Utah is on the verge of criminalizing miscarriages while it looks like Iowa has already criminalized accidents and doubts:
Life can’t get much worse for Christine Taylor. Last month, after an upsetting phone conversation with her estranged husband, Ms. Taylor became light-headed and fell down a flight of stairs in her home. Paramedics rushed to the scene and ultimately declared her healthy. However, since she was pregnant with her third child at the time, Taylor thought it would be best to be seen at the local ER to make sure her fetus was unharmed.
That’s when things got really bad and really crazy. Alone, distraught, and frightened, Taylor confided in the nurse treating her that she hadn’t always been sure she’d wanted this baby, now that she was single and unemployed. She’d considered both adoption and abortion before ultimately deciding to keep the child. The nurse then summoned a doctor, who questioned her further about her thoughts on ending the pregnancy. Next thing Taylor knew, she was being arrested for attempted feticide. Apparently the nurse and doctor thought that Taylor threw herself down the stairs on purpose.
According to Iowa state law, attempted feticide is an trying “to intentionally terminate a human pregnancy, with the knowledge and voluntary consent of the pregnant person, after the end of the second trimester of the pregnancy.” At least 37 states have similar laws. Taylor spent two days in jail before being released. That’s right, a pregnant woman was jailed for admitting to thinking about an abortion at some point early in her pregnancy and then having the audacity to fall down some stairs a couple of months later. Please tell me you find this as horrifying as I do.
Apparently pregnant women in Iowa don’t have a right to doctor/patient confidentiality either.
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OK, this al-Thea (aka Tea Bagger) assault on America’s Rights and Freedoms has officially gone beyond the pale.
Fricking nanny state terrorist supporting Ayn Randers!
Wow, that’s ridiculous. Way to encourage women to be honest with their doctors.
So much of this story is fucked up, but it’s worth mentioning that charges weren’t pressed… so this ultimately comes down to “all cops are bastards,” which is common knowledge, and “What the fuck is up with these medical professionals?”
Doctor patient confidentiality doesn’t apply when you are a danger to yourself or others. I mean, this is totally fucked up, but suppose the cunt nurse was going to report it. If the doctor refuses to corroborate, he’s breaking the law and can lose his license.
The Taliban treat women better.
Apparently states with homosexual marriage like Iowa are really oppressive fucked-up anti-woman backward retarded places.
This makes me want to puke.
God wants those that flaunt his law to suffer. This uppity woman should have known the righteous and forgiving hand of god would punish her for considering abortion. I hope a local church can consult with her about where she went wrong.
Oh sorry I forgot to log onto my loveschild account before posting this.
So let’s see, it’s better to put a pregnant woman through the stress of multiple days in jail (thereby risking all sorts of bad things occuring to the fetus), than it is recognize that her unborn child is just fine, and let her go home to comfort and safety. Hm.
Yeah, I’ll bet she’ll be a touch more guarded when talking to doctors in the future.
Madness.
It’s interesting to note the amount of states that have a law like this on the books: http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=1…
However, yay Washington! Our law states: Wash. Rev. Code Ann. § 9A.32.060 declares that a person is guilty of manslaughter in the first degree when he intentionally and unlawfully kills an unborn quick child by inflicting any injury upon the mother of such child.
@7 You and me both. I feel so sorry for that poor woman.
4
are you calling Dan a liar?
@10 – most of those laws are directed at people who hurt both the mother and the fetus (e.g. a robber that shoots a pregnant woman) or non-health care professionals who perform back alley abortions. Utah’s is pretty much the only one directed at the woman. The Iowa statute is clearly directed at unlicensed abortion providers, as it specifically mentions the consent of the pregnant person.
#12 If a Doctor ‘knows’ (in this case it is very outrageous) that you have caused harm to a child they have to report you.
@3 Nick, please note that charges were not pressed only because it was determined that Christine Taylor was in the end of her second trimester and therefore the law in question did not apply. Seems there are additional morals to this story you could glean.
This story is sick and terrifying on so many levels. I hope she’s able to sue the shit out of that hospital.
This outcome is but the natural product of our culture’s fetus-worship. I’m sure medical confidentiality was no impediment to their actions (in their minds); they had a “religious grounds” exemption.
It’s hard to injure a fetus without causing at least as much injury to the pregnant woman housing it. Virtually every method that’s good for killing a fetus without killing a woman is already used medically for abortion, and the only major exception I can think of is things that are more likely to cause birth defects than successful abortions, like extreme alcohol consumption.
I’m just throwing it out there that any woman who wants to induce abortion by a method other than the standard ones is probably going to punish herself pretty seriously in the process. If a moderate stomach-punch were all it took, that would have been a widely used historical method. Natural law is much better at protecting fetuses from staircases than the state of Iowa could ever dream of being.
