Shit, I’m going to quit my job and become a professional psychic, because, seriously, as much as I hate to say I told you so, I told you so.
Let us go back in time to February of this year in which I said the following:
If a fetus is a person, a legal person with a right to life, how can that NOT happen? The police will have to investigate every miscarriage to see if it was just “natural,” whatever that means, or if the woman did something, even inadvertently, that caused it.
Via Punkass Mark over at Punkass Blog I bring you Christine Hutchison–a woman being brought up on charges because she failed to report her miscarriage. As Mark says:
So what we’re left with is a woman who accidentally lost her child being brought up on charges because she didn’t tell Poppa Police or Daddy Doctor that her baby box broke. Apparently, all dudes, including those who didn’t have anything to do with getting the woman pregnant, have a right to full status reports on her ladyparts once any sperm’s gotten up in there.
Maybe the responsible thing to do would be to report the accident, but the only reason you’d try to criminalize the failure to do so would be to remind women that their rights are subordinate to their fetus (even if it’s dead) and the Male Right to Know.
Y’all, let me reiterate: this poor woman miscarried and is being charged with failure to report the death of a child. We all (women who are sexually active) will miscarry at some point in our lives. Most of us won’t even know we’re pregnant. We’ll just flush that “baby” down the toilet or set it out in the morning trash with the tampon or pad it’s collected on. You think keeping your “baby” in the freezer because you’re too depressed to deal with your loss is abhorrent, it’s got nothing on the disposal of a “baby” in the trash or down the toilet.
This is disgusting, charging a woman who has suffered a tragedy that she is obviously still grieving from, with a crime. Tell me, anti-abortionists, is this the world you have in mind? Where every sexually active woman is a potential criminal and our inability to carry a pregnancy to term indicative of a crime being committed?
I told you before and I’ll say it again, the war on abortion unjustly affects women who miscarry.
As I’ve said about a million times before, if you create a system in which one group’s needs must alway be deferred until another group has its needs met, you can’t really say that the first group is fully human/full participants in society. Punkass Mark also brings us the story of the story of a man in Arizona who received 16 years for killing a woman and 20 years for killing her fetus.
That’s right. It’s more wrong to kill a fetus than the woman who’s carrying it.
America, what do you make of that?
Filed under: Fun with Feminism
These folks sound more and more like Ceausescu, ya know.
what the eff? It’s because they didn’t like the squick-worthy way she decided to store it, right?
And oh, lord the other one…The incubator isn’t as preciousssssssss as its luggage. Okay, then.
I’m going hide under the covers until my child-bearing years are finished.
[...] Aunt B. has some words for a segment of the anti-abortion crowd. Tell me, anti-abortionists, is this the world you have in mind? Where every sexually active woman is a potential criminal and our inability to carry a pregnancy to term indicative of a crime being committed? [...]
Seriously. Between all this shit and the stupidity I’ve had to go through keeping my girl bits under control, I’m of half a mind to have the silly things removed. Unfortunately, I’m rather minded to use them later on, and I’d really like to put off menopause at least until after I’m 30. Would that I could send them into some sort of alternate dimension until the world calms down a bit.
I guess I will begin to keep a log of the happenings of my vagina in case I ever have to explain its habits.
Just sayin….
I wonder if they’d be pissed if they saw the placenta in my freezer. (no, there’s not really a placenta in my freezer. But I do know someone who really DOES have a placenta in their freezer. I refuse to eat there.)
Pffft. Placenta in your freezer? How about in your hair? It’s been a popular additive for a while. I’m just not sure where the placenta comes from, y’know?
(That also reminds me of this, but I couldnt’ figure out a way to work that gracefully into the conversation.)
“Defense attorney Lawrence Fisher said prosecutors will withdraw the remaining charge once Hutchinson agrees to continue treatment for depression.”
Okay, fine. Getting treatment for depression is really important, but for these charming souls to make it a condition of her criminal status—a criminal status she does not deserve—is so frustratingly shitty that I cannot adequately articulate my rage.
I mean, honestly, if they think she committed a crime here then how am I supposed to believe that they would even consider the possibility that depression is a serious or even real condition? Can a vessel have depression?
Thanks TCP for the post– Utter Crap! I’ve never been so motivated to teach sex ed before as a bio teacher. Starting a new U gig in the fall. If I’m not teaching sex and development right I’m part of the problem, and I can’t be party to such gross biological misconceptions.
If a grown man picked a fight with another grown man, is it more stupid, less stupid or equally as stupid as if he picked a fight with an 8 year old boy? Killing is always wrong, regardless of the age of the human being.
So, then, Chris, you agree that it’s more wrong to kill a fetus than a woman?
Not at all. I do, however, think the sentence for the killing of the fetus/baby should have been just as lengthy as the one for murdering the lady. You agree with that, right?
No, actually. But that’s a whole ‘nother argument.
Ahh, so now it’s more wrong to kill a woman than it is to kill a defenseless baby? Makes total sense.
Chris, bless your heart. I eagerly await your efforts to pass legislation that will stick women who miscarry in prison for involuntary manslaughter and negligent homocide.
