A few weeks ago 24 year old Selena Maria Chandler-Scott, was arrested in Georgia after suffering a miscarriage. After Scott was rushed to the hospital for medical treatment. She found herself facing criminal charges. Authorities determined she threw her fetus away in a bag, in a nearby dumpster.
Selena faced one count of concealing the death of another person and one count of throwing away or abandonment of a dead body. Last week all charges were dropped. which is wonderful because it starts some sort of precedent in Georgia. But not in the country. This will happen again and again until women have the ability to get the healthcare they need and with it the protections of their rights. In This case, I think the right to suffer, mourn and heal from a major health emergency, without the stress of arrest and accusation is pretty important.
In 2023 Brittany Watts was arrested for having a miscarriage, her 21 week old fetus was pulled out of the toilet and she was charged with abuse of a corpse – a felony carrying up to a $2,500 fine and up to one year in prison.
Since Roe V. Wade was overturned more than 210 women have been criminally charged for their conduct related to miscarriages. Even though vastly different, government involvement in all forms of reproductive health is a war against women. This is my opinion.
It is not about children, it never was, if it was about children, there would universal healthcare and school lunches and maybe not 400,000 kids in foster care, and oh lets.... GUN CONTROL the leading cause of death for kids 1-17.
So if its not about the babies ...and it is not....its about the women. The relentless fanatical pursuit to control women's bodies. Since the dawn of time. For that reason I am bouncing back and forth between talking about abortion and miscarriages, because all gynecological care, at it's most basic level is healthcare..
The complexity of conversation around abortion has always fascinated me, because you have people who believe in a woman's right to choose when and if she brings life into the world. And you have people screaming that all life is sacred and that abortion is murder and that murder is always wrong, and these are interesting conversations to have and think about. As pro choice as I am, And I am Fiercely, rabidly Pro Choice.....I can not deny the sanctity of life, I wrestle with what I eat, what I kill and what I believe everyday. It is not a flippant ease that I have on the subject.
Sometimes I run my brain ragged just trying to think of a solution to quell everyone. Wouldn't it be grand if no one ever had to make the wretched decision to have an abortion, because all of women's health needs were met, because birth control pills were the males responsibility, because sex education was free and available and clear and open. Because women were paid livable wages and could support a larger family. It would be splendid if there were no rapists because all forms of toxic masculinity are so frowned upon that they are eliminated from our society, and those with a psychological propensity towards sexual violence are handled in a manner befitting their crimes.
It would be great if all women lived such lives that they knew early on the magic and sacredness of her own body, that they knew they could control what they did with their bodies and understood that sex isn't love, or if they had the agency to decline a sexual advance no matter how persuasive. It would be the coolest if every girl knew that its ok to hurt a mans pride, or could see the signs of manipulation. But it is not that rosy for every female.
There are so many more ways to discuss the problem and find a solution than just is it right or wrong. Making it illegal is probably the least effective way to handle any thing that regularly happens. It happens because there is a need. The need doesn't go away just because access to abortion goes away, the only chance it has to go away is action, planning, education, research and communication.
Eliminating Roe V Wade has halted the conversation, focusing on the legal or illegal aspects of abortion, criminalizes and punishes but does nothing to lessen people having unwanted pregnancies. No that takes work, conversation, understanding, the dreaded empathy. It takes understanding of circumstance and obstacles and misinformation.
Or we can just stand around with placards screaming about god and nature and science, like we all know the truth.
But this little musing is not about the polarizing topic of abortion. This is about woman being arrested and criminalized for their bodily functions. Imagine any scenario in which a man could be arrested for something happening naturally in his body. Passing a kidney stone for instance, imagine being in terrible pain, hospitalized in agony and arrested for passing a kidney stone. Its laughable.
I am not equating a fetus to a calcification of uric acid, but the discrepancy with which we judge men and women's suffering is staggering.
We know that around 1 in 4 women have had a miscarriage. Early miscarriages occurring before a woman knows they are pregnant, could make that number so much greater. Thats about a million spontaneous miscarriages a year in the US. Far greater than the amount of intentional abortions. If we are criminalizing miscarriages now, That's a lot of women to disappear.
It may seem grossly hypocritical to talk about disappearing women, when also talking about disappearing fetuses, and that irony is not lost on me. That I am favoring the idea of a woman retaining her rights as a human, while also allowing that the fetus does not have those same rights to exist is true to me?
Having met both fetus and full grown humans I would say that is how I lean, but I don't know for sure and am open for further discussion.
What I do know for sure is that a miscarriage is a natural physical no fault occurrence. Most of the time due to chromosomal abnormalities or structural issues within the uterus or cervix, or some other reason we don't understand.
If we cared about women, we would invest in funding research for women's health, maybe we could learn more. Maybe we could talk about it more?
The fact that when polled the majority of Americans believe miscarriages are a rare occurrence shows how quiet we are, how stigmatizing it is. Even today when we know it is not the woman's fault, women still feel shame, and embarrassment over their bodies "failure". This misconception ( lol, is it too soon to make a pregnancy joke and then call it a tragedy?)... is a tragedy!
