Two years ago (Feb. 2007) at the beginning of TN’s legislative session, the infamous State Rep, Stacey Campfield, filed a slew of bills, including the odious bill requiring a death certificate for aborted fetuses. The bill, thankfully died, but not before receiving international attention.
Two years later, after the dems had no one running against this woman hater, and the misogynist was sent back in the TN legislature by the wingnuts in his district, filing the same bills he filed two (and possibly 4?) years ago, including the requirement of Death Certificates to be filed for Aborted Fetuses. This time he got a clue from another previously filed bill in Montana, and the firestorm that ensued on his own blog, that included a privacy clause. (That was after he tried to say that no other bills like this had been filed in states, showing just how uninformed he was — New Hampshire and Montana — linked above — had tried this legislative stunt.)
Except, the number of legally performed abortions is already counted, and records sent to the state. This is a mandatory filing by doctors to the state. So, actually counting how many abortions occur in Tennessee is already known.
There are two reasons for death certificates of fetuses. The first is to collect identifying information of a woman. Vital Records are available to the public. That information may not be used by the state to create a database, with the privacy clause as written is included, but it does not stop regressive groups like Right to Life from searching through public records and making their own database.
The second reason for this is to define life as beginning at conception. Of course, the fetuses of spontaneous abortions aren’t given the same accord, unless those fetuses reached 22 weeks and 500 grams inside the womb. This bill mandates death certificates for 22+week old fetuses, as opposed to the current may have a death certificate issued. That leaves a lot of unrecorded death certificates for fetuses that were spontaneously aborted.
The uninformed Campfield has not filed any bills that would safely end abortions, such as making contraceptives available. Instead, this misogynist would rather scare women into not having an abortion, the threat of their identity being publically available to anyone that wishes to search the public record is to beat you into submission. Because, after all, you are only a stupid brood mare.
[...] of these records is specifically intended to intimidate women who are considering abortion. The archcrone makes a similar argument in her post today, which is worth a read on its [...]
Maybe instead of trying to “intimidate” women about the decision to end the life growing within them, Rep. Campfield is trying to help these women take the time to remember that they’re not just having their appendix removed, that they’re ending human life.
And certainly, since the State issues Certificates of Death for other human lives that are ended. Why not here, as well?
Diezba, in order to be issued a death certificate, one must first be alive.
Life is defined as, “the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.”
Are human organisms inside the mother dead? If not dead and not alive, what are they? Animated?
What changes, ontologically speaking, about the human organism after it has left the birth canal?
Please do not be disingenuous enough to say that the organism’s connection to its mother through the umbilical is the reason it’s not an organism, because, ever under current U.S. law, when the baby has emerged from the mother, it is a human who’s “alive,” even before the umbilical is separated.
So again: if it’s not alive, and it’s not dead, what is it?
And what about emerging from the mother makes it ontologically different from being inside the mother?
By this logic, every woman of child-bearing age must send the state their used tampons and used sanitary napkins to make sure no blastocyst was spontaneously aborted.
As a large percentage of fertilized eggs do not attach to the uterine wall and are thus expelled by the body, your logic is faulty.