Give it time.
So they charged her for giving live birth, then?
Georgia defines the fetus as a person. My friend Bob who lives in Florida is also a person.
My wife and I conspire in Georgia (draw up plans, get the gun, etc.) to travel to Florida to kill Bob. I’m still not a lawyer, but it seems likely that Georgia could prosecute us for conspiracy to commit murder.
It seems further likely that Georgia could treat our plans to travel to Florida to get an abortion exactly the same way.
I don’t want to hijack, but I want to single out this post with a personal story and how I went from “on the fence” to “pro-choice.”
This was about 20 years ago in Texas.
I dated a woman for years, and she was born when her parents were 16 (dad) and 15 (mom). We were in college, and her parents were still married but in their mid to late 30s and trying to have children again, at an appropriate time so that they could afford and be the mature, stable parents that my girlfriend never had. They were good people, just fucked up when they were young and had her.
So the mother gets pregnant finally. Everyone is excited. Her pregnancy ends up being ectopic, and she gets rushed to the hospital when she falls over in pain. We had no idea what was wrong. We all start driving to the hospital. The first (small townish) hospital has a doctor that refuses the DNC or whatever because there is some policy that lets the doctor refuse the procedure on moral grounds. By the time me and the girlfriend get there, the nurses (male and female) are screaming that her mom is going to die because she is about to rupture. Her dad is having a panic attack. The nurses load her up into another ambulance and send her to fucking Parkland in Dallas. I follow the ambulance in the car with her dad and it seemed to take forever to get there.
What we didn’t know is that she was going into shock in the ambulance and almost died. By the time we pull up, I leave my car in the ambulance lane with the keys in it and we rush into the hospital. They rush her passed everyone in the hall behind the flappy doors.
We waited. When the doctor came out, he told us that she almost died and they weren’t sure she would make it through the night. They had to do an entire hysterectomy because she did rupture on the way and they weren’t really sure how she survived the ambulance ride. She made it, but she wasn’t ever the same. Her dad never was the same because he thought somehow he caused it. She never did get to have the children she wanted.
Some dickhead piece of shit asshole doctor decided FOR HER that she would die. Or at the very least never be able to have the children they desperately wanted. They never got the chance to be the good parents I knew they would have been.
I gotta walk away now and smoke a cig or something. Each time I think about that situation I get filled with a very unhealthy rage. I watched three people get their whole world ripped away that day. It fucking haunts me.
These Georgia fucks don’t seem to think about things like this.
Sorry for the cuss words.
The antiaborts I mentioned above will critize the people who transport the women to the clinic and even the men who go in with them for “committing murder.”
And when I ask them about pregnancy from rape, they say “The baby didn’t do anything wrong.” I guess they think tying a woman to her rapist for the rest of her life is not wrong.
Thanks for sharing. I hope it’s that few “pro-life” people recognize how many monstrous things like this that their advocacy can lead to, rather than that they recognize it and just don’t care. I know the latter is true for some – so many have made it clear, again and again, that they really just don’t value women as fully human beings. But hopefully there are lots more who just need to be educated to recognize how important this freedom of bodily control really is.
She went into labor well before her fetus was independently viable. She miscarried.
I suppose we could break out the dictionary cites at this stage, but what’s the point, really?
So, how do you feel about “stand your ground” laws? Should they apply to women?
I don’t know why they charged her for murder, but I do know that she didn’t have a miscarriage, she had a live birth, and so nothing in this story is relevant to asahi’s fear about women “almost certainly” being jailed for having miscarriages in Georgia. Do you too now understand that the story has nothing to do with miscarriages?
“Officer, I was well within my rights – this person wouldn’t leave my body and was taking my body’s resources without my permission.”
Interesting. If a woman was pregnant by a man and she did not want the baby but he did, he could probably get away with kidnapping her and hold her hostage until she gives birth.
BUT, if he told her to leave him alone and never contact him again and she broke into his house, he could “stand his ground” and kill her and the unborn “baby.” And get away with it.
Is that fucked up or what?
No, she didn’t miscarry. It’s not a miscarriage if the baby is born alive. It’s a live birth, which in the is case sadly was followed shortly by a neonatal death. Here are the actual definitions for such terms if you’re interested. The point is to fight your ignorance on this matter.
Stand your ground laws DO apply to women. They don’t, however, have much relevance in a discussion around abortion laws, particularly since those laws already allow for an exception in the case that the woman’s life is in danger.
I honestly can’t think of a good reason to argue with her.
I’m also a tad curious about the rape exception. Hypothetically, what if a woman walks into a police station and relates the following:
“I just found out I’m pregnant. I have no recollection of having consenting sex in the last two months. I vaguely recall going to a bar about two months ago, but I can’t remember where exactly. I think I may have been roofied or just really drunk and I think I was raped. I don’t remember anything else.”
Is that enough of a police report to get an abortion? If not, what is?
What world do you live in where kidnapping and holding someone hostage is legal?
Do you think it should be legal to break into someone’s home and try to harm or murder them if you are carrying their child?
If only there was a word that meant intentionally killing a fetus in the womb. Then if we had that word we could decide whether an anti-abortion bill would cover it.
An embryo/fetus/baby’s legal status can change / be different. I guess I just don’t see the conflict here that maybe you do. If this law is allowed to take effect, then in Georgia it will generally be considered a person, but if the same mother with the same fetus cross the state line into Florida, it’s no longer, legally, a natural person (at least in its present jurisdiction). Nothing about the nature of the embryo/fetus/baby changed, just it’s legal status. Same thing with the exception for rape / incest. It’s not that the nature of the embryo/fetus/baby is different, just that it’s legal status is. I hope that helps. Feel free to ask any follow-up questions you wish.
Stand your ground laws only apply if the person is being threatened. So in your scenario if the fetus is pointing a gun at the mother or is advancing with a knife then it could be legally aborted.
If you were trying to keep them from killing your “baby” I doubt the state would press charges. If someone is threatening your child, I bet you could harm or kill them without much legal action being taken.
Where did I say the man would be “harmed or murdered”? But if the woman was just to get him to accept his responsibility as a father and he told her to leave and she kept arguing, so he murders her, he could claim he thought he was being threatened, which is a good reason to kill her (and his unborn “baby.”)
So anti-abortion folks are only against abortion and are not advocating for an agenda you made up in your head?
Probably not an epiphany to most folks.
When I google up miscarriage the first definition I get is:
That’s exactly what happened in the case - fetus was expelled, it died (as most ~5 months births do, because they can’t survive independently) and that’s exactly why it’s a miscarriage, and that’s exactly why you’re wrong.
From your cite, the definition of miscarry can vary by state. Georgia doesn’t mention the term at all, so I see no reason I have to stop using it.
Do stand-your-ground laws (generally, or just in Georgia, as you wish) require a specific threat of death or does a reasonably perceived threat of injury count? Pregnancy can be pretty injurious, I’m given to understand. I gotta figure if you walked up to Johnny Guntoter and said “I’m gonna enter your abdomen and slowly stretch out,” Johnny could plausibly view that as less-than-desirable. Does he have to retreat, though? How much do I have to stretch his abdomen before Johnny gets to decline?