For potential mothers, the very idea of a miscarriage is frightening and terrifying.

Unfortunately, Utah is not making it any easier.

If Utah’s House and Senate get their way, mothers who miscarry could have to deal with criminal charges on top of their tragic losses.

The proposed bill, waiting gubernatorial review and approval, would essentially make it a crime for a woman to have a miscarriage, and “make induced abortion a crime in some instances,” according to an article on rhrealitycheck.org, a Web site dedicated to reproductive health.

The bill does not affect legal abortions of course, but it “criminalizes any actions taken by women to induce a miscarriage or abortion outside of a doctor’s care,” with the kicker being that one of the penalties is life in prison.

The bill came about after a 17-year-old Utah girl paid a man $150 to beat her in order to terminate her seven-month pregnancy. She could not be charged with a crime because Utah had no law on the books preventing this kind of desperate tragedy from occurring.

While no one can deny that this is a tragic event, it is also an isolated one—and Utah is overreacting a tad. Some states have bills “directed [against] third party attackers,” but oddly enough, Utah’s bill seems “specifically designed to be punitive toward pregnant women, not those who might assist or cause an illegal abortion or unintended miscarriage,” according to the article.

This bill is not moronic just because it targets women. Its stupidity knows no bounds, mostly due to the extremely ambiguous nature of the bill’s language.
Under the bill, women can be accused of “reckless behavior” by the government if she “behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn’t intend to lose the pregnancy.”

This would not be a problem except for the fact that pregnancy dos and don’ts vary from doctor to doctor. Some say eating sushi is a bad idea; others say it does not matter. Until recently, alcohol was a no-no; now, some doctors say that a glass of wine once in a while won’t affect the fetus.

“Reckless behavior” could also mean something as innocent as tripping and falling down stairs—like in the case of Christine Taylor.

While she was pregnant with her third child, Taylor fell down the stairs in her home after she got light-headed.

Fearing that she had injured her unborn baby, she went to the ER—a natural, motherly reaction.

Instead, she found herself arrested on suspicion of trying to terminate her pregnancy, thanks to Iowa’s feticide laws.

The nurse who took care of her thought that Taylor might have been in her third trimester, which would have made tripping down the stairs a crime.

Thankfully, charges were dropped—but not because authorities decided Taylor actually had tripped. Instead, they were dropped because her doctor confirmed that Taylor was actually in her second trimester, not her third.

Sigh. Not to mention, no-one is entirely certain how the authorities found out—apparently, a nurse in Iowa is not familiar with doctor-patient confidentiality.

As mentioned earlier, some states’ feticide bills only come into play during a woman’s third trimester. However, even if the Utah bill’s ambiguous language wasn’t a perfect example of “reckless behavior,” there’s the issue that Utah’s law would make a miscarriage during any part of the pregnancy into a potential murder trial.

The Utah bill would discourage women with substance abuse problems from seeking treatment, for fear that they could be charged with a crime if they miscarry.
It also would punish women who are in abusive relationships and unable to leave because, “not leaving would, under the ‘reckless’ standard, constitute conduct that consciously disregarded a substantial risk,” according to the same rhrealitycheck.org article.

Women who have already suffered the double-threat of an abusive relationship and a miscarriage would be subjected to a criminal trial. This bill is an absolute travesty and a perversion of the justice system.

Anti-women legislation isn’t anything new, but the Utah legislation stands to set a dangerous and irresponsible precedent with the introduction of the “reckless behavior” clause and ‘anytime during pregnancy’ prosecution ability.

Utah lawmakers need to get with the program and realize that not only is their new feticide bill draconian, it is also anti-woman and goes against everything that reproductive-rights advocates have fought so hard for in this country.

Andrew Seal is Opinions Editor for The Current.