Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
On the National Level
In late January, I wrote a post titled Rape Redefined and Brought to You by the US House of Representatives in which I 
talked about members of Congress—mostly Republicans—who were attempting to “redefine” what the only REAL kind of rape is—that would be “forcible rape.” (I wasn’t aware there was any other kind of rape.) These Congressmen were proposing legislation that would no longer consider the following types of sexual assault as rape: The rapes of women with limited mental capacity and rapes in which women were drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol.
Last week, Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw) wrote a post titled The Right’s War on Women in which he discussed legislation proposed by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana) that would eliminate the entire budget for Title X. Lawrence wrote: “Rep. Pence and his fellow Republicans are trying to defund Planned Parenthood because it receives millions from Title X funds to assist women in their family planning and health matters. In order to try to end abortions without testing the strength of Roe v. Wade in the courts, the sponsors and backers of this bill don’t care if low-income women suffer by not getting the health care that they so desperately need. Many of these same legislators also backed the repeal of the Affordable Health Care act which would also assist low-income women get affordable health care.”
And Now from the State of Georgia
Just yesterday, I read about State Rep. Bobby Franklin of Georgia who is introducing legislation in his state that would require proof that a miscarriage—aka a spontaneous abortion—was the result of natural causes. If this legislation passes, there would have to be proof that a woman’s miscarriage was the result of natural causes. If a woman can’t prove that—she might face felony charges!
From a piece in Daily Kos: “Franklin wants to create a Uterus Police to investigate miscarriages, and requires that any time a miscarriage occurs, whether in a hospital or without medical assistance, it must be reported and a fetal death certificate issued. If the cause of death is unknown, it must be investigated. If the woman can’t tell how it happened, then those Uterus Police can ask family members and friends how it happened. Hospitals are required to keep records of anyone who has a spontaneous abortion and report it. Yup, we’ve been waiting for someone to suggest this–and Franklin has.”
Here’s the link to Franklin’s bill:
http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/en-US/display.aspx?Legislation=31965
There are millions and millions of American women who suffer/have suffered miscarriages through no fault of their own. Suffering a miscarriage can be an emotionally wrenching experience for a woman. Imagine losing a much wanted pregnancy–and then having to prove the miscarriage was the result of natural causes. How does a woman do that, Rep. Franklin? Can you explain to the women of Georgia how they should go about gathering evidence to prove that they haven’t committed a felony when they have a miscarriage?
By the way, Rep. Franklin also introduced a bill to change Georgia’s criminal codes so that victims of rape, stalking, and family violence could only be referred to as “accusers” until defendants have been convicted.
FYI
Here are some statistics on miscarriage for you:
From WebMed
Frequency of Miscarriages in the United States
The overall miscarriage rate is reported as 15-20%, which means 15-20% of recognized pregnancies result in miscarriage. The frequency of spontaneous miscarriage increases further with maternal age. With the development of highly sensitive assays for hCG levels, pregnancies can be detected prior to the expected next period. When these highly sensitive hCG assays are used early, the magnitude of pregnancy loss significantly increases to about 60-70%. Late implantation by the conceptus beyond the usual 8-10 days after ovulation also has an increased risk of miscarriage.
About 80% of miscarriages occur within the first trimester. The frequency of miscarriage decreases with increasing gestational age. Recurrent miscarriage, defined as 2-3 pregnancy losses, affects about 1% of all couples.
From American Pregnancy Association
Miscarriage is the most common type of pregnancy loss, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Studies reveal that anywhere from 10-25% of all clinically recognized pregnancies will end in miscarriage. Chemical pregnancies may account for 50-75% of all miscarriages. This occurs when a pregnancy is lost shortly after implantation, resulting in bleeding that occurs around the time of her expected period. The woman may not realize that she conceived when she experiences a chemical pregnancy.
Sources
Washington Monthly (Political Animal)
From Move On:
Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP’s War on Women
http://pol.moveon.org/waronwomen/?id=26177-9315970-1VrUTWx&t=3
1) Republicans not only want to reduce women’s access to abortion care, they’re actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven’t yet. Shocker.
2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to “accuser.” But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain “victims.”
3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)
4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids.
5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.
6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids’ preschool program. Why? No need, they said. Women should really be home with the kids, not out working.
7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.
8. Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.
9) Congress just voted for a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.
10) And if that wasn’t enough, Republicans are pushing to eliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can’t make this stuff up).
From RH Reality Check (2/24/2011)
Miscarriage-as-Murder Bill Center of GOP War on Women
By Amie Newman, Managing Editor
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/02/23/prenatal-murder-bill-center-women
Excerpt:
Sigh. This is what happens when you find someone who’s earned an undergraduate degree in both “Biblical studies” and “Business Administration,” have him run for state representative unopposed in 2010 (although he’s been part of the Georgia House of Representatives since 1996) and then allow him to revel in a nation-wide political assault on women, led by the Republican party, of which he’s a member.
