Prison Time for Miscarriages?

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Misleading title. Should a person be prosecuted for negligently or recklessly causing the death of another? This is a simple yes or no.

It is up to the prosecution to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant negligently or recklessly caused or allowed the death of another human.
 
The author seems to conveniently forget that the use of methanthetamine is already illegal, whereas baloney and herbal tea are not. The woman broke the law when she took the drugs in the first place. Therefore the state has the right to prosecute her for that alone. Should the charge be manslaughter? Well, that should depend on if they prosecution can prove when she took the drugs and if she already knew she was pregnant when she did it. The author claims the amount in her blood was “trace”. I don’t know how long meth stays in someone’s blood stream. I’m told heroine can take up to a year to clear out of the brain completely. If that’s true, then it is possible the woman took the drugs prior to being aware she was pregnant.
 
Posted May 8th 2013:

Personhood would criminalize miscarriages. Wrong.
Pro-lifers have recently begun getting signatures for the Personhood initiative in Mississippi which reads:
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Code: 
The right to life begins at conception. All human beings, at every stage of development, are unique, created in God’s image and shall have an inalienable right to life.
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Pro-aborts assert that this proposal, like other Personhood measures, will mean that distraught mothers will be investigated for miscarriages. Why? Because a miscarriage might be an intentional abortion. This seems plausible to people who are ignorant about law and history. Pro-aborts prey on ignorance, so this scare tactic can be effective.
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We have two pieces of evidence, based in legal procedure and history, to show that the “investigate miscarriage” claim is false. First, sadly, miscarriages are far too common to provide probable cause or even reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Nothing in the Personhood Amendment says otherwise. Police have no desire to, neither will they, waste their time harassing women for non-crimes. Without reasonable suspicion, the police will leave families alone to grieve for the deaths of their children.
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Second, when abortion was illegal, were mothers investigated for miscarriages? In Mississippi? In North Dakota? In countries, such as Ireland, where abortion is currently illegal, are mothers investigated for miscarriage? No, of course not. History shows that mothers who tragically lost their babies suffered no such persecution.
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Despicably, pro-aborts hide behind the tragedy of miscarriage to push their baby-killing agenda. When someone supports killing babies, taking cover behind maternal anguish isn’t much of a stoop.
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Posted in 2011 about non state specific personhood law:

PERSONHOOD LEGISLATION WOULD NOT CRIMINALIZE MISCARRIAGES
 
_Abyssinia said:
Pro-aborts assert that this proposal, like other Personhood measures, will mean that distraught mothers will be investigated for miscarriages. Why? Because a miscarriage might be an intentional abortion. This seems plausible to people who are ignorant about law and history.
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Hold on, you want to have a class of persons whose death the gov’t is not allowed to investigate? What kind of personhood is that?

This is akin to claiming that it’s illegal to kill drug users, but the gov’t shouldn’t investigate their deaths, because there is a high probability they died of overdose. It’s quite obvious where that would lead.
_Abyssinia said:
Police have no desire to, neither will they, waste their time harassing women for non-crimes. Without reasonable suspicion, the police will leave families alone to grieve for the deaths of their children.
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That’s empirically false. Police already waste time charging people for posession of marijuana. Not because these people are dangerous – contrary! There’s no risk in apprehending them, and they look good in statistics.
_Abyssinia said:
Second, when abortion was illegal, were mothers investigated for miscarriages? In Mississippi? In North Dakota? In countries, such as Ireland, where abortion is currently illegal, are mothers investigated for miscarriage? No, of course not. History shows that mothers who tragically lost their babies suffered no such persecution.
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First, El Salvador does treat miscarriage as a potential abortion. trust.org/item/20121023151100-w1qgm/

Second, this argument is a non-sequitur. For example, Poland does not investigate miscarriages, because the law only prosecutes the abortion provider, not the woman.
 
aux1 said:
That’s empirically false. Police already waste time charging people for posession of marijuana. Not because these people are dangerous – contrary! There’s no risk in apprehending them, and they look good in statistics.
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“Empirically”? One can’t get from pot smoker to miscarriage empirically. :rolleyes:
 
aux1 said:
Hold on, you want to have a class of persons whose death the gov’t is not allowed to investigate? What kind of personhood is that? This is akin to claiming that it’s illegal to kill drug users, but the gov’t shouldn’t investigate their deaths, because there is a high probability they died of overdose. It’s quite obvious where that would lead. That’s empirically false. Police already waste time charging people for posession of marijuana. Not because these people are dangerous – contrary! There’s no risk in apprehending them, and they look good in statistics. First, El Salvador does treat miscarriage as a potential abortion. trust.org/item/20121023151100-w1qgm/ Second, this argument is a non-sequitur. For example, Poland does not investigate miscarriages, because the law only prosecutes the abortion provider, not the woman.
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The radical leftist link in your post is meaningless opinion. To assume that anything in that blog is factual is a huge leap of faith. And, what does any of this have to do with the thread? It’s about a single case of methamphetamine use allegedly leading directly to a miscarriage. Can we focus, please?
 
SamH said:
“Empirically”? One can’t get from pot smoker to miscarriage empirically. :rolleyes:
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Again, the claim was that police will not investigate miscarriages because
Police have no desire to, neither will they, waste their time harassing women for non-crimes. Without reasonable suspicion, the police will leave families alone to grieve for the deaths of their children.
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It’s the same police which stops people on the street because of “resonable suspicion”, finds (or plants) marijuana on them and then throws them in jail, just to boost statistics.

