One just can't afford to be sick. While we weren't looking, Neanderthal Del. Chris Jones' (R-Suffolk) monstrous bill (HB 1126) passed the House (68 to 31) and is in Committee (Education and Health) in the Senate! Del. Jones wants to felonize women having either an abortion or miscarriage. It's bad enough to felonize women having an abortion. But the inclusion of miscarriage, which occurs naturally in 20% of all pregnancies, is simply draconian.
The upshot could be that up to 20% of all pregnancies would result in criminal investigation. Talk about feeding the prison industrial complex. And that's what this punitive, unAmerican bill will do.
Miscarriages which are "caused" by the woman, or anyone else, will yield a five year prison sentence. As the full text reveals (below), "cause" is defined very vaguely. It's bad enough to try to felonize women for abortions. But to treat miscarriage as if it were a criminal matter is, well, downright grotesque.
And the roll call contains the usual radical wrong, who'd be considered buffoons, but for the tremendous damage they do. It really goes to show how uncompassionate conservatives (and their gutless enablers on our side of the aisle) are. These folks are right out of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
You know the crew: Dave Albo, Terry Kilgore, Bob Marshall Bill Carrico, John Cosgrove, et al. And as for Democrats Phillips, Valentine, Armstrong, Barlow, (Algie) Howell, Johnson, Morrissey, and Lewis, get them out of office. Soon!
Here's the text.
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:
1. That -º 18.2-71 of the Code of Virginia is amended and reenacted as follows:
-º 18.2-71. Producing abortion or miscarriage, etc.; penalty.
Except as provided in other sections of this article, any person, including the pregnant female, who administers or causes to be taken by a pregnant female any drug or other thing, or uses means, with intent to destroy her unborn child, or to produce abortion or miscarriage, and thereby destroys such child, or produces such abortion or miscarriage, is guilty of a Class 4 felony. The provisions of this section shall not apply to any medically approved contraceptive whether used before or after sexual intercourse [ or any medication legally prescribed by a physician ] [ specifically to induce or cause an abortion ] .
2. That the provisions of this act may result in a net increase in periods of imprisonment or commitment. Pursuant to -º 30-19.1:4, the estimated amount of the necessary appropriation cannot be determined for periods of imprisonment in state adult correctional facilities and cannot be determined for periods of commitment to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice.
PS If you read all the related clauses, doctors have a lot of cover (e.g., they wouldn't be prosecuted for legal abortion). The women themselves not so much. It has all the signs of a bill to be ready when Roe is eliminated once and for all.
Mathieson, Lewis and especially Bulova, I'm not so sure about.
Inexcusable in a Fairfax district which is now arguably LIBERAL!!
FASCIST
IMMORAL
UNDEMOCRATIC
You also forgot some people that deserve special attention for voting for this monstrosity:
Paula Miller, from an urban Norfolk district
Dave Bulova, from a safe Fairfax district who by all rights should be primaried out for this
BOBBY MATHIESON, WHO JUST BEAT AN INCUMBENT REPUBLICAN WITH 57.5% OF THE VOTE!!!
WHO DO THESE PEOPLE THINK THEY ARE? Not Democrats, that's for sure!
This one should be no exception.
I am CERTAIN there are other outrageous votes out there in this year's House that haven't been caught. People should begin scanning the bills passed, particularly in the House, to uncover the hidden agendas of some of the delegates.
They're out there, as NLS recently showed us with the $5M budget amendments Clarke Hogan tried to get pushed through undercover in the Honeywell pollution racket.
Now the medical care industry will continue down the path of not just turning in patients w/ suspected pre-existings (as one insurer asked them to do in Calif). This law, if enacted, means doctors, nurses, etc will be police surrogates. How can we receive good health care and have good communication with our health care providers under circumstances like that?
He probably also knows that Kaine will veto the bill as well.
So before you go and turn the Assembly wholly over to the Republicans, I would urge everyone to target the author of this bill and not fellow Democrats.
So when this idiot Jones comes up for election next year, I wonder how many of you will call and get a phone list to call through to turn out votes for his Democratic opponent. Or how many will pitch in $50. so the Dem candidate can get some mail out the door letting Jones constituents know that he wants to put women who have miscarriages in jail.
Instead we turn on each other.
I normally very much enjoy things that Kathy writes. And she definite nails it that this is a shameful bill. But she goes radically off track when she goes after people like Ward Armstrong, one of the best Dems we have.
Lets get this guy Jones instead.
You can call it my "95-County" strategy.
I once (long ago) had a mis-carrriage (of a pregnancy I very much wanted--not that that would have been anyone's business) and am mighty sensitive to men trying to become judge and jury. Did the women do this or that right (or wrong?) Was it her fault? Should she have worked? Exercised? Did she do something worse? Hell no. But it was not for anyone to say. Even back then pre-Roe, there was none of this going after women who miscarried.
I am not saying I would agree that women who have abortions should be criminalized. That's bad enough. But going after women who miscarry is just wicked. And it shows how insincere about protecting real life these people really are. Interestingly, when I miscarried, all the people who supposedly cared about "life," had nothing to say, not even "I'm sorry this happened to you."
Previously, I was involved in the effort to block efforts by Del John Cosgrove to require all women who have had miscarriages to file a police report within 12 hours. Following a dressing down on Nightline opposite the great blogger Maura Keaney(and being made to look foolish), he backed down. Even the so-called pro-life forces joined with us and abandoned him on the bill), so he withdrew it. Not Jones. When he failed last year, he came right back with a slightly revised bill. He made an exception for birth control. But these guys, a handful, really, keep coming up with more and more creative ways to inject their pseudomorality on citizens' personal lives.
You can argue with my contention that we need (some) better Democrats. Personally, I think we are foolish to presume we have to go on supporting just any Democrats no matter how they vote. If they just once cared about real people instead of their obsession with women's reproduction, Virginia would be a better place. But I agree that what is clear is that the usual suspects among the radical right need to lose their next elections, big time.
If this bill was going to pass anyway. Why would Armstrong and others purposefully give the wingnuts something to hit them with. Their votes would not have made a difference.
Lets get this guy Jones. Any good candidates in the works to take him on?