Virginia bill would make failing to report a miscarriage a crime

[rebecca_herman]

http://democracyforvirginia.typepad.com/democracy_for_virginia/2005/01/legislative_sen.html

I saw a link to this on another board, it's someone's blog about a bill that has been proposed in Virginia. It requires a woman who has experienced a miscarriage without a doctor's assistance to report the death of the embryo or fetus to authorities within 12 hours or be possibly charged with a Class 1 Misdeamenor (other class one misdeamenors include statutory rape, arson, stalking, giving alcohol to miners, etc!). "The authorized punishments for convictions for a Class 1 misdemeanor in Virginia are “confinement in jail for not more than 12 months and a fine of not more than $2500, either or both.” " The woman is also required to provide information that violates her privacy, "The “report of fetal death” asks for the woman’s full name, her history of prenatal care, her marital status, her education history, her previous deliveries (if any), and a number of other very intrusive data items." (if you read the blog it gives a list of everything) I tried to find a news article on this but couldn't find one. you can take a look at the text of the bill there. If anyone lives in Virginia, I suggest taking action and writing to your local representatives. This is an outrageous law that absolutely should not be passed!

[revree]

1. NEANDERTHALS, THE ENTIRE STATE OF VIRGINIA IS

Except of course for any poor blue staters who are stuck living there, and i know of a few...

[yellowcanine]

2. IF it passes it will be vetoed. IF veto overridden, it will be declared

unconstitutional. Clearly the state cannot require this. There is no baby so the state has no compelling interest in knowing about every miscarriage. The wingnuts in Virginia are imploding.

[Jackie97]

7. If nothing else...

it will be declared stupid and not really enforced. That's about like a law that says that women need to be laying on their backs to have sex in NC (where I'm at). It's so stupid, who the heck will enforce it?

[iverglas]

3. and so it starts

Next up: monthly (weekly?) pregnancy tests for all fertile women.

(How can ya know who's not reporting her miscarriage if ya don't know who's pregnant??)

yellowcanine has it right, of course. Such a statute would be utterly and completely unconstitutional.

[REP]

4. Can I Be Sterilized *Again*?

Some people thought I was being too careful when I had two different sterilization procedures done...

Yellowcanine and Iverglas have more faith in common sense than I am feeling at the moment. Of course the proposed law is unconstitutional and violates many Federal laws and yes most women can't tell if they're having an early miscarriage (almost every single sexually active woman has had an early miscarriage) or just an unusually heavy period so there's no way to enforce such a law, but reality has stopped entering into reproductive law ("fetal pain," for example).

[NorthernSpy]

5. the F word

So, Big Brother wants to you to tell him whether your period has been kinda heavy, kinda late -- and within twelve hours of initiation, no less. This goes beyond even the Heart of Midlothian scenario.

Such a law would be completely outside the liberal democratic tradition (which includes most of the American political spectrum, including most American conservatism). But this kind of intimate state intervention into the private life of the individual is part and parcel of fascist government.

From where I stand, most people are to the right of me, and so my perspective tends to compress inegalitarian politics into a narrow spectrum that devolves swiftly from ordinary conservative, to reactionary, to outright fascist. If I say that fascism is growing in America -- and I do say it -- then I might be correct, or I might be guilty of not making careful distinctions among the various kinds of right wing politics. But as it happens, I'm not the only one who senses that a line has been crossed.

I've been reading some stuff written by long-time conservatives who also are worried about the direction that things on their side of political fence have recently taken. At the moment, Lew Rockwell and Paul Craig Roberts (among others) are warning us that much of the America's political right has developed into a genuinely fascist movement. The fact that the very right-wing Rockwell and Roberts are spreading the alarm about this trend should be especially worrisome to us; conservatives tend to use the term "fascist" much less freely than we do, and I'm guessing that these guys have pretty good knowledge of their own political movement. They're not just crying wolf, and things like the proposal in Virginia make it look as though they might be right about this.


(edit: changed word for clarity)

[Jackie97]

6. What the heck?

Under what grounds is a woman supposed to report that? It's not considered a person legally. Some women don't even know they're pregnant when they miscarry. They're insane.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

8. This is silly.

More comment than this I feel is not required, except possibly to reiterate how glad I am to be living in the UK.