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In Virginia, it may soon be a criminal offense to fail to report a miscarriage to the police within twelve hours - regardless of gestational age. Here is the full text of the bill.

There is an essay on this topic at some progressive sites, including the Daily Kos and Democracy for Virginia. This really should not be a progressive women's issue - this should be a family issue. I can't imagine that any family of any ideological stripe wants to spend the first few hours after an early miscarriage filling out paperwork; and as some have pointed out, strict compliance with this law would necessitate that sexually active women report each and every menstrual cycle to the authorities, just to be sure.

Thanks to

leora for the heads-up.

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ow. brain. hurt. muchly.
why do they want to criminalize failing to report such a natural and relatively frequent occurence as miscarriage, especially when there is no requirement to report the antecedent pregnancy?
how are women expected to be able to do this, seeing as many miscarriages happen without the woman even knowing she's pregnant?

According to another thread (so this is something like third hand, take with appropriate salt grains) the author of the bill has stated an intent to prevent "trash can babies" where a viable birth is disposed of. Of course, if this is really the intent, the wording of the bill is ludicrous.

A more cynical interpretation is that this is a bald-faced ploy to simply advance the notion of a fetus as a full human being with all attendant rights from conception, and has no other practical effects.

If I had to guess, this is more likely a response to the woman in Missouri who kidnapped the fetus and claimed it was her own. Every 6 months or so, it seems one of these stories crop up somewhere in the USA.

It's very probably yet another misguided attempt to use legislation to prevent insanity. If a woman or hospital reports a miscarriage, it's going to look awfully strange to all involved when she turns up with a live baby 6 months later.

Crap like this only tends to turn up when legislators are knee-jerking to something. What's that old saying... never attribute to malice what can be counted as stupidity?

Dare I ask how you're supposed to prove you've had a miscarriage?

I'm... not sure. Do you suppose they'd ask for proof?
I can't imagine they get many people filing for a death certificate for a nonexistent dead fetus.
Though, if they did, it sure would increase their paperwork. Imagine if every Virginia woman really did report every instance of menstruation...

On a similar note I'm not sure how the government would go about prosecuting someone for failing to report the loss of, say, an 8-week pregnancy. The person may not have even sought prenatal care at that point, so no one would necessarily know except herself and her spouse. I suppose in practice, the only prosecutable cases would be ones where prenatal exams had already begun. But what doctor is going to turn these women in? Isn't it something of a breach of medical ethics to call up the cops and say, "By the way, here's a list of people who got pregnant and lost the kid"?

The list of information wanted on the form was also ludicrous - including things like sex and size of the fetus. What if you thought you were pregnant but it turns out the "fetus" was just some type of uterine aberration (http://www.med.uwo.ca/ume/radiology/year3/OBGYN/obgynfull.htm)? Not like a mass of molar tissue has a sex. The whole thing is just bizarre and clearly designed by a guy who's had precious little experience with pregnancy.

The only thing that surprises me, is that Georgia didn't think of it sooner.

strict compliance with this law would necessitate that sexually active women report each and every menstrual cycle to the authorities, just to be sure.

This should be done! I'm sure it would annoy the people who are for this bill.

If I'm in Virginia next year, and this bill is law, I'll do my best (tm) to report my periods to the authorities.

Such a waste of limited resources. Good grief.

Anybody know the likelihood of this making it out of committee?

I don't think it'll pass. A bit of an outcry is already raised, and it has too many utterly ludicrous aspects to it. So, I think it'll fail. I think something like this will only pass when nobody is noticing the attempt.

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