Write to the Point
An inescapable news topic in recent weeks has been Georgia’s new legislation governing abortion, signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp last week and sparking outrage and debate across the country.
The much-buzzed-about “heartbeat bill,” HB 481, is one of the strictest in the country and bans abortions after six weeks. The ban is the fifth in the country to ban abortion after that date, but takes it one step further by granting a fetus full legal personhood.
And regardless of your stance on abortion, the precedent set by this bill should have you worried.
The new law goes into effect Jan. 1, and expands the definition of abortion to encompass self-termination — a change from previous laws aimed at the providers of abortion services.
The punishments for women under the law vary depending on the charge, but what is clear is that Georgia defines a second-degree murderer as “a person who …irrespective of malice…causes the death of another human being,” which fetuses would legally be.
This could include miscarriages or stillbirth, some of the greatest heartbreaks expecting parents face.
Miscarriages are startlingly common — an analysis from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that 10 percent of recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage, usually in the first trimester. Another study from the American Pregnancy Association estimated that number to be closer to 25 percent. Some women miscarry before they even find out they’re pregnant.
Under the law, women who miscarry could find themselves facing investigation in which a third party decides whether or not their actions in any way contributed to the miscarriage.
Making miscarriage a criminal offense is adding insult to injury to women who are already damaged emotionally and physically. To follow up a horrible tragedy with an accusatory interrogation is not just poor public policy — it’s barbarism.
This bill also makes women less likely to pursue medical care if they believe they may be miscarrying. Blood hemorrhage before and after miscarriage is the leading cause of miscarriage-related death. Criminalizing miscarriages in any way means it’s likely some women won’t seek help for healthcare emergencies, and it’s likely some women will die.
Planned Parenthood execs have come forward to say they doubt the law can or will be used to prosecute women, but have failed to provide any justification for those doubts. In fact, HB 481 includes a provision for the defense of women prosecuted under the law that says a woman may have “an affirmative defense to prosecution… if a woman sought an abortion because she reasonably believed that an abortion was the only way to prevent a medical emergency.”
Now, not to be reductive, but a law that won’t be used to prosecute women shouldn’t need to include an explicit defense against prosecution. It’s not enough to hope that prosecutors will be understanding and compassionate. Reliance on prosecutorial mercy is no protection at all.
In fact, women in the state are already being prosecuted, such as one in 2015 who was charged with malice murder after using the drug misoprostol to induce a miscarriage. The charges were dropped only after a local prosecutor decided the local laws did not support the prosecution. Now, they almost certainly would.
Exceptions to the Georgia bill due to rape and incest are only acceptable if “an official police report has been filed alleging the offense,” despite the fact that rape and incest are massively underreported crimes. So much so that RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, estimated three out of four sexual assaults are not reported.
And as of press time on Tuesday, May 14, the Alabama State Senate had passed a near total abortion ban, providing no exceptions for rape or incest.
Yes, it’s true these bills will be challenged in court. But that’s exactly the point, and the hope of their creators. The clear goal is getting such a bill in front of the Supreme Court, granting them the power and the opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade.
This is a problem, considering many writing and promoting these bills clearly have no idea how the human body works. Ohio lawmaker John Becker suggested that an ectopic pregnancy could be “removed from the fallopian tube and reinserted in the uterus.” (Spoiler alert: No, it can’t.)
Georgia law proponents have suggested women just take pregnancy tests “early,” despite that meaning women would not yet have any physical or medical indication they need to do so. (Should women take a pregnancy test every day, just in case?)
And Kemp signed a bill insisting abortions take place before most women know they’re pregnant at all. (It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that a six-week ban on abortion is essentially a ban on all abortion. A woman who is six weeks pregnant has likely missed one period; in other words, six weeks is long before many women even realize they’re pregnant.)
And when those drafting and approving reproductive rights bills clearly do not understand basic science, let alone have a grasp of the empathy and nuance required to parse such a highly-charged issue, you should be worried.
We all should be.
Shannen Talbot can be reached at [email protected].
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