Anti-choice group is proposing law that would demand death certificates for aborted fetuses, miscarriages, and stillborn babies.

Courtesy of The Guardian: 

McConchie, of the AUL, told the Guardian the group had drafted a model “Dignified Final Disposition Act” and was tweaking it in response to the clandestine videos. “We’re working with legislators. There’s a lot of interest.” 

The proposed law would mandate that fetal remains be cremated or buried. If cremated, they would have to be cremated separately from medical waste and a county medical examiner would have to authorise the cremation. 

The act would also require fetal death certificates for “each fetal death after delivery, miscarriage or abortion”. A stillborn child would need a state-issued “certificate of birth resulting in stillbirth”. 

The AUL has helped pro-life legislators restrict abortion availability in many states in what has been dubbed a “stealth war” on abortion.

If you guessed this is in response to those doctored Planned Parenthood videos give yourself a gold star. (By the way according to this article there are about a dozen more of those on the way.)

Can you imagine being a young woman who had a miscarriage early in their first trimester who then had to fill out paperwork to obtain a death certificate for something the size of your thumbnail?

And how many women have miscarriages and never even know it? Would they be breaking this new law if they were simply ignorant of the fact that they needed this paperwork?

I have heard of draconian laws before, but this one takes the cake.

Somebody please remind me again, why do women continue to vote Republican?

And yet nobody EVER protests him like they do Planned Parenthood.

So much for every life being precious and all of that hooey.

Indiana woman sentenced to 20 years in prison for feticide. The inevitable result of aggressive anti-abortion laws.

Courtesy of New York Magazine:  

In a ruling that’s already caused uproar across the country, Purvi Patel was sentenced on Monday to 20 years in prison for committing feticide. Patel, a 33-year-old woman from Indiana, was accused of illegally inducing her own abortion and subsequently having a baby she allowed to die. Last July, Patel visited an emergency room with severe bleeding and eventually told doctors she’d miscarried. When questioned about the location of the fetal remains, she said she was unsure what to do, so she wrapped the fetal remains in a bag and threw the bag in a Dumpster. Patel was then living with her conservative Hindu parents and in a relationship with a married co-worker, which helps explain why she felt it necessary to hide the pregnancy and dispose of the remains so quickly. 

While Patel has maintained that she miscarried and delivered a stillborn baby, prosecutors insisted that she induced a late-term abortion with pills she ordered on the internet and gave birth to a living fetus that died almost instantly. A toxicology report produced no evidence of such drugs in her system, but prosecutors pointed to texts Patel exchanged with a friend in which she claimed to have ordered pills from a pharmacy in Hong Kong. Because the age of the fetus was heavily contested, it’s possible that had she gotten a prescription for the pills in the U.S., the pregnancy termination (if that’s what happened) would have been legal. It remains illegal to order such pills online. 

If Patel did self-induce an abortion, it’s essential to understand the legal restrictions she faced as a resident of Indiana. The state has only 11 abortion clinics and an exhaustive list of abortion restrictions. Indiana prohibits certain qualified health-care professionals from performing abortions, restricts young women’s access to abortion by requiring parental consent, subjects abortion providers to targeted (and burdensome) regulations not applied to other medical professionals, subjects women to biased counseling and mandatory delays, has passed unconstitutional bans on abortion, prohibits certain state employees and organizations with state funding from referring women to abortion services, restricts access to other reproductive health care, and restricts low-income women’s access to abortion.

The article goes on to question the case against Patel, including expert medial testimony that at 24 weeks the fetus was not viable, and would have died even if born alive. 

What we as a country need to recognize is that if the Republicans get their way this will become a much more common occurrence, and soon women will be arrested for miscarriages that happen even during the first trimester of their pregnancy, without any evidence of wrongdoing on the mother's part.

In the conservative world women were created to give life. And failing that biological imperative, they have no real value.

And in their world the fetus is the most precious of all lives, far more important than the life of a woman who cannot even manage get pregnant or give birth correctly.

