Come On, Own Up

Which one of you conservatives was talking smack about how the recovery in Mississippi was going so well and Louisiana was just a pit of liberal despair and depravity?

Okay, you don’t have to admit it was you.

Just the thought of your face turning red as you read this article about how State Farm isn’t going to write any more new policies in Mississippi and hasn’t decided how many people they’ll stop insuring BECAUSE OF ALL THE LITIGATION, which, I might point out, would not be happening if things were going so swimmingly.

Can we just admit that the recovery efforts for the whole area have been FUBAR since day one? 

Transformations

Well, shoot, being all investigative this morning and then reporting it to you sure has been fun.  But dang, I was disappointed to see that other people’d already thought of that.  It must suck to be a reporter and think you’ve got the inside track on something only to find that everyone else is also flocking there.

Also, it was so cold when I walked the dog this morning that it bothered me when my legs touched my pants, because my pants were freezing.  I have to tell you, when I think about my perfect dog walking outfit, I begin to see a future for myself full of eyes of newt.

Because, in my perfect dog walking outfit for this time of year, I’d have hiking boots with good tread, long underwear, a long, long skirt that had warm petticoats under it, my coat, gloves, and a large brimmed hat to keep the rain and or snow off my face.

It’s true!  I am becoming a witch. 

Stacey Campfield Wants In Your Medical Records

Yes, another post about abortion.  Skip if necessary.

Now Stacey Campfield’s trying to come back all “I’m just making a reasonable suggestion.”  Let’s take a look at his post, shall we? 

1. We give out death certificates to miscarried babies now. It is done
on a weight determination basis. So in the eyes of the state the baby
is (or was) a life.

First, pregnancies are miscarried, not babies or fetuses, or whatever.  If we’re going to talk about scientific things, let’s be sure we’re using our terms correctly.  Second, that didn’t take long for him to go dragging people’s personal tragedies into this did it?   

2. When a person does a heinous crime and beats up A pregnant woman and
kills her and the baby it is a double murder. In other states It is
called Lacy’s law after the Lacy Peterson case. So in the eyes of the
state the baby is (or was) a life. In these cases the child would also
receive a death certificate.

I know it’s inconvenient to his argument, but shall we look at the relevant legislation?   I direct your attention to TN 39-13-214, which informs us that, for the purposes of laws dealing with homicide, “For purposes of this part, ‘another’ and ‘another person’ include a viable fetus of a human being,
when any such term refers to the victim of any act made criminal by the
provisions of this part.” [emphasis mine]

What can we learn from this?  1.  That an assault on a woman that ended her pregnancy is only murder if the fetus is viable and not at any point along the pregnancy.  and 2.  that the state law recognizes that a fetus is not quite a legal person under most circumstances, by the wording “of a human being.”  It isn’t quite yet a human being.  It’s the fetus of one.

Let’s go back to Campfield. 

This bill will give information to the state that is not available now
on how many abortions are given each year as well as information on
race, age, weight.

The first part is a lie.  We know how many abortions are done each year in Tennessee.  That’s information collected by the Health Department. 

The third–age–is also a lie.  We know that.  If you look at TN 39-15-201, if you’re going to perform an abortion in Tennessee, you’d better be damn sure how old that fetus is before you perform the abortion, because depending on how far along the pregnancy is, there are different legal requirements.

 Why is Campfield hung up on the weight of the fetus?  I can’t be sure.

But let’s talk a second about the implications of him wanting to know the race.  You can’t tell the race of a fetus by looking at it.  You could only tell based on the race of the folks who’ve contributed DNA to it.

And here, I think, we see the real motivation behind Campfield’s legislation–it is to collect data, but not on the fetuses; it’s an attempt to backdoor into the private medical records of individual Tennesseans.  Right now, legally, if you have an abortion, the abortion is reported to the state, but the names of the parents are not (TN 68-3-505).   If you miscarry and the fetus is a certain age or weight, a death certificate is issued and the names of the parents are recorded and reported to the state (TN 68-3-505).

If Campfield succeeds in passing this legislation, he’ll have wormed his way into individuals’ private medical records that are legally off-limits to him. 

Makes you think, doesn’t it?