And in the wonderful world of Virginia politics comes news (via Waldo Jaquith) that Virginia Sen. Mark Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) has introduced a bill which would effectively criminalize miscarriages:
Requires that when a fetal death occurs without medical attendance upon the mother at or after the delivery or abortion, the mother or someone acting on her behalf, within 24 hours, report the fetal death, location of the remains, and identity of the mother to the local or state police or sheriff’s department of the city or county where the fetal death occurred. The bill also specifies that no one shall remove, destroy, or otherwise dispose of any remains without the express authorization of law-enforcement officials or the medical examiner, and that a violation of this section is a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Sen. Obenshain clearly sees women as little more than babymaking machines fit for harassment and imprisonment if they shirk their (presumably) divinely mandated duties, I wonder how Sen. Obenshain intends to enforce this deeply misguided/offensive law. After all, “thirty-one percent of all conceptions end in miscarriage“, the vast majority of which occur before the woman is even aware that she is pregnant. And while I don’t presume to speak for Sen. Obenshain, I can’t help but think that he would be a little uncomfortable with a legal regime which was empowered to violate the privacy rights of each and every woman of childbearing age in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
On the other hand, Sen. Mark Obenshain obviously has very little regard for the agency and privacy of women in his district and Virginia at large, so it wouldn’t surprise me too much if sees nothing wrong with routinely violating their privacy in an effort to ensure that no miscarriage goes unpunished. But, of course, we all know that pro-choicers are the unreasonable party in the abortion debate. Yes. Exactly.
This is actually a bill some version of which has been introduced repeatedly in the VA legislature for several years. I remember first hearing about it several years ago, at which I remember someone commenting that, since you never know which eggs were fertilized and which not, that women ought to just mail their used pads and tampons to Rep. Obenshain.
(I think this confuses the issue, biologically speaking, but it seems unlikely that he’d know the difference.)
You have got to give some love to the other guy in this crapfest: Frank Cosgrove. He is the other person to try this, just 4 years ago, to complete and utter failure and ridicule. Maura Keaney wrote about it on DFA blogs.
Benjamin, Del. Cosgrove’s 2005 bill is the only other instance of this bill or one like it being filed in the Virginia General Assembly, at least that I know of. I know that no such bill was filed in the 2006, 2007, or 2008 sessions.
It appears to me that this was not malicious on the part of Del. Obenshain, but that he either lacks the knowledge or the intellectual curiosity to have considered the impact of his bill before filing it. I don’t think it once crossed his mind that miscarriages occur at anything other than the third trimester, or perhaps that miscarriages occur at all; that they’re simply coverups for abortions. From my observation of his time in the senate, this is consistent with his performance in other regards. Like I said: he’s either not very knowledgeable, or he has a level of intellectual curiosity on par with, say, President Bush. Neither possibility speaks well of him as a legislator.
Thanks for the background. I had forgotten it was a different guy.