Unintended Consequences

Carl Wimmer's HB0012 Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments isn't what he thinks it is. There is much more to it no matter what Carl says and I would like to know who came to him with the bill. Carl believes that this bil will simply make it illegal to have an illegal abortion, one that's not done at the hospital.

The supposed purpose behind this bill is because a pregnant teenager was threatened by her boy friend he would leave her if she had the baby. Her solution was to HIRE someone to beat her up to induce an abortion. They arrested the girl and tried to charge her but she committed no crime, poor prosecutors couldn't put a teenager behind bars for 15 years. SO, the genius that Utah law makes are, they (more likely some anti-abortion group) come up with this bill!! Brilliant!

Lets continue to address a bandaid on a gapping hole in your head. This is always the best solution. Of course it never occurs to types like Carl that there are larger ISSUE at hand than a teenager trying to have an abortion!! Maybe the fact that she in an abusive relationship and is willing to have an abortion to stay in it? Or how about that her solution to her boy friends threat was to PAY for someone to beat her up? Who pays someone to have them bet you up? There are much larger and more concerning issues at hand other than authorities couldn't punish this girl.

This bill will open the door to prosecuting anyone who has an abortion, has a miscarriage or maybe even a still birth. Carl doesn't believe this, which means he really doesn't know or understand these issues or he's lying. I don't like to call anyone a liar if I don't know they are lying so we'll just say he hasn't thought this one through.

Democracy Now did a great piece on this bill. I'll put down some of the highlights if you don't want to read the whole thing.

"The man, the Utah legislator, as I understand it, who put this law in, he was asked, “Isn’t this really, you know, an anti-abortion measure?” And he said, “Listen, I am totally anti-abortion rights. I don’t want women to have any abortion rights, and I hope that this measure does restrict women’s ability to terminate a pregnancy when they want to.” He said, “I think the”—the Utah—he obviously is one who believes that the Utah legislature has more right to control a woman’s body than the woman herself does."

"for people who claim to pass laws to promote a culture of life, it’s hard to imagine that, when they don’t value the life of also the life of this young woman. Anybody who is so desperate as to invite violence against herself—and she could have died from the beating—to think that a statute making that behavior a crime is going to deter such desperate behavior is pretty crazy, to begin with, and lacking in any common sense about—if you really want to value fetal life and maternal life, this is certainly not the way to do it. "

I would say that it is illogical to believe that Wimmers law would deter anything like this case.

"So I think people—when we give examples of women being arrested for staying with a batterer, people think these are slippery slope craziness. But we keep seeing cases like this. In fact, Utah, in 2004, arrested a woman who had given birth to twins, one of whom was stillborn, and they charged her with murder, because she had refused C-section two weeks earlier. And the theory was her refusal of the Caesarian section, Caesarian surgery, constituted murder. So right now there’s a law that’s been passed by both houses in Utah that would make miscarriages and stillbirths, because it applies to pregnant women from the moment they conceive."


Thanks to Utah Legislatures like Butters and Wimmer Utah is moving backwards in time.