Rep. Bobby Franklin Looks to Criminalize Miscarriages
As Amie reported earlier today, Representative Bobby Franklin is pushing legislation in Georgia that would criminalize miscarriage. Jill Filipovic suggests we all help him by sending him the attached letter and offering up our used tampons.
Dear Rep. Franklin,
I applaud your efforts to support the rights of zygote citizens of Georgia by criminalizing miscarriages and investigating every instance of fetal death as a potential crime. The bill you are trying to pass is clear that the Georgia State Assembly knows that life begins at the moment of conception, and that any fertilized egg that dies is a human death that we should all grieve. I couldn't agree more, and I would like to help.
As I'm sure you know, more than 50% of fertilized eggs --Georgia citizens! -- naturally don't implant, and are flushed out of the body during menstruation. I am personally concerned that my own murdering woman-body may have flushed out some human beings, and I may have flushed them down the toilet without knowing that I was disposing of Georgia citizens in such an undignified way. This must be remedied. I would like to be sure that I am not killing any more Georgia citizens -- and that if I am, they are able to receive a proper funeral and not a burial at sea, and that our state police can dedicate valuable time and resources to investigating their deaths.
To that end, I attach a picture of my latest used tampon. I am preserving this tampon, as well as all of my other tampons, pads, feminine hygiene products and soiled panties from my current menstrual cycle, so that the Georgia State Police can come collect them as evidence. I would also be happy to drop the specimens off at your office, should you want to examine them yourself.
Please let me know if I can make an appointment to give you these items. Or, since I appreciate that you are a very busy man, please let me know when the police will be by my home to collect them, as my next cycle is rapidly approaching and they are starting to smell. I cannot keep them in my refrigerator for much longer.
Thanks for all the work you do to further the pro-life cause.
Sincerely,
[name]
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This Bill is an attack on women who are in no position to be dealt with in such a deplorable manner. I have 7 children. I have a 7 year old son, a son I've lost to stillbirth and four sons and one daughter I've lost to miscarriage. This is a definitive attack on me and everyone like me who has had a miscarriage. I had no choice in losing my children and to punish me for their deaths is insane.
But when it's not relevant, it's lame.
If he wanted to include natural miscarriages or define menstration as a miscarriage I would be worried if I was pro-choice, but this position IS pro-choice. It's just not the choice pro-choice proponents care to defend.
I don't follow anyone, because those that appear to be on the same path usually end up just getting in my way.
From Bill HB1 :
"'Prenatal murder' means the intentional removal of a fetus from a woman with an intention other than to produce a live birth or to remove a dead fetus; provided, however, that if a physician makes a medically justified effort to save the lives of both the mother and the fetus and the fetus does not survive, such action shall not be prenatal murder. Such term does not include a naturally occurring expulsion of a fetus known medically
as a 'spontaneous abortion ' and popularly as a 'miscarriage' so long as there is no human involvement whatsoever in the causation of such event."
I'm no lawyer, but I can read. While the last sentence presumably excludes "spontaneous abortion" and "misarriage" from being called "prenatal murder", it leaves those two occurrences wide open to interpretation. What, exactly, constitutes "human involvement"? Using a coat hanger, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, tripping and taking a fall down the stairs or being involved in a car accident? All of those actions have "human invovlement".
Finally, how does one conclusively prove that the "human invovlement" directly caused the "spontaneous abortion" or "miscarriage"?
As a side note, I find this paragraph in the bill very telling :
"Justice Blackmun, writing for the majority in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), wrote: 'when those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer [to the question of when life begins].'
The General Assembly knows the answer to that difficult question, and that answer is life begins at the moment of conception;"
While the doctors, scientists, academics and theologians couldn't come to a consensus, the esteemed legislative body of the state of Georgia knows ...
Please explain which position you mean and why it is 'pro-choice' whichever choice you think that is.
If we're to believe abortion proponents when they say they're pro-choice and not pro-abortion, then they need to be as vigorous in protecting the childs' ability to grow as they are about the ability to end the life. However, their reaction to this story demonstrates that they aren't at all interested in protecting the choice of the women who chose to keep their child.
The authors' suggestion that this legislation would really criminalize a natural occurrance is as stupid as saying we could outlaw diahrea or headaches.
I don't follow anyone, because those that appear to be on the same path usually end up just getting in my way.
As a nurse, sometimes miscarriage is unavoidable, it should not be made a crime unless there is illegal substances in the blood.
thanks,
Stanley Daniel RN, MSN
there's a direct correlation between, say, smoking marijuana ('illegal substance') and causing a miscarriage? And IF there is, it's somehow 'provable' that the miscarriage was caused by smoking a joint (vs. drinking a glass of a legal substance like wine?). As a nurse you should know that many miscarriages happen before the woman knows she's pregnant AND before a pregnancy test would be accurate. Why would a health care provider want to make some moral judgement --and perhaps send someone to jail or worse-- for a miscarriage, when doctors and scientists usually don't know what causes spontaneous abortions. Sometimes they may find out later that it was caused with a genetic defect in the zygote? Sorry, but Bobby Franklin sounds like a bona fide member of the American Taliban, trying to destroy the rights and privacy of women and everyone else.