Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

[Tylluan Penry]

I came across this article in an online UK newspaper:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges

I had to read it a few times to make sure I understood what it was saying (and I fully understand that the article may not be giving us all the salient facts.)

But, as it stands, I am completely gobsmacked. How the hell can having a still born baby or even unintentionally causing death be murder when abortion (the deliberate ending of a pregnancy) isn't? IMHO this is the thin end of the wedge. We are going back into the Dark Ages (the period in Europe at least, when classical learning of Greece and Rome was lost and deliberately destroyed - is there an equivalent US term?).

Just interested in your thoughts.

[Caelia]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

It implies there was cocaine use during the pregnancy. Even if it is the case I think murder charges are a bit extreme. I feel it's manslaughter if anything.

Sadly, it's part of the War on Women. If a woman has anything go wrong with a pregnancy she must have been behind it. I'm not even alluding to Midwife's Tale with this one; this is going well beyond that and it's scary. Heck, we have one congressman in Kansas comparing rape to a flat tire.

What they don't realize is that in suppressing women like this is they're suppressing other groups, especially children. I don't ever want to see what happens when a little girl who happens to start menstruating at a young age gets raped and impregnated.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

It's scary stuff... and even if there was cocaine use you could compare this to other things. What about someone who is not a very good driver yet keeps driving during pregnancy, has an accident (that was her fault) and has a still birth?

As for that congressman in Kansas.... grrr!! That one didn't make it into the news over here. And you're absolutely right, Caelia, that it's not just anti-women. I often say to men who can't see this, 'Well how would you feel if this happened to your mother? Your sister? Your daughter? Your wife?' Often it's not until something hits home that people realise what it is that they're supporting.

The laws of unintended consequences have a nasty habit of coming back to bite us in the bum.

[Caelia]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

It's scary stuff... and even if there was cocaine use you could compare this to other things. What about someone who is not a very good driver yet keeps driving during pregnancy, has an accident (that was her fault) and has a still birth?

I agree, it's very complicated dealing with these things. Heck, what happens if a woman takes something prescribed by her doctor and it ends up causing a stillbirth? We can't forget about 50 years ago doctors actually recommended pregnant women smoke.

As for that congressman in Kansas.... grrr!! That one didn't make it into the news over here. And you're absolutely right, Caelia, that it's not just anti-women. I often say to men who can't see this, 'Well how would you feel if this happened to your mother? Your sister? Your daughter? Your wife?' Often it's not until something hits home that people realise what it is that they're supporting.

It drew lots of ire. NOW in Kansas actually orchestrated a protest, lots of letter-writing ensued, and a demand for an apology that never happened. They don't realize most of the population out here are female. I hope it occurs to them soon enough that they compared their mothers and wives of their daughters to cars. However, I don't think they care. I really think they like the idea of "owning" a person.

The laws of unintended consequences have a nasty habit of coming back to bite us in the bum.

Agreed, but I fear this consequence will bite everyone in the bum.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

It amazes me that there's still so much BS towards approx. 50% of the population due to what's between their legs.

---------- Post added at 11:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:52 AM ----------

Furthermore, as much as I'm anti-drug use, laws like this that further criminalize drug use in an extreme way do NOT help solve the problems of addiction. Didn't we just have a massive influx of reports saying that the war on drugs was a lost cause and that treating users like criminals doesn't work??? I think that a 15 year old who uses drugs and gets pregnant is a big problem, but is that woman a criminal? No....she has a mental illness.

[yukanaoe]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

i'm so flabersated... i dont even know that to say... how can we charge a woman for murder when she had a cocane habbit which they say didnt have anything to do with the death of the unborn child... and yet abortion is still legal..... i'm at a loss here... this is so wrong.. send her to drug rehab not prison.... this is mind boggling...

[Taiga Pagan]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

Let me ask some simple questions of logic...

Question: If the whole mother would dissapear... leaving only the stillborn and what is inside the uterus... would the stillborn survive?

Answer: Not more than 4 minutes... lack of oxygen will kill it as it drowns inside the fluid.

Question: So if the stillborn is part of the mother as a joined organism would that imply that the stillborn is an individual (in the single whole lifeform sense)?

Answer: An individual (in the whole single lifeform sense) is a life that can stay alive for an extended period of time without continuous assistance from another physically connected lifeform which is itself an individual(in the whole single lifeform sense).

Conclusion: So logically, if the stillborn does not qualify as a whole individual, it should not be recognize as such. Which grants it no rights, as we grant no rights to the bacteria that is physically joined in our guts.