That is why their focus is not only making it impossible to get an abortion, but even doing away with birth control itself.

For the most tone deaf response to the Grand Jury decision on the choking death of Eric Garner where else would you go except Fox News?

Courtesy of Think Progress: 

Moments after the decision was announced, Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson expressed her deep concern about the outcome. Not concern that the police killed Garner, who was allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes, without facing legal repercussions. But concern that anger over the decision could impact a “the tree lighting ceremony” scheduled for that evening at Rockefeller Center.

Sadly for Carlson her worst fears were realized.

The mayor’s appearance tonight at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting has been canceled.
— Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) December 3, 2014

Yeah it really sucks when the unnecessary death of a black man, and a miscarriage of justice, screws up people's holiday plans.

And coming in a close second in tone deafness is potential 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul, who blamed the whole thing on taxes. That's right taxes: 

Well you know I think it’s hard not to watch that video of him saying ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ and not be horrified by it. But I think there’s something bigger than the individual circumstances. Obviously, the individual circumstances are important. But I think it is also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes so that driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say, ‘hey we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette.’ And for someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians. We put our police in a difficult situation with bad laws.

Well so much for Rand Paul's attempt to court the African American vote.

Republican nominee for Attorney General in Virginia would force women to report their miscarriages to the police.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they must report it within 24 hours to the police or risk going to jail for a full year. At least, that’s what would have happened if a bill introduced by Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R) had become law. 

And yet, the Virginia Republican Party wants to make Obenshain into the state’s top prosecutor. This weekend, Virginia Republicans selected Obenshain as their nominee to replace tea party stalwart Ken Cuccinelli (R) as the state’s attorney general. 

Under Obenshain’s bill, which was introduced in 2009:

When a fetal death occurs without medical attendance upon the mother at or after the delivery or abortion, the mother or someone acting on her behalf shall, within 24 hours, report the fetal death, location of the remains, and identity of the mother to the local or state police or sheriff’s department of the city or county where the fetal death occurred. No one shall remove, destroy, or otherwise dispose of any remains without the express authorization of law-enforcement officials or the medical examiner. Any person violating the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. 

Under Virginia law, a Class 1 misdemeanor carries a maximum sentence of “confinement in jail for not more than twelve months and a fine of not more than $2,500,” so Obenshain’s bill could lead to a woman who decides to take a day to grieve the loss of a pregnancy she’d hoped to carry to term spending a year of her life in jail for that decision.

Isn't Virginia also the home of Governor Transvaginal Ultrasound?

What the hell Virginia?

This whole idea of rights of a fetus superseding the rights of all others is completely out of control!

Tennessee has now passed a bill that identifies mothers who miscarry as murderers.

Courtesy of The New Civil Rights Movement:

 The Tennessee House last week voted 80-18 to make miscarriage — or the killing of any fertilized egg — murder. Last night, the Tennessee Senate passed by a 28-2 margin a companion version of the bill. The bill specifically includes all embryos “at any state of gestation in utero.” Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Haslam has not indicated if he will sign the bill. 

To be clear, this bill goes further than covering, say, a violent attacker harming an expectant mother who then, unfortunately, miscarries. This bill, House Bill 3517 and the Senate’s companion, makes anyone’s actions that presumably cause a miscarriage murder. Opponents of the bill question how law enforcement would actually enforce this law or determine if someone’s action was a direct cause of a miscarriage.

Personally I don't see how anybody did NOT realize that this was the ultimate goal of the Republican's "War on Women." It has always been about criminalizing the death of a fetus, and they will not stop until they can find a way to pillory a woman who suffers a miscarriage in the public square, and send any doctor who performs an abortion to the gas chamber.

Look I don't know how else to say this, but if you are a woman who supports the Republican party in 2012 you are an idiot!

I mean what more do they need to do to convince you? Forcibly remove your ovaries until you swear to them that you will only use them to create more Republicans?