War on Women, Extreme Edition: prison for miscarriage?
Following the devastating Democrat rout last week, commentators on both sides of the political spectrum have proclaimed the “war on women” battle cry dead.
While abortion enthusiasts may now be forced to retire that exact terminology, and while they may also be forced to temper their hysterical push for free contraceptives (also because the new Republican “let’s offer them over-the-counter” counter-offensive terrifies Planned Parenthood), rest assured they will repackage the message.
In fact, they already have.
The abortion lobby has pushed a version of this forever, but they revealed their next PR campaign in a New York Times op ed on November 8.
Their previous version was that mothers procuring back alley abortions will be thrown in prison should abortion be made illegal.
Clarke Forsythe of Americans United for Life handily refuted that when liberal Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn tried to corner me in 2006.
Basically, Forsythe responded that there are no known cases of aborting mothers being prosecuted before Roe v Wade legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, and the law has always considered women second victims in abortion. Prosecuting them would circumvent the real goal of nabbing the perpetrators, i.e., the abortionists.
The new and improved meme is that pro-life laws will be used to send miscarrying mothers to prison. See graphic above, referenced below…
If the fundies had their way willfully terminating a pregnancy would be murder in the eyes of the law. That means… http://t.co/RTsvVribmr
— The Christian Left (@TheChristianLft) November 9, 2014
This argument has also been out for awhile, but abortion proponents are ratcheting it up as a major offensive now that former claims are felling on deaf ears.
In the NYT, Lynn Paltrow and Jeanne Flavin of the pro-abortion and misnomered group National Advocates for Pregnant Women, used skewed reports to make their case.
If the examples Paltrow and Flavin gave sound too incredible to be true, they are. Here’s just one:
In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The real story? In a 2013 report Paltrow and Flavin went into greater detail, still being coy and adding some dramatic flair. But what really happened nevertheless becomes clear:
In Louisiana, Michelle Marie Greenup, a twenty-six-year-old African American woman, went to a hospital complaining of bleeding and stomach pain. Doctors suspected that she had recently given birth and contacted law enforcement authorities. After repeated police interrogations, Greenup “confessed” that the baby was born alive and it died because she had failed to provide it with proper care.
Greenup was charged with second-degree murder and incarcerated. Eventually counsel for Greenup obtained her medical records, which revealed that the fetus could not have been older than between 11 to 15 weeks and that prior to the miscarriage Greenup had been given Depo-Provera, a contraceptive injection that may cause a miscarriage if administered to a woman who is already pregnant.
Greenup was finally released, but only after she agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor violation of a public health law that regulates disposal of human remains. There is no indication that the human remains law was intended to apply to pregnant women confronted with a miscarriage
So Greenup gave birth at home and confessed to authorities that her baby died due to her neglect, after which she dumped his or her dead body.
There was a there there. Paltrow and Flavin’s colorful rendition is not plausible. I’m confident this holds true for the rest of their examples in the NYT.
Paltrow and Flavin also took issue with mothers being prosecuted for intentionally harming their babies prenatally.
But why not? If mothers are prosecuted for harming their children post-birth, they should be held just as liable pre-birth.
If courts are able to determine whether mothers are negligent or violent toward born children, courts can certainly make the same determination regarding harm inflicted on preborn children.
Mothers should be held responsible for drugging their preborn babies, just as they are for postborn babies. Or plying preborns with alcohol. The route of administration is simply different.
[tweet_box]Mothers shld be prosecuted 4 drugging preborn babies or plying them w alcohol, just as 4 postborns.[/tweet_box]
Throwing in the kitchen sink, Paltrow and Flavin complained pro-life laws are forcing pregnant mothers to undergo caesarian sections against their will.
But there are indeed extreme cases when higher authorities should step in when mothers refuse surgery that would save the lives of their children.
As a labor and delivery RN, I witnessed several examples, for instance a psychiatric patient who tried to refuse a c-section to save her baby’s life. She was eventually overruled, rightfully so.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
“But why not? If mothers are prosecuted for harming their children post-birth, they should be held just as liable pre-birth.”
