How much “normalcy” do you think was in this dipshit’s life before she came up with this bright idea? She was in her third trimester.
She had six fucking months to safely terminate her pregnancy. She waited until she was past the point where even the Supreme Court thinks abortion is a bit more significant than getting your stomach pumped.
Look, the law can’t fix stupid. The (badly written) article in the OP says, quite clearly and explicitly,
So every dim little twit in Utah can merrily fuck her way across Salt Lake City, with or without a condom, and nobody turns a hair.
But when she waits until it is way too late and hires some asshole to beat her up, because she can’t figure out the bus schedule for seven months, and we get all these horseshit scenarios about how we are going to send women to prison because they drank a half espresso latte, even though
By hiring someone to beat you with a stick so you can abort?
Convince me you’re serious. Good luck, you’ve got quite an uphill climb.
Potential unintended consequence, if a woman in Utah is faced with an unwanted pregnancy and on the fence about whether to abort or give birth and give the baby up for adoption, this would be one point toward just getting the abortion.
Granted there probably won’t be lots of people who will make their choice based only on this law but if it were me I’d certainly take it into consideration. Especially if it was expected to be a high risk pregnancy.
As crazy as it sounds, it appears that the state of Utah would not have allowed her to have a legal abortion at any time without written parental consent.
She did still have six months to get someone to punch her, but I would understand if she spent the first six months in a state of shock that a state in the modern USA could prevent her from having a legal abortion. Also, the punching alternative isn’t exactly something you would jump on right away. That is the kind of thing you really need to be driven into over the course of months of helplessness and disbelief.
Except that’s just not how it works. Not in theory, not in practice. That’s why couching this debate in this bullshit terminology about murder is so repellent. It’s nothing but an appeal to emotion intended to shut down discussion. If it’s murder, nothing else matters. It’s bad faith rhetoric of the worst sort.
But this law doesn’t have a word in it about trimesters or anything else. If she’d been in her third week and had someone beat her to try to cause a miscarriage, she could be charged and face the potential of life in prison. This, along with the weasel language regarding “recklessness” is why this bill is so very onerous.
Yes, she was in her third trimester, because contraceptives and abortion were not legally available to her. But there can be some semblance of normalcy in a pregnant woman’s life, especially if she’s hiding it, which by all accounts, the girl was. Keeping up the appearance of normal was probably an overwhelming concern. But hiding a pregnancy is possible, hiding a baby, not so much. She was running out of time because she never really had any options to begin with.
No she didn’t. She was 17. She didn’t have any time in which she could do anything. Utah law states that her body is not her own, that her choice is not her own and puts other people in charge of her uterus.
Could you be a little more condescendingly offensive? I don’t think so.
Wow, and this totally isn’t about slut shaming, not at all. :rolleyes:
One more time. Abortion was not an option for her. Contraceptives were not an option for her. That’s Utah law already. No one couldn’t figure out the bus schedule.
The law specifically includes “reckless” behavior without defining what is reckless where a pregnant woman is concerned. Maybe it’s not drinking a latte, but applying the same illogic that is behind the Utah law, a woman was arrested last month in Iowa for admitting, after falling down a flight of stairs, that she was unsure about continuing her pregnancy. The charges against that woman were only dropped because the Iowa law specified limits regarding trimesters. The Utah law does not specify nor draw any distinction between a pregnancy before the point of viability nor apply any of the state’s limits to when a medical termination can take place.
Desperate people do desperate things. In this case, the legislature has within its power the ability to reduce the likelihood of other Utahn women ever becoming that desperate – by increasing access to contraceptives and increasing, not decreasing, access to safe, legal abortions for any woman who needs one, regardless of age or economic status. But they cannot or will not do so, and do this instead, not merely punishing women who take the bad options when they have no good options, but endangering the liberties of women who have actually done nothing wrong at all.
Time doesn’t pass any differently for a teen ager than for a normal person. She had two full trimesters. She did not attempt to obtain a safe, legal abortion - she waited until her baby was viable and then hired someone to try to beat it out of her. This is [list=A][li]stupid, []irresponsible, and []ineffective - she later gave birth.[/list][/li]
And stupid people do stupid ones. Passing a law to try to keep the stupid ones from behaving stupidly may trigger hysteria, but when the law says -
How do you know that? She may have been prevented by her parents. She may not have had the money. She may have simply been unable to reach one; there’s only 6 in the state. She lives in a state that does everything it can legally get away with to prevent women from getting abortions, and harass and humiliate them in the process.
No. As these anti-abortion laws always do, this law has one purpose only; to punish women. Throwing some poor woman who miscarries into prison - possibly for life - won’t do anything else.
There was a thread recently on whether I.Q. tests should be required to qualify someone for seeking the Presidency.
While I am against that, I think it would be appropriate to do sophisticated brain scans on anyone seeking to be a legislator. If, when you say the words “There oughta be a law!” pleasure centers in their brain light up, they’re disqualified from running for office.
She had enough money to hire somebody to beat her.
In seven months? :rolleyes:
This is as dumb as it was the last seventeen thousand times you said it. Since you cannot produce a cite for the intentions of the legislators who originated this bill, I suggest you preface this with “the following is my opinion, and is stupid, ill-informed, and based on nothing”.
This law does not apply to those who miscarry, as has been cited twice. And your assertion that it would carry a possible life sentence is also stupid and wrong.
Right now any death unattended by a doctor has to be reported and investigate. The death of a fetus granted personhood would qualify. Technically, every menstrual period of a sexually active woman would have to be investigated for a fertilized cell.
I bet every one knows a woman who had a hard time when ordering coffee or wine when pregnant.
Well, I already said I thought it was a stupid, unconstitutional law for that reason. But you were the one who made it personal about her, which is why I brought up her particular circumstances.
Where are you getting the “life in prison” part? And we’ve already had posts about the legal definition of “reckless”. Go back and read what it means.
As for the parental consent thing, Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of that. Sorry, but democracy can be a bitch some times.
I’ve had to take the internet’s word on what “reckless” means because that’s all I have access to. I’ve attempted to look into Utah Codes for a day now and failed. They’ve put their statutes on this buggy piece of Java crap and my browser fails every time I try searching through the thing.
And thanks for assuming I’ve passed any moral judgement. Go back and read the OP without your blinders on. I found some articles, summarized them, and asked for others’ opinions on them. It’s about as objective as I could make it.
When someone is murdered, the first people investigated are those with a motive. Unwanted pregnancy would be the first motive investigated for “killing” the fetus.
I was under the impression that where the constitutionally protected rights of minors are at issue, we needed a little more than the preferences of the mob.
Parental consent laws are (unfortunately) here to stay, but that’s a foolish reason to justify them.
In case you might accidentally intentionally grossly deviate from the standard of care that a normal person would receive? If that’s your thought process, you probably shouldn’t have kids anyway. Of course, anyone morally bankrupt enough to have an unnecessary abortion shouldn’t be raising people anyhow.
Where are you getting this “unattended deaths have to be investigated”? I’ve never heard that, and it doesn’t match up with my experience.
Can you tell me any law that works like that? Where law enforcement investigates every situation where a crime could maybe possibly might have occurred? Is every date investigated for rape? Every conversation investigated for harassment? Every bruise investigated for assault?
Well, all constitutional rights are ultimately determined by “the mob”-- lso known as the majority (when we agree with them).
Personally, I’m undecided as to the wisdom of such laws. If a 12 year old girl gets an abortion, I can see where the parents might want to know. At 17, it might be different, but we have to draw the line somewhere.