Second, I’m sure your working at this very minute to figure out how to house all of the women who’ve had abortions in prison for life. I’m interested in hearing how you plan to house these women and what you will do with their actual children. What programs are you proposing to aid single fathers, the single fathers you’ll be creating as you imprison the mothers of their children?
Third, would you like me to send you my used tampons so that you can mourn over them as you would the death of an actual infant on the off chance that there’s a spontaniously aborted fetus among the blood and endometrial lining?
Or are you just bullshitting a little bit about how much you think the early stages of human life are exactly the same as a baby?
Aunt B, would you kindly remove your words from my mouth?
Have you ever actually seen pictures of aborted fetuses? Ever seen the arms? The fingers? Anything? How can you not believe it’s a tiny, living, growing baby? Does it need to actually be delivered to qualify? You tell me. I’m all ears.
Or if you’d rather not ruin “the spirit of this place,” I’ll understand.
Chris, I believe it’s a tiny, living, growing potential person. Yes, it actually has to be delivered to qualify as an actual legal person. That’s the easiest way and the only way that prevents women from being 4/5 (as the judge ruled) people.
You’re the one who said that the sentence for killing a fetus/baby should be the same as killing an actual woman. I’m just trying to ascertain whether you think that’s actually true. Hence, I wonder if you believe that women who miscarry should be investigated by the police. If an actual child died in my care, I would be. If abortion is murder, shouldn’t women who have abortions be put in prison for life? And, if a fetus is really a baby, why won’t you grieve over spontantiously aborted “babies” the same way you’d grieve over a real baby?
Listen, I believe that you think abortion is very, very bad. I even respect that, to some extent. I just don’t think it outweighs my basic humanity.
Which you know, since you read me. It’s always been my position.
You can get saucy with me, if you like. It’s kind of cute.
Even better than the Operation Rescue photos, I’ve been pregnant and seen my own ultrasounds. First, some information about fetal development (as distinguished from embryonic development — hey, science!). Embryos don’t implants until 10 days to two weeks (which is why women don’t produce Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) and really early pregnancy tests don’t work so well). Fetuses don’t have a detectable heartbeat until around 6 weeks in. Fetuses are not able to breathe through the arm-buds to which you refer nor do they actually have a developed brain beyond a rudimentary brainstem. In my instance, the first ultrasound I saw would have suggested that I was going to give birth to a shrimp. She was in no way a “baby” and indeed we only knew she was a she at the chromosomal level (as the genital structure was not yet present). But she turned into a pretty good-looking kid after 6 more months of fetal development. So wow, yeah…I’ve not only seen the pictures, I’ve been there and got the t-shirt and the 8-year-old to prove it. It’s not a “quality of life” issue. It’s a “that’s not even remotely a baby yet” issue. Fetal viability on delivery (which becomes debatable between 26-29 weeks) seems to be a good place to say — yep, baby.
Not only did the experience of pregnancy not make me anti-abortion (or put me off seafood), it solidified my support for abortion in those instances wherein a woman is not able or willing to carry the pregnancy to term. It’s a huge thing to take on and one must do so willingly, I believe. As you are not now nor are ever likely to be pregnant, I suggest that you leave those decisions in the hands of the women taking the risk to reproduce and busy yourself creating a world in which more of them can be assured that their pregnancies will be healthy, their deliveries safe, and their babies well cared for. That would be time well-spent and I’d happily be your ally in such an endeavor.
I am cute!
Twice I have clicked over from NiT to comment on posts that catch my eye. I don’t know if that would really qualify me as a reader of yours. No offense. You’re just not my cup of tea. My blog’s probably not yours! I believe you’re probably a decent person. I just 100% disagree with you on the issue of abortion.
Things I believe pertaining to this post include, but are not limited to: 1) I do believe life begins at conception. 2) I do believe that the penalty should be just as weighty for killing a fetus/baby as it is for killing an adult. 3) I do believe a miscarriage is a horrible thing for women to go through and I absolutely would not advocate police inquiries/action for miscarriages.
My wife is 14 weeks pregnant right now. I thank God that we have not had to deal with a known miscarriage, but I can assure you that if we did, we would grieve and grieve hard. Would we grieve exactly the same as we would if we were to lose our 2-year old daughter? No, but not because we value one life over the other. Because we spent more time with one than the other? Because we carried on conversations with one and not the other? Because we heard the words “I love you Daddy” from one and not the other? Because we felt hugs from one and not the other? These reasons are more likely.
I would still be interested in knowing whether or not you’ve seen pictures/videos of aborted fetuses.
[...] on abortion… June 11th, 2007 Today I have been reading the posts and comments over at Aunt B’s site and at NiT about the woman in Pittsburgh who was arrested for abuse of a corpse and concealing the [...]
Bridgett, all of your science sounds pretty legit to me. One question… is it alive?
And Bridgett, are you serious with the “I suggest you leave those decisions in the hands of women” remark? You don’t honestly believe that a man has no place in the discussion of abortion, do you?
