March 2, 2010

Conservatives have women's rights in their sights when they promote legislation to "protect the unborn," explains Elizabeth Schulte .

IF UTAH legislators get their way, a pregnant woman could be arrested for having a miscarriage--or doing anything that the state perceives as a threat to the fetus.

According to a bill passed by the state House and Senate and awaiting the signature of the governor, a woman could be charged with criminal homicide if she is found to have induced a miscarriage.

The bill's sponsor, Republican Rep. Carl Wimmer, is a former police officer and chair of Utah Family Action Council, which he describes as "continually working to pass pro-life legislation which will weaken Roe v. Wade." He is also a supporter of the right-wing Tea Party and 9/12 movements, and co-founded the pro-"states' rights" Patrick Henry Caucus.

Right-wing, anti-choice supporters of the bill like Wimmer highlighted the case of a 17-year-old who was seven months pregnant and allegedly paid a man to beat her and cause her to miscarry. The man struck her and kicked her repeatedly in the abdomen. The teenager didn't miscarry but gave birth and eventually put the child up for adoption, but she was still charged with murder. The charges were ultimately dropped.

Carl Wimmer addresses the Utah House of Representatives

"Justice was not served," Wimmer said of the outcome in this terrible case. During the House hearing on the bill, he read from a letter by the woman who adopted the teenager's child, who described the child as "full of life." "I am so grateful that the attempt on her life was unsuccessful," the adoptive mother wrote.

Of course, nothing was said about the desperation the 17-year-old must have felt to resort to paying someone to beat her to end her hardship.

AT LEAST 37 states have so-called "feticide" or "fetal homicide" laws, which are typically aimed at people who hurt pregnant women or doctors who perform late-term abortions. Many of these state laws are inspired by the federal "Unborn Victims of Violence Act," passed in 2004, under which someone who attacks a pregnant women can be charged with a crime against the pregnant woman and the fetus.

These laws--which supporters claim "protect the unborn"--are part of larger campaign to elevate fetuses so that they have the rights of living human beings. In the process, the rights of real live women, such as our legal right to abortion, are viewed as less important.

In some states, the target of these laws is the pregnant woman herself. In January, Christine Taylor, a pregnant women and mother of two in Iowa, was accused of attempted "feticide" after she fell down some stairs.

The charges were based on what she thought was a private conversation with medical personnel after her fall, in which she described some of the extreme difficulties she was having with her husband, who had left her, and her desperation of trying to provide for two children by herself without a job. The conversation was passed onto police, and the next thing she knew, she had been charged with attempting feticide.

Taylor was arrested and taken to jail as she was leaving the hospital. She said she spent two days in jail, while her two children wondered where she was.

The charges were dropped--after Taylor's doctor confirmed that she was in her second, not third trimester, when the Iowa fetal homicide law would have applied. But the damage was already done, with the story splashed across the media. "My name is ruined," Taylor told the Des Moines Register. "Just Google it. Now I won't even be able to get a job."

The Utah bill is different from past bills because laws in other states apply only to pregnant women in their third trimester, whereas the Utah bill would cover a woman's entire pregnancy. So if a woman has a miscarriage in her first trimester, she could be up on murder charges.

The legislation would make a woman legally responsible for her miscarriage if a district attorney can show that it was the result of so-called "reckless behavior"--using drugs, for example. This could lead to a situation in which pregnant women with drug or alcohol addiction problems avoid seeking the help they need because they fear arrest.

All in all, the bill is written so broadly that it could criminalize anything a pregnant woman does that comes under state scrutiny.

"This statute and the standards chosen leave a large number of pregnant women vulnerable to arrest even though they have no intention of ending a pregnancy," Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, told Rachel Larris for RH Reality Check.

"Whether or not the legislature intended this bill to become a tool for policing and punishing all pregnant women, if enacted, this law would permit prosecution of a pregnant woman who stayed with her abusive husband because she was unable to leave," Paltrow said. "Not leaving would, under the 'reckless' standard, constitute conduct that consciously disregarded a substantial risk."

As Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the New York Times, "Prosecutors have a lot of discretion, and miscarriage is a sad but common event in connection with pregnancy. This bill would cast suspicion, potentially, on every single miscarriage."

The bill passed in large part due to Republican majorities in the Utah House and Senate, but Democrats also played a role. Three Democratic women in the Senate voted in favor.

This legislation sets a terrible precedent for women seeking abortions. It elevates the "rights" of a fetus above those of a living, breathing woman. And it's terrible news for pregnant women in general--it confines them to the role of producing babies, first and foremost, above every other consideration in their lives--under threat of punishment.

Women are relegated to being incubators, and it's up to anyone but her--health providers, police, judges--to decide what she can do with her body.

Women aren't supposed to lose their rights when they become pregnant. But this is what "fetal homicide" laws are all about.