In principle I agree, but n practice there is a complication. Essentially the problem is that as long as abortion remains legal (also to some extent if it is made illegal) these laws incentivize women to have abortions in certain situations. For example, if a woman has taken a substantial amount of alcohol and/or drugs before finding out she is pregnant, she may face charges if the baby is born testing positive for any such things. However if she has an abortion, she will face no consequences whatsoever. From a pro-life point of view, this is not something we want to encourage.
This would bring up the issue of others in her life causing stress to her. Stress can contribute to miscarriage as well. Do we charge an abusive spouse or boss if she miscarries? What about medical professionals who push abortion? This is stressful. What about a landlord that kicks her out or a crazy neighbor who harasses her? What if she is dealing with parents with Alzheimers? What about the drug dealer or bartender? The list could go on.
Interesting tactic – I wonder if they are getting advice from Sarah Palin – reminds me of the death panels discussions – take a law or idea, and blow it out 8 steps farther than anyone will ever take it.
There are so many problems with this. First of all, do a little googling and you’ll find cases upon cases of women being charged with murder for attempting abortion. Just because you ignore the facts doesn’t make them go away.
Secondly, the author suggests a woman should be held accountable for everything she puts in her body that may harm her fetus. She clearly has no understanding of drug addiction. If you are drug addicted you can’t just STOP using drugs, that’s the whole reason they’re addicted.
Thirdly, not everyone believes a fetus is a full fledged person with rights equal or greater than those of its mother. That’s the whole point of America. People have different beliefs and you have to respect them. You can be anti abortion AND pro choice- if you don’t want an abortion then don’t get one but don’t force your religious beliefs on everyone else.
If an organization’s raison d’etre is to defend a woman’s God-given right to take illegal drugs or attempt suicide while she’s pregnant, it’s difficult to take their claims at face value. Just saying.
So Greenup gave birth at home and confessed to authorities that her baby died due to her neglect, after which she dumped his or her dead body. There was a there there. Paltrow and Flavin’s colorful rendition is not plausible.
Well, the question is did Greenup actually give birth to a living baby that died due to her neglect? If not, then the case demonstrates exactly what Paltrow and Flavin say it does: a woman being prosecuted following a miscarriage. Jill, do you have a single example of a viable infant being born at 11-15 weeks gestation?
But why not? If mothers are prosecuted for harming their children post-birth, they should be held just as liable pre-birth
This is why no rational person believes the claim that women will not be prosecuted for having abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
How could anyone keep a 11-15 week old fetus alive at home? They can’t even do that at the hospital can they? She can’t confess to neglect. You just love to write that tough as if it were so simple. And why us African American in bold? Racism discredits you further.
“not everyone believes a fetus is a full fledged person with rights equal or greater than those of its mother. That’s the whole point of America.”
Really? That’s the whole point of America? We also used to believe that women and black people were not full fledged people with rights equal or greater than those of their owners.
I might have to clock anyone who compares abortion to miscarriage within striking distance.
I lost four babies to miscarriage. I was not forced or coerced into killing them. I did not pay- or ask anyone else to pay- for them to be killed.
They died of natural causes.
Murder is not the same as natural death. It’s not that difficult.
Unless you want to piggyback on the grief of women who lost babies to miscarriage. Unless you want to use us a shield against criticism. That’s what really ticks me off.
Want abortion? YOU DEFEND ABORTION THEN, and stop using other people’s pain to confuse the issue.
The organization is absolutely not defending a woman’s right to take drugs while pregnant. It defends pregnant drug-addicted women from being prosecuted with things like “fetal endangerment” because NAPW understands the complexity of drug addiction and that one cannot simply just “stop taking drugs.” The woman in question may really WANT to stop taking drugs but her body is physiologically addicted and it’s not that easy, and could actually harm the fetus even more if she quits cold turkey.
No one is comparing miscarriage to abortion. They are completely different phenomena, but the “pro-life” movement is using both of them to better police women’s bodies.
Comparing women or African Americans to unborn fetuses is frankly insulting to the women and African Americans, and African American women.
I think there’s a line somewhere between allowing women to take drugs that will kill their children because they don’t want children, and prosecuting them for drinking while pregnant.
I think it’s silly to equate giving an infant drugs with taking drugs while pregnant. And I do think it can be a slippery slope. I don’t think it is okay to charge a woman with an addiction, or anorexia, or different dietary requirements, or gestational diabetes, or type II diabetes with the death or impairment of her child.
