Right-to-Lifers: How Does Miscarriage Fit In?

I often wonder what right-to-lifers think about miscarriages. People act as if life, and all its splendor, shines down upon all of us equally. We act is if everything is guaranteed: life, liberty, happiness… But, you can be prince one day, and a pauper the next as the best laid plans of mice and men ofter go awry. Man proposes, and God disposes. Nothing, nothing is written in stone - except death and taxis. :wink:

So, now how does miscarriage dovetail into your thinking? Ultimately, if abortion was made illegal, would mothers-to-be be accused of murder when a miscarriage occurs? I wonder just how ugly could this issue could get… - Jinx

Miscarriages are unfortunate deaths, to be prevented as necessary. There’s no reason that mothers who miscarry should be charged with murder; it’s pretty silly to suggest that.

Miscarriage is, of course, a tragedy.

It almost happened with us, when our twins were born prematurely. Thankfully, they came through it just fine.

Our neighbors weren’t so lucky when they went into early labor. They had one twin make it, and the other one, sadly, died.

I have many members of my family who have suffered miscarriages, as has my wife’s best friend, several times. For the record, I am pro-life.

Why, I ask, is this so hard to understand?

You’re assuming that if a woman miscarries, she necessarily caused it. Miscarriages usually happen because there’s a defect with the fetus or something goes terribly wrong. Charging a woman with murder would be like saying someone committed suicide because they had a heart attack.

Now, if a woman does something that causes a miscarriage or stillbirth (drug use, etc.), the laws now being put into effect could, as far as I can see, be used to prosecute her. Her in South Carolina, women have already been charged and convicted of murder for stillbirths caused by drug use.

(FWIW, I’m pro-choice and find the above a travesty.)

Of course not. Very few healthy fetuses are lost to miscarriage. Usually the poor thing is so defective that it wouldn’t live even if it continued to develop; as tragic as it is, it’s probably kinder to it and its parents than if it were born, suffered a while, then died. It’s sad that a baby is lost through miscarriage, but it’s not as though either parent did something to cause it to be defective - unless she did drugs or drank. In that case the only way I can see charging a woman with some crime is only it can be proven she knew she was pregnant at the time she used/drank.

But then there’s the case where a woman’s organs are as such that she can’t carry a baby to term. What do you think, Jinx, should the lost baby’s grandparents be charged with something then, given it’s their genes that gave the mother imperfect organs?

But that’s really the point of this debate. How will the government determine if the mother caused it? If you consider the death of a 1 year old, what would be involved? You mentioned obvious factors like drug abuse, but this implies that you know about the potential mother’s life. You seem to agree that if the mother directly caused it she’s some form of murderer. There will now have to be an investigation into ALL miscarriages the way there is an investigation into all deaths. The mother would then have to account for her entire actions during the months leading up to the event. There was a really interesting thread about this recently, let me see if I can find it.

But to sum up: C3, I’d like you to propose a procedure for the police and DA to deal with misscariages assuming that you start without any knowledge of the mother; someone simply called Crime Stoppers and claimed they knew a women who used to be pregnant. It helps if you start by assuming they’re all drug users.

This post really cracked me up and pretty much says it all with regard to protecting the fetus. I was in response to commends made after that woman refused a C-section in this thread here. Try not to take it out of context.

Well, exactly what are we discussing here? Can we frame the debate a little better?

Are we talking about the tragedy of accidental miscarriage?

Or are we talking about negligence on the part of the mother, leading to fetal death? Case in point would be the woman who let one of her twins die by refusing a C-section.

Alternatively, we can discuss the new law passed, making it a crime to kill an unborn child in the course of committing another crime, a la Laci Peterson.

These cases are much in the news lately, and we could devote whole threads to each one. Indeed, people already have.

(my bolding)

Um, no, I don’t seem to agree that if the mother directly caused it she’s some form of murderer. If you had read my whole post, you would see that I said that I’m pro-choice and I believe cases where mothers are charged with murder for the stillbirths of their children are travesties.

