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US women are being jailed for having miscarriages -BBC 2021 (www.bbc.com)

submitted 7 months ago by alphanerd4@lemmy.world to c/usa@lemmy.ml

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[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The short answer is liability.

Here's where we already are in the current circumstance, just pick the article you want: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=ob%252Fgyn+leave+red+states

But why start out with a goal of "technically illegal but defacto legal" - that seems inherently bad no matter what the issue is. The laws should be what we agree the laws to be, not what we agree them to be but then wink and fail to enforce.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works -2 points 7 months ago

The "goal" here is to respect the rights of both the mother and the child. The mother has a right to her body, but the fetus also has a right to life. Usually it's easy to craft policy such that "my rights end where yours begin," but they overlap in this case.

It doesn't make sense to me to give the woman priority just because she can communicate her wants and needs. I think pro-life people generally go way too fast in prioritizing the rights of the unborn, and pro-choice people go too far in prioritizing the rights of the mother. So that's why I have this compromise, it:

prioritizes the woman's rights at the most important time - limits harassment about miscarriages, allows confidentiality in cases of rape and incest, and provides a backup plan for those who cannot afford to be mothers
retains the mother's discretion in handling medical issues
prioritizes the fetus' rights at all other times
errs on the side of the mother if there's a conflict (e.g. mother's life is at risk)

I think it's a fair balance. It does prioritize the mother, but only when the alternative involves likely harassment of many innocent innocent people (like in the article), so I think it's a fair compromise.