i know that the system is on its head in a lot of ways right now but how in the wide blue fuck does this make any sense? nowhere in any laws does it state that a miscarriage is illegal, and she contradicts herself later in her own post by saying that she was not even pregnant in the first place. smells a little/lot like bullshit.
@party05- not gonna go into my opinions etc. just a few fine points I want to clarify.
1. She does not say she wasn’t pregnant- she says she didn’t KNOW she was pregnant until she miscarried. It may seem far fetched but is very common that women who aren’t planning pregnancy often do not realize they are pregnant until relatively late in their term due to things like irregular periods or poor reproductive health knowledge, lack of obvious symptoms, and other reasons.
2. This doesn’t make sense but not in the context that she’s exaggerating- a lot that is messed up in the world “doesn’t make sense.”
3. I can’t say that it states nowhere in the law that miscarriage is illegal but remember that the law doesn’t say it’s illegal to Kill someone either- there are many scenarios where it is perfect legal to kill another human being. The Texas “abortion ban” also didn’t state it is “illegal” to get an abortion- it allows you to sue people who get or seek one. There isn’t a criminal..
.. component.
So is it dumb someone could think this..? No. It’s quite reasonable. A woman in Alabama- Marshae Jokes was indicted for miscarriage in June of 2018 because she was shot and leading up to the shooting she had been in an argument.
In 2016 and 2017 two women in Arkansas were arrested after miscarriages.
Often times it isn’t the miscarriage which triggers the arrest. Several states have laws such as: “concealing a birth” or “concealing a death” in which failure to report a birth or death are crimes, and where a fetus is considered a person, a miscarriage can and sometimes is pursued as a “concealed death.” The rub there being that there aren’t a lot of “standard” avenues asides perhaps contacting the police to report a miscarriage to report such a “death” since there is no social security or other record keeping for a fetus.
Katherine Dellis gave birth at home to a stillborn baby and was sentenced to 5 months in prison for concealing a death.
In 2016 Indiana woman Purvi Patel went to the emergency room for bleeding. She had a still birth at roughly 24 weeks and after discovering evidence she bought abortion drugs online she was prosecuted for feticide- despite toxicology and examinations showing no signs the drugs were used and the evidence being sketchy at best. Prosecutors argued that the baby was born and alive at 22-24 weeks and Patel’s lack of care caused the death. She was convicted and sentenced to 20 years.
She was acquitted on appeals but not before going through a traumatic and life damaging conviction and incarceration process after losing a pregnancy.
I could go on with examples- recent ones like these- not counting all the examples from the past. So it does seem ridiculous when you read it- until you realize that yes- in many parts of America a woman losing a pregnancy can see her go to jail if she makes a single misstep along the way and it suits the whims and moods of those in position to put her there.
No where in the law does it say a miscarriage is legal either, and the law is open to interpretation in that often what it doesn’t say is a damning as what it does.
As the recent uptick in often vaguely worded or ambiguously defined legislation targeted at women's reproductive health in law continues, the reality is that what is legal or not becomes more questionable.
The crux is not necessarily wether miscarriage/still birth etc. are legal- it is what crimes can be applied when those things happen under various circumstances? Defining a fetus as a legal person is one example- the crime of manslaughter applies to the death of a person where death was not intended but was the result of “carelessness” or an action which the legal system defines as of foreseeable consequence leads to the death. A woman losing her pregnancy could find herself charged with such a crime if ANYTHING she did or did not do dieting pregnancy could be said to endanger a pregnancy for example.
You could call that a ridiculous leap- but I’ve shown several, just a sampling of the real examples where women have been charged or convicted stemming from a miscarriage in a world where that isn’t the case. A few of these examples and many others show a “stretching” of law or circumstance to validate the charges brought. If anyone wants to say my statement is alarmist- I’d hope they’d be right, but I’d put a money bet that within 10 or so years I’d be proven right and we could add an example to this list of an arrest for a crime like manslaughter to this list. It’s pretty messed up, but it is true that if you or someone you knew who can get pregnant were to miscarry in modern America, you could be arrested. More so in some states than others. Nothing about that is an exaggeration beyond the while you can be arrested MOST people probably won’t be. It’s subject to whim- maybe not the best or most comforting way for laws to be enforced but at least in this case it isn’t more often.
i was unaware of these examples and good God that is terrifying. Knowing that, it seems more and more reasonable/unreasonable that she should have to google that.
also, admittedly, i have a personal history with miscarriages, wherein my wife and i suffered one early in our relationship. it was heartbreaking for the both of us, and in misunderstanding the post and not knowing that there are examples of the law being that fucked up, i thought she was making an inflammatory remark using something so traumatic to drive a message. i should have dug deeper.
I’m sorry to hear that- and I don’t mean that in a surface level obligatory courtesy way- I have some experience with the pain of such matters and mean it with my deepest sincerity.
