"Women taking part in the grassroots protest movement
#PeriodsforPence are leaving excruciatingly detailed messages at the
office of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence about their monthly cycles. The action
protests a draconian new Indiana anti-abortion law that, among other
things, requires that any tissue from an aborted or miscarried fetus be
either cremated or interred. That and various other provisions in the
law appear intended to make it more difficult and expensive to maintain
abortion facilities. The period protests points out a
poorly thought out implication of the law. Miscarriages happen all the
time, especially early in a pregnancy, often resulting in what looks
like a late period. The women mock the law by proactively informing the
governor that they shouldn’t be investigated because as far as they can
tell, their bodies have not expelled any tissue from a miscarriage. Proponents
of the law may point out that by its terms, the requirements regarding
miscarriages apply only to facilities that come into possession of fetal
or embryonic tissue. But the state of Indiana recently prosecuted Purvi
Patel for feticide for allegedly acquiring miscarriage-inducing drugs.
The law under which she was convicted was intended to allow full
prosecution of anyone who unlawfully causes the death of another
person’s fetus. Watching a law that was passed ostensibly to protect
Purvi Patel being used to send her to prison for two decades has
understandably made women suspicious of Indiana’s end game. More
generally, despite the universal outcry even among pro-life activists
when Donald Trump suggested that laws against abortion should include
some penalty for a woman seeking one, that is in fact a logical
conclusion to criminalizing abortion. A state which fully outlaws
abortion will see cases in which the only actor who caused the abortion
is the mother. It strains credibility to believe that the states that
are currently working to regulate abortion clinics out of existence will
remain hands-off in cases where a woman induces an abortion herself.
And Patel’s case is not the only one in which women have been
investigated following miscarriages. By including provisions directly
addressing miscarried fetuses, the state of Indiana has taken a step
toward a particular dystopian fear. When terminating a pregnancy becomes
illegal, miscarriages become potential crimes. Happily, the ACLU has
challenged the law and obtained a preliminary injunction.........Generally
I find abortion a comfortably abstract issue. It certainly won’t affect
me directly and most of my relatives and friends who might be affected
have the means to find a way to work around whatever laws get passed. But
I find myself personally affronted by any hint of the state mucking
about in cases of miscarriage just to round out its policing of
abortion. When my wife Elizabeth and I began trying to have a baby, we
knew that she was considerably past prime child bearing years. We were
prepared for the possibility of not succeeding, but did not know how
difficult the near successes would be. I have learned since that our
story is typical of couples facing fertility challenges, including
delayed periods that gave fleeting hope and an eventual miscarriage.......Elizabeth and I were lucky. A year
after her miscarriage she got pregnant again and we had a healthy baby
who is currently finishing her freshman year of college. We also were
lucky that we did not have the state telling us to treat our personal
setback as a human death. We didn’t have to fill out a form about how to
treat our “baby’s” remains or pay a bill with a line item for
cremation. The miscarriage is something that I barely think about
anymore, partly because of the knowledge that we never had an actual
baby to lose. But for millions of other couples, miscarriages,
especially as part of a broader history of fertility challenges remain
traumatic memories. At worst, laws like Indiana’s will encourage
investigating women at a point of traumatic loss. At the least, they
will make it harder to move on."
http://www.akronlegalnews.com/editorial/15116