WE'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!

Imagine that. I have gotten to quote the finest television program ever created twice on this blog's title in two days. What do you know. Anyways. Out in Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert has signed a law under which a woman can be charged with murder for having a miscarriage. That's right. A woman can be jailed and charged with murder for losing her baby. See, there was this Utah teen who got knocked up and then paid a friend $150 to beat the crap out of her. This attempt at homemade abortion failed. But, of course, a bunch of conservative white guys decided they needed an app for that. So they passed the "Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments," and they hope to pass it along as model legislation for other states. Now I'm not about to argue that I think that a pregnant woman should have every right to ask a friend to punch her in the gut. However, I would argue that this was an act of a young woman who did not feel that she had many other options. I betcha if you grow up in Utah, getting pregnant puts a bit of a mark on your forehead. Anotherwords, I'm saying that perhaps the state of Utah isn't the kind of place that's forgiving and/or accepting of a young woman who happens to get knocked up. You know. Maybe she wasn't no Juno MacGuff is what I'm saying. As we have discussed previously, laws that prohibit abortions are bad and do not work. Presently, there is a woman in Nicaragua—which has out-and-out banned all abortion—who has an aggressive cancer but is prohibited from seeking treatment because she is pregnant. The woman is, by the way, already the mother of a 10-year-old girl. Her country has decided that she will not get to see her daughter turn 11. The law in Nicaragua—created to guarantee that President Danny Ortega would have the church's political support—has had a general chilling affect on health care for women, as Amnesty International has reported. Doctors are reluctant to treat even healthy pregnant women, fearing they might be held liable if something happened. And problems with access for pregnant women translates directly to problems with access for women generally. I will say it again for the benefit of all of my "anti" readers: There is no law in the known universe that can actually prevent a woman from having an abortion. If saving cute little babies is your actual intent, then empowering women, not disempowering women, is the only logical way to actually achieve that end. Throwing a little girl in jail because she asked a friend to punch her in the stomach does not actually save the baby in question. Creating a culture where women feel safe and powerful, that is how you save the cute little babies. And laws like the one they just passed in Utah achieve the exact opposite of that. Trust women already. Jeez.