Meshugganah!
I’ll just say this, Chris Thomas: you can wave the tiny, pre-born bloody shirt all you want. You can offer up all the patriarchal penal math you want. But if my wife ever has a miscarriage and doesn’t report it to whatever authorities are deemed appropriate for such a grisly, God-awful rite, I want you to be the one to come and take her into custody. I want to see if your desire to control my wife’s body is stronger than your desire to keep breathing.
Seriously, though, Aunt B., ever since Teh Broadz started taking advantage of the Civil Rights Act, they’ve been lumped in with all the other groups (you know, like niggers, cripples, etc.) that straight white males have been forced to treat like they were human beings or somethin’. Any way Teh Patriarchy can fight back, they’ll take it. If that means using Teh Law to get a hold of women’s reproductive parts, they’ll do it.
Sure, they’ll tell you it’s about Teh Babiez, but I know that’s bullshit. That’s the funny thing about these anti-choicers; they’re all riled up to get the government to control women’s bodies under the auspices of ’saving children’, but ask them what they think about that same government’s role in this or this and I doubt you’ll get a straight answer that adds up.
Yes, I am serious. But more in a “why don’t you butt out of other people’s personal affairs” way. I don’t see how my reproductive choices could possibly concern you and it’s presumptuous as hell of you to think that they should. Men have many options when it comes to avoiding impregnating their partners and they should use them as they see fit. If moral scruples are particularly strong, there’s always the abstinence option…love waits, remember?
Church Secretary, can you readz? What didz I says about womenz that dealz withs Teh Miscarriagez? Why do you completely disregard what I say and then label me a baton-carrying (the metal kind) member of the he-man woman-controlling club? Because I’m pro-life, I MUST want every woman who experiences a miscarriage thrown in jail. Riiiiiiiight. I guess that means you, being anti-life, MUST want every two-year old on the planet exterminated in a ball of fire.
The fact is you have the freedom of choice. You can choose not to be sexually active, becuase, like the lady said, true love waits. You can choose birth control. Oh yeah, it’s not 100% effective. I know that. But so do you, and yet that risk is still taken. You’re making a CHOICE. While still CHOOSING to be sexually active knowing full well the risks involved, maybe an adult should CHOOSE to take responsibility for the life they played a part in creating. Oh, I know that motherhood is not for everyone. Know what? These days there’s a thing called adoption. You can CHOOSE not to raise the child. So unless the mom’s life is at risk, why is another CHOICE so desired? I really want to understand why you believe what you believe.
I guess that means you, being anti-life, MUST want every two-year old on the planet exterminated in a ball of fire.
Doesn’t everybody?
Everybody who votes Republican, Mack. But the fireballs are only for foreign brown two-year-olds. We’re content to let our domestic brown and poor two-year-olds (if they live that long) die of malnutrition and lack of adequate health care.
You should check your ticket, Chris Thomas, because many of the other passengers on your train aren’t so magnanimous as to give women so much freedom as to decide even when or not to get pregnant. The people on your train are on their way to reducing women to the legal status of less-than-men by virtue of their reproductive capacity. So you can garnish your anti-choice beliefs with all the florid rhetoric about ‘life,’ ‘love,’ and ‘choice’ that you want, but you’re still riding with the folks who want to put their grubby, controlling paws on my wife’s uterus. Again, many of your fellow riders won’t be satisfied with a prohibition on abortion. As I said before, it isn’t about ‘protecting life.’ It is about relegating women to subservient status. If abortion goes, so will legal contraception (access to abortion has already been made incredibly difficult for most women in the country; foot-in-the-door anti-contraception legislation has been passed in some states, too).
So thanks for dropping in to give us the Nice Guy version of anti-choice. I, for one, am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt; maybe you’re so pumped full of right-wing propaganda that you don’t know you’re full of shit. The fact remains that some of us pro-choice people have children, too, and we love them as much as you love yours. In fact, I’ll bet the vast majority of people (in this country and in this world) who have children love them as much as I love mine. That’s why I oppose any government policy that results– by violence or official neglect– in the deaths of children who are already born (remember them?). Can you say the same, Chris Thomas? Did your love of innocent young life lead you to oppose the lethal (and illegal) sanctions and war against Iraq? Or did you vote for Bush in ‘04 because he was most likely to put the uterus under state control?
I also know that my daughter will grow up to be a woman. I will oppose any legislation that makes her a legal slave to any man’s sperm (a situation that will be more likely if she waits for ‘true love’ and gets married). Just the same, my wife is my partner, not my property. If she ever decides– for whatever reason– to terminate a pregnancy, then I will have the choice either to stay and support her or to file for divorce. I do not– and should not– have a legal right to decide what she does with her own body.
Isn’t that the whole purpose of fireballs?
Chris, I’m going to answer your question in just a minute, but I have some questions of my own. First, again, if abortion is murder, how long should women serve in prison? Second, if abortion is murder, how can you possibly keep the police out of women’s miscarriages? A baby is dead. That has to be investigated. If your toddler died under unclear circumstances, the police would investigate. I have to tell you, you seem to be holding contradictory positions: that a fetus is a baby that has legal rights as a person when a woman wants to have an abortion, but that it doesn’t have legal rights as a person if a woman miscarries.