In my post, I was simply pointing out that not all miscarriages are the fault of the mother (which is the premise that the OP seemed to be basing his argument); regardless, mother’s are already being prosecuted and convicted. Because of the reasons you cited, and because I don’t believe that fetuses should be granted the same protections as born humans, I don’t agree that this should be the case. But, it seems that in many of these threads, there is the idea that if we don’t stop these laws, we’ll be sliding down the slippery slope and the next thing you know, mothers will be prosecuted for stillbirths. Well, they already are. We’ve already slid down the slippery slope.

The most covered case in South Carolina (because I think it was the first, although there have now been hundreds of women caught up in this) is that of Regina McKnight

I linked to this article in the c-section thread, too. Please, if you’re interested in this subject, please read this.

Damn, please delete that pesky apostrophe in “mother’s”. I saw it just as I hit submit.

Since a miscarriage is technically defined as a “spontaneous abortion due to natural causes”, I wouldn’t think that it would be legally possible to legislate against miscarriages, or to punish women for something that was “natural”.

http://health.allrefer.com/health/abortion-spontaneous-info.html

There are a whole host of substances, both legal and illegal, that when used during pregnancy can cause a miscarriage (some because they’re directly toxic, and some because they cause birth defects which cause the defective fetus to naturally abort), but you would have to prove that the substance had caused it, that it hadn’t happened “naturally”. I don’t have any idea how you would prove, for example, that a woman who miscarried, and who turned out to have high levels of lead in her body, had miscarried because of her high lead levels.

http://www.infertilitytutorials.com/miscarriage_members/misc.cfm

And things like stress can reportedly cause miscarriages. How would you prosecute a woman for “having such a stressful life that she miscarried”?

Low folate can apparently cause miscarriages. Are you going to prosecute a woman for not taking her prenatal vitamins?

And of course smoking is strongly linked with miscarriages, but how are you going to prove that the pregnant smoker’s miscarriage was caused by her smoking?

I got the impression that the OP was wondering whether, in a version of America whose laws are pro-life, there would be laws in place to investigate miscarriages as possible murder cases to determine whether the crime of killing a fetus had taken place.

Sorry if I’m wrong about this, or if I missed a clarification earlier…

That’d be giving the fetus more rights than a human is already entitled to. Let me explain.

As it stands, the C-section lady case actually gave the fetus MORE rights than a human is entitled to. Nobody’s forced to undergo involuntary medical treatment for the sake of others. If I had an extremely rare blood type, and someone with that blood type needed a kidney, it’s legally within my rights to say “No, I’ll keep my kidneys, kthx.” Yet this lady was arrested for refusing to do life-saving treatment for another person.

Likewise, you can say that your own workplace stresses indirectly caused your angsty 16-year-old to kill himself. Or feeding your kids McDonald’s meals caused him to have Type II diabetes at age 30 and caused him to go blind. Or secondhand smoke caused him to have asthma and he dies at 8 of an asthma attack. I don’t view stuff like drinking alcohol, eating the wrong foods, smoking, being stressed, etc., to be abuse since the fetus is only an indirect victim.

Unless the lady did something really screwy directly to her own fetus, such as injecting it with alcohol directly, all of the situations you postulate would be giving a fetus even more rights than a human child.

How does this fit in to the Regina McKnight case (and South Carolina law)? Regina McKnight used cocaine while pregnant and, as a result, her baby was stillborn. She did not inject the fetus with cocaine. She is now serving a prison sentence.

This is ALREADY HAPPENING! Women are already being prosecuted (and convicted) for their babies dying in utero. This is no longer a hypothetical argument.

I know it’s happening–and I referred to the C-section lady as an example of this. It’s idiotic, especially in the light of the fact that abortion is legal. Makes no sense at all, no consistency in there.

Just giving my perspective on how not persecuting actions a pregnant woman does that causes her fetus to die/be injured in utero wouldn’t necessarily conflict with a pro-life stance.

Got it. That’s a good stance to take (from my perspective). It seems like we’re all on the same page in this thread so far.

Thanks. Gotta love SDMB–try having this debate on Fark.com, FR, or DU… :o)

Agggh, the MB translated my smiley-with-a-nose to a yawn again. Oh, well.

Originally posted by Jinx

Ahhh yes death and TAXIS.

Truly not a legal issue at all (unless it was somehow intentional), it is a loss of a life due to natural causes, like a heart attack.