Speaking of draconian "fetal protection" laws with unintended spillover effects, Jen Phillips says they're at it in Georgia too.

Under [Georgia] Rep. Franklin's bill, HB 1, women who miscarry could become felons if they cannot prove that there was "no human involvement whatsoever in the causation" of their miscarriage.

Source: Mother Jones

And... if she can prove that she lived downwind of, say, a peanut, peach, or cotton farmer who sprays chemicals known to cause miscarriage, spontaneous abortion, or even failure to implant, or, oh, say, a paper plant that emits other chemicals known to do likewise does Rep. Franklin propose merely letting her off the hook and go after the party now guilty (under his terms) of either negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter?

Somebody's got to start asking these questions. If not of the likes of Rep. Franklin in Georgia, or Rep. Phil "justifiable homicide" Jensen in South Dakota, or all the wannabes and copycats in Nebraska, Iowa, and elsewhere then perhaps manufacturers, distributors, and users of those chemicals might be able to help out with an answer.

Because it seems to me that if they can't prove the pesticides, pollutants, and industrial materials to which their "human involvement" exposed any woman who miscarried then... shouldn't they then be subject to Mr. Franklin's death penalties and Mr. Jensen's "justifiable homicides?"

Again, has anyone contacted them do see if they support these initiatives?

According to Greg Sargent, South Dakota Republican Phil Jensen's bill to expand "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus isn't about legalizing the murder of abortion providers. Pinky promise! Here's Sargent:

I just had a spirited conversation with the bill's chief sponsor, State Representative Phil Jensen, and he defended the bill, arguing that it would not legalize the killing of abortion doctors. "It would if abortion was illegal," he told me. "This code only deals with illegal acts. Abortion is legal in this country. This has nothing to do with abortion." In other words, since abortion is not "homicide," the law could not apply.

....When I asked Jensen what the purpose of the law was, if its target isn't abortion providers, he provided the following example: "Say an ex-boyfriend who happens to be father of a baby doesn't want to pay child support for the next 18 years, and he beats on his ex-girfriend's abdomen in trying to abort her baby. If she did kill him, it would be justified. She is resisting an effort to murder her unborn child."

Source: Washington Post

Being the generous souls we are, let's take Mr. Jensen at his word. abortion is legal in this country so he's explicitly exempting abortion providers.  The example Jensen provides actually makes his intention quite clear: it should be justifiable homicide to kill anyone who knowingly jeopardizes a woman's planned, wanted fetus.

So.

Turns out there are quite a few activities and behaviors that could put a woman's wanted pregnancy at risk, which as long as the woman resisted would justify homicide under Mr. Jensen's proposed law.

For instance from Sax's Dangerous Properties of Industrial Materials (available for $540.00 on Amazon!) here's a nice list of two thousand fifty seven pesticides, industrial chemicals, and pollutants that are known to or else strongly suspected of inducing spontaneous abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, and of course minor and gross birth defects. 

In other words any one of those pesticides, industrial chemicals, and pollutants can reasonably be believed to harm fetuses.

And there are certainly women, even in South Dakota, who've expressed the desire not to be exposed to any of those substances lest they harm their fetuses.

So it sounds to me as though Mr. Jensen (who, remember, says his bill still protects legal abortion providers) is nevertheless proposing to give those women, their families, partners, friends, or... fellow environmental activists carte blanche to out and out kill polluters, careless employers, and even upwind farmers and crop dusters who use pesticides!

Who knew South Dakota Republicans were such aggressive environmental activists.  I'm confident even the Earth Liberation Front and Earth First! wouldn't have proposed going that far!

Now figleaf, you might be saying, doesn't Mr. Jensen's disclaimer that his bill exempts only illegal harm to fetuses?  And isn't it perfectly legal to expose women to chemicals known to harm or kill their fetuses?  Go back and check what he told Greg Sargent: "If she did kill him, it would be justified. She is resisting an effort to murder her unborn child."

