Secular Pro-Life
  • Home
  • About
    • Meet The Team
    • Mission and Vision
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Stances
      • Abortion
      • Religion
      • Contraception
      • The Rape Exception
    • Terms and Conditions
      • Opt-out preferences
  • Content
    • Index
    • Blog
    • Presentations
      • A Secular Case Against Abortion
      • Building Bridges
      • Deconstructing Three Pro-Choice Myths
      • Overlooked Findings of the Turnaway Study
    • Research
      • Abortion Law and Abortion Rates
      • Abortion Law and Pregnancy Rates
      • Later Abortion
      • Embryonic Hearts
    • Collections
      • Becoming Pro-Life
      • They can hear you
      • Parents can hear you
      • Our children’s heartbeats
      • Ask An Atheist
      • LGBTQ and Pro-Life
      • Fixed that meme for you
      • For the biology textbook tells me so
    • Print Materials
      • 100 Pro-Life Sign Ideas
      • Overview of SPL
      • 3 Reasons to tell people you’re pro-life
      • How to talk (not fight) about abortion
      • Bridges PRC Curriculum
      • Fetal Remains Disposition Protocol
      • FAQ handout
      • Presentations overview card
    • Store
  • Contact
  • Get Involved
    • Why support SPL?
    • Donor Opportunities
    • Volunteer Opportunities
    • Volunteer Survey
    • More Surveys
      • Why do you support SPL?
      • Best and Worst Abortion Arguments
      • “Ask An Atheist” Interview
      • Non-Traditional Pro-Life Survey
      • LGBT Pro-Life Survey
      • Parents experiences with prenatal screening
      • Your experiences with adoption
      • Your experiences with processing abortion
  • Donate
  • Search
  • Menu Menu

Why the “Investigating Miscarriage” Objection is Nonsense

February 26, 2024/in Miscarriage & Pregnancy Loss, Uncategorized /by Kelsey Hazzard

In the Dobbs era, one of the abortion industry’s favorite fearmongering tactics is to claim that every miscarriage will become the subject of a police investigation. “After all,” they reason, “it could have been an abortion! So vote for our abortion-on-demand constitutional amendment, or heartless detectives will swarm every miscarrying woman’s house.”

It is more than a little cynical for pro-abortion advocates to situate themselves on the side of parents who are grieving miscarried children, given that they’ve spent the past several decades dehumanizing those same children as clumps of cells, parasites, etc. Setting that aside, however, the people making this argument just don’t understand how death investigations work.

In the United States, only one in five deaths warrants an investigation by a medical examiner. The vast majority of deaths are natural and unsuspicious. There is no good reason to require an autopsy when a person has clearly died of a heart attack, cancer, or the many frailties of old age. A requirement to investigate all human deaths would overwhelm our law enforcement infrastructure.

So too with miscarriage. Estimates are hard to come by, but according to the Mayo Clinic, at least ten to twenty percent of babies die before the 20th week. In actuarial terms, that’s akin to being in your late 80s or early 90s. Most miscarriages are caused by natural, unavoidable genetic mutations. So the fact that an unborn baby has died is not, by itself, a sufficient reason to open a criminal investigation. There would need to be something more to take that step: for example, a mother’s reasonable suspicion that her partner has poisoned her with an abortion drug, or a corpse recovered from an abortion center with an injury to the base of the skull that is the hallmark of an illegal partial-birth abortion.

Let’s take this a step further and suppose that prenatal death investigations were more common. Would it follow that abortion should be legalized in all circumstances?

An analogy is easy to find: just shift a few months later. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), the unexplained death of an infant in the first year after birth, is a horrific tragedy. I cannot begin to imagine how those parents must feel. For the police to get involved while they are in the depths of grief must be a terrible, emotional invasion.

But I have yet to hear a single person come forward to argue that because investigating infant deaths causes undue stress for the parents of babies with SIDS, we ought to legalize infanticide!

If you appreciate our work and would like to help, one of the most effective ways to do so is to become a monthly donor. You can also give a one time donation here or volunteer with us here.

Related Posts

Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit
  • Share by Mail
https://i0.wp.com/secularprolife.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/miscarriage-sad-woman-320x320-1.jpg?fit=320%2C320&ssl=1 320 320 Kelsey Hazzard https://secularprolife.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/SecularProlife2.png Kelsey Hazzard2024-02-26 02:55:002024-09-26 12:30:00Why the “Investigating Miscarriage” Objection is Nonsense

Follow via Email

* indicates required

Categories

  • Ableism
  • Abortion pills
  • Administrative
  • Adoption & Foster Care
  • Biology
  • Bodily Rights
  • Dialogue strategy
  • en español
  • Later Abortion
  • Legislation, laws, & court cases
  • Miscarriage & Pregnancy Loss
  • Personhood
  • Philosophy
  • Pro-Life Demographics
  • Rape Exception
  • Religion
  • Research
  • Speeches, Discussions, Presentations
  • SPL Emails
  • They Can Hear You
  • Top SPL Articles
  • Top SPL Graphics
  • Uncategorized
  • We Asked You Answered
  • Year In Review
  • Your Stories

Archive

It’s crucial that we demonstrate that anyone can–and everyone should–oppose abortion. Thanks to you, we are working to change minds, transform our culture, and protect our prenatal children. Every donation supports our ability to provide nonsectarian, nonpartisan arguments against abortion. Read more details here. Please donate today.

DONATE
SUBSCRIBE
© Copyright 2025 Secular Pro-Life. All rights reserved. Website Design by TandarichGroup

Related Posts

Alabama’s IVF Ruling: Embryos Are Children Wild Media Bias in Alabama IVF Case
Scroll to top
Manage Consent

To provide the best experience, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent may adversely affect certain features and functions.

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}

Subscribe for Livestream Updates and More

* indicates required

Interests

Want to receive our email newsletter?

We’d be happy to keep in touch. Subscribe for access to our newsletter and other updates.