Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
And we do mean all of 'em.
Representative John Cosgrove has recently introduced a bill to the Virginia legislature that will make it a misdemeanor crime for any woman who's experienced a miscarriage - at any stage of gestation - to fail to report that miscarriage to local law enforcement personnel within twelve hours.
Our friend Maura is trying to call attention to this important issue; she's written about the bill here. As she explains, the information a woman will be forced to provide to law enforcement will include (but will not be limited to) her social security number, her race, her educational background, her marital status, the extent of her prenatal care, and her full reproductive history.
Right.
To the cops.
This is insanity. Have a miscarriage, be required to call the police and give them all your personal details to be recorded in a database for, well, who really knows? Go ahead - take a wild guess as to which party Rep. Cosgrove belongs.
Update (1/8, 4:20 pm): Cosgrove has responded to the site that initially broke this story, and his letter is worth reading. The important paragraphs:
TrackBackThe requirement for the twelve hour notification timeframe comes from the method that a coroner would use to determine if the child had been born alive or dead. After twelve hours, it becomes next to impossible to determine if the child was alive due to decomposition gasses that build up in the body.
My bill in no way intends that a woman who suffers a miscarriage should be charged for not notifying authorities. The bill in no way mentions miscarriages, only deliveries. However, after discussing the bill again with our legislative services lawyers, I have decided to include language that will define the bill to apply only to those babies that are claimed to have been stillborn and that are abandoned as stated above.
The "That Two-Timing Bitch Left Me and All I've Got Now is Politics To Enact My Revenge On Every Single Woman In This Shitty State" Party?
Posted by: norbizness at January 7, 2005 09:15 AMI am stunned. Where does the government involvement in our reproduction end?
I detect a future tax deduction debate that might bring some new perspective to defining when conceptions become people.
Posted by: Ru at January 7, 2005 05:41 PMThat's one of the most underhandedly cynical comments I've heard in a while. Unfortunately, I have no reasonable choice but to agree with it.
Posted by: John Johnson at January 7, 2005 08:32 PMMy period was a week and a half late and kind of heavy. Do I have to tell the cops?
What about people trying to conceive? I had a friend who went so crazy wanting a baby she'd take a pregnancy test if her period was a day late. It would show postitive, but she'd get her period within a week. She was a basketcase every time it happened. And it happened many times.
There are actually a lot more miscarriages than one would think. In 2000, there were 4.04 million live births, and 1 million fetal losses after 8 weeks (doesn't count abortions, or people like my friend). That means that for every four babies you see, there was a miscarriage. And they want all of these women to head down to the police station and file reports? Can't you just picture the the local news with the irate husbands, sobbing wives beside them, telling the story of how they have been trying to have a baby for five years, and now are treated like criminals?
The real question is: are they willing to pay for the women's prenatal care, when lack of it becomes a criminal matter? Or is it a crime to have a job without health care?
Posted by: Mary R at January 8, 2005 04:21 PMAn article I read in "Natural History" (I happen to still have it) from May, 1992, "Our Phantom Children", by Jared Diamond, contains the following statistics:
1) Of prenancies clearly recognized by the mother, only 15% end in miscarriage,
2) ...modern hormonal tests can detect many other pregnancies that terminate within a couple of weeks, indicating a total miscarriage rate of about 50%...
3) Outcomes of attempted artificial fertilizations of ova within the fallopian tubes suggest that still more embryos are lost even before implanatation, ading up to a total loss rate as high as 80%.
Nature is pretty lossy...
(And the government would have to be pretty invasive to detect this level, but what a large club they'd have if this ever passed).
Posted by: Canardo at January 8, 2005 06:37 PMCanardo, these stats are close to those at the NIH library. The problem is that this is an estimate, and largely depends on people like MaryR's friend eventually providing her miscarriage expeiences accurately to a physician and that physician tracking that data.
It took nine years for me to have a child. I can't even begin to speculate on how many times I may have miscarried. I wonder how enforcement of this kind of law would really be carried out?
What is the real purpose of this law? The comtempt and disregard of women that this shows is unprecedented. Will this ultimately be a punishment of women who choose to have sex? I suppose we are back to comment #1.
Posted by: Ru at January 8, 2005 07:11 PMYeah, it's the talibanization of America - woo hoo - let's don our brown shirts and get in on the fuuuun!
What's changed with this bill, a little strangely, is the emphasis on *all* women, even those that have played by the rules, are married, and haven't "lost the baby" via any act of their own.
Perhaps we should cast our minds back to Salem - and note that that's the real reason for something like this, to allow anyone (any woman, anyway) to be prosecuted/persecuted if someone doesn't like them...
Posted by: Canardo at January 8, 2005 07:31 PMAlso, how long before this sort of thing becomes law again in Va?
The State of Virginia (act of assembly of 1705, c. 30) provided that "...if a person brought up in the Christian religion denies the being of a God, or the Trinity, or asserts that there are more Gods than one, or denies the Christian religion to be true, or the scriptures to be of divine authority, he is punishable on the first offense by incapacity to hold any office or employment ecclesiastical, civil or military; on the second by disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy, to be guardian, executor, or administrator and by three years imprisonment, without bail. A father's right to the custody of his own children being founded in law on his right of guardianship, this being taken away, they may of course be severed from him, and put, by the authority of a court, into more orthodox hands." [Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia, from _Thomas Jefferson: Writings_, pg. 284-285]
Posted by: Canardo at January 8, 2005 08:02 PM... Some relief, maybe, but as pointed out here, a miscarriage is defined as "a baby that dies before 20 weeks gestation", leaving quite a loophole.
Also, as dissected here, the bill would still make a pretty crummy law.
Posted by: Canardo at January 9, 2005 09:34 AMNow in considering the update, I have more questions. It still seems more than a bit problematic, even in the amended form.
Posted by: Ru at January 9, 2005 04:47 PMMary R,
A very similar thing has happened more than once with my wife. We are not even sure what happened, and we are expected to tell the cops? How stupid.
Posted by: Tripp at January 10, 2005 12:15 PMI don't think I quite understand how this bill was even revised to say what it did. The miscarriage part was completely ridiculus to begin with. But, to say intended for mothers who claimed to have stillborn babies when the child was just unwanted? Isn't it more of a felony than a misdemenor? You know, like man slaughter?
Posted by: at February 2, 2005 02:22 PM