Surely Jensen isn't proposing that just because abortion is legal a provider could perform an abortion on a woman who was actively resisting, right?  And surely simply punching someone in the stomach, say, during a boxing match, a karate exhibition, or even a drunken bar brawl doesn't ordinarily justify homicide.  So clearly what distinguishes his bill isn't the legality of the act itself but the fact that a) the act can harm a fetus and b) the prospective mother is resisting.  Consequently it's hard to see how the fact that it's legal to irresponsibly expose a pregnant woman to a fetus-harming pesticide sprayover would vacate a claim of justifable homicide should she or even an interested bystander use deadly force to resist it.

Meanwhile, if Jensen and his cohorts amend his bill to specifically protect fetus harming and killing when it's committed by by industrialists, farmers, and other polluters it'll make it pretty fucking hard to hide behind the facade of "concern for unborn life."  Because by their own logic a life's a life, no if's, and's, or buts.

---

Back in 2008 I first proposed that "concience clauses," life-begins-at-conception definitions, and other anti-abortion and "fetal harm" laws could be used against polluters and other environmental offenders.  I wondered then how well that would go over.

At the time I wrote

Proactive Activism Opportunity

Oh yeah, and while we're at it if those "life begins at ejaculation" types get their way, especially if they get their way with the broad language they all shoot for then here's an other question. There's an extraordinary correspondence between "pro-lifers" and major polluters and opponents of occupational health and safety and product-safety regulation. So I wonder how happy they'll be when anyone from mainstream environmentalists to consumer activists to a revived EPA to the anti-vaccination/anti-fluoridation crowd starts throwing everything from civil lawsuits to criminal complaints to shareholder activism to survivor's benefits claims for nominal "life" that was "cut short" by exposure to, say, spontaneous-abortion-inducing, miscarriage-inducing or even implantation-inhibiting chemicals, manufacturing byproducts, and toxic waste?

And remember, according to the Bush "administration" appointees it's enough to imagine a product causes the "loss of a human life" at the fertilized-egg stage so science? Who's going to need science to back up their claim of irreparable (if possibly also undetectable) carnage caused by mine tailings, sediment dredgings, pesticide oversprays, plastic-packaging outgassings, packaged-food preservatives, food-coloring agents, "sick building" workplaces, and on and on and on?

Note: now obviously it would be pretty terrible if the 'wingers finally landed a "life begins at conception" ruling from, say, the Supreme Court. But there's no reason, at all, at all, for a nice, healthy group of pro-choice-oriented legal activists to set up a highly-visible operation issuing (or even just promising to issue) white papers detailing all exciting new ways activists could use a "life begins at conception" against asbestos producers like Dick Cheney's old Halliburton-Dresser subsidiary to liquor distillers to air fresheners manufacturers to oil refiners to non-organic farmers. A heck of a lot of "pro-life" money comes from sources in those industries and I think it would be wonderful if they were taken to task for their support.

I said it here.

I wonder how they're going to feel about this.  Don't you think someone should ask them?

Matthew Yglesias thinks instructively about why people imagine some kinds of preventable deaths are more important than others.

It’s quite true that human beings do not have a great intuitive grasp of statistical arguments or a great love for them. But the world would be a better place if people thought of these things in a more statistically informed way. Likewise it’s true as Jon Chait says that people generally think differently about intentional murders than thinks like car crashes. But this, though it’s definitely a fact of life, is also a problem that it would be good to ameliorate over the long run. People tend to view threats stemming from identifiable, individual villains as more problematic than impersonal ones. But while this is a fact of life, it’s also a mistake. If we do something to very slightly reduce the risk of a terrorist attack that has the inadvertent consequence of causing a large number of additional highway deaths then that would be a mistake.

Read the quote in context here.

