miscarriage to be a criminal offence in utah

[fishie]

utah have passed a bill which states that women can be prosecuted for criminal homicide for intentional or 'reckless' behaviour which causes miscarriage at any stage of their pregnancy.

story here and more here

Wow, did you see the comment on there that said the law has been passed to 'close the loophole that excused a woman who paid a man to beat her until she miscarried'.

Imagine being that desperate that you have to pay someone to beat you up

Just, just unbelievable. Imagine how desperate you would have to be to ask someone to beat you that hard.

Disgusting. God forbid a woman should be shown compassion, eh?

mind you, this is utah, home of the mormons.

The woman (she was 17) who paid the man to beat her was 7 months pg

i suppose if you take it to the logical end then every woman who has a miscarriage, at any stage, will have to undergo some sort of investigation.

most states seem to have some sort of fetal rights legislation in place. but it mainly covers third trimester and third parties harming pregnant women, rather than not wearing a seatbelt when pg etc.

Oh, I wasn't giving an opinion on whether I thought it was a right thing to do, just wondering at the desperation of someone who felt she needed to do that. And feeling sympathy for her, much as I would feel sad for a mother who killed her newborn baby out of desperation. Because regardless of the fact that it is an abhorrent thing to do, totally alien to most people, for it to happen, something is very very wrong. I wonder why this young mother felt the need to do this- I wonder what support the Utah government puts in place for mothers to enable them to have their babies and then either have them adopted or keep them. Because when abortion is illegal, the state can avoid things like this happening by putting more support in place, surely?

OMG how can a man beat someone who is 7 months pg for money to make her mc

imagine being so desperate you put yourself through that

what a thing to live through and recover (?) from

that is the sickest thing I have heard for a long time

yes that story is very shocking. but it didn't merit this legislation, which potentially means that every woman who takes drugs or drinks alcohol and subsequently miscarries will face life imprisonment.

Agreed.

Jesus it's a mine-field. But from a cold objective perspective you can see the (ill-thought in my opinion) logic that if abortion is illegal in the state then so is taking positive actions to procure or cause a miscarraige as an abortion substitute.

what is the position if the act that causes you to miscarry is done in another state but you miscarry in Utah or vice versa? as mayor says what a minefield.

This amounts to state control of the body of any woman who may - or then again, may not - be pregnant. Bloody hell.

Margaret Atwood will be rolling in her Room of Her Own.

onebatmother, I immediately thought of The Handmaid's Tale, too!

What a dangerously backward and fucked up place Utah must be.

bump for evening outrage

Unbelievable - makes me despair

Believe it or not, the sponsor of the bill is a woman, Margaret Dayton.

duly outraged

utter outrage

Bloody hell!

That is appalling.

WHy do some people treat pregnant women as walking incubators?

here the gov says it will likely be overturned.

i posted a while ago about legislation in utah which makes it possible to prosecute women who miscarry with homicide for procuring illegal abortions.

Johnny, the problem with having all unwanted children born and then adopted is that it is going to be difficult to find that many good adoptive parents. Especially as it will be impossible to get round the fact that a lot of these children will have difficult behaviour simply due to the fact that they know they have been rejected by their birth parents.

Countries with laxer adoption controls than ours also have far more adopted children murdered or injured by their adopted parents, or returned into foster care, often to be re-adopted and then re-rejected.

And stories from the days when unwanted babies were routinely born and adopted suggest that many of them did indeed end up in highly unsuitable families.

For crying out loud!

Outrageous.