It also seems, and this is just from my perspective, that you’re trying to have a slightly different argument than the one folks are having with you.
No one here disputes that, from conception, that isn’t a form of human life. It is. No one here disputes that it’s alive. It is. Shoot, I’m ready to argue that it’s even a person under the law, if you anti-abortionists are prepared to treat it as a person under the law and not some special case.
But what you want is not legal personhood, but legal special status for fetuses.
If a fetus were a person, he would have no legal claim to my body. Just as I couldn’t say to you, “Hey, Chris, I need one of your lung, give it here,” and have any court in the land take that seriously, so too, if fetuses were real legal people, would their claim on women’s bodies be just as spurious.
What you want is for there to be a special time in a woman’s life (immediately after sperm has fertilized one or more of her eggs) when she is no longer an autonomous being who can make medical decisions for herself, but is instead temporary property of the State and must acquiesce to what the State decides is best for the State’s purposes, even if it means she’s got to carry a pregnancy she doesn’t want to term.
This makes us unequal. The State cannot compel you, a man, to put your body through incredible changes and risk your life in order to do something incredibly painful that can, on occasion, leave you infertile or incontinent afterwards.
You saw what your wife went through. Yes, the results were wonderful. But it doesn’t give you pause when you think about forcing a woman to do that against her will?
And, no, at the end of the day, I don’t think men should have a deciding say in whether women do or don’t have abortions. I think that you, as a husband, can hope to influence your wife’s decision, but it’s her body and you have no right to force her to put her life at risk.
As for abstinance, please. If your wife came to you tomorrow and said, “I can’t have another kid. I just can’t. Being pregnant is hard. Giving birth is the most terrifying and terrible thing. You just can’t even imagine. I can’t even relax enough to enjoy sex with you, my dear husband, because I’m so afraid our birth control will fail. So, we’re not going to have sex any more.” you’re going to tell me you’d be fine with that?
So, yes, Chris, I’ve seen what aborted fetuses look like. I’m not an idiot who came this postions because I just don’t know any better.
I came to this position because I want to be an equal citizen and I can’t be if the State owns me the moment some guy fucks me. Penises do some amazing stuff. But they aren’t magic and they shouldn’t be able to strip me of my sovereignty.
Chris,
This topic has come up repeatedly here (as other places) so I imagine some people are impatient having to explain what they feel is a basic right. Imagine having to explain to people over and over again why you should be able to have whatever religious beliefs you wanted, when others constantly said “but if we let you believe that you’ll go to hell!”… what I mean is that the position you are advocating is something that is very well understood by many of those (here at least) who disagree with it. Some are patient about it, others just very frustrated, especially given the current trend in abortion politics.
Having said all that, if you are sincerely interested in understanding the line of thinking (which I believe you are based on what you said), I’ll do my best to paraphrase it.
I guess the logic runs like this:
1) The analysis will make more sense if you start with and hold firm the following concern: throughout history women have been viewed as property; of their fathers, their husbands. Women were traded for family alliances. Women couldn’t vote. Women could be raped with impunity by their husbands. Even today is some cultures, besides the whole genital mutilation thing, if a woman is sexually active, even in some cases where she is raped, she may be killed by her “tribe” for bringing disgrace. Not the man (even the rapist). The woman. Who belongs, especially her body/sexuality, to the community.
You may be saying “yes yes I know, but what in the world does this have to do with the life of the baby?” But if you neglect this past you’ll never grasp the context in which abortion rights are seen. Simply put, it’s this: When it comes to women, especially women’s sexual and reproductive rights, men have throughout history and across cultures presumed that they needed to control it, in part because they were wiser protectors better qualified than the women themselves to make decisions. And thus, a woman’s body never belongs to herself as fully as a man’s belongs to himself. And not feeling secure in your own body makes you respond to even well-intentioned concern with a “make all the suggestions you want but keep your hands off my body.”
Okay, now to your points, because they are valid, they just need context to address:
2) Life. Yes, a fetus/undelivered baby is alive. But lots of things are – butterflies, sunflowers. I expect you’d ask, “well sure but they aren’t alive AND human” … that’s more to the point. The question is a fetus/undelivered baby alive AND human. This is what some of the responses above were addressing. There are two answers, each of which are consistent with a pro-choice position, but get there different ways.
A) The fetus/unborn is alive, and human, but not fully so. Either it’s not fully alive (not viable, etc) or not fully human (a small clump of cells, not implanted, shrimplike, etc). The line of this thinking is that, to the extent that the fetus/unborn is less than a full born human baby, any conflict of rights between it and the woman carrying it will benefit the woman. I imagine you can fill in the blanks in this line of argument. I’d only point out the strength and the weakness of this position. The strength is that if at the moment of conception a fetus/unborn is fully alive and human (with all rights etc) then it raises tricky issues – for example, fertilized eggs for IVF that are not implanted can be viewed as murder (full human life stopped), etc. So the strength is that, for most people, there is some qualitative difference between an eggs 2 seconds after fertilization and a toddler. The weakness though is that a fetus/unborn baby 2 seconds before birth seems for all intents and purposes to be just as alive and human as it is 4 seconds later. So there seems very little qualitative difference between fetus/unborn and toddler as pregnancy approaches 9 months.
