QotD [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

"Occasionally, in my more paranoid moments, I've thought that the next step after outlawing abortion would be criminal investigation of miscarriages.

"Until now, the rational part of my brain always considered that a slippery slope type of argument, and mocked my paranoia. Now I'm struggling for the words to articulate my outrage."

-- minim_calibre, 2005-01-07, in response to learning about Virginia Delegate John Cosgrove's bill which would mandate that a woman who suffers a miscarriage without medical attendance report that to the police within twelve hours or face up to a year in jail. (It's worse than this one-sentence summary makes it sound. here are links to more info, and a last-minute edit: a response to the blogosphere furor, update, and clarification from Delegate Cosgrove, which is either a correction of careless phrasing or a strategic retreat from the glare, and being halfway to sleep as I edit this at 04:00, I'll try to figure that out after I've slept.

P.S.: The main point of this entry was supposed to be minim_calibre's quote, not all the news links (which I would've put in a normal entry), since this is, after all, my QotD entry for today. But once I'd decided to bump the quote previously scheduled for today in favour of posting this while it's still topical, I figured, "Well, I've got all these links right in front of me right now..." It's not the start of a new direction for my quote of the day -- in general I'll use a normal (not QotD) entry for things like this.

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Actually before the flap about gay marriage, I spent some time thinking about what the next logical step would be for a group that had succeeded in stamping out legal abortion on demand and it seemed to me that it would most likely be an all out attack on fault free divorce and perhaps even all divorce. This would be consistant with their "family values" platform.

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I disagree with this bill and I think it will not pass. While I am opposed to abortion after the point of viability, in other words after the child can be born and live, I disagree with creating a law in which miscarages (which are more common then people think) are monitorable thing in of its self. If the attempt was made to prevent the abondonment of new borns (which should be a crime) the bill is poorly written.

I don't think it will pass, either, but I'm concerned that a compromise version--longer notification period, smaller punishment--will pass.

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Purhaps.. I do think something should be done about baby adbandoment (exposer). But it is hardly a large enough scale to warrent monitoring of all pregnant women. What should be done it strong enforcement activity. Namely the police pursueing the matter in the fullest since to abandon a new born is a crime already under child indangerment and as such we don't need more laws to cover it just enforce the current laws.

Still it should this attempt should be monitored to ensure it's failure. Too often people let things slip because news stations don't think it is worthy of time.

BTW, read the final link in dglenn's post - rep Cosgrove has responded...

I think Cosgrove's claim that this was meant to address abandonment was purely an attempt to cover his ass after the outrage over this bill. As noted in the discussion over at DfV, Virginia actually does have laws designed to prevent abandonment (such as HB 1891, allowing mothers to relinquish custody of newborns without charges, which I believe has generally been found to be more effective than criminal penalties.) If Cosgrove really wanted to make those laws more effective, he would have worked for better social services instead.

I have not denied that Cosgrove is tring to cover his ass. Nor am I for the bill since it is just plan stupid. As for child abandonment. What ever works I am all for it. If they want to give the child up for adoption at a police station I have to problem with it (or a church or any other place where the child can quickly and safely change hands). But if the parent refuses to do this and leave the child in a trachs can then I think the book should be thrown at her and more so should the child die because of this.

I have always felt we needed to improve of system to deal better with children without parents. Their are alot of flaws in it today from children being taken from loving parents to child in the care of people who do it only for the money. I can sight case from a friend were her duaghter children were taken from her and I know personnal she is a very loving mother.

I agree with all your points. I didn't actually mean to disagree with you, I was just being appalled that not only is he trying to use a real problem as cover for a radical anti-abortion bill, he's using a real problem that as a legislator, he could do something about if he really cared about it.

Instead of having the book thrown at some hapless woman who leaves her newborn in a trash can, I would prefer to see that the 87%+ of US counties which currently have severely restricted to nonexistent access to abortion have services provided or restored; I would prefer to see "conscience clauses," which allow medical professionals to restrict women's access to contraception or family-planning information (on the grounds that the medical professionals themselves disagree with the existence of such technologies), scrapped; I would prefer to see comprehensive sex education in US schools, as is done in just about every other industrialised Western country; I would prefer to see a US government pushing science instead of "faith-based initiatives" as a basis for its public policy...

To me, to do the former, rather than all the latter, is blaming the victim in the rankest sort of way. People who do that sort of thing need help, not punishment.

Then again, since you're a marginally literate religious type (with a penis and a public opinion about abortion) who rants about liberals, misunderstands the purpose of "free speech," and hates the ACLU...not to mention who cites personal anecdotes to support his arguments without citing facts to back them up, I wouldn't expect you to understand the thrust of my argument.

I'm also not a US citizen (thank goodness), and I'd be perfectly content to let you lot go to wrack and ruin on your own, if it weren't that you'd take the entire rest of the world down with you when you went.

Let's get it over with and declare that the state of being female is illegal and we all gotta suffer and die.

Or all women of childbearing age could refuse to commit any act which might get them pregnant. It would take great coordination.

Ah, the Lysistrata approach. Yeah, it'd take a lot of coordination. But not something to forget about entirely.

Socialism... right. State run every thing. You know what I am GLAD you are not a US Citizen.

"Occasionally, in my more paranoid moments, I've thought that the next step after outlawing abortion would be criminal investigation of miscarriages.

"Until now, the rational part of my brain always considered that a slippery slope type of argument, and mocked my paranoia.

It was a dangerous possibility in the 60's (see Delaney's autobiographical The Motion of Light in Water, e.g.); not at all surprising that it's resurfacing now.

But I empathize with the anguish of "that was supposed to be the PARANOID view, not the realistic one!"

Since about 1/2 of conceptions end in miscarriage, often before the woman even realizes she has conceived, its hard to see how this would work. Perhaps mandatory monthly pregnancy testing, with government case workers regularly following up on every positive until the moment of birth, when the government abandons them?

Now That sounds like something our erstwhile Federal Administration's right-wing ~friends could approve of! What a great way to ensure a vast underclass to be the serfs (carefully Not Called slaves, at least out loud) in the new and coming Empire. From a historian's view, this looks just an Awful lot like the beginning of the slide into empire that strong republics usually end with.

But Wait, they Already have most of this policy in effect in Muslim countries under Sharia law, why not just invite them in to jump on the bandwagon too?!

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