Premature infant death leads to murder charge. What does that have to do with abortion?
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So the South Carolina abortion ban directly resulted in a woman being charged with murder for a miscarriage? That sounds awful. Also really strange, because South Carolina’s abortion law sprecifically does not allow criminal prosecution of women who get abortions. Here (emphasis added):
A pregnant woman on whom an abortion is performed or induced in violation of this article may not be criminally prosecuted for violating any of the provisions of this article or for attempting to commit, or conspiring to commit a violation of any of the provisions of the article and is not subject to a civil or criminal penalty based on the abortion being performed or induced in violation of any of the provisions of this article.
SECTION 44-41-670. Criminal prosecution of pregnant women prohibited, South Carolina Code of Laws, Title 44 – Health, Chapter 41 – Abortions
The lengthy CNN article does provide the actual story, woven in between not-so-subtle implications that this charge was because of abortion bans. But if you make it to paragraph 35, the article does finally acknowledges South Carolina’s abortion laws weren’t the basis for the case. Again here (emphasis added):
Solicitor David Pascoe, a Democrat elected to South Carolina’s 1st Judicial Circuit whose office handled Marsh’s prosecution, said the issues of abortion and reproductive rights weren’t relevant to this case.
“It had nothing to do with that,” he told KFF Health News.
“She was accused of murder after losing her pregnancy. SC woman now tells her story,” CNN 9/23/24
Here’s a synopsis of what happened:
- Amari Marsh was in her second trimester when she went into premature labor and gave birth to her infant daughter in a toilet. The article talks about how “the bathroom was covered in blood” and Marsh was screaming and panicking.*
- Her boyfriend called 911. The emergency dispatcher repeatedly told Marsh to take the baby out of the toilet. She said “I couldn’t because I couldn’t even keep myself together.”
- When first responders arrived, the infant was still in the toilet and still had signs of life. They tried performing lifesaving measures as they headed to the hospital, but the daughter did not survive.
- Marsh was arrested for murder, specifically for not taking her daughter out of the toilet at the urging of the dispatcher, which the warrant listed as the “proximate cause of death.”
- The grand jury decided there wasn’t probable cause to proceed with a criminal trial. The case was dropped.
*It’s worth noting that women having pregnancy losses or premature births where the embryo/fetus/infant is expelled from their bodies into a toilet is not uncommon. It’s not a sign of malice. It’s a heartbreaking and horrifying motif of pregnancy loss groups.
[Read more – The guilt and trauma of flushing a pregnancy loss in the toilet, Glamour Magazine]
The CNN article goes on to discuss “pregnancy criminalization,” talking about South Carolina’s previous 22 week limit on abortion, since replaced by their heartbeat bill.
But abortion bans are laws related to the destruction of embryos and fetuses (in utero). Marsh’s story is one about laws regarding the treatment of premature infants (ex utero). When journalists and abortion advocates frame Marsh’s story as one about abortion restrictions, they suggest a link between how we treat fetuses and how we treat infants.
Pro-lifers agree. We’ve long raised concerns, for example, about children mistakenly born alive after attempted abortions. We question whether the doctor who was just aborting the fetus is the appropriate person to give medical advice about how to best care for the (mistakenly born) infant.
[Read more – What do they mean by “after-birth abortion”?]
Abortion advocates largely dismiss these questions as fear-mongering baseless nonsense, suggesting no abortion provider or (recently) pregnant woman would just leave a premature infant to die. They argue that abortion is not about causing death, only about ending pregnancy. They try to separate abortion advocacy from the dehumanization of embryos, fetuses, and infants.
Then we have a case of a premature infant who was born alive, was offered no aid, and died, and abortion advocates argue legal repercussions are “pregnancy criminalization.” Kind of telling on themselves here.
Here in video form:
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