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rfmcdonaldNews of a proposed law in Georgia that could subject women who have miscarriages to the death penalty has been extensively covered--here, for instance, by Mother Jones' Jen Philips, interviewed in the below MSNBC segment.
Her summary?
Besides noting that this legislation almost certainly exists in the Glileadean theocracy that Margaret Atwood describes in her The Handmaid's Tale--a book that, I should note, was certainly not intended by Atwood to be an instructional tome--I will say that Franklin is one of the few strongly anti-abortion people I know who are consistent in their positions.
I have always found find remarkably inconsistent the people who condemn abortion as murder, innumerable abortions as acts of genocide entirely comparable to anything done by Hitler or Stalin, and then go on to not favour radical action in the name of the millions murdered hypocritical. Are these human lives, or are these human lives?
Likewise, I have always found inconsistent those call abortion murder but then go on to call the women who commissioned their abortions as victims, undeserving of criminal prosecution. Why should infanticide escape punishment? Even if women aren't fully capable moral actors, surely they knew what they were doing and--wicked, wicked!--planned anyway to murder the life that they were to nurture.
Franklin is a man who's consistent: yes, a fetus is a human life as worthy of protection as any other; yes; women who don't take proper care of the life that they're supposed to nurture should be punished. His radical honesty isn't something a sane civilization should strive for, mind, but it's something to be noted. Would that other anti-abortion opinionmakers were as consistent as him.
And below, for illustrative purposes, is a 2008 photo I took of the address of the former location of Dr. Henry Morgenthaler's famous Harbord Street abortion clinic in downtown Toronto. You know he got the Order of Canada, right?
Her summary?
There's a new bill on the block that may have reached the apex (I hope) of woman-hating craziness. Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin—who last year proposed making rape and domestic violence "victims" into "accusers"—has introduced a 10-page bill that would criminalize miscarriages and make abortion in Georgia completely illegal. Both miscarriages and abortions would be potentially punishable by death: any "prenatal murder" in the words of the bill, including "human involvement" in a miscarriage, would be a felony and carry a penalty of life in prison or death. Basically, it's everything an "pro-life" activist could want aside from making all women who've had abortions wear big red "A"s on their chests.
I doubt that a bill that makes a legal medical procedure liable for the death penalty will pass. The bill, however, shows an astonishing lack of concern for women's health and well-being. Under Rep. Franklin's bill, HB 1, women who miscarry could become felons if they cannot prove that there was "no human involvement whatsoever in the causation" of their miscarriage. There is no clarification of what "human involvement" means, and this is hugely problematic as medical doctors do not know exactly what causes miscarriages. Miscarriages are estimated to terminate up to a quarter of all pregnancies and the Mayo Clinic says that "the actual number is probably much higher because many miscarriages occur so early in pregnancy that a woman doesn't even know she's pregnant. Most miscarriages occur because the fetus isn't developing normally."
Holding women criminally liable for a totally natural, common biological process is cruel and non-sensical. Even more ridiculous, the bill holds women responsible for protecting their fetuses from "the moment of conception," despite the fact that pregnancy tests aren't accurate until at least 3 weeks after conception. Unless Franklin (who is not a health professional) invents a revolutionary intrauterine conception alarm system, it's unclear how exactly the state of Georgia would enforce that rule other than holding all possibly-pregnant women under lock and key.
Besides noting that this legislation almost certainly exists in the Glileadean theocracy that Margaret Atwood describes in her The Handmaid's Tale--a book that, I should note, was certainly not intended by Atwood to be an instructional tome--I will say that Franklin is one of the few strongly anti-abortion people I know who are consistent in their positions.
Franklin is a man who's consistent: yes, a fetus is a human life as worthy of protection as any other; yes; women who don't take proper care of the life that they're supposed to nurture should be punished. His radical honesty isn't something a sane civilization should strive for, mind, but it's something to be noted. Would that other anti-abortion opinionmakers were as consistent as him.
And below, for illustrative purposes, is a 2008 photo I took of the address of the former location of Dr. Henry Morgenthaler's famous Harbord Street abortion clinic in downtown Toronto. You know he got the Order of Canada, right?