In my opinion anyone that says it is a person is lost somewhere in the cosmos by having smoken too much pot.

As a helper to understand my way of thinking this: Would you grant an Iron Lung some rights because it is connected to a human being?

[Ophidia]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

Basically, since there are all these health warnings about alcohol & various other substances possibly causing damage to a fetus, these laws and criminal cases are implying that since all women know that these substances could potentially harm the cluster of cells growing inside their uteri, and therefore they must be intentionally trying to harm these clusters of cells by beginning or continuing use of said substances.

The next step is going to be going after any woman who has the potential of becoming pregnant and prosecuting her for doing things that might prove teratogenic or mutagenic, damaging to her eggs and possibly causing future harm to a baby she hasn't even conceived of conceiving. Eventually, they might even get around to going after men who do things that might harm the viability of their sperm or be mutagenic/teratogenic & thereby threatening the genetics of any future child they might play a part in creating.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

if we're talking about pure, hard facts, the survival rate for pregnancies and newborns has never been better, and through the course of human history, there has never been more information and care available to expecting mothers. If something happens and the baby doesn't make it to term, whether the fault of the mother or not, that sucks, but it's nothing compared to the past. We as a species aren't exactly struggling to continue our existence so I don't know where this sense of stress is coming from. If people are REALLY so concerned about the health and safety of fetuses, they should be campaigning for drug rehab programs and laws that will make it safer for women to come forward to get help with their addictions, not prosecute them. And they should be doing everything they can to help further medical care for women on lower incomes, spreading info about sex education, prenatal care, and all that jazz. If they weren't so ignorant, that's what they'd do, because just prosecuting people does absolutely NOTHING to help.

[B. de Corbin]

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

I think what's going on here is if you choose to have an abortion, have it & be done. If you choose to continue the pregnancy don't do stupid things that will harm the fetus. A wanted, expected baby should not be abused or have their quality of future life undermined.
There was a case in NJ some years back where a high school girl gave birth at home and proceeded to stab the baby to death with nail scizzors, because "abortion was a sin". This is TRULY twisted thinking, IMO, but yet similar things happens fairly often.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

I understand what you mean, but I just really think that these laws do dick all to solve the problem. YES taking drugs has a high chance of harming a fetus, but a few points there:
1) Addiction isn't so simple as saying "hey, I'm pregnant, I better stop now." If it were that simple, addiction wouldn't need all the support that it does. People would just do drugs when they felt like it and stop when they felt like it as well.
2) Drug support in North America, and especially the US, is appalling. Use and possession are far too criminalized and I think a lot of people still fear getting the help they need out of fear of stigma or even prosecution.
3) Sex ed in some areas in the US is TOTALLY appalling. Abstinence-only ed isn't real sex ed and it's a fast track to unwanted pregnancies and all the problems that come with it. Sex ed has to start early as well...12 years old or so. Waiting until 16 just wont cut it.
4) There needs to be more info and resources for prenatal care. Planned Parenthood is great for that, but from what I've read, the conservative camp who supports these kinds of laws also wants to cut funding for Planned Parenthood. Smooth.

And just because professional women support these sorts of things doesn't mean that it's still not tied to an issue of the limitations women face. If that were the case, then we wouldn't be seeing a slight majority of women graduating from universities but still playing second fiddle in professional work places and all that jazz. Often, we're our own worst enemy, and I mean that regarding feminism in general, not just issues surrounding abortion.

PS calling the Guardian "propaganda" is totally ridiculous. It's one of the most respected papers in the UK. Yes, it does have a bit of a "left" bias, and that comes out more when discussing the US because pretty much all of Europe is "left" compared to the US, but that's pretty well known and readers tend to consider that. It's not like we're talking about the Daily Mail here. And I do understand that papers, even good ones, want to sell stories, but that aside, there are some facts here, which I outlined above. Yes, these women shouldn't be getting pregnant or going through with them in the first place, but prosecuting them is the wrong direction and wont solve any of the problems. And it DOES open up the door for more frightening legislation, because in order to carry out such prosecutions in the first place, the fetus has to become a person in the eyes of the law.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

[QUOTE=DanieMarie;45223]I understand what you mean, but I just really think that these laws do dick all to solve the problem. YES taking drugs has a high chance of harming a fetus, but a few points there:
1) Addiction isn't so simple as saying "hey, I'm pregnant, I better stop now." If it were that simple, addiction wouldn't need all the support that it does. People would just do drugs when they felt like it and stop when they felt like it as well.
QUOTE]

True. This is why the law is used to put a squeeze on them. Social programs to treat addiction may or may not be available, but the only way a person can be put into such a treatment program is to either A) volunteer, or B) be legally mandated. Drug addicts aren't so good at A, so there needs to be a B.