I think for most people, strengths of the “it’s a mass of cells” and the “it’s a baby” arguments lead to the compromise we have in law: that at first it’s almost all the woman, and by the end it’s almost 50/50 woman and baby, and so as the pregnancy progresses, the fetus/unborn gets more rights relative to the woman.
B) The second argument (which I find persuasive) avoids the whole cells/full human argument, and brings in the history of women as property. It goes like this: Even if for argument you assume a fetus is 100% alive full human with all rights from the moment of conception, the question remains whether that human has the *legal* right to take from a woman’s body. As in, if the child had already been born, and needed a bone marrow transplant to survive, could the government compel the mother (or father) to undergo a bone marrow donation to save the child’s life? I may not be able to express the point I want here, but it is something like this: we say “it’s a child’s life”, and even if in many circumstances that is debatable (as described above), there is a huge step from saying that a woman saves a child’s life by carrying a pregnancy to delivery, and saying that the government can compel a woman against her will to give her body to save someone else, at risk to her own health (which pregnancy always is).
Here’s where the history recap at the top comes in: a woman is perfectly capable of making a moral decision about life and death, and women tend to be just about as anti-abortion as men are. They are stereotyped as having a greater emotional connection to the baby; they carry it inside them. She would seem to be well positioned to understand what is at stake. But if a woman decides she wants her body to be free of the demands of another life (whether fully human, fully alive, or not), do men allow her to have that freedom that men always have, or do they say that the woman’s body belongs to the fetus/unborn, or to the husband, or society, etc? Or does the woman’s body belong to herself, and thus the moral question about whether to risk her health to keep the fetus/unborn alive rests with her?
I think there is a sense that as some feel that the government needs to step in to make the decision (as the last Supreme Court ruling effectively said ‘to save women from making mistakes they might later regret’), that again men are assuming that women are not capable of being responsible with their bodies, and thus someone else needs to step in and take ownership of their bodies and choices. This may also explain the “hey you’re a man, butt out” responses you will often get; it can be interpreted rather like a man who looks over the shoulder of a woman doing household repairs – implying she isn’t capable of taking care of these things without your help.
And this discussion about miscarriages is a case of that; women just trying to live their lives, but finding that men/society are saying that women owe them an accounting of how their bodies are working: the women do not own their bodies, but are allowed to have them by society, on the condition they report back on their use.
Some of that is of course hyperbole, but if you are really interested in understanding where people are coming from, I think that is where people are coming from. Of course most parents would give bone marrow to save their children, and most expectant mothers and fathers think of their unborn babies as babies, and would not want to lose that life. It’s more often the men who run off and leave single mothers. Given how disproportionately the burden of children falls on women, I understand why many feel that they don’t owe anyone else an explanation or obedience for how they use their bodies, and why if they feel they cannot or do not want to carry a pregnancy to delivery, other people should trust them with that difficult decision.
This is where bridgett’s point comes in, and I think it is a key one: that people (and men especially) who feel that they wish women would make different decisions, could best put that energy to use making the burdens of children less. For example, making it easier for women to have children and keep their jobs, better health care (especially prenatal care), etc etc. Point being, that if it is about valuing life and not bossing women around, then trust women, ask them what they need to carry life, and try to give it to them.
That’s what I believe, and I think many (not all) people here believe. Wanted to give you a real chance to understand. And thanks for asking and reading.
Jebbo, dang it. You should post that at your place, too. That’s a really clear overview of a lot of complicated issues. Thanks.
This does not in the least make the above conversation irrelevant, but it’s still important to know that the murder victim mentioned above was not quite two months pregnant. That makes the nonsentient victim an embryo, not a fetus.
That doesn’t change my opinion about the case, but it does undermine the oh-so-compelling bloody baby arms imagery.
B, I’m so lazy about posting at mine, it’s ridiculous. I’m gonna have to start paying rent at Commentville.
And “I want to be an equal citizen and I can’t be if the State owns me the moment some guy fucks me” is about the most succinct formulation I’ve ever heard. I’ll be giggling about that all day.
I’ll quit now. You are absolutely entitled to your views. I disagree. My being pro-choice has nothing to do with wanting to control a woman’s body, it has nothing to do with viewing women as property and despite the smoke and mirror game Secretary would like to play, it has not has nothing to do the war in Iraq. It’s not a political issue to me.
If a 20 year old male were to empregnate his girlfriend and she chose to have the baby (against his wishes), would it be okay with you if he abandoned her and didn’t support her or the child? What if he’s not ready to be a father? Do you think he should have the same right to an “out” as she does?