I am pregnant with my fourth living child. I have gestational diabetes for the fourth time. I have been diagnosed with PCOS which is also related to insulin resistance.
Being on a specialized diet can be very hard. Especially if you don’t have a good provider, and/or aren’t educated well, and you feel like you are having to choose between feeling like you are starving all the time and endangering your child’s health. It is entirely possible that I have had a miscarriage, or even more than one, that could have been prevented by having the exact right diet, before I knew about how diet would affect my pregnancies. And I’ve heard of people being put on really terrible diets for gestational diabetes that made no sense, and endangered their babies more than letting mom eat what she wanted–but how would you know that if you only had the one doctor’s opinion and you trusted him or her? What if it turns out that eating organic during pregnancy will prevent autism and ADHD? What if a woman miscarries because she isn’t bedresting enough or right or doesn’t have the support to be on bed rest at all?
I think that laws that punish moms-to-be for what they may or may not have done in pregnancy is not realistic, compassionate, or preventive of the situation. Educate, absolutely. Offer support. Don’t drive them to hide what they did so that they won’t seek treatment for themselves or their children, or worse yet so that abortion is the only way they see to keep themselves out of trouble or “help” their children. Expectant moms have enough guilt about what they do in pregnancy without heaping on legal consequences, and I would worry more about stigmatizing and guilting large groups of women who would be better served by care and education than about a very few mentally unstable individuals who would intentionally harm their unborn child in hopes of miscarrying or damaging them. It shouldn’t be about punishing moms but about preventing miscarriage and disability.
Yeah, I’ve heard from someone too, this will be their next talking point, it means the other ones are failing though, which is good. When the reality is too gruesome to defend, you trump up the ridiculous. It’s going to lose too, there was no spate of mass detention centers for women who have miscarriages in 1972. There were plenty of those around the world for other reasons, built by people of particular political persuasions though!
The article Jill is responding to doesn’t discuss drug addiction at all. It briefly mentions women who were “alleged to have used some amount of alcohol or a criminalized drug.” This implies the authors think pregnant women should be allowed to voluntarily use alcohol or drugs. The issue of drug addiction doesn’t help their case anyway, as that would be a mitigating factor which would reduce culpability (if not, that’s a failure with the justice system and not an argument against pro-life laws). The central thesis of the op-ed is not that drug addiction is complex and should be taken into account when considering criminal penalties, but that “[a]nti-abortion measures pose a risk to all pregnant women, including those who want to be pregnant.”
Comparing women or African Americans to unborn fetuses is frankly insulting to the women and African Americans, and African American women.
You’re free to think that, but you seem to be missing the point. The pro-abortion-choice position is not entitled to “win by default” because there is disagreement on the rights of the unborn. If we took that reasoning to its logical conclusion, we would be forced to accept mistreatment of women and African Americans because there is or once was disagreement on their status as persons. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
Do you have cases in the United States where women are charged with murder for attempting abortion? I know of reports from El Salvador, but the criminal justice system is not the same there and many of the cases come from a discredited New York Times article or from pro-abortion partisans (thus I’m skeptical).
ali,
“Republican” and “Planned Parenthood” are in bold type as well. They’re called proper nouns. If you were to read an article on something about China, “Chinese” would also be in bold type.
Jill has been putting races, places, and organizations in bold type for years and years now. But the accusation of racism because of it?? Kind of hilarious.
ali,
As Kel said, I put proper names in bold the first time they’re used in a post. What I found most interesting, which you either ignored or didn’t notice, was that it was Paltrow/Flavin who actually noted the woman’s race. I was merely copying and pasting what they wrote. Why did THEY do that?
Personhood is not a religious belief for me, it is a belief based deeply on logic and philosophy. Some bioethicists, like Peter Singer and Michael Tooley, honestly believe that newborn infants aren’t persons, so even when we criminalize infanticide we are forcing our opinions of personhood on someone else. There is no reason to deny personhood to the unborn that could not also be used to deny personhood to certain classes of born people, like conjoined twins or temporarily comatose patients.
it was Paltrow/Flavin who actually noted the woman’s race. I was merely copying and pasting what they wrote. Why did THEY do that?
