Pretty fascinating new law being proposed. Is this fair to men?
Bill assumes male guilt and opens door to unfair prosecutions.
The House Bill 5882 in pdf format It’s quite short, but the penalities being proposed are fascinating.
Bit of a misleading title there.
Normally I find cries of ‘unfair to men’ to be based on flimsy reasoning, but this law says exactly what the newspaper article claims it says. Does anyone know whether the state has attempted to prosecute anyone under section 3(b), 3©, or 3(d)? I don’t imagine that 3(d) would stand up to a 15th amendment challenge.
Have you read the bill? It’s not misleading at all. If you break up with a pregnant women predicate to her giving birth, and you go your separate financial way, you can be prosecuted, and put in jail.
No. You can’t prosecute someone under a bill. This is not yet passed into law.
Well if you cleverly neglect to quote the entire bill it seems that way.
OK here’s the entire bill. The way I read it, (and please correct me if I am mis-interpreting it) if a man says, intimates, or makes statements that could be interpreted as " I do not want ot be a father, and I will not stay with you or support you if you decide to carry this pregnancy to term. If you do this I will break up with you." he could be prosecuted for “coercing” her to have an abortion.
Cleverly? Are you insinuating that astro intentionally didn’t quote the part of the bill referring to jail time, and that was clever on his part because he intended to fool you into posting that his title was misleading?
Which, of course, is a bit different than going to jail for simply breaking up with a pregnant women.
True. If you meant that astro cleverly titled his thread to be provocative and grab attention by having us believe, before reading further, that one can go to jail merely for breaking up with a pregnant woman, it does seem that way.
The very last line says, “This amendatory act does not take effect unless all of the following bills of the 93rd Legislature are enacted into law:
(a) House Bill No. 5879.
(b) House Bill No. 5880.
© House Bill No. 5881.
(d) House Bill No. 5883.”
Do any of you Michigan folks know what these other bills are? This seems like a very broad-brush bill that could end up doing more than it intends. Does it have any chance of becoming law?
It seems to me that this bill could lead to an actual use of the third amendment (have we ever had one of those before?) if said pregnant female was serving in the armed forces.
So, if this bill makes it to law, will they drop charges or expunge the records of husbands they prosecuted if it is proven that the child is not the husband’s child? 
No. The law is clearly aimed at anyone who tries to coerce a woman to abort a pregnancy against her will. If, for example, the woman’s mother tried to force her daughter to get an abortion by threatening to kick her out, she can be prosecuted under this bill, if it is passed into law as is. Excepting section 4(d), paternity is irrelevant.
Well, if the man knows he didn’t have sex with his wife at the time she fell pregnant, and decides to move out and file for divorce, would he face prosecution if she is then torn between letting him go, or keeping the baby? What if he won’t be back even if she gets an abortion, but she doesn’t realize it? Will he still be prosecuted uner this law? Yeah, big scenario, but I could see it playing out that way more than once.
No, he’s perfectly free to leave. What he can’t do is to try to force her to have an abortion by saying “if you do, I’ll stay”, or somesuch. The same goes, in fact, even if he IS the father of the unborn child.
Suppose the man wanted the woman to have an abortion. They fight about it. They break up. There’s a big difference between that and coercion, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be in the position of having to prove as much in court. It would come down to one person’s word against another’s. Pretty silly and unenforceable law.
Which is the point I was trying to make. I can see it coming down to “he said, she said” pretty often, with the courts erring on the side of male wrongdoing.
Is it even fair to women? According to MARAL Pro-Choice Michigan, a reproductive-rights organization which opposes the bill,
The bill appears to be an attempt to effectively reduce access to abortion, masquerading as concern for women’s safety.
It actually looks like you get one free shot at it.