Woman prosecuted after taking meth leads to still birth in mississippi

She had a stillbirth at 31 weeks and named the baby. She's now being prosecuted for miscarrying. Not for using the drugs, for miscarrying. The grand jury decided that there were grounds for indicting her because she "did willfully, unlawfully, feloniously, kill Hayley Jade Buckhalter, a human being, by culpable negligence." By taking drugs.

no.i don't share your alarm or belief this is draconian or leads to imposition upon pg women
you're unnecessarily linking unrelated diet and alcohol/tobacco to a prohibitive state intervention
I think you're unnecessarily het up on bunch of what ifs

This, from the Huffpost story, is chilling: "Virginia's Republican candidate for attorney general, state Sen. Mark Obenshain, introduced a bill in 2009 that would require women to report their miscarriages to the police."

Yeah, because conniving untrustworthy women, stained by the sin of Eve, just can't wait to murder unborn babies - without the brave Senator's intervention men's precious seed would be wasted by all those evil women.

To be honest I don't see the sinister precedent here. Anyone has the right to fill themselves up on booze, but get behind the wheel of a car and kill or cripple someone and people don't suddenly see drink driving as being against the law as a slippery slope to stop people's right to drink, and this isn't taking into account that the drug in question here is a highly illegal one.

All that said the pregnancy aside crimilizing addicts is rarely of any use. They are often victims of some horrendous thing or another. The saddening thing for me is either side of the abortion debate co-opting this situation to push an agenda. The more relevant thing to do in law is to slap additional charges on individuals who supply illegal narcotics to a pregnant mother, charges so significant people will think twice about doing it, it baffles me nobody else has come up with this.

(I mean, because as I understand it, someone prescribed methodone will be checking in with medics and at least vaguely trying to stay on the programe?)

Yeah, I don't think anyone else is particularly thrilled with the idea either, though.

The issue is, where do you draw that line? And where do you find the money to remind drug users users about contraception and support them 'heavily'?

Btw, this would presumably be easier with someone who was using methodone, which is sometimes prescribed.

The woman in the OP's link was using crystal meth, which is different.

I agree. It's a dangerous precedent. Obviously it's dreadful, and a tragedy, but she was addicted to the drug.

No, she doesn't have the right to (not knocking you, but I did make this point upthread).

But there is already a law against illegal drugs.

She is, instead, being prosecuted for the separate issue of what the drugs probably caused to happen to her baby.

I'm not sure I am following this debate at all. Nobody has the "right" to stuff their body full of illegal chemicals, so I am not following how this woman suddenly has the right to simply by virtue of being pregnant, or am I missing something crucial here?

Ok well I've had a stillbirth despite doing all the "right" things, I was just hugely unlucky. And it is hard to see someone in that situation due t their own fault or indeed angry on behalf of the baby that died. But for me it ia a bright line, you cannot view a woman as a vessel for the child whose rights trump hers regardless the circumstances. Otherwise we are on extremely slippery slope.

How would that work?

I mean, I would imagine that possibly paying for and using contraception isn't totally compatible with, you know, being an addict or 'dsyfunctional person'?

What is a 'dysfunctional person' anyway - I mean, what defines that?

I think an addict/dysfunctional person has a responsibility not to bring children into this world, i.e use some contraception,

Had the baby been born it more than likely would have been severely disabled. And tbh I think that should be a crime too.

could you possibly clarify further please? If one body is inside another's body, do you still support the right of the host body's owner to do as she wishes with her own body?

or does she lose her rights for the duration of her pregnancy?

If I have contradicted myself let me make myself clear. I have no problem with someone doing harm to their own body but I do have a problem with them doing harm to someone elses body.

LuckyLuckyMe, you obviously aren't pro-choice.

You have totally contradicted yourself.

The problem with aborting a fetus in order to continue being an addict without consequences is that access isn't as easy as it sounds.
www.guttmacher.org/pubs/sfaa/mississippi.html

www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/us/ruling-prevents-closing-of-mississippis-only-abortion-clinic.html?_r=0

There's one abortion clinic in the state, abortion isn't not covered by insurance in a lot of cases, even if she had it in the first place, and she'd have to have jumped through a number of hoops she probably wasn't able to deal with.
So I agree with a woman's right to contraception, MAP abortion, the right to be a single parent, and the rights of a viable fetus to also have a right to life.
Which makes the entire argument incredibly complicated and very uncertain.

luckyluckyme
you are apparently not pro-choice at all, according to your post.

legislate against women doing something to their own bodies? I'd say that's the exact definition of anti-choice.

I think that taking meths while pregnant most probably leading to the death of the unborn child is an actual crime.

A woman having suffered a MC must put so much blame on themselves. It must be awful for them to analyse everything they did and ate etc. even when they did nothing wrong. It must be torture but a woman taking a drug while pregnant should be held responsible for the resultant miscarriage. I doubt a court would convict if there was no proof that the drug didn't cause it.

A woman trying to end a pregnancy on purpose is not unheard of. Maybe there should be legislation to stop it.

I am definitely pro-choice. I think it is absolutely up to the woman how she lives, what drugs she takes or if she wants to abort a foetus but taking a drug while pregnant that could affect the child's health disgusts me.

blog.cps.gov.uk/2012/02/cps-statement-on-carl-whant-conviction-important-to-mark-death-of-unborn-child-with-separate-charge.html

80s in the US men are routinely charged for murder in the death of a fetus. Laci Peterson's husband etc.

what the heck is going on in the US at the moment? It's terrifying.

Men: here are your rights over your own body.
Women: dare to assume you have equal rights to men over your own body and we will imprison you. different laws apply to you and you have less rights. in LAW.

It's as if, having abolished slavery and established equal rights under law for all races, a desperate need has emerged to make SOME class of people LESS in law.

And it's women.

It's a very worrying precedent, although thankfully we have much more pro-women (ie rather, not so anti-women) laws in the UK.

Obesity raises the risk of stillbirth. Should obese women be prosecuted if their baby dies? After all they could "just lose weight" before getting pregnant...

I admit, I don't know much about law, I was just thinking of a particular case in the UK where a stranger stabbed and killed an 8 month pregnant woman and was obviously charged with her murder but not that of her unborn child. Then there's the women who lose babies due to DV, I've never heard of a man being charged with the murder/manslaughter of their unborn child. Of course just because I've never personally heard of such a case does'nt mean it hasn't happened. But I know there are women on here that this has happened to.