There are a plethora of tragedies in a miscarriage. The dream one holds for their child is gone. Regardless of the circumstances, planned or unplanned, the connection with a new life is lost. Hope is shattered, the mourning for a child that is loved but never seen, the fear, the physical pain, the distress emotional and physical, the fear of judgement and the shock, the absolute definition of shock, that occurs in the body is enormous. The subsequent grief, that has no purchase, no where to cling. The loneliness and isolation all of this is life altering.
Being a woman is a life of pain. It is a life of getting up and facing the storm, over and over again. People debate what the definition of a woman is, that is what I would say. A woman is a being that suffers a loss and stands with fists awaiting the next blow.
These are the women that are being targeted by this administration. Women who are simply trying to stand up in the storm of their lives and now.. their hands are being placed behind their backs and handcuffed.
I fear for women of child bearing age, especially because their choices are dwindling before our eyes. But more than that, we are being corralled by men who don't understand woman's bodies, And if you need a break to laugh so you don't cry, click this link to hear my very favorite song in the whole world by Marcia Belsky about the time NASA gave Sally Ride 100 Tampons for a week in space. There are very few people that have right to enter a woman's vagina and I will fight the storm screaming that they all , every last one of them... NEED TO BE INVITED. Every person making a decisions about a vagina, must have permission to be there.... these politicians making decisions about womens bodies, are criminals to me. They are all up in a womans private place, uninvited, and there are words for that.
One of the most Haunting Handmaids Tales of the entire 2025 floorplan is the expressed proposal that all reproductive healthcare be tracked and monitored, and that HIPPA be rolled back to allow police access to information regarding pregnancies. Surveilling pregnancies. This government wants to track individuals and their pregnancies, not like the way the census tells us how many people are living or dying or the CDC can say what race in what city is having the most abortions, no! No, this administration whats to know if you... Ms. Jane so and so are pregnant, and they want to track and make sure you have a baby, and if not? where did you travel? what happened? And that can only be to criminalize you. Using a woman's own body as a weapon.
- In related news Project 2025 seeks to redefine basic sexual health education as “pornography”—and then to make pornography illegal—and also recommends replacing comprehensive sex education with abstinence-only curricula.
- What could go wrong?
I believe all healthcare decisions should be made between a woman and her doctor. If she wants to bring her pastor or her government official into it, thats peachy, I think she should have a right to that. But I don't want the government or the church in my vagina.
The laws are so muddied that any pregnancy that ends is a risk for prosecution. This is horrific, everyone should be taken aback by the idea of a woman being being penalized for a miscarriage.
So Instead. I drew my own.
This is me, at age 21, completely alone on a bathroom floor, overwhelmed by blood and the shock of what had just happened. My beautiful, distorted alien precious baby girl. She was 20 weeks old and very still and I wrapped her in a towel. Please tell me , was this the right thing to do? Should I have cleaned up the bathroom before or after I tucked her into a drawer? What does one do? How long should I have kept her there? Could I be arrested for having a fetus in a drawer in my bedroom.
I never thought my pregnancy was lucky, the boy who fathered her never spoke to me again after I told him. He had promised to take a train in from the city and go with me to an appointment and pay half of a very expensive shot that I needed as a RH - woman. we were going to have dinner and discuss our futures together, But He never showed up on the 5 o'clock or the 6 o'clock. or the 7 o'clock or the 8 o'clock train. He never again answered his phone. Theres more to that story but its irrelevant. The point is I never Felt lucky. But today I do. Today I realize that not only did I have low cost affordable healthcare thru a local planned parenthood, I was able to pay for my visits and that very expensive shot on a sliding scale, they gave me everything I needed to have a healthy pregnancy when I decided thats what I wanted, I had access to prenatal vitamins, exams, information. I had the choice to have an abortion if I had felt that was the best option for me, It never occurred to me that I could live in a world without that choice, and to be clear, having that choice is what led me to keep it, somehow knowing that I had choices allowed me to really reflect on my life and values. I knew she was a girl, I felt the deepest connection to her right away, but knowing I had a choice made her seem even more important. How lucky I was to have that choice. Late that night when I developed cramping and a high fever they got me in and performed a D&C a simple procedure that at the time was completely legal. Today, while most medical professionals will preform the D&C, it is up to the state to determine if the mothers health is at risk and it is warranted. Good God what if I lived in the wrong state, what if I hadn't had access to the care I needed, what if my infection got worse and I was unable to have my beautiful teenage sons. Oh no I see how lucky I am.
Because on top of that, I experienced a miscarriage at a time when being arrested was not even on my radar. It never crossed my mind that I could have been prosecuted or had jail time for the devastating experience that I and more than 750,000 women have every year, in this country. I am so lucky. It has been 30 years and I think of her all the time. I think about that terrible night and all of my anger and fear and shock...and I think about how horrendous it would have been if I needed to go to court and defend myself in the middle of that ordeal, if that sad moment in time would be marred by a felony, that I would carry my whole life. And I think yeah I am so lucky my mother and my mothers mother fought for me to at least feel cared for and protected.
And before you say, "I am sorry for your loss" or offer any condolences, Make sure you are on the right side of history, If you care about me, than you care about women being stripped of their rights and arrested in their most vulnerable moments. You care about women having autonomy over their own bodies, and their right to clear concise information and choices.
You do not need to agree with what someone does with their body, but you need to understand that there
And if you feel the need to report this incredibly painful, everyday occurrence as obscene, consider the obscenity that is someone in this position being hauled off to jail and charged with a crime.
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