Miscarriage = Murder?

[modernelegance.livejournal.com]

A new bill has been proposed in the state of Georgia that you could be investigated for murder if you have a miscarriage.

WHAT THE CRAP??

This is why I am more of a Libertarian than a Republican...this is just NUTS and needless regulation!! *headdesk* This is just ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.


May the odds be ever in your favor.

Comments

[eajou.livejournal.com]

Yeah, (here's a random situation) that's just what someone who had a miscarriage who may have been trying to convince for a long time needs. To be investigated for murder. That's REAL nice.

How easy is it to get contraceptives in GA anyway? Cause I know in PA it's HARD AS HELL if you don't have health insurance.

[modernelegance.livejournal.com]

Yes. I'm going to venture a guess and say that he nor his wife have never had to deal with a miscarriage since that is something that affects both partners. Also, I would think it would promote mental health instability...

What an idiot.

[eajou.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when my Aunt had a miscarriage she was a mess. I can't imagine how much worse it would have been if she had to be under investigation during that time. Under that law she would have probably been guilty too, since the cause of her miscarriage was her anorexia.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

I think the rationale behind it is purposeful endangerment of the fetus i.e. smoking, drinking... though it is still a bad bill

[eajou.livejournal.com]

But what if the woman didn't even know she was pregnant?

[merig00.livejournal.com]

I call your attention to the last sentence in my comment :)

[darth-eldritch.livejournal.com]

What insanity. This is going well into government interference with privacy. Miscarriages can result from many things, most of which are well beyond the control of the mother. Not to mention, as stated above, adding to the stress and anguish of a mother, or couple, losing a child.

[amempress.livejournal.com]

So my mother is like a serial killer? She had several miscarriages.

Life is indeed precious. Too precious to waste time torturing mothers who've lost their babies!

[travels-in-time.livejournal.com]

My mom too! At least one when she actually lived in Georgia.

[darth-eldritch.livejournal.com]

My grandmother, too. My devoutly Catholic grandmother.

Hugs......

[ariel72.livejournal.com]

and my sister and a few of my friends have multiple miscarriages too.. :(

[milleniumrex.livejournal.com]

Bobby Franklin is to Republicans what Uwe Boll is to filmmakers.

[dark-weezing.livejournal.com]

+1.

I'm not sure which is more insulting to whom. Hehe.

[blondebaroness.livejournal.com]

I read the text. I don't think the 'investigation' is anything like a murder investigation. Really no more that already occurs to determine what went wrong so that it can be possibly avoided in the future.

I'd vote yea.

[modernelegance.livejournal.com]

I read it as well but to me it's more of just needless regulation. I mean the birth control contraceptives (like Mirena the intrauterine contraceptive) can cause a female to miscarry...so are they going to ban those as well?

[eajou.livejournal.com]

Distraught parents would still be put under unnecessary grief, even if it is just investigative. Going on what someone above said about checking for miscarriages from "smoking or drinking" - if a couple find out that they are pregnant they usually take precautions with proper prenatal care afterwards. But according to this bill they'd not only lose a child and would have their faces rubbed in the cause. It is unnecessary. In cases like those stated, any women of child bearing age who ever has sex would have to never drink or smoke to prevent this again.

[notapuppy.livejournal.com]

Bobby Franklin has been re-elected to his spot in the Georgia House of Representatives every year since 1996. He frequently has no opposition in his district. He sponsors a radically anti-abortion bill every year.

One year the Georgia house was voting on an anti-dog fighting bill from a completely different representative and he attempted to get his anti-abortion bill amended onto it. The Speaker of the House eventually had to refuse to recognize him because he was insisting that "life is life" was a valid reason for him to be able to amend the bill.

Every year his annual attack on abortion never makes it out of the House Second Readers, let alone gets voted on by the House and the Senate and signed by the Governor. This includes many many years where Georgia's House has had a clear Republican majority.

Almost all of the bills he sponsors end up this way, in fact the only successful bills I have ever seen his name on he was a co-sponsor of. There are 179 other G.A. State Representatives and (so far) none of them have shown any indication that (no matter how pro-life they may be)that they support investigating and/or punishing women who have had miscarriages. So there's really no reason to believe it will pass in the state of Georgia.

Nobody co-sponsors his bills because they are almost always entirely radical nonsense. Another thing he does every year is make sure his bills are among the first into the legislative calendar because it gets him all this attention.

The first 20 bills in the House this year are his and they're all ridiculous. He wants to get rid of driver's licenses and state income taxes. He wants Gold and Silver money only. He wants to make a panel that will monitor the Federal tax collection in Georgia. He wants to abolish the department of Human Services. He wants to get ride of the provision in our law that allows the Governor to limit gun sales in a state of emergency. He wants to ban not only dash cameras and stop light cameras but also security cameras on government buildings.

Of course, none of this is to say that it's not important or relevant to pay attention to what he is doing or saying because his attitude and his arguments are dangerous. I agree it's a bad idea.

I am just saying he's been doing this for like 15 years and his ideas and bills almost never put him instep with our state's GOP. It almost certainly won't even get voted on in the Georgia State House, let alone become law here. He's basically famous in our state for introducing ridiculous legislation.

[izuko.livejournal.com]

Seems like most of his ideas are pretty good, actually. He botched this one, but I like many of the other ones you cited.

[shellebelle84.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

The miscarriage thing goes too far, but I rather like some of those other examples!

Some of those ideas are bit radical in that I think he'd have a hard time finding support but not nonsense.

