Utah Governor Signs Controversial Law Charging Women and Girls With Murder for Miscarriages

From Alternet:

March 9, 2010 | On Monday afternoon, a controversial Utah bill that charges pregnant women and girls with murder for having miscarriages caused by "intentional or knowing" acts, was signed into law by Gov. Gary Herbert.

Contrary to media reports last week, the "Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments" or HB12, which previously also applied to miscarriages caused by "reckless" acts, was never "withdrawn" by its sponsor, Republican Representative Carl Wimmer (who is crafting similar "model legislation" for other states). After the governor expressed concern over "possible unintended consequences," of the legislation as written, Rep. Wimmer swiftly introduced a new version, titled "Criminal Homicide and Abortion Revisions" (HB462), which omitted the word "reckless." Gov. Herbert signed the new bill and vetoed the old one.

In a letter to legislative leaders on Monday, the governor wrote: "I appreciate the willingness of Representative Wimmer to reevaluate the impact of potential unintended consequences arising from the inclusion of 'reckless' behavior in HB12. HB 462 is more consistent with the true intent of the legislation and addresses those situations in which the termination of a pregnancy is intentional and is not conducted at a physician's direction."
Nevertheless, women’s and civil rights groups say the new, just-signed version of the bill is just as dangerous.

“We are still passing legislation which seeks to criminalize women for their actions,” Marina Lowe, legislative and policy counsel for the ACLU of Utah, told AlterNet. “The language is still problematic.”

I'm not sure where the exclusion of the single word "reckless" is enough to make this bill less of a call for the "Wombcops" I originally envisioned when first hearing about it. It still makes a pregnant woman part of a suspect class, and while it might somewhat mitigate investigations regarding obvious accidents and cases of abuse, the truth remains that those situations sometimes aren't so clear-cut. It is still possible for such a law to be used to harass women on the basis of their situation. I think it's still pretty flawed.

This article is a very good one regarding the issue, because it goes into detail about how women are underserved regarding their reproductive freedom even though contraception and abortion services are legal, because they are scarce commodities in many regions. This situation, combined with factors like social pressure and possible abuse scenarios, can lead to desperation, and the humane thing seems to me to be to try and help people find solutions--not punish them for making bad choices when they unfortunately, don't have a lot of good ones to pick from. And still less to punish people who have not done anything at all, except possibly suffered a traumatic loss of a child. It's all about perspective, and I think the feminist take is totally missing, here.