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

[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. :-)