2) Drug support in North America, and especially the US, is appalling. Use and possession are far too criminalized and I think a lot of people still fear getting the help they need out of fear of stigma or even prosecution.

Yes. In 2005 (the last year I could find statistics for) the U.S. government spent $468 BILLION on drug rehab programs and treatments. It isn't enough. But please bear in mind that, in the U.S. if a thing is not written into law, the government has NO authority to act - to get people into treatment, they need to violate a law. The first step in treatment for habitual addicts is frequently going to be prosecution - unless they decide to do something for themselves.

The other option would be for the government to, in some way, coerce people into drug treatment programs WITHOUT recourse to law. In other words, establishing a dictatorship in which a person can be sentenced to "the cure" without due process of law (possibly a benevolent dictatorhip, but still... a creepy thought).

3) Sex ed in some areas in the US is TOTALLY appalling. Abstinence-only ed isn't real sex ed and it's a fast track to unwanted pregnancies and all the problems that come with it. Sex ed has to start early as well...12 years old or so. Waiting until 16 just wont cut it.

I'm not real clear on what this has to do with the present issue... I guess that the idea is that if that cocaine using 15 year old had only known enough to give a BJ instead of doing it missionary, the whole problem wouldn't exist...

OK, I'll buy that. But, just so you know, your stats apply only to very specific and very limited parts of the U.S. (which you did say, I notice). Where I am, we begin sex ed in 1st grade. By high school, the kids can put a condom on a banana (there should be some kind of award and notice in the newspaper for all students who advance so far).

I'd like to point out, though, that contraception and teens on cocaine or stinky drunk isn't exactly a safe bet, even if the condom does manage to get to the banana...

4) There needs to be more info and resources for prenatal care. Planned Parenthood is great for that, but from what I've read, the conservative camp who supports these kinds of laws also wants to cut funding for Planned Parenthood. Smooth.

Type "prenatal care" into google, and take a look at all the info. How much will be enough?

DanieMarie, this may be a problem that only a professional educator understands, but I'll tell you... Having information, and being able to use it are two vastly different things. You can teach anything to anybody, provided the goal of "education" is the transmission of information. But if the goal of education is to teach people to actually apply and use what they've been taught, your success rate percentage will go way, way down.

Speaking from personal experience which comes from 18 years of working with high school students, I'd say that maybe 1-5% of students will learn things "just because," around 10% won't learn no matter what you do (for a whole variety of reasons - in this area, drug use and alcoholism are so high that some students are coming out of homes that are so disordered that what happens at school is not of much concern to them). The remaining 95% or so need to be forced, in some way, to learn (grades are a way of forcing people to learn, for instance).

So - the upshot of all this is that, no matter how much info is put out, there will never be enough for about 95% of the population - unless there is some sort of force (such as the law) to compel them to apply it.

Is cutting funding for sex ed a good idea? NO IT ISN'T - but pumping more money into it won't solve the problems either.

And just because professional women support these sorts of things doesn't mean that it's still not tied to an issue of the limitations women face. If that were the case, then we wouldn't be seeing a slight majority of women graduating from universities but still playing second fiddle in professional work places and all that jazz. Often, we're our own worst enemy, and I mean that regarding feminism in general, not just issues surrounding abortion.

Yes - women have limitations. So do men. For all of us, our biggest limitation is our body, which can't do nearly as much as our minds can imagine for it. Women have bodies which can produce children - if the woman so chooses... or gets lazy... and that's a big limitation. Of course, it's also a huge advantage. But I'm not seeing how this is relevant to the issue... It seems to me that this is a second issue, unrelated to the first issue of using cocaine while pregnant...

For the record, I'm all in favor of women and their freedom to succeed. If it matters, in my entire working career (about 38 years) I've had female bosses for all but, maybe, 5 of those years... So I don't know much about that inequality thingy.