Rep. Bobby Franklin (R-Marietta) of “rape victims should be classified as accusers and not victims” fame – or the “Lone Ranger” as he’s been called and has taken to calling himself – has most recently introduced a bill to criminalize miscarriages, renaming the process “prenatal murder.” Oh, they say, no. It’s only miscarriages where the cause cannot be determined – not all miscarriages. Well, folks, that’s most miscarriages.
Here’s the thing: you’ll need, as others more witty than I have deemed them, a team of Uterus Police Officers – to suss this out as a crime.
Ask my midwife why I miscarried with my second pregnancy. What was the cause? The cause was my body behaving as the female human body will sometimes behave. What do you mean – what’s the cause?! Was there human involvement in the causation of the event? Of course my body was “involved in the cause of the event.” If the female body itself is criminalized – something this bill would do – we may as well throw all girls and women on an island somewhere far away and let us fend for ourselves in all of our evil glory. Sadly, that does not sound so horrible at this point and time.
HB 1 creates a new legal classification for pregnancy termination – “Prenatal Murder,”
‘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. (c) The act of prenatal murder is contrary to the health and well-being of the citizens of this state and to the state itself and is illegal in this state in all instances. (d) Any person committing prenatal murder in this state shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, shall be punished as provided in subsection (d) of Code Section 16-5-1. The license of any physician indicted for an alleged violation of this Code section shall be suspended until resolution of the matter. The license of any physician convicted of a violation of this Code section shall be permanently revoked. The provisions of this Code section shall be in addition to any other provisions relating to the killing of a fetus or any other person.”
I’m going to see if I can embed a video that I tried to post earlier.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CBFHtUFjVg&w=480&h=390%5D
Lottakatz,
Excellent post. As I’ve always suspected, and this post confirms, much of this war the GOP is waging against women has absolutely nothing to do with defending the unborn and absolutely everything to do with control, similar to how rape is not a crime of sex, but a crime of control.
Your post does not surprise me one bit.
I have always thought that the men leading the assault on women’s health and reproductive rights were abusers. That is the effect of their actions and “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them”. They are what they do. Their preoccupation with controlling women, most easily through health/reproduction, has always left me with a queasy feeling, there’s something unhealthy motivating it.
This is an interesting article and it’s a cultural phenomenon that needs more study:
“Report Details Sabotage of Birth Control
By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: February 15, 2011
Men who abuse women physically and emotionally may also sabotage their partners’ birth control, pressuring them to become pregnant against their will, new reports suggest.
Several small studies have described this kind of coercion among low-income teenagers and young adults with a history of violence by intimate partners. Now, a report being released Tuesday by the federally financed National Domestic Violence Hotline says 1 in 4 women who agreed to answer questions after calling the hot line said a partner had pressured them to become pregnant, told them not to use contraceptives, or forced them to have unprotected sex.
The report was based on answers from more than 3,000 women, but it was not a research study, those involved said.
“It was very eye-opening,” said Lisa James, director of health at the Family Violence Prevention Fund in San Francisco, which worked with the hot line on the report. “There were stories about men refusing to wear a condom, forcing sex without a condom, poking holes in condoms, flushing birth control pills down the toilet. …”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/health/research/15pregnant.html?_r=1
Elaine,
I don’t think Double Chuck was really confused. I think he was just repeating what he was told to say!
GOP War on Women:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CBFHtUFjVg&w=480&h=390%5D
rafflaw,
Thanks for that response. I’m not sure how people extrapolate from what I wrote that I’d condone the actions of doctors who were breaking the law. A miscarriage should not be equated with an abortion.
chuckCharles,
Can I just call you Double Chuck? first of all, you are mixing up abortions with miscarriages. The Georgia legislation is concerned with miscarriages that the good Rep. thinks might actually be self inflicted abortions. If you have doctors who are breaking the law, put them in jail. Few if any would have a problem with that. Secondly, the uterus police is going a little too far, don’t you think. How about if we have a gun police to check every man in Georgia to make sure he/she has a legal permit for the gun? That check would be met with a little resistance in Georgia, don’t you think?
Respectfully,
rafflawRafflaw
chuck Charles,
Did you read my post? Do you have any response to what I wrote about?
Oh please people, stop the dramatics. No one is interested in a 4 weeks pregnancy.
What authorities are interested in are women who are 7 ..8…9 months pregnant, going off to Philadelphia (or wherever) to illegal abortion mill, and get an illegal abortion or give birth and then have the baby killed.
And then these women come gack to GA (or where ever) and suddenly, after their so called “spontaneous” fetal death, their unborn baby is just gone?! Hmmmm, women never lie, right? Every 7 …8…9 month pregnant women ONLY loses babies to natural causes, right? Never to illegal abortion mills, right?
Similiarly, if a 2 month old born baby goes missing, don’t you think the authorities have a right to investigate where it went?
So why don’t authorities have right to know what happened to a baby in it’s 8th month if it suddenly goes “missing” or dead(aka w/o medical attendance to confirm no foul play)??
Oh please, stop the baloney. Even when an adult dies, if not in the hospital for under medical care for 48 hours, most state medical examiners hold the body for days and do an autopsy!!
You think the state isn’t interested also in 8 month unborn babies and they aren’t interested in confirming there was no foul play?
