Is Miscarriage a Crime?

We know that many pregnancies end naturally in spontaneous abortion, aka miscarriage, before the pregnancy is known or even suspected. A typical scenario: Your period is a week or two late (if you are normally irregular, you probably won't notice). Then when it finally comes, it may seem a little heavier than usual. The blood that is discharged will be disposed of on a tampon or pad. Even if you suspect this was a miscarriage (most women don't), you will likely not consider having a funeral for your tampon.

In another common scenario, you realize you are pregnant, and may have already received prenatal care. Then one day, you experience cramps, bleeding, and an urge to push (similar in feeling to a difficult bowel movement). Most women go into the bathroom at this point, where they are likely to bleed onto the floor, in the bathtub, or into the toilet. A few will save the bloody mess to be analyzed by a medical lab, but most will just clean it up, washing everything down the drain or flushing it down the toilet. In some cases, it may be necessary to have a "D&C" procedure to remove tissue that was not expelled. The flushed or removed material is not perceived as a "body" or a "corpse".

Many Republicans now want to arrest women for doing the normal thing during and after a miscarriage. Simply seeking medical help during a miscarriage is often viewed with suspicion, or treated as a potential crime. Medical providers report being afraid to treat women undergoing miscarriage, because state laws will lead to accusations of performing an illegal abortion.

• This woman is being prosecuted because she flushed blood and tissue: https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2023/12/08/miscarriage/

• In Alabama, women risk bleeding to death because doctors will not help them when they miscarry: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/roe-dobbs-abortion-ban-reproductive-medicine-alabama.html

• This woman spent 19 days having a miscarriage because doctors refused to help her: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/idaho-woman-shares-19-day-miscarriage-tiktok-states/story?id=96363578

• A woman with a cancerous condition was told to go sit in the parking lot and wait for a heart attack: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/04/25/1171851775/oklahoma-woman-abortion-ban-study-shows-confusion-at-hospitals

 

Free Speech

In London's Hyde Park, there is an area known as Speaker's Corner, where, by tradition and the law, people are free to make speeches and express themselves.

I have been there a few times. Speakers sometimes stand on boxes or ladders to make themselves more visible. The confident ones just stand on the ground. Some people want to preach religion; others talk politics. Some people try out their stand-up comedy. Some just talk randomly about whatever pops into their heads. Not everyone attracts an audience, and not every audience is respectful. The speakers have the right to speak; the hearers have the right to disagree or walk away.

And that is pretty much what free speech is and isn't. You can say whatever you like, and you can't compel anyone to pay attention to you, nor can you require those who do pay attention to agree with you.

 

Please Control Our Lives

Browsing through social media, it is alarming to see how many people want to give up voting rights and a representative government in favor of a dictatorship.

Like the people who supported Mussolini because "he made the trains run on time," many of these people seem to think dictators will provide them with amenities like cleaner streets, and these things are, in their minds, worth giving up basic freedoms. Other dictator fans imagine that the dictator will share their world view and religion, and will create a society that enforces those ideas on the entire population. They think it's a good idea that dissenters might be imprisoned, expelled from the country, or executed.

It never occurs to them that (a) the dictator will not actually do what they imagine, (b) historically, dictatorships do not create prosperity for average citizens, (c) someday, the tables will turn and the former in-group will become the out-group.

 

Should Religion Run the Government?

History shows us what happens when the church is allowed to direct the government. A Protestant government persecuted Catholics, a Catholic government persecuted Protestants. They all persecuted Jews. Then you've got all the churchy people who burned or hanged people for being "witches", often using torture to force false confessions from them. And all the religion-controlled governments today who treat women as slaves who can't even show their faces in public.

People who want religion to control government always imagine it will be their version of religion. They are genuinely surprised when it is turned against them, for not being orthodox enough, for being denounced by a neighbor, for using the wrong word, for being a bit eccentric, for being an unmarried woman with property someone would like to seize, for having the wrong ancestors, for laughing at the wrong time, etc.

Think about the ongoing problems with sexual abuse in churches, and how the church authorities protected the offenders and concealed the truth. Now imagine how that would play out if the churches controlled the government. We already see judges who give shockingly light sentences to preachers and youth pastors who committed terrible abuses against children and teens. If the churches were in charge, would they ever bother to prosecute their monsters?