PS calling the Guardian "propaganda" is totally ridiculous. It's one of the most respected papers in the UK. Yes, it does have a bit of a "left" bias, and that comes out more when discussing the US because pretty much all of Europe is "left" compared to the US, but that's pretty well known and readers tend to consider that. It's not like we're talking about the Daily Mail here. And I do understand that papers, even good ones, want to sell stories, but that aside, there are some facts here, which I outlined above. Yes, these women shouldn't be getting pregnant or going through with them in the first place, but prosecuting them is the wrong direction and wont solve any of the problems. And it DOES open up the door for more frightening legislation, because in order to carry out such prosecutions in the first place, the fetus has to become a person in the eyes of the law.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

Re: law and drug rehab. I totally disagree. The Netherlands has had their addiction rates drop drastically since they decriminalized drug possession, and this has moved some European countries (or states within countries) to pursue similar models, also with success (Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and the UK also use the Heroin Assisted treatment model that the NL uses, and in the NL it's estimated that they're able to reach and treat 90% of addicts and the average age of addicts has risen to 38). I'm not convinced the US model works at all and lately there have been a lot of studies coming out proving I'm right.

Re: Sex ed, that's exactly what I meant. And I'm not convinced sex ed doesn't do anything. ONE girl got pregnant in my school of 1000. ONE. Maybe a couple more got pregnant and had secret abortions, but that still leaves the rate pretty low. This is typical of my area, and in case you're wondering, my hometown is known as the "heroin capital of Canada." It'a not all white picket fences throughout. If you ask the teens there, a lot of them are on the pill, they know about the risks associated with sex and all that jazz. And it's not like they don't do drugs. Once again, this is BC...pot is pretty much seen as being less harmful that smoking (which it's not really, but that doesn't change the fact that most young people think that).

And I think you're reading WAY too far into the article. I may not have studied what you studied, but I DID major in writing and journalism, and have a few close friends who are journalists, and I realllllyyyyyyy don't believe they're out to manipulate or mislead the public. They just want to write stories and get paid. Editorial is solely concerned with readability and public interest. I still write the odd thing occasionally, and usually I just want to get it done and there's limited time in which to do it. Here's how this kind of story typically works: you're in a newsroom, you have limited time, and you get an AP release, or maybe a blurb from a foreign correspondent. You check a few facts, and for a story like this (which doesn't have any relevance to the UK) it usually stays short unless it's something huge. They're not going to write an in-depth report on it. -Especially- as this is a UK paper and this story is only of passing interest to most people as it does not actually have anything to do with the UK. They have neither the time nor the resources. I'll admit that the media, even the respected media, is pretty shallow, but having had a lot of personal experience with it, I just don't think that there's any sort of aim in most sources to largely mislead the public.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Stillbirth - how can it be murder?

Re: law and drug rehab. I totally disagree.

Uhm... with what?

The NL model seems to be pretty effective - I'd prefer to see it here. But... there's still a problem... is it voluntary?

If the answer is yes, then good - it will reach that part of the population which has realized that the drugs are devestating their life, hopes, and futures. But it will NOT reach those who do not choose to take part.

If, however, the answer is no (it's not voluntary) then it means that somehow, some agency has forced somebody to do something which is not supported by the law. I won't expalin again why this is a problem - I've already done that - but if you are going to look at America and American politics you must understand that the limitations put on the government's ability to screw with one's private life is so absolutely fundemental to our political outlook that too many attempts on the part of the government to do so WILL result in a massive civil uprising - I hope.

Re: Sex ed, that's exactly what I meant. And I'm not convinced sex ed doesn't do anything. ..

I didn't say or imply that it didn't. In fact, it does. Money spent there is money well spent. What I did actually say is that it won't solve the problem. That's all. I said that because any deep seated social problem is gong to require more than one change to cure it. Sex ed will work for those who are amenable to it, but not for those who aren't - well, for them, you'll need to apply some kind of coersive force... or throw up your hands and weep.

And I think you're reading WAY too far into the article. I may not have studied what you studied, but I DID major in writing and journalism, and have a few close friends who are journalists, and I realllllyyyyyyy don't believe they're out to manipulate or mislead the public. They just want to write stories and get paid. Editorial is solely concerned with readability and public interest. I still write the odd thing occasionally, and usually I just want to get it done and there's limited time in which to do it. Here's how this kind of story typically works: you're in a newsroom, you have limited time, and you get an AP release, or maybe a blurb from a foreign correspondent. You check a few facts, and for a story like this (which doesn't have any relevance to the UK) it usually stays short unless it's something huge. They're not going to write an in-depth report on it. -Especially- as this is a UK paper and this story is only of passing interest to most people as it does not actually have anything to do with the UK. They have neither the time nor the resources. I'll admit that the media, even the respected media, is pretty shallow, but having had a lot of personal experience with it, I just don't think that there's any sort of aim in most sources to largely mislead the public.

OK - so it's not propaganda - just very crappy, very poor, very lazy, bad journalism intended to sell papers rather than provide information.

So much for the Gaurdian's good reputation.