They're at it again.
This is what we can expect from a Romney/Ryan administration. It's unlikely to pass, but at this point it matters less than you'd think.
Once an embryo is considered a person, it's safety is in the interest of the state. This means that the mother can be charged with criminal negligence or endangerment by eating the wrong foods or doing the wrong activity. In the interests of keeping it safe, because child services cannot remove the child, the state must have total control over the life of the mother for the duration of her pregnancy.
This is not some silly overlooked consequence of such a law. This is no bug. It is a feature. It has always been the goal.
Don't believe that they would go to such lengths?
In Georgia a bill in the legislature (which fortunately did not pass, though I don't know how it got so far) sought to criminalise miscarriages. A woman who could not prove that she had not done anything whatsoever to cause her miscarriage
could have faced death or life imprisonment.
It's already happening.
Mississippi 2006, a pregnant 15 year old had a stillbirth. Upon discovery that she had had a cocaine habit during her pregnancy she was charged with "depraved-heart murder" of her child even though there is no known causative link between cocaine and miscarriage. If found guilty she faces a mandatory life sentence.
Or in
Indianapolis last year, the severely depressed Bei Bei Shuai, whose baby died shortly after birth as a result of her
nearly successful suicide attempt (after her boyfriend revealed he was married with another family and left her). She spent 435 days in prison before she made the $50,000 bail, and if convicted faces 45-65 years in prison.
Or
Amanda Kimbrough of Alabama, who was convicted of the chemical endangerment of a child when she took meth once during her pregnancy (she had a history of meth abuse) and her son was born premature and died after nineteen minutes. Though it is likely that this was something to do with his Down's Syndrome, and Kimbrough had actually chosen not to abort after learning this. She was advised to plead guilty and got ten years. She is one of
over 60 Alabaman mothers who were charged with chemical endangerment as a result of continuing with their pregnancies in spite of a drug problem.
And earlier this year,
Georgia actually passed a bill banning all abortions passed 20 weeks
even when the foetus is already dead, forcing women to carry their dead children for as long as their body keeps them. During the debate, Representative Terry England argued that women should carry their dead foetuses to term
because that's what farm animals have to do! Blatant, open comparison of women with livestock. Make no mistake, this is the true face of this lobby, and they could not sink lower if they tried.
This is the wet dream of the anti-choice, anti-women, pro-imprisonment (I refuse to call them "pro-life") crowd made reality. It is what they want. It is what they have fought so hard for all these years.
And I hate every single one of them. I hold them all personally responsible for the horrors they have made possible.
And this is far from the worst of it.