It’s not difficult to understand. If you read the whole article, you’ll see that Paltrow and Flavin found that women of color, particularly African Americans, were disproportionately represented among women who were arrested or otherwise deprived of their liberty because of their pregnancies.
I notice you opted not to answer my question about the Greenup case, so I shall ask it again. Do you have a single example of a viable infant being born at 11-15 weeks gestation?
Paltrow and Flavin also took issue with mothers being prosecuted for intentionally harming their babies prenatally.
Actually, they took issue with the prosecution of women who did not intend to harm their babies prenatally.
LisaC… The Paltrow/Flavin story doesn’t add up there either. I need to see the case.
Well, the question is did Greenup actually give birth to a living baby that died due to her neglect? If not, then the case demonstrates exactly what Paltrow and Flavin say it does: a woman being prosecuted following a miscarriage.
No, but she confessed to it (which is considered homicide). They’re trying to demonstrate that some sort of Margaret Atwood-inspired police state is coming to you soon if pro-lifers are voted into office, not that you might end up doing time if you confess to breaking the law.
This is why no rational person believes the claim that women will not be prosecuted for having abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned.
Nonsense. It’s possible to believe that it’s not unjust to punish mothers for harming their children before they’re born (which would include abortion), but at the same time believe that in the real world the legal precedent and political reality would disfavour prosecuting women for having abortions after Roe v. Wade is overturned. It’s just not the gotcha question pro-choicers need it to be.
I agree with Mary Ann, and comparing women who have abortions to those of us who have had miscarriages is VERY hurtful.
One is the INTENTIONAL death of a pre-born baby , the other is (entirely) UN-INTENTIONAL.
(Comparing) Apples to oranges.
This is such a slap in the face. My first (I’ve had 3 and an ectopic pregnancy) miscarriage was what made me prolife. I’m sure I’m not the only woman who has learned the value of life by being faced with its loss.
I’m also very concerned about the false information women are given about their bodies and reproduction. Everything I was taught in public school sex ed was either false or dangerously incomplete. Bad information has almost cost me my life twice. I’m tired of my health and my children’s health being victim to a political agenda.
“I’m tired of my health and my children’s health being victim to a political agenda.”
Me too.
Actually, you can’t always determine a woman harmed her fetus intentionally or did anything to harm it at all. I take a cocktail of prescription meds and if I didn’t realize I was pregnant for a month, I would still have to taper off them or risk my own life (not important to prolifers I know) and risk the miscarriage of a 3 month fetus (sacred and important, I know). Nobody can prove beyond a reasonable doubt my legal drug or something just went horribly wrong with my pregnancy naturally, as happens to women who take no drugs at all or has any medical conditions. Want to up abortions? Keep passing these dumb laws.
Important evidence is always ignored by pro-aborts, and that is precisely that an aborted baby is going to look entirely different from a baby who has been miscarried. A miscarried baby will be weeks behind, gestationally because they die and are miscarried about 2-5 weeks after they have died. Women typically have been getting regular ultrasounds and receiving prenatal care, and they have records to prove that the baby’s heart stopped on its own. Even without those prenatal records, though, an aborted baby will be the proper gestational age because he or she is still living when aborted. Thus, a mother at 12 weeks will naturally lose her child who may have died at 8 or 9 weeks, and the child will have been reduced in size due to the death process, and the child will have the appearance of an 8 or 9 week preborn child. The appearance will be one of a naturally miscarried preborn child – often intact, but sometimes not. Another mother who aborts at 12 weeks will have a child who has the features, development, and length of a 12 week old preborn child because the child will not have been dead for a couple of weeks in the womb. Also, the preborn child will not be intact, but will show definite signs of being ripped apart. In the case of a RU-486 abortion, the baby of the body might be intact, but again, it would have a vastly different appearance because of being more recently alive than the miscarried child. If there is some sort of injection or drug used to induce the death of the child, then there would be traces of that drug in the child’s body, and that could be determined post-mortem. If a woman needs a d&c for a miscarriage, then there would be ultrasound records and prenatal records proving the natural death of the child. Thus the pro-aborts are arguing a moot point!