Maytag's Playhouse => Free Talk => Topic started by: BeethroBudkin on February 28, 2010, 07:03:55 pm
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Anyone heard of this yet? A new bill being passed in Utah may cause miscarriages to become a murder charge.
The link is here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/utah-women-may-face-murder-charges-after-miscarriages-1913019.html
In a nutshell this bill states that any pregnant women who does an "intentional or knowing reckless act" that leads to a miscarriage could be charged for murder. The reason for this bill is because a woman paid a man $150 to hit her stomach repeatedly in hopes of a miscarriage.
The problem is that a woman could be jailed for drinking or smoking while pregnant. This is not a bad thing, but the bill is so vague that a woman could also be charged for falling down the stairs or walking on a icy sidewalk, not to mention that the percentage of miscarriages are significant, at least 15%. This will waste tons of resources investigating all of them. What really perplexes me is that someone can go get an abortion without any consequences, but if you go skiing and fall you could go to jail. ??? ???
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What really perplexes me is that someone can go get an abortion without any consequences, but if you go skiing and fall you could go to jail. ??? ???
No, Those are outlawed by the same bill, though they were not legal in utah anyway, if I remember right. Though, I don't think there is anything stopping you from going to another state and having an abortion.
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Debate room topic? *shrug*
Well... if abortion is illegal in the state then I don't see a big deal in it also being illegal to force an abortion by injuring yourself or something. The case they used as an example was with a woman trying to force an abortion in her 7th month of pregnancy by paying a man to punch her abdomen. I'm pretty sure it's illegal in any state to seek an abortion that late but apparently they could charge the man she paid but had no law to prosecute her with because it wasn't a proper abortion.
Its true that the disturbing part of this statement "intentional, knowing or reckless act" is the "reckless" part. Intentional and knowing, sure that would have prosecuted the woman mentioned before but despite some efforts to remove that one word from the new law it was apparently kept in. Now it's left to judges and jury to decide what constitutes "reckless" with each case thats brought to court. I suspect common-sense will come into play on the decision of which cases police and prosecutors pursue but there's no doubt that they can make a woman who's suffered the trauma of an unintended miscarriage suffer further with a court case if they choose.
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Common sense hardly ever comes into play with these things.
Utah's full of batshit crazy Mormons, anyway.
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Purge the heretics? anyone? ::)
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Well... Common Sense will come into play for a good many of the miscarriages that occur but there's no denying that it can't stop all and some will slip through putting grieving would-be parents through more turmoil and hopefully stirring up enough media attention to quickly get the law revised.
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Yeah, I wrote a topic in the debate room about this exact same thing way back. *nods* Go check out the replies there. ^^
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Well if no-one minds once I've learnt how to I'll move this to the debate thread.
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Ahh yep. Nearly forgot about that topic:
http://www.flipsidecomics.com/forum/index.php?topic=140.msg29687#msg29687
@Oddball: I have no issue, not sure about anyone else *shrug*
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@Oddball: I have no issue, not sure about anyone else *shrug*
Must....resist.....bad.....joke........
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GO ON SAY IT!!!