VA Legislative Sentry: Have a Miscarriage, Go to JAIL?

[Petra]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/6/194434/1328

From the above article:

Imagine the following scenario. You are at home alone at 8:00 on a Friday night. You are 8 weeks pregnant. All of a sudden, you begin to experience heavy cramping and bleeding. You realize with shock and sadness that you are probably experiencing a miscarriage. You are overwhelmed with grief and surprised by the intensity of physical pain involved. When your partner comes home, you break the sad news to him. Over the next few hours, you suffer pain, cramping, and intermittent bleeding. Exhausted, you finally fall asleep in your partner's arms around 4 AM. You sleep until noon.

Guess what? You just earned yourself up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine. Why? Because you failed to call the cops and report your miscarriage within 12 hours.

True? Not yet. But if Delegate John Cosgrove (R-78) has his way, HB1677 will become law in a few short months, and this scenario will be reality for many women in Virginia.

[....]

Almost all states mandate reporting of fetal deaths to vital statistics bureaus. These statistics are then collected nationally by the CDC. In most states, health care providers must provide reports on fetal deaths after 20 weeks gestation (or at a certain fetal weight approximating 20 weeks gestation). Virginia is one of only 7 states, however, that mandate the reporting of loss of all "products of conception" regardless of gestational age.

[....]

Furthermore, this bill means that a woman who experiences a spontaneous loss of pregnancy will have her privacy violated significantly more than if she had chosen an abortion. Though Virginia requires that induced terminations of pregnancy be reported, those reporting forms require only a "patient number" and information on the procedure. The "report of fetal death" asks for the woman's full name, her history of prenatal care, her marital status, her education history, her previous deliveries (if any), and a number of other very intrusive data items.

If the miscarriage occurred under a physician's care, all of this information would be provided by the physician out of the patient's medical records. Physicians and/or funeral directors are given 24 hours to file this report. Delegate Cosgrove's bill gives women who experience miscarriage without a doctor only 12 hours to report, adding insult to injury.

[...]


The report requires the following items for spontaneous fetal deaths:

place of occurrence
usual residence of patient (mother)
full maiden name of patient
medical record number and social security number of patient
Hispanic origin, if any, and race of patient
age of patient
education of patient
sex of fetus
patient married to father
previous deliveries to patient
single or plural delivery and order of plural delivery
date of delivery
date of last normal menses and physician's estimate of gestation
weight of fetus in grams
month of pregnancy care began (sic)
number of prenatal visits
when fetus died
congenital malformations, if any
events of labor and delivery
medical history for this pregnancy
other history for this pregnancy
obstetric procedures and method of delivery
autopsy
medical certification of cause of spontaneous fetal death
signature of attending physician or medical examiner including title, address and date signed
method of disposal of fetus
signature and address of funeral director or hospital representative
date received by registrar
registrar's signature
registration area and report numbers.

...etc.



How utterly horrendous.

[wade-w]

That's... that's... words fail me. When I was reading your OP, Luna, I kept wondering "What the hell is the point of such legislation? What possible benefit could this proposed law serve?" Well, according to the bill's author:

This bill, which was requested by the Chesapeake Police Department, is an attempt to reduce the number of "trashcan" babies that are born and then abandoned in trashcans, toilets, or elsewhere to die from exposure or worse.

That is utterly ridiculous. How would reporting miscarriages possibly stop the abandonment of babies?

ETA: Virginia already has a law on the books that says that one can abandon a newborn child at certain approved locations such as a hospital. It seems to me that making sure that this law is well known to the residents of Virginia would be a much more effective means of reducing the number of "trashcan" babies there. Me thinks that Mr. Cosgrove is lying through his teeth about the motivations behind this atrocity.

[livius drusus]

It's nauseating, but Kos doesn't comment on the likelihood of its passage. It looks to me like Cosgrove posturing for his vocal anti-abortion constituents rather than a real legislative possibility.

I'm going to look around and see if there's anything else out there about this story.

[viscousmemories]

Yeah that's just vile. I can't imagine many women getting behind such blatantly heinous legislation, no matter how against abortion they are. Anti-abortion people miscarry too.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by lunachick

Virginia is one of only 7 states, however, that mandate the reporting of loss of all "products of conception" regardless of gestational age.

Yeah, um... good luck with that. Considering the possibility of a miscarriage occuring before the woman even knows she's pregnant.

[wade-w]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

Yeah, um... good luck with that. Considering the possibility of a miscarriage occuring before the woman even knows she's pregnant.

The current law only applies if the miscarriage occurs while under a doctor's care. And it is the doctor's responsibility to do the reporting. It's like certain infectuous diseases must be reported, and for similar reasons. The proposed legislation would add a requirement that women who have a miscarriage while not under a doctor's care to report the incident to their local law enforcement agency within 12 hours of the event.