Wait, I said I was going to stop, didn’t I…
[...] Blue Collar Muse takes on Aunt B.’s missive on the news of a woman was charged with a crime in the wake of police finding a late term fetus [...]
Chris,
I’d also be interested in hearing the answer to that one. I think you have an excellent point, although in practice I’d probably break towards men not being required to pay support.
I think it boils down to this. Two people are needed to conceive a child. Two are needed (ideally) to support it. Only one is required to bear the physical burden. This creates a certain unavoidable inequality that we have to figure out how to deal with fairly. Let’s say that personal freedom from physical burden gives a woman an out. However, in practice it is often the fiscal burdens as much as the physical ones that lead to a decision to not carry a pregnancy to term.
If one highly values personal freedom from government interference, then I think one cannot argue that a husband should be able to compel a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will. I should note that taking someone’s freedom usually requires a higher hurdle (e.g. ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’) than taking their money (’preponderance’), so it’s less unfair to require someone a parent give their money than to require they give their body. But there is still an unfairness there.
If a woman can say “Yes I had sex, but I do not want the responsibilities of parenthood (as opposed to pregnancy)” why cannot a man say the same?
It may be a necessary unfairness of giving someone control of their bodies while valuing life, and a more palatable unfairness than forcing someone to have a baby they do not want. But in our railing against the patriarchy, it’s worth pausing to note that under the formulation we have above, men would lose children they want (to what they may view as murder), and be given responsibility for children they do not want, while women would be given choices to avoid both situations.
I’ll shut up and listen for a while.
I do think men should have a set period to opt out of fatherhood. I think this puts me in opposition to a lot of folks, but I firmly believe that a man should be able to take, say, six months from finding out about a child (or impending child) to decide if he’s up for the financial and emotional investment. If he’s not, he should be able to get out of it.
But that’s got to require severing all ties. If he shows back up in the kid’s life, he should be automatically required to support that kid for 18 years, regardless of the age of the kid when he shows up (so, if you father a kid, sever ties and then imagine you’ll show up when he’s 18 and befriend him, you’d be SOL because you’d then have to pay him support until he was 36).
I’ll poke my $.02 in over here and note that the lady was NOT asked to do anything with her body nor was she asked to be responsible for anything she or anyone else did with her body.
She was charged with crimes that arose from what she did with something that was not a part of her body, the miscarried fetus or child – choose your side’s term.
This isn’t about forcing women to submit to men or submit to the state’s rule over her body. It’s about whether or not she should have the right to dispose of human remains in the manner in which she did. If her grandfather had keeled over in the living room and she had not reported it, choosing instead to stuff Grampy in the freezer, there would have been similar consequences.
The police got involved because they got a tip. They didn’t know what was going on and so they investigated. There were two charges filed and then one was dropped and the second one may be. Probably because the authorities also came to the conclusion that the course they were pursuing was the wrong one. I think it’s possible you can make a pretty good case they should have waited before filing charges and treated the situation differently. Then again, I only have the facts as reported in the original article. Who knows what else may have gone on that might impact all of our opinions.
Bottom line, though, is this is not about abortion, women’s rights, women’s reproductive rights or anything other than what the young lady did with the body of her child. Trying to jump from that to other issues makes for great threads, comments and flames but it is making the case be about more than it is.
Wondering if I’ll need to duck under cover after this …
Blue Collar Muse
Hmmm… is there really a choice here? Apparently you think not, B.C.M.:
Bullshit. If the police, prosecutors, and judge regard the lump of dead flesh as a child, then it ups the ante legally and makes the woman a suspect in a crime. If they regarded it as a lump of dead flesh– whether or not the expectant mother wanted to keep the pregnancy– then there was no law broken, and no need even for an arrest. The decision to pursue criminal charges is clearly a political one.
Proceeding at all with any charges does no one any good. As Aunt B. clearly and unequivocally points out–
–placing the dead fetus in the freezer may seem bizarre, but it was likely the act of a distraught expectant mother’s grief at having lost a desired pregnancy. Many miscarriages occur to women who didn’t even realize they were pregnant, so the manner of disposal is practically irrelevant.
So the only reason to proceed with any charges (even those that may be conditionally dismissed) is to make a political statement about the relationship of fetal ‘rights’ to a woman’s rights. The ugliness of this case is only multiplied by the insult and pain it must be inflicting on what is likely a grieving erstwhile expectant mother (i.e. a woman who wanted to keep her pregnancy). So much for compassionate conservatism.
Secretary –
Of course there’s a choice. We just choose different sides. I choose ‘child’ you choose ‘not child’. It’s often difficult to get past even the language in these sorts of exchanges so I like to start off acknowledging that I understand there are differences. Thank you for illustrating that I am right in that observation.
I am unfamiliar with the exact wording of the actual statue under which the young lady was charged. I suspect that is true of everyone here. I only know that the original article stated the charge was Concealing the Death of a Child. For all I know, that is language from a statute that has been around for 50 years, long before Roe v Wade. Thus the lady being charged with that specific charge is not necessarily the result of a political agenda on the part of the police or anyone else as much as you might like it to be.
