Ambivalence About Motherhood is Criminal!
Really? Seriously? This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard in my life. Prepare to be enraged.
This case from Iowa is a spine-tingling example of the ways that feticide laws, ostensibly created to protect pregnant women and punish late-term abortion, can go awry. Police accused Christine Taylor, an Iowa mother of two, of trying to kill her fetus when she fell down the stairs. According to Ms. Taylor, she was crying and hyperventilating after a distressing conversation with her estranged huband, and fell down a flight of stairs. Although paramedics said she was fine, she went to the emergency room out of concern for her fetus. While there, she admitted to hospital personnel that she had not wanted to be pregnant and had considered adoption and abortion rather than raising a third child as a single mother.
Read this slowly: she was arrested and jailed for being ambivalent about her pregnancy.
Before anyone starts wanking about "no, she was jailed for trying to illegally kill her baybee!!," I'd like to point out that the police never would have been involved had she not expressed her ambivalence at being pregnant. You know, because having a miscarriage is not a crime.
Most feticide laws do not apply to a pregnant woman's conduct in relation to her own fetus. This is not the case in Iowa. As it stands, Iowa Code § 707.7 applies only in the third trimester:
1. "Any person who intentionally terminates a human pregnancy, with the knowledge and voluntary consent of the pregnant person, after the end of the second trimester of the pregnancy where death of the fetus results commits feticide."
2. "Any person who attempts to intentionally terminate a human pregnancy, with the knowledge and voluntary consent of the pregnant person, after the end of the second trimester of the pregnancy where death of the fetus does not result commits attempted feticide."
3. "Any person who terminates a human pregnancy, with the knowledge and voluntary consent of the pregnant person, who is not a person licensed to practice medicine and surgery or osteopathic medicine and surgery under the provisions of Chapter 148, commits a Class C felony."
Iowa recently avoided extending this law to all pregnant women when the governor vetoed an Unborn Victims of Violence Act.
As though it weren't bad enough as it is, a law professor brings up the fact that the police never should have been able to get a statement made by a patient to medical personnel during the course of treatment, especially not evidence used to prove a propensity toward a certain type of criminal act. Such evidence would be considered inadmissible under federal rules.
It appears that the hospital may have tried to hide behind mandatory reporter status, although it's worth noting that there was no "child" here for legal purposes. In fact, most jurisdictions do not extend juvenile court jurisdiction to fetuses. It is a little hard to glean the chain of events from the article, but it seems as though a nurse reported Ms. Taylor to the police, saying that she was in her third trimester when she was actually in her second. The police came to the hospital and interrogated Ms. Taylor. According to the article:
Shortly after she was released from the hospital, two squad cars pulled up behind the taxi she was in on her way home to meet her two girls. She said she spent two days in jail, while her daughters wondered where she was.
Police indicated in their report that they would notify child protective services. Typically, it seems, protocol is to report suspected child abuse to the agency, which does not intervene before a child is born. Nevertheless, such an investigation could conceivably interfere with her right to custody of her other two children.
Fortunately, no formal charges will be brought, but it seems that this is only because her doctor confirmed that she was in her second trimester rather than because such charges would be completely inane and would call every stillbirth into question. Unfortunately, however, untold reputational damage has already been done. It seems that even when the criminal justice system determines that they don't have a case against a woman, the court of public opinion is harsher, as evidenced by headlines such as "No Charges in Attempted Fetus Death."
Cases like this are highly troubling to me because they reinforce, on pain of criminal prosecution, the idea that a woman carrying a pregnancy to term must be immediately and unequivocally happy about the prospect of motherhood. Like parents scolding a toddler, the state says "you'll carry that fetus and you'll like it, goddamit, or I'll really give you something to cry about."
From this post at Feministing
This case from Iowa is a spine-tingling example of the ways that feticide laws, ostensibly created to protect pregnant women and punish late-term abortion, can go awry. Police accused Christine Taylor, an Iowa mother of two, of trying to kill her fetus when she fell down the stairs. According to Ms. Taylor, she was crying and hyperventilating after a distressing conversation with her estranged huband, and fell down a flight of stairs. Although paramedics said she was fine, she went to the emergency room out of concern for her fetus. While there, she admitted to hospital personnel that she had not wanted to be pregnant and had considered adoption and abortion rather than raising a third child as a single mother.
Read this slowly: she was arrested and jailed for being ambivalent about her pregnancy.
Before anyone starts wanking about "no, she was jailed for trying to illegally kill her baybee!!," I'd like to point out that the police never would have been involved had she not expressed her ambivalence at being pregnant. You know, because having a miscarriage is not a crime.
Most feticide laws do not apply to a pregnant woman's conduct in relation to her own fetus. This is not the case in Iowa. As it stands, Iowa Code § 707.7 applies only in the third trimester:
1. "Any person who intentionally terminates a human pregnancy, with the knowledge and voluntary consent of the pregnant person, after the end of the second trimester of the pregnancy where death of the fetus results commits feticide."
2. "Any person who attempts to intentionally terminate a human pregnancy, with the knowledge and voluntary consent of the pregnant person, after the end of the second trimester of the pregnancy where death of the fetus does not result commits attempted feticide."
3. "Any person who terminates a human pregnancy, with the knowledge and voluntary consent of the pregnant person, who is not a person licensed to practice medicine and surgery or osteopathic medicine and surgery under the provisions of Chapter 148, commits a Class C felony."
Iowa recently avoided extending this law to all pregnant women when the governor vetoed an Unborn Victims of Violence Act.
As though it weren't bad enough as it is, a law professor brings up the fact that the police never should have been able to get a statement made by a patient to medical personnel during the course of treatment, especially not evidence used to prove a propensity toward a certain type of criminal act. Such evidence would be considered inadmissible under federal rules.
It appears that the hospital may have tried to hide behind mandatory reporter status, although it's worth noting that there was no "child" here for legal purposes. In fact, most jurisdictions do not extend juvenile court jurisdiction to fetuses. It is a little hard to glean the chain of events from the article, but it seems as though a nurse reported Ms. Taylor to the police, saying that she was in her third trimester when she was actually in her second. The police came to the hospital and interrogated Ms. Taylor. According to the article:
Shortly after she was released from the hospital, two squad cars pulled up behind the taxi she was in on her way home to meet her two girls. She said she spent two days in jail, while her daughters wondered where she was.
Police indicated in their report that they would notify child protective services. Typically, it seems, protocol is to report suspected child abuse to the agency, which does not intervene before a child is born. Nevertheless, such an investigation could conceivably interfere with her right to custody of her other two children.
Fortunately, no formal charges will be brought, but it seems that this is only because her doctor confirmed that she was in her second trimester rather than because such charges would be completely inane and would call every stillbirth into question. Unfortunately, however, untold reputational damage has already been done. It seems that even when the criminal justice system determines that they don't have a case against a woman, the court of public opinion is harsher, as evidenced by headlines such as "No Charges in Attempted Fetus Death."
Cases like this are highly troubling to me because they reinforce, on pain of criminal prosecution, the idea that a woman carrying a pregnancy to term must be immediately and unequivocally happy about the prospect of motherhood. Like parents scolding a toddler, the state says "you'll carry that fetus and you'll like it, goddamit, or I'll really give you something to cry about."
From this post at Feministing