I’m… fairly confident many of the same principle applies to matters of sex, choice, reproduction and contraception, agency and autonomy, etc. Opposition to hormonal contraception, for instance, not because of the small but real risk of embolism or thrombosis in the woman who takes it but instead an infinitesimal-to-the-point-of-imagination risk that ovulation and fertilization of a hypothetical “life” might somehow magically occur… and yet somehow not implant. To name one. To name another, fanatic willingness to murder healthcare providers in church over abortion but absolute zero, nothing, none interest, at all, in parting a hair to prevent about approximately equal numbers of miscarriages (environmental- or stress-induced or otherwise)... or to do anything at all about stillbirths, infant or maternal mortality, or prevention of childhood deaths from, say, asthma.

But again it’s a general principle. Although expand the scope just a teeny tiny bit and you’re left wondering about the “moral” hesitation in the early 1980s that allowed HIV to become a global epidemic instead of a relatively isolated outbreak, where squeamishness about thousands of “h-word” people (hemophiliacs, heroine users, and homosexuals) mainly in the U.S. allowed it to spread to tens of millions of “pa-word” people (pretty-much anybody.)

While they must surely have been asked, and possibly even answered elsewhere, here are a few more questions about my previous post about those new "conscience" clauses Bush flacks in Health and Human Services cooked up:

1) Further Questions:

• Does that mean doctors may now in good conscience ignore Supreme Court rulings about withholding life-saving care for women who's health or lives are threatened by late-term complications of pregnancy?
• Does that mean doctors may now in good conscience ignore everyone-but-Oregon's laws that require them to let their patients suffer lingering, painful death?
• Does this mean doctors (and don't forget pharmacists) may now in good conscience dispense Plan-B emergency contraception over the counter to women of all ages even when the law says otherwise?
• Does this mean federally- and state-funded doctors, pharmacists, and other caregivers including teachers may now in good conscience ignore "gag law" policies preventing them from mentioning anything but abstinence when counseling their clients?
• Does this mean doctors, pharmacists, and other caregivers in good conscience are now protected from employers that insist they deny or withhold care, medication, or information about all options for dealing with issues of contraception, pregnancy, and STIs?

Just curious.

2: Proactive Activism Opportunity

Oh yeah, and while we're at it if those "life begins at ejaculation"* types get their way, especially if they get their way with the broad language they all shoot for then here's an other question. There's an extraordinary correspondence between "pro-lifers" and major polluters and opponents of occupational health and safety and product-safety regulation. So I wonder how happy they'll be when anyone from mainstream environmentalists to consumer activists to a revived EPA to the anti-vaccination/anti-fluoridation crowd starts throwing everything from civil lawsuits to criminal complaints to shareholder activism to survivor's benefits claims for nominal "life" that was "cut short" by exposure to, say, spontaneous-abortion-inducing, miscarriage-inducing or even implantation-inhibiting chemicals, manufacturing byproducts, and toxic waste?

And remember, according to the Bush "administration" appointees it's enough to imagine a product causes the "loss of a human life" at the fertilized-egg stage so science? Who's going to need science to back up their claim of irreparable (if possibly also undetectable) carnage caused by mine tailings, sediment dredgings, pesticide oversprays, plastic-packaging outgassings, packaged-food preservatives, food-coloring agents, "sick building" workplaces, and on and on and on?

Note: now obviously it would be pretty terrible if the 'wingers finally landed a "life begins at conception" ruling from, say, the Supreme Court. But there's no reason, at all, at all, for a nice, healthy group of pro-choice-oriented legal activists to set up a highly-visible operation issuing (or even just promising to issue) white papers detailing all exciting new ways activists could use a "life begins at conception" against asbestos producers like Dick Cheney's old Halliburton-Dresser subsidiary to liquor distillers to air fresheners manufacturers to oil refiners to non-organic farmers. A heck of a lot of "pro-life" money comes from sources in those industries and I think it would be wonderful if they were taken to task for their support.

[* The "you stick it you own it" scoring method they really believe in. --fl]