My assumption, from my reading of the original article, is that the charges the woman faced/faces have nothing to do with the actual death of the child but with what she did with it after it was physically separated from her. That many women miscarry and are unaware of it and thus dispose of the remains “in the trash or down the toilet” is irrelevant in this case. This miscarriage was not one that happened without the mother knowing. Thus, whatever behavior followed can be seen as a choice with all of the attendant consequences. Thus your references to miscarriages that happen without the mother knowing and to whether or not the mother wanted to keep the pregnancy have no bearing here. At issue is what happened after the pregnancy was over and with the woman knowing what had happened.
As for there being a crime or not being dependent on whether or not the child is considered a child or tissue, that is, once again obviously not true. It does make a difference in the sort of crime one may be charged with, but it does not automatically do away with whether or not a crime has been committed. I am unaware of anyone that has said the police charged the woman with a crime incorrectly. Thus, it is likely what she did was, indeed, a crime. Whether or not that law should be on the books and whether or not they actually SHOULD have charged her with the crime is another matter entirely. That does not, however, mean there was no crime. And again, it does not mean that the crime is related to the woman being pregnant or doing something to end the pregnancy.
I find it interesting you appear to assume I am in agreement with what the police have done by referencing ‘compassionate conservatism’. Unfortunately for you, I have clearly stated that it seems quite possible the police chose poorly in charging the lady. Both my compassion and my conservatism remain intact.
Perhaps, just perhaps, we can have an intelligent and passionate discussion on emotional issues without lobbing stones and assuming we know what other people are thinking. If you can see any way possible that the charges could be applied to the lady without the issue of fetal rights vs. women’s rights being involved, then you have to consider that maybe you’re wrong. Not that you ARE wrong, I acknowledge that you may very well be absolutely correct, just that you might be wrong. And if it turns out that you are, what then?
Comments?
Blue Collar Muse
[...] on All Women With the Bloody Flag 12 06 2007 Provocative high-traffic comments today, about defining values and controlling women [...]
BCM –
Apologies as I’ve not followed the details of this case closely, and don’t have time to read the links at the moment (working), so if I’m off base it’s on me. That said,
1) I’m not sure if the law says that one is required to report the miscarrying of a fetus. If so, I think the debate here is on whether the law is a good idea. If the law says it’s illegal, then yeah it’s illegal. One can still debate if it is *wrong* (there have been bad laws before), and that’s probably where CS is coming from.
2) Leaving aside what the law says and focusing on what the law should be, the trouble I’d probably have with your line of argument is that it seems you’d say if a woman miscarries, and knows she miscarries, she is legally responsible for reporting it, while if she doesn’t know then she isn’t. (a) I’m trying to think of other situations where someone is held legally liable for reporting what happens with their body. I accept you regard this as more than what happens with her body, and that your position is not unreasonable. But if one has a bloody discharge, is one supposed to take it to the doctor to see if it might be an embryo? My argument is that it’s a very gray area, and that any law would at a minimum have to be based on more than the death/miscarriage of life after conception. Third trimester? Well, yeah, I assume that one couldn’t ignore that. But the “if she doesn’t know and doesn’t report it’s fine, if she does know then she goes to jail” seems like bad law, unenforceable in many cases.
(b) My broader problem with the law is that it criminalizes women’s behavior by establishing a duty of care for a child before it is born. It’s an interesting variation on the normal abortion debate as it takes some of the health risk arguments out of play, and as such it is a less offensive law to me. It just gives me the heebie-jeebies as once you say that a woman has this “duty” of care to the fetus after death, it’s a slippery slope to imposing other duties on her.
Having said all that, I wouldn’t have a violent reaction to having such reporting requirements at 7,8,9 months. I wouldn’t support them either, but it’s not as bad as forcing medical procedures on people.
Jebbo –
Great comments and observations. Thanks for them.
I’m pretty evenly divided on the issues and debate here. My first thoughts and comments, basically in a post at my blog, were on the broader issue that Aunt B posted on. I found it disturbing that she placed the blame for the situation on the pro-life or anti-abortion crowd. I thought, and still think, that is a very bad conclusion and one unsupported by the facts of the story.
The other half of the issue is what we’ve been discussing in comments over here are the details of the case. My thoughts there are a bit different. Who knows, I may even find an inconsistency in my thinking that I’ll have to resolve. That’s where you guys come in. If I miss it, and it’s there, I’m sure you’ll help me find it. **grin**
Discussing these details is infuriating since there is so much we DON’T know. All that the story said is that the woman was charged with two things: abuse of a corpse and concealing the death of a child. Nothing in the names of those charges reveals anything about the wording of the charges or what other offences may generate such a charge. The only thing I’m taking from the charges is that they relate to something that happened after the miscarriage. If this was a miscarriage where the child was so deformed or had so many problems that it died in utero and was expelled dead, the abuse of a corpse charge might seem to have merit but where does the concealing the death of a child charge come in? We have no details but one conceivable scenario is that the miscarriage was valid but the child was still alive when it passed. If we assume further that the lady told the police that is what happened, then the charge of concealing the death of a child gains some credibility. Even if the child could not have survived do to whatever condition it had, if it was miscarried but was still alive, then Pennsylvania law may have something to say about that. Much of the debate comes from people commenting and posting as if such and such a set of circumstances is so when there is no way to know from the information we have what the details were.