[modernelegance.livejournal.com]

Thank you for explaining his background....

...but I gotta say...I HATE HATE HATE red light cameras.

[rivetspoon.livejournal.com]

I hate them, too, but when other people get caught by them, it gives me a small sense of satisfaction. XD

[rightsaidred.livejournal.com]

They've been outlawed in many states. I know Minnesota got rid of theirs, because although it may be your car they photograph, it's not necessarily YOU driving it, and they can't necessarily prove that the car's owner ran the light/was speeding, etc.

[rivetspoon.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I remember one case where a guy's car was parked by a camera and every time someone ran the light, HE got cited even though his car wasn't even running, let alone speeding. And then I heard that they're not even enforcing that the tickets get paid? o_O What a waste.

[mprice.livejournal.com]

So if you miscarry you can be investigated, but if you have an abortion everything is hunky-dory.

This world is totally upside down.

[scarletwalk.livejournal.com]

This is exactly what I was thinking.

Upside down, indeed.

[chibimarchy.livejournal.com]

THIS. I agree whole-heartedly. D:

[archerstar.livejournal.com]

They tried to do this in Utah, too. I actually think it passed in the House? Or the Senate? It passed in one, but was completely shot down in the other.

I mean, I think that if you throw yourself down the stairs because you're 14, you can't get an abortion and you don't want your parents to know? That's...that's something not right. But when they put forth these bills, there is NO specificity attached and then can then be attributed to women who accidentally fell, or who didn't even know they were pregnant, and it just brings grief and pain on families who wanted their children very much.

[hannahsarah.livejournal.com]

What if you desperately wanted the baby, had been trying for years, and did everything right - but the baby was not viable? Are you still a murderer?

Maybe G-d is the mass murderer here. Don't suppose he even considered that, did he?

*RAGE*

[archerstar.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Exactly! As awful as it is, sometimes the baby just isn't viable and would never have been viable. That is no ones fault and trying to say that women are murdering their children because they were biologically unsound is...appalling.

And of course, abortion is A-OKAY. Not murder. Nope. No-siree.

[hannahsarah.livejournal.com]

This makes me so angry I can barely even type. Does this man even know WHY pregnancies miscarry? The VAST majority of them happen because the baby was not viable to begin with.

I've had many miscarriages, and the last one was so devastating that I was nearly psychotically depressed and suicidal for a long time.

I have a lot more I could say about this, but I need to stop now. My hands are shaking too much.

[ariel72.livejournal.com]

:( Hugs to you too..

[mosinging1986.livejournal.com]

This is the most stupid thing I've seen in a while. And in today's world, that's saying a lot.

This is inconsistent with the pro-life view, which is that *deliberately* taking an unborn baby's life is immoral. Women have miscarriages all the time, and usually not in their doctor's office! How utterly ridiculous to think you can track such a thing. Even if you could, how the heck can you definitively pinpoint the cause?

And of course it will backfire. The pro-baby murder side will seize upon this and claim that this is what the pro-life side had in mind all along. It may even cause those who have been on the fence about the issue to switch to the pro-baby murder side.

Good grief, did anyone involved with this stop for and think this through like I just did, which took all of maybe five minutes?!

[rivetspoon.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the proposal/bill/whatever, but based on the comments/OP, somehow I can't help but think that there's a comical undertone to this:

It's ruled as a double homicide if you kill a pregnant woman, no matter how far along she is. This suggests that a fetus is a life.
If Miscarriage can be viewed as taking a life that isn't even born yet, a fetus is considered a life once again.
Thus one can then present another case of abortion being murder.

Clearly this is the wrong way to go about it, BUT.

[rivetspoon.livejournal.com]

"Comical" is probably the wrong word to use, but I fail at le Vocabularie.

[archerstar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I definitely know what you're saying.

Oh, but it's only a life if it's wanted. Or something like that. Which throws the miscarriage thing into whack. I don't even try to know what goes through people's brains anymore.

[rivetspoon.livejournal.com]

"Oh, but it's only a life if it's wanted."

OoooooooOOOOOOooooh EXCUUUUUSE MEEEEEE, Congressman!
That totally brings me back to the line, "You know what rape is? It's when a woman changes her mind after." The rules change the second it's in/convenient, and the legit cases can't hold any muster anymore. :|

[whak-hat.livejournal.com]

…Guys…I hate to say this but America's leaders are seriously sounding like they are all dumb as paint…

Pro-live and pro choice.. but..

[ariel72.livejournal.com]

IF YOU HAVE A MISCARRIAGE... YOU USUALLY DON'T WANT IT TO HAPPEN. Usually when pregnant, you *want* the baby. If you don't, that's what Planned Parenthood takes care of on Fridays. Then to have to sit through something like "are you suuuure you didn't have anything to do with this?" WTF!?

There are just some things you don't want people picking at "up there" and this is no exception. Had a mother to be committed something against her unborn, let her own guilt kill her soul, but don't suspect everyone who has a miscarriage... Tchhhaaa!!

Anyone ever seen

[ariel72.livejournal.com]

Citizen Ruth? It's a scream because it covers both sides, but the girl in question (Laura Dern, druggie, huffie) in the middle of the choice-life debate, has a miscarriage near the end. While she didn't actively do something to create that event, her lifestyle certainly didn't help. Even this selfish brat grieved for a few short hours in her room. Make this a debate now, who knows what else will be under scrutiny later? If somebody says they miscarried, that usually should be enough. Let's not litigate the event.