Jen Phillips reports that anti-abortion Georgia Rep. Bobby Franklin has proposed a bill that would criminalize some miscarriages. The bill, a ten-page anti-abortion screed that would legally define fetuses as legal persons from the moment of conception, criminalize abortion as “prenatal murder, and declares that continued recognition of Roe v. Wade will “cause the basis of this Union, and eventually the Union itself, to fall,” would basically force the authorities to treat any instance of “fetal death” as a murder to be investigated. Here’s the relevant section of the bill:
‘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.
I’m not sure that Phillips is right that this would force women to “prove” the miscarriage was natural, exactly–it would just force the relevant authorities to treat miscarriages that occur without “medical attendance” as potential murder scenes. It certainly inverts the presumption of innocence in the sense that it throws all women under a cloud of suspicion for a medical phenomenon Phillips points out doctors don’t fully understand yet. Phillips writes that she’s “seen a lot of anti-woman, hate-filled bills this year, but this one takes the cake.”
This one is pretty bad, but it’s got some pretty stiff competition with the bill Franklin introduced a few weeks ago. While Franklin’s current proposal would treat women who miscarry as potential “prenatal murder” suspects, as Amanda Terkel reported in early February, Franklin proposed a bill that would redefine rape victims as “accusers” prior to criminal conviction, which could dissuade victims from notifying authorities of a crime that studies already suggest goes underreported.
