NEWS: Pregnancy is Not a Promise

CULTURE: Pregnancy is Not a Promise

Ugh.

Here's a story about a fucked up situation where clearly *something* is not right, but lacking evidence prosecutors are trying to go after a woman for "murdering" a stillborn baby.

Now, clearly in this particular case something weird is going on:

Whether the weirdness is some kind of horrific unlicensed abortion practice, or the remains of a series of home abortions, or something else entirely, isn't clear. Presumably whatever the explanation is, the woman and her husband are a little nutso.

But what is clear is that none of that weirdness--fetal remains, a placenta, a stillborn baby, medical care following an at-home stillbirth with an undelivered placenta, or even bizarrely implausible statements about not being pregnant--is actually illegal. And the law in question, as reported--that killing a viable fetus is murder--is unconstitutional (for the time being, anyway) under Roe v. Wade.

So what we've got is a case where a weird situation is being prosecuted under an ill-advised and fucked-up law, and where the understandable "something's wrong, and someone oughta be held accountable" reaction is being pursued despite the obvious injustice of holding women accountable for stillborn babies, and the obvious potential problem of setting a seriously messed up precedent.

This sort of thing drives me batshit. On the one hand you've got DAs being extremely cautious about rape prosecutions because they're difficult to prove; on the other, you've got (other) DAs going after women because their pregnancies didn't result in a healthy baby.

Part of this is doubtless simply because some DAs are cautious, and others are stupid assholes. But you can't help suspecting that it's also just got a wee little bit of something to do with a broader culture that thinks that women's bodies and the things that happen to them are a spectator sport, and that the women themselves are the last people we oughta trust about what's actually happened.

Bitch_PhD knows it's a cliche, but still wishes that people would commit the phrase "U.S. Out of My Uterus" to memory. "Keep Your Laws Off My Body" is a good one, too.

Update

you women with your stupid abortion shit, that's what drives me fucking nuts.

IDAGAS, thanks for the update.

"Stunning" seems a bit of an overstatement to me. Heh.

So if I read this correctly, they were originally charging her with murder for having a stillborn child?

Then it was later retracted and then they charged her for the murder of a different baby?

Well.... that is some fucked up shit.

Jesus Christ. This story is just fucked up anyway you look at it. She let a baby drown in the toilet?

I'd be concerned if the police weren't involved in that kind of a situation, because if she has four corpses of various newborn/fetal statuses, she obviously needs some sort of counselling or medical care. That's an odd charge, and frankly a ridiculous one to try to stick her with and actually take to court, but maybe it's all they had they could immediately charge her with in order to hold her for more than 72 hours while they figured out exactly what the hell TO charge her with. As long as it doesn't serve to somehow further undermine Roe v. Wade, I don't have a problem with this idea. As a poster above made clear, some details have obviously came out since, and the prosecution has dropped its initial charge and pursued one that doesn't threaten women's civil liberties. This kind of legal manouvering is not unusual in the slightest, and nothing sets precedent until someone's actually convicted of something, no?

Oh, jesus christ.

so the cops get called in to an obviously fucked up situation where something illegal is likely to have happened, they hold the woman on the best charge they can pull together with the information they have so they can further investigate. de rigueur for police.

bitch_phd gets ahold of this information and overreacts, accusing the entirety of american culture of sexism leading to the unjust accusation of an obviously innocent woman. de rigueur for bitch_phd.

She is a fucked up person.

You REALLY think she had that many stillbirths or miscarriages; really think she wasn't doing something, at the very least, naughty?

Give me a break.

That is one story for the books. Who will play her in the Lifetime movie?

tori spelling is rehearsing as we speak.

I think she pointed that out in the second or third sentence.

I can picture Tori Spelling keeping fetuses* in bags, so it won't be much of a stretch.

*I'm not even sure they'd have to be hers.

Wow... I'm insanely curious as to what was going on, here...

Was she trying to get pregnant to have a collection of dead fetuses (feti? fetae?)? Is she just generally mentally ill and had no idea what she was doing? Could she have gotten pregnant for real once, and had a miscarriage that made her baby-crazy? Or perhaps abstinence isn't the best kind of birth control...

Either way, I tend to agree that it sounds like the police picked her up on what they could, intending to charge her with something real later (or perhaps I watch too much Law & Order - I bet this becomes an episode, btw). If I had run across this without the update, though, I would be a bit off-put that somebody could be arrested for having a stillborn child...

Think about it - what if some over-eager cop sees you in an emergency room with a stillborn child, and something about you strikes them as odd? Technically, they can arrest you for that - saying you murdered your child. Chances are, charges would be dropped unless you had something else going on, but that does not make the experience of being arrested for an already traumatizing event over which you have no control go away.

The law should not exist, period... and if they didn't have anything to charge her with, they should have waited to arrest her until they did. What, was she going to get pregnant and "kill" another fetus in the time it took them to figure shit out? I doubt it.

Maybe a civil comitment hearing for insanity, but not murder. Probably just another looney in need of serious medication before all this shakes out.

Yeah, why the fuck aren't you cooking, cleaning and delivering babies?? Get with the program already!!

This is not a women's rights issue. This is fucking insane.

And from the Washington Post article, it sounds like it could get insane-er:

It also sounds like this might not be a case of a miscarriage or self-inflicted abortion:

Quite frankly, I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want someone to intervene here. Maybe a charge of murder isn't the best way to go about it, but I also doubt that there's a perfect legal mechanism in place to deal with something like this. In the very best-case scenario possible, you've got someone who doesn't seem to have a problem filling her house with dead fetuses. I think it's safe to say that she needs more help than bloggers rallying around her screaming "reproductive rights," even if that help starts with the misapplication of a poorly conceived law.

Insaner??? Please no.

It's one more insanier.

I don't think it really matters. Someone with no friends here, no journal entries, 1 comment ever (today) , after being a member for almost a year means nothing. Random idiocy...kinda like a ghost in the machine..only dumber.

I'm pro-choice. It's better leave this one alone. If Republicans see pro-choice groups rallying on this the headlines would be crazy - "Pro-choice groups support baby killers". Better to not cry wolf on this and save it for when abortion rights are really infringed.

i don't know if anything's clear in this case.

Wait...why is this weird? Who doesn't have a few fetuses in their front lawn? It makes great fertilizer.