legislative antics in Virginia

[cellio]

It's only the first week of January, and already we have a strong contender for most reprehensible legislation of the year. If this passes, then in the state of Virginia a woman who has a miscarriage will be required to notify government authorities within 12 hours or face a year in jail. Yes, you read that right. (Info from celebrin.)

I am rarely speechless, but I'm having trouble putting my outrage into words right now.

Update Sat 9:30pm: According to the person who posted the news initially, there has been some progress based on the huge outcry (thanks to paquerette for the update). There's still more that needs to be done, but the response from the blogosphere seems to have made a difference. Stay tuned.

Comments

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

It appears to be a measure intended to curb illegal abortions.
Oh, wait, abortion's not illegal in Virginia.


The concept itself isn't so bad, it's the heavy penalty and the short time period that make it really stupid. I will optimisitically assume that they want the death statistics for things like determining "Hey, an abnormally high number of miscarriages are happening in that city over there, we should send someone to check the water and test for radiation leaks from the nuclear plant next door."

[paquerette.livejournal.com]

See my above comment re: intent. Although I highly doubt that this guy is being truthful about his intent.

I do think the concept is bad. The wording of this is such that any sexually active woman with any possibility of having conceived could be breaking this law every time she menstruates. Women on hormonal birth control too, since they may have a fertilized egg, aka a "product of conception." It would be nice to have data, like you said, to show problems with water or such, but early miscarriage is so frequent, and often women don't know about it, or don't want to acknowledge that that's what happened.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

The wording of this is such that any sexually active woman with any possibility of having conceived could be breaking this law every time she menstruates.

On the other hand, there would be no way to convict her due to a complete lack of evidence.

[siderea]

1) It is legal grounds for any VA cop with a chip on his shoulder to arrest any woman, and force her to go through a state-mandated vaginal exam. Charming.

2) Gosh, do you think there might be some MDs in VA who would be happy to sell their services to the Commonwealth, looking at women's cervices so they can testify, "Yep, she is dialated, and she's not pregnant now, and she didn't report losing it...."?

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

It is legal grounds for any VA cop with a chip on his shoulder to arrest any woman, and force her to go through a state-mandated vaginal exam.

Ideally, you don't arrest someone unless you have good reason to believe that they're guilty, and you get in trouble for arresting excessively for no reason.

I realize that this doesn't happen in practice. If the bit about the summary execution of the exam after arrest is written into the law (I didn't read the law's text, just the commentary), then it's more prone to abuse than is reasonable--such things shouldn't be forced except by court order.

[cellio]

Ideally, you don't arrest someone unless you have good reason to believe that they're guilty, and you get in trouble for arresting excessively for no reason.

Ideally, sure. But in the real world, abuse of power happens all the time. Even if there is some good behind this -- a premise I don't grant -- the potential for abuse, combined with the damage to the woman and the violation of privacy, makes it a bad idea.

Since some (many? most? I don't know) miscarriages that are recognizable as such happen under circumstances where some medical professional is aware of the event, it seems like any data-gathering benefit could be achieved without compelling the woman. Doctors and hospitals are already required to report things like highly-communicable diseases for the public good (scraped of identifying info, in theory). If there's a public-health benefit, a similar mechanism could be employed. Either way, some people will get missed; I'm not going to assume, for instance, that every single person who is HIV-positive has made a doctor aware of that, yet I don't think there's an analogous reporting requirement on the individual.

[paquerette.livejournal.com]

If she doesn't even know; yes, you're correct. I can't see how they'd find out. But I think that it's entirely possible that if a woman knows she's pregnant, and loses it very early, she might talk about it with close friends, she might write in her lj or blog about it, or talk to sympathetic people on message boards about miscarriage. All it would take would be one person pissed off at her to make a phone call, and there they have a confession that she had an "illegal miscarriage." Rather like VA's illustrious sodomy laws, it's the sort of thing that's wide open for selective prosecution as personal revenge.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Rather like VA's illustrious sodomy laws, it's the sort of thing that's wide open for selective prosecution as personal revenge.

In my previous comment, I was forgetting to account for the probable lack of virtue and sense on the part of the prosecutors and police officers. I can only blame a failure of realism--those happen to me sometimes. :)

[cellio]

It's ok. You have to let the inner optimist out to play occasionally. :-)

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Oops! My previous reply (since deleted) gave you the same link as the one referenced in celebrin's blog.

But I still say it's an awesome article that highlights just how onerous this bill would be for women have miscarriages (which is a horrible enough thing to have to experience without having to also call the police and fill out intrusive paperwork) about it.

Such a statistic wouldn't prove much. Miscarriages sometimes just happen, often for no reason. "1 pregnancy in 5" is a common statistic, and it usually happens in the first trimester, before many doctors even start obstetrical care. It's even more common as a mother ages, so a city with a high number of miscarriages might just have more women starting families later in life, more families with cats (toxoplasmosis), more pregnant women eating unheated deli meats tainted with listeria...

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

So, the only aspect of this thing I might consider good is the possible public health benefit of these statistics. If they're not of much use, then the rather draconian provisions of the rest of the law would be uncalled for.

But I still say it's an awesome article that highlights just how onerous this bill would be for women have miscarriages (which is a horrible enough thing to have to experience without having to also call the police and fill out intrusive paperwork) about it.

That bit is irreparably stupid. There's no reason not to let the physician handle it, since they're in such a better position to do it in terms of both information and emotional state.

[cellio]

But I still say it's an awesome article that highlights just how onerous this bill would be for women have miscarriages (which is a horrible enough thing to have to experience without having to also call the police and fill out intrusive paperwork) about it.

Yes. As I just commented above, the impact on the woman is severe. If you've had an unanticipated miscarriage, you are probably in no state of mind to be dealing with reporting requirements in that timeframe! Have they no compassion and decency? What public benefit could possibly counterbalance that?

And yeah, my understanding is that miscarriages in the first trimester are pretty darn common. If they must go in this direction (and I don't see why they must), they should at least limit it to second- and third-trimester events. Those are much more likely to be noticed, and are less frequent and thus more interesting.