Please, please, please, the hubris and arrogance of women, protesting reasonable safeguards for unborn babies is UNBELIEVABLE!! UNBELIEVABLE!!
Uh, oh. Looks like my above posted version is like a silent dog whistle …
“Send in the Clowns” …
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-01-19/news/27088082_1_abortion-clinic-late-term-abortions-aborted-fetuses
Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell charged with murdering 7 infants with scissors
BY LAUREN JOHNSTON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Jan 27 2011, New York — A doctor who ran a “house of horrors” abortion clinic has been charged in the deaths of one woman and seven babies who prosecutors say were born alive then killed with scissors.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who treated mostly poor and immigrant women, was arrested Wednesday along with nine employees from his West Philadelphia Women’s Medical Society – among them a high school student who performed medial treatments with no license.
Gosnell, 69, raked in millions over 30 years performing illegal and late-term abortions, prosecutors said.
Officials described his squalid clinic like something out of a horror movie
“There were bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses were scattered throughout the building,” said Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams. “There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose.”
Gosnell has been named in at least 10 malpractice suits, but Williams said state regulators ignored complaints about his clinic and that the office hadn’t been inspected since 1993.
Elaine,
“I admit it’s not my best effort.”
I find it to be a most stellar effort 😉
Question : Should women be allowed to hire Drs and medical staff that perform illegal abortions and killings of live babies?
If the Drs are caught performing these illegal abortions, if Drs are caught killing live birth babies, are only the Drs. legally responsible?
Should women not be charged with crimes if the Drs perform known illegal abortions and live birth murders?
Should women be allowed to get away with murdering babies?
Currently in many states, women seek out Drs. who perform illegal abortions. Drs. will perform these illegal abortions for hefty fees. These Drs. will also perform live births for these women and then kill the babies after the births.
The women know that these Drs. are breaking the laws and know the Drs. are killing the live birth babies. HOWEVER, under many state laws, women are not legally held accountable for these illegal abortions and killings of babies. Only the Drs and medical people are held responsible. In other words, the women get away with legal murder. And the medical staffers are paid killers for the mother.
From my initial reading of this bill, these legal changes will hold women accountable for the deaths and murders of these babies. There will no longer be any loopholes for the women. They will be prosecuted for the illegal babies murders, just as Drs. and other medical professionals are already being held for babies deaths.
The women will not be able to claim “ignorance” either. If they try to claim they didn’t know the Drs were performing illegal abortions, they will not have a legal defense. Ignorance of the law is never a defenese anyway.
So after my initial reading of this bill, this is what this REALLY is about. This is not about investigating every miscarriage. This is not about creating a “Uterus Police” force. It is about giving the state to look into highly suspicous “miscarriages” that are really illegal abortions and murders of live born babies. It is about stopping certain women from getting away with what is currently legal murder for them.
And this post? This post is about misrepresenting the facts, whipping up the base, and getting women confused, and allowing certain women to keep illegal abortions and killing live birth babies, unfettered.
The American holocaust of the unborn will be stopped.
rafflaw,
Sadly, John of Orange’s tears will be flooding us later this evening.
Couldn’t help but put my own spin on this:
Tears of a Clown
Oh yeah yeah yeah
Now if there’s a sad look on my face
It’s only there trying to fool the public
But when it comes down to fooling you
Now honey that’s a different subject
But don’t let my sad expression
Give you the wrong impression
Really I’m glad, oh I’m gladder than glad
You’re gone and I’m not hurtin’ at all
Like a clown I pretend to be sad
Now there’s some sad things known to man
But ain’t too much sadder than
The tears of a clown, when everyone’s around
Uh hum, oh yeah baby
Now if I appear to be worried
It’s only to camouflage my gladness
And honey to shield my pride I try
To cover this joy with a show of sadness
But don’t let my show convince you
That I’ve been sad since you
Decided to go, oh I don’t need you so
I’m happy and I want you to know
But for others I put on a show, ooh yeah
Just like I always did
I try to keep my inside hid
Crying in the public eye
But in my palatial room I smile
Not the tears of a clown
When there’s no one around, oh yeah, baby baby
Now if there’s a smile on my face
Don’t let my sad expression
Give you the wrong impression
Don’t let these tears I wear
Make you think that I care
When really I’m glad… Eh, I’m not hurting so bad……
Stamford,
Here’s a quickie verse. I admit it’s not my best effort.
Women to GOP:
Baa, baa, GOP,
Can you help us gals?
We need some contraceptives.
Please be our pals.
**********
GOP Reply:
Here’s one for the stallion,
One for the mare—
But none for you ladies–
Whatsoe’er.
Elaine,
Malloy was my mayor for 14 years – he’s a good egg!
Thank YOU for the above articles. It is safe to say that if the Rabid Right does manage to defund PP and Title X, we nags can take comfort in that we can take … HORSE birth control.
I’m guessing the Rabid Right does not get how utterly ridiculous they are … “Now, now. We’re not laughing WITH you, we are laughing AT you.”
rafflaw,
Maybe women can be covered under the Burton bill. You know how so many of those right-wingers think we gals are just a bunch of nags!
😉