Dark Day For Women In Utah

You probably know how we at Morning Quickie like to follow what’s going on in America around abortion law.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like women in Utah are now going to be charged with murder if their miscarriages are caused by “intentional or knowing” acts.

This all started when a 17-year-old girl paid a friend to beat her in the hopes that she would miscarry. She didn’t. The child lived and has been adopted out. The friend is going to be in jail for five years. The girl was originally placed in the custody of the Juvenile Justice Services but has been released after a judge stated that “a woman who solicits or seeks to have another cause an abortion of her own unborn child cannot be criminally liable”.

The adverse reaction to letting her go was that opponents formed this new law so that future women won’t even think about attempting to cause a miscarriage.

The term “knowingly” is causing lots of trouble and Planned Parenthood representatives ask what this might mean in real life. They ask what it might mean if women stay in abusive relationships where they are knowingly putting themselves and the baby at risk from physical harm.

“Rep. Wimmer claims such women would not be prosecuted because they didn’t knowingly act to terminate their pregnancies.”

To put this in human terms, had Rep. Wimmer’s bill been on the books last spring — and had the 17-year-old’s fetus not survived — she would have faced a prison sentence of 15 years to life. Rep. Wimmer says he’s OK with that because the teenager has to face the “consequences of her barbaric actions.”

Planned Parenthood says that it is more important to look at how she got pregnant in the first place. The girl lived in a rural area and had little access to sex education and health services. They believe that sex education is a much more important issue to put public health funds into than jailing women who miscarry or abort and would  have more long-term benefits (i.e. preventing unplanned pregnancies and STIs).

I agree and I’m sure most sensible people would as well.

There are no words to describe how devestating the passing of this bill is. America is becoming a more hostile environment to women’s rights by the day and it looks like on the slippery slope of abortion laws that Utah is closer to banning it than ever before.

You might also want to read:

Blog For Choice Day 2010: Accessing Abortion

Other Morning Quickie articles on abortion.