such thing as "partial birth abortion". There are late term abortions - which is probably what you mean. Late term abortions are extremely rare and are not done on a whim. They are done because of serious abnormalities in the fetus which are incompatible with life. They are done to protect the life of the mother or her future ability to have children. What happens in these cases medically is best left to physicians. None of the medical options in these situations are easy but the options take into consideration what is best and least painful for the fetus and the mother. This difficult choice is best left to the woman and her medical team.
275
@Paul "abortion on demand" is right wing garbage talk designed to put shame on women for seeking a legal medical procedure. Sorry, I refuse to compromise with those people.
128
@Paul
What do you mean by "if you can get a few doctors to agree which you always can"? Personally I don't know where I'd be able to round up a few malpracticing doctors to testify that I need an abortion when I'm perfectly healthy. If multiple doctors say that my health is endangered by a pregnancy--I'd believe it.
You seem to be deliberately hand-waving away the fact that late-term abortions are only permitted when the fetus is not viable or when it is "necessary" for the health of the mother. And in fact most late-term abortions are sought for those reasons anyways--in a state where abortions before 24 weeks are permitted, why would someone wait so long to get an abortion, unless it was a wanted pregnancy that suddenly went wrong?
Ignoring this fact is ignoring many of the valid health concerns that this abortion debate is overlooking, and not only endangering women but also turning a blind eye to their very real crises and heartbreaks.
99
Becker advocates an impossible procedure that doesn't exist.
Point that out to him, and he responds by calling you "Crazy!"
Is this sort of thing normal in Ohio?
44
@Chanzo
Becker represents one of the most conservative districts in Ohio. Around Columbus or Cleveland, no:
this is not normal. In the conservative suburbs of Cincinnati...it's a different story.
Ohio used to be politically diverse. Unfortunately economic decline has incentivized educated moderates to move out of state. This, combined with unconstitutional levels of gerrymandering, has given Republicans a lock on our state government. That in turn has emboldened people like Becker.
45
All of these abortion as crimes bills have one thing in common: they practice medicine and nursing without a license. They should be rejected in full for so doing.
Medicine and nursing - the helping professions - are practiced as professions because they, under our social contract, are deemed to have bodies of expert and unique knowledge. Licensees promise to use clinical judgment based on this knowledge to serve the primary interests of the patient, and not any other entity.
Unless the electorate votes to remove these professions from doing this, the electorate - and their elected legislators, have no business interfering with minimally accepted standards of care and practice by physicians and nurses.
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Do you believe that the government should force you to donate one of your kidneys to save someone else? How about your bone marrow forcibly taken from you by legislation? If you think that these are the wrong use of government power, then you are pro-choice even if you think you are pro-life. Pro-choice is not pro-abortion. It is that people should not be compelled by the Government and the sanctity of your body. By not agreeing to someone else using your body parts, you are not guilty of murder....right?
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Ah, but women sign up to be incubators when they have sex. That’s the definition of “good”. Bad girls who want sex without responsibility must be punished.
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@Liz
I agree with you, ironically it's the girls who have the abortions who are being responsible, since they won't have a baby they can't raise.
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These GOP lawmakers, mostly male, and all breathtakingly ignorant of female biology and the medical issues surrounding pregnancy, and also completely uninterested in the effects physically, mentally, socially and economically that pregnancy has on women are the least qualified people on earth to be writing these laws. Like the rest of the GOP positions on the economy, healthcare, social welfare, guns, criminal jurisprudence and the environment, there is no real interest in protecting “life”, only a desire to arrange things to keep rich, white, “Christian”, heterosexual males at the top of the socioeconomic order as long as possible.
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@NMY Your comment is brief, precise and 100% correct. Thank you.
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Women who don’t have the right “credentials” will be questions and some may prosecuted. Doesn’t anyone reading this article think the fanatics in Georgia care.
This article was written as if the audience was a group of rational legislators who just didn’t know. They don’t care and if he happens, it will again show women who is boss.
Any woman who votes Republican could be signing their own death warrant.
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Nothing horrifies me more than legislators creating laws about things they never bothered to pretend to understand or investigate.
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Dear Georgia politicians,
I propose an amendment to your new "abortion" legislation to provide balance and meaning to your efforts.
Pass legislation that makes a full, documented funeral (obituary, death notice, graveside service, et al.) legally mandatory for every miscarriage.
This will provide meaning and purpose, so those whose guiding principle of "sanctity of life"can now fully express their grief.
Based on the current average rate of miscarriages/live births, based on Georgia births in 2019, they can look forward to twenty-five thousand funerals for the "unborn" this year. It's the right thing to do, don't you think?
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@DogBone I know you're being facetious, but I'm pretty sure something along these lines was seriously proposed by one of these "pro-life" legislatures in the past year or so.
9
Men having been trying to control women and their bodies for centuries, regardless of whether they understand how human bodies actually work. The insertion of politics into miscarriages isn’t surprising, and the vast and obvious ignorance and contempt for women behind the move is even less so, given the current political climate. It’s enraging and horrifying to see American politics so gleefully and mindlessly espousing the methods and policies illustrated in cautionary tales like THE HANDMAID’S TALE and 1984.
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no wealthy woman will ever be arrested, charged, or convicted. the younger and poorer a woman is, the more this will affect her.
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Don;t fool yourself. Women will be prosecuted. True fewer wealthy women but the point if this legislation is dominance over women, not rich over poor.
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@true patriot
Such as it always was.
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@true patriot Exactly. And also, the darker her skin. No doubt.
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We need to stop discussing these attacks on reproductive healthcare as "an attempt to reverse Roe v Wade." They go SO much further. This does not roll the clock back to a pre-Roe era. Pre-Roe, women were not routinely prosecuted for abortions or miscarriages, providers were rarely prosecuted for performing abortions, and usually only if a woman died as a result of the procedure.
It's important to remember that as late as 1968, Evangelical Christians actually supported abortion and contraception as a "deeply-held religious belief." (Indeed, there is a special Nov. 1968 issue of Christianity Today devoted to the Biblical basis for abortion and contraception.)
So what changed in the 5 years between 1968 and 1973? Power changed. Women started demanding it ... and getting it.
The abortion debate is not about religion. It's not about fetuses or babies. It's not about sex.
It's about power. Who has it, who wants it, who wants to keep it.
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@SouthernBeale
well said
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@SouthernBeale
Please try to get women in your state to rally against this misogynist law! We are protesting here in Tucson for us all!
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@SouthernBeale I completely agree. Take away religion and this issue does not go away. At our Planned Parenthood it is primarily men who are out protesting and intimidating women (are men more religious? Probably not). This is a patriarchal grab of power over women. Plain and simple. Let's not get distracted by debating religion. Let's just vote and educate our children well.
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