What’s most terrifying about this misogynistic law is that when it goes up before The Mudville Nine, it’s almost certain to get four yay votes from Injustices Thomas, Scalia, Alito, and Chief Corporate Fuckslave Roberts Jr. Y’all in the Blue States, keep writing your Senators and Congressmen asking them to increase the size of the High Court to eleven or better yet thirteen. All it takes is a majority vote.
If she’d thrown herself down the stairs with the intent of harming the baby, why did she seek medical attention to make sure it was all right?
Speaking of babies: for those slogging along at home, I finally had my chicken cutlet early yesterday morning. 7 pounds, 12 ounces. I had her on the living room floor, and Mister TVDinner is deeply traumatized.
Let’s not forget the Melissa Ann Rowland case happened in Utah. While she certainly wasn’t ever going to win any awards for Mother of the Year, did she really deserve to be charged with capital murder because she initially refused a c-section? Fortunately, she eventually pled guilty to child endangerment and was given probation. The prosecutor’s office never bothered to do enough of an investigation to discover that she had a long history of mental illness. Apparently, they were too busy and only agreed to the plea deal after learning of the mental illness.
Don’t forget the NJ woman whose child was taken away because she refused a c-section and was acting “irrational”. What woman doesn’t act “irrational” during labor? AFTER her child was taken away, it was learned that for the past 12 years she’d been receiving psychiatric treatment and that a former psychiatrist questioned her ability to parent a child. However, none of this would have been discovered had she not been reported for child neglect, simply because she refused a c-section. While the eventual outcome in this case may have been in the best interest of the child, it’s alarming that you can be reported for child neglect for simply refusing a c-section. (By the way she wound up having a vaginal delivery and the baby was fine.)
There are numerous examples of courts who have FORCED women to have a c-section. Google it. You’ll probably be surprised.
Apparently, a woman is simply a tool for spitting out babies and her right to decline invasive abdominal surgery is thrown out the window when she’s pregnant.
Congratulations, TVDinner! I have been following it via your posts, and it seemed like a long incubation period. So glad all went well.
@20
congrats!
Whoa – the living room floor? You’ll have some stories to tell her when she grows up. Congratulations!
What freedom is it that Americans talk about so much? Cause everytime I read the news, it seems to me that out of every developed western country the US is the closest one to the government in 1984, as in the creepy dictatorship predicted by George Orwell. Well, I guess he only got the country wrong…
BTW, I actually just watched Kinsey, the movie, and it was sad to see how the Bush government was able to turn peoples’ view on sex back to how it used to be in the 1930s. The dialogue about abstinence-only sex education was the same in 1930 and 2008. Very, very sad.
Is it too early to implicate the fetus?
Congrats on the baby, TVDinner! Was the home birth intentional or did it just kind of happen that way?
This story disgusts me, too, Dan. Stories like this make terrified to set foot outside New England…not that we don’t have our own problems.
Comgrats TVDinner!
And “ugh” to all these laws and legislators that idolize fetuses while demonizing women. As a nurse, I particularly think it’s to call this attempted feticide. Pregnancy is a time when a women’s body is rapidly changing so slips and falls aren’t unheard of.
Also, in most north American jurisdictions, there is less clarity re: mandatory reporting of crimes than most people assume. Iowa would have to have a mandatory reporting clause for attempted feticide on the books, or these health professionals could find themselves liable. I certainly hope she’s placed complaints with both of their licensing boards.
She was absolved of the charges and that’s fine, but lets not kid ourselves here, it was clear that she confided to both the nurse and the doctor that she had wanted to abort that child. There have been just too many innumerable cases (example the one in Utah) were these types of abortions late in the second and even third trimester have happened, and unless clearly shown to be proven an accident, those are clear murders.
We as a society have decided that infanticide is not something that we are willing to tolerate. There’s a distinction that needs to be made between a right and an unlawful act. Choosing right to have or not children is a right, and if you do decide to have them, then having them on your terms (at what age and with the adult man of your choice) is clearly a personal decision (a right), some even take it as far as having a right to do away with the pregnancy in the way early stages (and many of us might agree with that). But once you make a conscious decision to follow thru with the pregnancy and get to the point where there’s a clear identifiably formed human life then it stops being entirely a personal matter and a right.
If you decide to induce harm to that a new life then your rights end because you have no right to take it away just because you had a change of mind. That’s the reason for these careful laws in many states and the vast majority of people both female and male no matter whether pro-life or pro-abortion support their implementation and thorough enforcement.
Congrats TVDinner! I hope the chicken cutlet is healthy and tasty. Err… happy, I meant happy. That’s it.
I read about this case in conjunction with the Utah law and it was horrifying. Even if charges were dropped (on, what was essentially a technicality), she still had to spend a couple of days in jail at a time. How would they ever have proven this case? I mean, I’ve hurt myself falling down the stairs a couple of times in my life, so I sure hope I don’t find myself in jail if it should happen while I’m pregnant…
@30,
Ever thought about throwing yourself down the stairs?
