Anything to Push the Agenda...

Have a miscarriage, go to jail.

Virginia delegate John Cosgrove (a Republican, naturally) is sponsoring a bill (HB1677) that requires any woman who has a miscarriage without a doctor present — regardless of gestational age — to report it to the state within twelve hours. Failure to do so would be considered a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by up to twelve months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

And we’re not talking about a simple acknowledgement of the fact of the miscarriage, but a full-blown report. Dozens of required information fields, including the sex and weight of the fetus, sex if determinable, full medical history, the works. All, of course, within twelve hours of the miscarriage itself.

Cosgrove’s professed rationale for the bill is to prevent the abandonment of newborns (i.e., “trash can babies”). Fair enough.. if it were true. But actually looking at the bill in question demonstrates that his argument doesn’t stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. It does nothing beyond already-existing Virginia law to prevent (or punish) abandonment, and serves solely to place additional burden (beyond that required of doctors and other medical professionals, incidentally) on what is likely to be a distraught woman. The bill is designed for one purpose, and one purpose only: To legally establish “personhood” for a fetus from the moment of conception.

I don’t often get into the abortion debate, at least not on the merits of the debate itself. Not that I’m one to avoid controversy, but because there are rational arguments to be made on both sides. Granted, most of the arguments you hear from the antiabortion crowd are anything but rational, but that’s another debate (one I have often gotten into elsewhere). My reason for calling attention to this bill is twofold: One, it’s being pushed in under the radar, without much in the way of public awareness, and two, it’s being promoted under flagrantly false pretenses. The “stepping stone” argument can easily be overdone (on both sides), but in this case, I think the intent is fairly clear.

I personally find this particular bill ridiculously intrusive, though I’m certainly willing to entertain counterarguments. But at the least, I wanted to bring it out into the open.