I Could've Been a Felon... In Utah

 I live in California. I’m a mom with kids in public school and am self-employed. For quite sometime now I’ve been pretty upset with my home state of California. I’ve joked and thought seriously about leaving. Financially we are broker than broke, our education system is just about the worst in the whole country and in 2008 we totally slammed the entire gay community. But last week my heart was full of love for this broken state I live in. So full in fact that I stepped outside onto my suburban California Street and kissed me some California pavement. Thank God I don’t live in Utah, I said to myself.

Why the hate on Utah? Well because I have a chronic genetic disorder known as a balance translocation. But for quite a few years I didn’t know I had that disorder. In fact for the first half of my married life my disorder was lovingly referred to as “chronic miscarrier” or “habitual aborter.”  Such lovely medical terms and labels I wore with much shame and disgrace. In fact you might as well wove a scarlet letter A on my chest. Over the years I had six miscarriages or “spontaneous abortions.” But before genetic testing determined the cause of my miscarriages (something that very few habitual aborters are ever lucky enough to find) I blamed myself. And last week the Utah state legislature tried to pass a bill that would make miscarriages in some instances a felony (including skiing and crashing while pregnant if the crash caused a miscarriage).

I smoked. Granted I quit each time I found out I was pregnant, but I was a smoker. I was careful at work, but I know that there were times I probably should have been more careful. I went to loud clubs a couple times. I even went and saw AC/DC once while I was pregnant. I didn’t always eat right (mucho Taco Bell cravings) and with each new pregnancy my stress level increased dramatically. Deep down I knew these things didn’t cause any of my miscarriages, at least I think I knew. But I really questioned myself. Did I do something wrong? What could I have done different? And with each passing miscarriage, I felt worse. I even had one careless and clueless co-worker tell me after one miscarriage “Well, next time you’ll know to be more careful.”

I didn’t write about this bill in Utah earlier in the week because it was too much for me to fathom. Every time I tried to write about it all I could do was imagine what it would have been like to have an officer show up at my home while I was rolled up in a ball in my bed suffering a miscarriage and serve me with a warrant.

And even now all I can think of to say to the Utah State legislature is, how dare you?

How dare you for ever running for public office.

How dare your constituents for ever voting for you.

And heaven help anyone who votes for you again.

Do the writers of this bill understand that a women who suffers an abortion, whether it be it God’s will or her own, is suffering?

Do I need to go down to Utah and tell the legislature the excruciating emotional and psychical pain that I felt with every single miscarriage? Do I have to read to them the pages from my journal that asked God why I was being punished? Do I have to paint a picture of the guilt I felt? Do I need to explain to them what it is to be a human being? Because as far as I can tell, they don’t have a clue.

At any rate, God bless California. Where I can lose an unborn child without fear of being arrested. And where, as a woman, I am free to live my life and make choices based on what’s best for my family and me. Unless of course I’m gay and want to get married. But hey, that’s a different story…

Now this bill may have been withdrawn and rewritten in the last day. They may have removed some of the more absurd aspects of the bill (for example staying in an abusive relationship, falling down stairs or drinking alcohol, and other "reckless" acts such as skiing) but wording still remains that criminalizes a woman’s “intentional” act to cause a miscarriage. Which still leaves way too much room for error.  The House passed this revamped version of the bill earlier today and it will move to the senate Monday.

The fact that this bill exists scares me to my very core, revamped or not.

When Meghan Harvey isn’t researching ways to impeach the entire state legislature in Utah she is blogging about the two miracles of her life on Meg’s Idle Chatter.

Comments

[Lawyer Mama]

Another horrified "habitual aborter" here. Way to pile it on, Utah. And then, of course, there's Iowa, where you can be arrested for falling down the stairs while pregnant.

[Maggie]

I agree, like you, this scares me to my very core, beyond that, I'm speechless.

[Karoli]

The Crusade Against Women makes me sick. The crap they pull in Utah, including things like not blinking an eye when employees are waterboarded by their bosses (seriously, it's true - search on my blog for the term 'waterboarding'), companies use fraudulent techniques to recruit naive college kids for profit margins, and Mormons fund anti-gay campaigns in California, leaves me with no sense of surprise that they'd do it. But dang, I hate it. Old men with lecherous and selfish designs on women. Blech.

[Cynematic]

I shoudn't be shocked at the need to control and define women's bodies, but I am--every single time.

What's horrible is that they're resumitting this bill with the most egregious elements removed--minus the "reckless" standard--but the rest essentially unchanged. See http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/03/05/utah-bill-criminalizing-miscarriage-withdrawn-will-resubmitted

[Lillie]

I think there are possibly too many men making decisions that impact women and their bodies. The majority of the women that I know would never intentionally induce a miscarriage. In fact, it's usually just the opposite since they are women who in most cases want to have children the most. Criminalizing this! Glad that I don't live in Utah!