@ 25
Freedom to own guns.
@ 30
“you have no right to take it away just because you had a change of mind.”
Say you need a kidney or you will die, and I agree to give you one of mine. However, just before they put me to sleep, I change my mind. There is no time to obtain a kidney from another donor because you’re dying. Are you saying that medical staff should hold me down while I’m kicking and screaming, put me to sleep and remove my kidney without my consent?
@33: this argument ~25 yrs ago in my college intro philosophy course was what finally turned me from my previous anti-abortion rights position into a dedicated pro-choicer.
Congatulations TVDinner. I can vouch for the birthing experience doing weird things to the father at the lizard hindbrain level. Myself, I was never more anxious and confused a pile of Jell-o.
The Max, I never knew we had the option of expanding the USSC. That is an interesting idea to pursue, and I always did like prime numbers.
Call me naïve, but I still have faith that the US Supremes can be more reasonable than to merely toe their party lines. Being an adjudicator makes one contemplative, and the courts have already proven eager to dispel zero-tolerance policies that land kids with butter-knives in jail. I suspect they’ll find laws that send late-term pregnant women into the pen a bit distasteful as well.
tiare, emma’s bee, I was just <a href="http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/02/27/legal-abortion-worse-for-blacks-than-slavery&view=comments#comment-3524334
“>thinking about this possibility very recently.
She needs to sue the fuck out of someone.
@36: Uriel-128, you are a mind-reading (anticipating?) mensch. I must admit, I didn’t have enough patience with that thread to revisit it after post ~50.
@38: U-238, of course, sorry for the typo. A noble radionuclide.
I gave up around 50th post too, but I caught up now, thanks for heads up 🙂
There was a legal precedent regarding this, I can’t remember the details but a man was taken to court because he refused to donate an organ to his ill relative. Interestingly, as 21 pointed out, this is exactly what is happening – women are forced to undergo major surgeries in order to preserve the child’s life.
I wonder why pro-lifers think that the fact that pregnancy results from sex should have any relevance. What if my obligation to save Loveschild’s life resulted from a night of passionate lesbian sex, because I promised her I would give her my kidney if she had sex with me? Does it mean in that case the kidney should be removed from my body without my consent? After all, I knew that would be the consequence of my decision to have sex with Loveschild…
Congratulations, TV Dinner!
Blessings to you all.
Man, good to know HIPAA is effective. Almost as effective as tea baggers making me want to take my ovaries and flee before I have to have a dowry if I ever want to get married…
@30: “unless clearly shown to be proven an accident, those are clear murders”
Really, Loveschild? Even supposing that late-term abortion was murder (which it generally isn’t), you’re advocating getting rid of the old “innocent until proven guilty” concept that has served our legal system so well.
In that case, I charge you with witchcraft. You turned my favorite teacup into a pony, and while I am very glad to have a pony, it is still made of flower-patterned china, and so it breaks whenever I try to ride it. Also, it ate my pants, and so I am currently freezing my ass off in this Chicago winter. I hereby sentence you to watching all three High School Musicals plus the two Twilight movies plus the “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” video, all at once. If you disagree with the verdict, you have the right to attempt to prove your innocence, but until such a time as you do, you will be considered a convicted witch. And I want my teacup back; my girlfriend and a lot of her stuffed animals will be by for a tea party tomorrow and I’m short on china. Not to mention pants.
See how ridiculous that is? And gee, I’d been abbreviating that one insult I use for you because you’d been keeping the worst of your craziness on the Down Low, but you just said something really egregious. Give me back my teacup, you cuntwhorebitch.
Found the case:
http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/lawmc…
Wow, that’s fucked up.
Re: doctor/patient confidentiality: I’m pretty sure doctors (like psychologists) are mandated reporters, meaning they are required by law to report things like this.
Can I join your tea party, venomlash? I can bring crumpets and jam. I could even bring some extra china (though I can’t help in the trousers department). I’m certain my girlfriend would love to come as well, and together we could all talk about how awful bigots like LC are.
@44: ugh. Thanks for finding and linking to that.
@45: reporting what, exactly? that a woman who fell down the stairs contemplated an abortion at some point in her pregnancy? Sorry, I don’t buy it. My professional training began in Charleston, SC in the 1990s, when medical professionals were roundly chastised for ratting on pregnant cocaine users (predominantly poor and African American) who were drug-tested w/o consent while seeking medical care and found themselves in court or jail.
http://tinyurl.com/yc7nz7p
You got off lucky, Loveschild. I think watching those films in succession would have been a harsher sentence.
For a society which respects the rights of one individual, to sink its teeth into the jugular vein or neck of one of its members and suck from it sustenance for another member, is revolting to our hard-wrought concepts of jurisprudence.
Suddenly I’m hungry.
I know it’s a bit presumptuous of me to ask, seeing as I invited myself to your tea party, but can I invite U-238 to your tea party as well?