As you say, many women miscarry without ever knowing they are pregnant. One wonders if Mr. Cosgrove intends to start mandatory monthly pregnancy testing for all Virginia women. Otherwise, how could you possibly enforce this law? And even then, what about the large number of ova that get fertilized but don't implant? They're still "products of conception," but how could you possibly know?

[Petra]

UberLutheran from CF had a great idea for protest to this nonsense - every sexually active woman in Virginia should send in to Cosgrove some of her menstrual blood to report loss of "products of conception".

I think that's a splendid idea!

[wade-w]

Heh, Luna. I noticed that several of the people on the thread you linked to had similar ideas. Like sending him their soiled tampons each month.

[Godless Dave]

It's ridiculous, but it's the logical extension of the position that abortion is murder. If an abortion is the murder of a human being, than a miscarriage is the accidental death of a human being. Since far more miscarriages than abortions occur every year, I expect the anti-abortion movement to raise millions of dollars for medical research to prevent miscarriages. Any day now.

[justaman]

Originally Posted by Godless Dave

It's ridiculous, but it's the logical extension of the position that abortion is murder. If an abortion is the murder of a human being, than a miscarriage is the accidental death of a human being. Since far more miscarriages than abortions occur every year, I expect the anti-abortion movement to raise millions of dollars for medical research to prevent miscarriages. Any day now.

What gets even more interesting is that 65% of zygotes fail to attach to the placenta.

This would then require inspections of every woman who has had sex in the last 24 hours to ensure any fertilized eggs have taken and, if not, to save said zygotes. The joys of the anti-abortion rationale

[Godless Dave]

Someone over at Religious Forums pointed out that an embryo and a fetus aren't the same thing, and this law only applies to fetuses. Many (but not all) miscarriages involve an embryo. The author of the bill claims it's to fight the problem of women giving birth to live infants and then leaving them to die.

Here's a link, including a letter from Cosgrove attempting to justify himself. http://www.religiousforums.com/forum...6819#post76819

[wade-w]

Considering the actual language of the bill as it relates to current Virginia law, GD, it does apply to both embryos and fetuses. And I already quoted his justification.

[Godless Dave]

Woops! Sorry for being inattentive. If the language includes embryos then his justification doesn't really hold water. I strongly endorse the suggestion to mail him used sanitary napkins.

[Shake]

I think I remember hearing -- after my wife had hers -- that something like 1 in 3 pregnancies end in miscarriage! Further, like the good Ensign noted, often times the woman hadn't even realized she was pregnant ... just a little late. My wife swears she had at least one like that.

By the way, anyone know what the other 6 states are?

Virginia is one of only 7 states, however, that mandate the reporting of loss of all "products of conception" regardless of gestational age.

[LadyShea]

The bill will never pass with the language as it is. How would the authorities know about it if the woman doesn't discuss it with her doctor or report it? What about IVF embryos? Are they "products of conception"? What if they don't implant and one gets a negative pregancy test 2 weeks later, must they all be reported? If so, I would have had to make 9 reports

Now, I'd like to think this information is used to keep accurate stats on pregnancy and miscarriage for educational reasons, but I know that the motive isn't so benign or beneficial.

[viscousmemories]

I was just reading up on this a bit more at this blog. Apparently Cosgrove used the term "fetal death" in the legislation, not 'miscarriage'. So that at least supports his claim that it was aimed at fetuses, despite the fact that (as wade pointed out) current VA law defines "fetal death" as (in part) "death prior to the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of human conception, regardless of the duration of pregnancy".

Update: If I had kept reading that blog to the next page before posting here, I could have pointed out that Cosgrove sent an e-mail to that blogger including the following:

My bill in no way intends that a woman who suffers a miscarriage should be charged for not notifying authorities. The bill in no way mentions miscarriages, only deliveries. However, after discussing the bill again with our legislative services lawyers, I have decided to include language that will define the bill to apply only to those babies that are claimed to have been stillborn and that are abandoned as stated above.

Apparently they can't prosecute a woman for abandoning a baby unless they can prove the baby was born alive, and after 12 hours it's nearly impossible to prove. I'm not really clear on how this legislation fixes that problem, though...

[Shake]

I'm not really clear on how this legislation fixes that problem, though...

... or why they're wasting their time and taxpayers' money on it?

[wade-w]

Yeah. AS I said earlier, Virginia already has legislation that is targeted to this specific problem. Currently, any mother may, without any questions asked or legal repercussions, abandon a baby under 14 days old at any suitable location, such as a hospital or fire station. IOW, all she has to do is walk in, leave the child, and walk out. I think that the citizens of Viriginia would be much better served by a campaign to publicize this existing law rather than creating new and essentially pointless and unenforcable law.