(LifeSiteNews) — American abortion propagandists are deceptively seizing once again on a case that, according to them, proves that pro-life laws create a draconian regime in which even women who have miscarriages become automatic suspects.
On March 20 in Georgia, an ambulance responded to an early morning call regarding a woman who was unconscious and bleeding. First responders determined she’d had a miscarriage; a witness stated that she had put the baby in a dumpster. Police recovered the body, and the woman was charged with concealing a person’s death and abandoning a dead body. When an autopsy determined that the 19-week miscarriage was “natural” and that the baby could not have survived outside the womb, the charges were dropped.
As with previous stories, abortion activists and their media allies immediately seized on the case as an example of alleged harm done by pro-life laws. As NBC put it:
Still, Chandler-Scott’s arrest comes at a time when a growing number of women are facing pregnancy-related prosecutions in which the fetus [unborn baby] is treated as a person with legal rights. And her experience raises troubling questions about miscarriages that happen in states with strict abortion laws, women’s health [i.e., abortion] advocates say. How should remains be disposed of? And who gets to decide? Georgia’s six-week abortion ban, the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, provides any fetus with a heartbeat legal recognition under the law.
NBC quoted Jill Wieber Lens, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and an “expert on pregnancy loss,” as stating: “If what comes out of you in a miscarriage is a dead human body, and you can’t abandon that, you can’t put that in the trash, you can’t flush it down the toilet, most people experiencing miscarriage are also apparently committing crimes in Georgia.”
Of course, that is not what occurred. What were the police supposed to do when they found the body of baby in the dumpster? Were they supposed to ignore the baby and not investigate? And what actually happened is roughly the precise opposite of what Lens is claiming: once an autopsy confirmed that the baby had been miscarried, all charges were immediately dropped – which is to say, nobody “experiencing miscarriage” is “apparently committing crimes in Georgia.”
Indeed, every other example cited by NBC involved charges being dropped when a natural miscarriage was confirmed.
As pro-life statistician and professor at the Catholic University of America Dr. Michael New told me: “It is important to note that the Chandler-Scott was not charged with violating a pro-life law. She was charged with concealing the death of another person and throwing away or abandoning a dead body. The situation would have likely played out the same way if Georgia’s heartbeat act was not on the books.” This, of course, is an inconvenient truth for abortion activists who would like to use this tragedy to push for more dead babies.
“There is no evidence that pregnancy is being criminalized in the aftermath of Dobbs,” New emphasized. “The Georgia woman in this case was not charged with the violation of a pro-life law. The group Pregnancy Justice claims that there has been an increase in pregnancy criminalization post-Dobbs.” According to New:
However, the numbers do not bear that out. On their website, their pre-Dobbs numbers tally pregnancy arrests. Their post-Dobbs numbers tally the number of cases charging pregnant women. However, not all charges result in an arrest — this inflates the post-Dobbs numbers. I should also add that post-Dobbs a significant fraction of the allegations against pregnant women involve substance abuse. This is an issue law enforcement should take seriously — regardless of the legal status of abortion. Furthermore, post-Dobbs there have been prosecutions against pregnant women in numerous states including California, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico. Since abortion is legal in all of these states, pro-life laws are not to blame.
In short, New noted, abortion activists are deliberately stoking an invalid concern. “The group Pregnancy Justice, which obviously has a strong pro-abortion bias, has only identified three allegations of improper treatment of fetal remains in the year since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision,” he told me. “The notion that there have been numerous prosecutions of miscarriages is not supported by the data — even data coming from pro-abortion groups.”
That said, it is important for pro-lifers to respond appropriately to these tragic situations. “Pro-lifers need to act with compassion,” he noted. “Pregnancy loss can be emotionally difficult and traumatic for women.”
“We also need to communicate that we do not want a woman who miscarried a child or a woman who gave birth to a stillborn child to be charged with a crime. Furthermore, we need to articulate that in the cases of Selena Chandler Scott in Georgia and Brittanny Watts in Ohio — the women were not charged with violating pro-life laws,” he stated.
“Policymakers should make it clear that pro-life laws exist to protect mother and child,” New concluded. “Most state laws regulating or prohibiting abortion contain explicitly exempt women from criminal or civil liability. Others implicitly exempt women by specifically targeting medical professionals or others who perform abortions rather than the women who undergo them. That said, this needs to be better communicated.”