Thus, we don’t know if a discussion of whether or not we need laws requiring women to report their miscarriages is applicable here since we don’t know if that is what the law says. Certainly we can discuss and debate whether or not we should have such laws but the discussion is hypothetical unless we know that one requiring that actually exists.
That’s why I’ve stated that the cops likely had little choice in doing an investigation. They were acting on a tip. What was the tip? “Psssst … hey, this gal’s got a body in her freezer!” That would seem to be something to look into.
Even if the exact situation was that it was a miscarriage and there were no problems with alive or dead and such, there could still be issues that needed investigating. I cannot say this for certain but I feel pretty confident that hospitals doing surgeries and abortion clinics cannot simply dispose of bodies and body parts by tossing them in the dumpster out back. Disposing of biological waste, particularly human, is not a simple or cavalier undertaking. Not only are there medical and health issues but there is the issue of basic dignity and respect. Thus, even if the cops knew what was in the freezer and where it came from, they still might have needed to look into the matter.
Now that I think about it, however, my wife and I had our last two children at home with a midwife. I don’t recall any special arrangements that we made to dispose of the placenta and such so perhaps I’m wrong about disposing of that sort of thing. Or maybe I don’t remember or maybe the midwife took care of it or maybe we should have done some things that we failed to do. I’ll have to look into that. Even if we should do something one way here in TN, it may be different in PA.
In any event, the issue in the above is not about the miscarriage or even reporting one, it is about what to do with what is left after one has one. I can empathize with the thinking that not reporting a miscarriage later in a pregnancy when it’s clear what has happened seems like a bad law. In fact, it may very well be. But this exact situation is not the usual one. For most people who miscarry, early or late, (Not ALL – I understand) there is usually some medical care provider involved and so there is some accountability built into the process. For instance, a D&C is often recommended after a miscarriage to ensure that nothing is left behind that might cause problems later. That seems reasonable to me. In such cases, there are other people involved who know about the miscarriage and the child’s or fetus’s death is not concealed. In this case, the woman did not do any of this and bypassed the normal processes whereby these things are taken care of. I don’t want to make law based on this case but it is also possible that lawmakers did not consider such a scenario when the law was drafted.
Again, there are so many things we don’t know, making any sort of definitive statement or drawing conclusions from what we know is risky. That’s why I opined that the charges were unlikely to be political in nature. It was more likely a correct application of PA law to the situation. Whether or not it was an intelligent application or not is another matter altogether.
Thanks for the things to think about.
Blue Collar Muse
Jebbo-
For the record, I asked The Much Younger Trophy Wife about the placenta issue for the home births. She said the midwives asked us if we wanted to keep it (the commentor above is correct, some people do freeze them – why I have no idea) or did we want them to dispose of them.
The reason they asked is that there is evidently some paperwork that needs to be filed as to what was done with it. Just a bit more evidence that there are, indeed, laws that govern this sort of thing. Good laws? Dunno – but laws there evidently are.
BCM
PS – We let the midwives, like Calgon, take them away …
OK – another quick disclaimer. Earlier I said,
“We have no details but one conceivable scenario is that the miscarriage was valid but the child was still alive when it passed. If we assume further that the lady told the police that is what happened, then the charge of concealing the death of a child gains some credibility. Even if the child could not have survived do to whatever condition it had, if it was miscarried but was still alive, then Pennsylvania law may have something to say about that.”
I wasn’t sure the definition of ‘miscarriage’ would bear that process. It does not. Medically, a miscarriage involves the passing of a child that has died in utero before 20 weeks of pregnancy. After 20 weeks it’s a stillbirth. Babies are sometimes born alive prematurely during the time in question but almost never survive. For my scenario to be true, the baby would have needed to be a premie that died shortly after birth. I guess it’s possible that’s what happened and the terms got all jumbled but if I go there it just gets crazy …
So – miscarriage it is, then, and I don’t know what it is in the language of the law that allowed her to be charged as she was.
BCM
Wow, BCM. That was quite an educational glimpse at the mental gymnastics one must go through in order to excuse brutal behavior and still live with oneself.
It really isn’t that complicated. The woman was being brought up on the charge of concealing the death of a child. She had a miscarriage, which means there was no child. The decision to arrest, arraign, and charge her for the crime of concealing the death of a child means that someone (or several people) in power was using their legal authority to make a political statement about the legal status of a fetus that hadn’t even reached the point of viability. They were clearly putting their political statement above the legal rights and even the well-being of the woman involved. If you have no problem with that, then you should just up and admit it. But don’t waste bandwidth bullshitting about it.
Secretary –
Since my use of plain English is not sufficient for you to understand what I’m saying, we’ll just have to leave it at that.
Perhaps we’ll do better next time.
BCM