Do you really believe that police officers and DAs will resist temptation of investigating easy targets such as women with miscarriages?
 
aux1 said:
Again, the claim was that police will not investigate miscarriages because

It’s the same police which stops people on the street because of “resonable suspicion”, finds (or plants) marijuana on them and then throws them in jail, just to boost statistics.

Do you really believe that police officers and DAs will resist temptation of investigating easy targets such as women with miscarriages?
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Smoking and/or possessing marijuana is illegal in most states and according to federal statute. So the police are not just arresting people to “boost statistics” - those people have violated the law.

Back to your original topic:

Mother Jones is a very liberal publication that is known for vigorously opposing all efforts to limit abortion. And the site you quote from is also fairly antagonistic toward conservative values and the Catholic Church.

I looked up the case itself, instead of reading the hype generated by Mother Jones, Salon, et al., whom are all quoting each other. The question is whether the mother knowingly harmed her fetus, resulting in the baby’s death - hence, the manslaughter charge. From a scientific standpoint, it appears that the prosecution doesn’t have a case (stillbirths can and do happen for many reasons), and it is ludicrous to presume like Mother Jones that this will mean any pregnant woman who does anything like drink herbal tea, be overweight, or eat processed meats will be prosecuted if she miscarries. That is just a slippery slope fallacy taken to the absurd extreme.

The real reason all the progressive publications are having a fit: they are using this case to further the pro-abortion crowd’s agenda to make sure that unborn children have no rights and to strike at any attempt to reduce abortion-on-demand, at any gestational age.
 
Lost_Sheep said:
The State of Mississippi is looking to imprison a woman for having a miscarriage. The notion is that because the woman tested positive for methamphetamine in her blood, the state says she caused the death of her fetus due to neglect.

The article does seem to have a bit of a liberal bias, but still…

addictinginfo.org/2013/05/23/conservative-controlled-mississippi-seeks-to-toss-women-in-prison-for-miscarriages/
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I think there have been some cases in which a person was charged with double homicide for shooting a pregnant woman, with one of the bullets killing the fetus inside her, but I don’t know the outcome of that case.

I also read of a case where a poor hispanic family was driving in Florida without seatbeats, including without proper seatbelts or carseat for the infant. They were in a crash, the infant died, and the parents were charged with murder or negligent homicide, or something written into the seatbelt law.

I think we all have to be careful in doing what we can to reduce our contributions to miscarriages thru varioius pollutions, etc. Pesticide, auto pollution. It’s possible a person may not know that some drug or pesticide can cause miscarriages, but at the least the person should be charged or admonished in some way to shake them up, then perhaps mercifully let off the hook if they truly knew not what they were doing, as they are probably already grieving the loss of their child, and that is plenty punishment in itself.

It’s just plain wrong to kill a person, whether that person be born or yet to be born. And some fuss needs to be made in such cases, whether criminal charge or something.
 
RHC said:
Smoking and/or possessing marijuana is illegal in most states and according to federal statute. So the police are not just arresting people to “boost statistics” - those people have violated the law.
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Oh, they are arresting them to “boost statistics” in a sense, that arresting a casual marijuana user is much easier than busting a drug cartel. With the pressure on law enforcement to produce “results” (i.e. increase the number of convictions) it makes more sense for the law enforcement to invest resources into busting casual pot users than actual, career criminals. Likewise, if there was a possibility of charging women who miscarried, the police would likely do that. Easy work, big payoff.

If fetus is a person, then miscarriage is an event which kills a person. So, legally speaking, miscarriage can be:

(a) an accident
(b) a manslaughter
(c) a premeditated murder

The claim that the police/DAs would not investigate miscarriages to allow women to grieve in peace is wishful thinking. It’s akin to claiming that police should not investigate the closest family of a person who dies in strange circumstances. Which is ridiculous, because spousal murders are quite common.

If fetus is a person, then police MUST investigate miscarriages – otherwise, the law would have no teeth.
 
I’m also thinking, but don’t know much about it, that many miscarriages might be happening in very early stages of pregnancy in which the woman doesn’t even know she is pregnant. Again, I think these can be due to internal factors (e.g., genetic anomalies) or external – pollution, lifestyle, etc.

I’m against putting women in prison (unless it is extremely necessary) for several reasons – one being that the prison conditions are horrible and women even get raped by guards, etc. One woman I vaguely knew who was put in prison for depositing her mother’s last SS check in their common account, after her mother had died, had it really rough. (I think the gov was able to withdraw the SS money back, but that caused another check to bounce, and they filed a claim and that’s why she was arrested a year later during a routine traffic stop).

The prison only gave her a tiny bar of soap and other amenities, and thereafter she was expected to purchase her own. Since her scoundrel husband (they were going thru a divorce) didn’t give her any money at all to help, either to pay the bounced check or a few bucks for amenities, she was shortly left without soap and other hygienic necessities. When we found out, we tried to visit her, but the prison people were really mean and crude to us and ultimately we could not visit or help in any way.

If at all there could be some other program for non-dangerous culprits outside of prison that would really help a person and help society, I’d prefer that – not prison.

It was weird because the woman never was able to pay the bounced check, but they let her out after a month or so (equating that punishment with paying the debt).

I would hate to imagine a woman who had just had a miscarriage in prison without hygenic amenities, subject to rape if the male guards took a fancy to her 😦
 
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