Also- I just want to state that I hope nothing I said came off as hostile or adversarial or like a “gotcha” or anything like that- tone can be hard to convey in text and I wasn’t judging or otherwise upset etc- I figured the initial misunderstanding was an easy and honest one and that probably most people wouldn’t be familiar with criminal prosecution surrounding miscarriage. So it was more a “not fun fact” post and I wanted to make sure that anyone coming along to read got the citations to proof it out.
Also I 100% see how this could be offensive and tbh I’m not sure wether the poster was aware of some or all the info and was speaking in earnest or if it was hyperbolic and just happened to be factually supportable. So that is another aspect to consider and not judge your reaction too critically.
As a disclaimer- I will often step in to add such facts even on stances or individuals I do not support or dislike. If a lie or inaccuracy is made to disparage politician A whom I like or largely agree with I would correct the fault if I saw it the same as I would if a disparaging remark which is inaccurate or a lie against politician B whom is dislike. Much is subjective but much is essentially factual and non disputable- I’m less concerned that I “support my agenda” than I am that I support fact- or perhaps my agenda largely is that of fact. We can draw our own conclusions from fact, but the coroner stone of being able to discuss and relate is to be able to agree on certain facts. I see the erosion of reality for perceptive bias as a major root of many of our problems today. Manipulation of information as a form of debate by leading conclusions on incorrect or misleading information.
1. She does not say she wasn’t pregnant- she says she didn’t KNOW she was pregnant until she miscarried. It may seem far fetched but is very common that women who aren’t planning pregnancy often do not realize they are pregnant until relatively late in their term due to things like irregular periods or poor reproductive health knowledge, lack of obvious symptoms, and other reasons.
2. This doesn’t make sense but not in the context that she’s exaggerating- a lot that is messed up in the world “doesn’t make sense.”
3. I can’t say that it states nowhere in the law that miscarriage is illegal but remember that the law doesn’t say it’s illegal to Kill someone either- there are many scenarios where it is perfect legal to kill another human being. The Texas “abortion ban” also didn’t state it is “illegal” to get an abortion- it allows you to sue people who get or seek one. There isn’t a criminal..
So is it dumb someone could think this..? No. It’s quite reasonable. A woman in Alabama- Marshae Jokes was indicted for miscarriage in June of 2018 because she was shot and leading up to the shooting she had been in an argument.
In 2016 and 2017 two women in Arkansas were arrested after miscarriages.
Often times it isn’t the miscarriage which triggers the arrest. Several states have laws such as: “concealing a birth” or “concealing a death” in which failure to report a birth or death are crimes, and where a fetus is considered a person, a miscarriage can and sometimes is pursued as a “concealed death.” The rub there being that there aren’t a lot of “standard” avenues asides perhaps contacting the police to report a miscarriage to report such a “death” since there is no social security or other record keeping for a fetus.
Katherine Dellis gave birth at home to a stillborn baby and was sentenced to 5 months in prison for concealing a death.
She was acquitted on appeals but not before going through a traumatic and life damaging conviction and incarceration process after losing a pregnancy.
I could go on with examples- recent ones like these- not counting all the examples from the past. So it does seem ridiculous when you read it- until you realize that yes- in many parts of America a woman losing a pregnancy can see her go to jail if she makes a single misstep along the way and it suits the whims and moods of those in position to put her there.
As the recent uptick in often vaguely worded or ambiguously defined legislation targeted at women's reproductive health in law continues, the reality is that what is legal or not becomes more questionable.
The crux is not necessarily wether miscarriage/still birth etc. are legal- it is what crimes can be applied when those things happen under various circumstances? Defining a fetus as a legal person is one example- the crime of manslaughter applies to the death of a person where death was not intended but was the result of “carelessness” or an action which the legal system defines as of foreseeable consequence leads to the death. A woman losing her pregnancy could find herself charged with such a crime if ANYTHING she did or did not do dieting pregnancy could be said to endanger a pregnancy for example.
also, admittedly, i have a personal history with miscarriages, wherein my wife and i suffered one early in our relationship. it was heartbreaking for the both of us, and in misunderstanding the post and not knowing that there are examples of the law being that fucked up, i thought she was making an inflammatory remark using something so traumatic to drive a message. i should have dug deeper.
Also- I just want to state that I hope nothing I said came off as hostile or adversarial or like a “gotcha” or anything like that- tone can be hard to convey in text and I wasn’t judging or otherwise upset etc- I figured the initial misunderstanding was an easy and honest one and that probably most people wouldn’t be familiar with criminal prosecution surrounding miscarriage. So it was more a “not fun fact” post and I wanted to make sure that anyone coming along to read got the citations to proof it out.
Also I 100% see how this could be offensive and tbh I’m not sure wether the poster was aware of some or all the info and was speaking in earnest or if it was hyperbolic and just happened to be factually supportable. So that is another aspect to consider and not judge your reaction too critically.