What's Next? (Hint: Stop Del Jones, Again)

By: KathyinBlacksburg
Published On: 2/13/2008 9:29:59 AM


The Virginia primary polls have closed. We've done what we can for now. And, until the general election presents, it's on to the next cause or worthy endeavor. Life has a way of sneaking up on us and presenting some new wrinkles and worthy actions. And this one will likely unite not just female supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but also women and men who support choice and those who do not. At least that is my hope. The irrepressible Del Chris Jones is B-A-A-A-C-K, as surely as a Jack Nicholson movie character! And Jones' actions require a feisty women's backlash. You see, he's back with more legislation designed to felonize women who miscarry. A little history first.
No doubt Jones was originally inspired by Del. John Cosgrove, who several years ago, had ideas of his own about blaming women for miscarriages. It mattered not that 1/5 of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, unfortunately labeled by the medical term "spontaneous abortion." And, where ignoramuses are concerned, that must mean bad, bad, bad. And so Cosgrove wrote a bill to require women who miscarried to file a police report within 12 hours of said miscarriage. When I miscarried many years ago, there was no way I was hauling myself off to the police department for paperwork after three-days-of-useless and terrible pain leading to miscarriage. I was heartbroken. But that kind of thing doesn't matter to a "knight" on his high horse.

But women had other ideas for Cosgrove back then. A brilliant blogger named Maura Keaney, formerly of Democracy for Virginia and now of My Left Nutmeg , happened to be monitoring the House of Delegates with the Legislative Sentry Project. Maura blogged the Cosgrove story, and even guested on ABC's Nightline, where she did us proud and showed the almost hapless Cosgrove was no match for a smart woman. (I also blogged this story at Democracy for Virginia.) But an interesting thing happened. Women who oppose abortion also have miscarriages. And they joined in to get the bill withdrawn. Cosgrove licked his wounds (poor puppy) and that was that.

Fast forward to last year, when Jones upped the ante. Last year at this time I wrote at Raising Kaine and Democracy Upside Down about Jones' efforts to felonize women who "cause" their own miscarriage (by any means whatsoever). The word "cause" here is loosey goosey, just as Jones no doubt wants it. The prison-industrial-complex must be served. Last year's bill was even more draconian than this year's (if that's possible). It even passed the House (75 to 25). That's how close women came to being felonized for a miscarriage that any miserable, nasty, unsympathetic person might want to charge them for. Compassionate conservatism, indeed. The Senate did its thing and blocked the bill. And that was that.

But now Jones has redrawn the bill.  And it's almost as outrageous. The main change is eliminating birth control pills and legal prescriptions from the causal list. But the wording vaguely encompasses just about anything else in which the woman herself (or anyone else) had the "intent" to terminate a pregnancy or miscarriage.  How one proves, or more likely infers, that is anyone's guess.

From Richmond Sunlight ", here's the summary of HB1126:


"Producing abortion or miscarriage, etc.; penalty. Provides that any person, including the pregnant female, who administers to or causes to be taken by a pregnant female any drug or other thing or uses means with intent to destroy her unborn child or to produce abortion or miscarriage and thereby destroys such child or produces such abortion or miscarriage is guilty of a Class 4 felony. The bill excepts medically approved contraceptives as a means of producing abortion or miscarriage. Current law does not with specificity include the pregnant female as a possible perpetrator."

And the full text is here.

I have no profound words tonight, only one mantra: What would Molly Ivins do? Let's get get busy. Let's stop the madness of felonizing women.

This article was written last night and is cross-posted at The Women's Post.

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