Making It Easier to Intimidate Women in Tennessee
Feb 15
A state legislature in Nashville wants to give death certificates for abortions:
Legislation introduced in Tennessee would require death certificates for aborted fetuses …
Rep. Stacey Campfield, a Republican, said his bill would provide a way to track how many abortions are performed.
The legislature, is, of course, lying about the state needing the information:
The number of abortions reported to the state Office of Vital Records is already publicly available. The office collects records–but not death certificates–on abortions and the deaths of fetuses after 22 weeks’ gestation or weighing about 1 pound.
So what’s the purpose? Well, aside form the insincere (yes, insincere. If this person actually thought aborted fetuses were life, he would do what the legislature in South Dakota did: introduce a ban on abortion with no exceptions. Actually, he would go farther: he would set punishments equal to first degree murder for abortion providers and women who have them. Anything less, and he doesn’t actually think fetuses are life. Alternatively, he could be advocating for comprehensive, free birth control and massive economic assistance for poor pregnant women. since he takes neither of the two serious tracks for limiting abortions, he cannot possible be serious about thinking fetuses are life.) grandstanding, the death certificate would have information that made it easy to identify the women who had abortions:
… which likely would create public records identifying women who have abortions.
… The identities of the women who have abortions are not included in those records, but death certificates include identifying information such as Social Security numbers.
That’s right: Campfield’s bill will make it easier to find woman who have abortions. So, for example, it will be easier for someone to tell your boss that you had an abortion. It will be easier for someone to tell your parents you had an abortion. It will be be easier for someone to tell your abusive husband that you had an abortion. It will be easier for people like Operation Rescue to picket your home or place of work. It will be easier for one of those nice Christian fellows who kills abortion providers to find you. And this will happen. Once this information is available, it will be trivial to link it to women and then to those women’s addresses, employers, etc. Once its trivial, its almost guaranteed that someone — perhaps like the sick f*ckers who run the sites that target abortion doctors for death — will attempt to intimidate these women. And all it takes is one case to act as a club against women who are trying to end their pregnancies.
Campfield, doesn’t have, apparently, the compassion to provide women with the economic and educational help that has been shown to reduce abortions. Campfield also doesn’t actually have the guts to come out and take real action against abortions and abortion providers and criminalize them and the women they serve. Instead he introduces this bill that provides no information the state doesn’t already have except for that information that would make it possible for the public to find out who has had an abortion. Considering his refusal to take one of the two serious tracks to attempting to stop abortions, one is left with the conclusion that Campfield intends his bill to be used as a means of intimidation.
Apparently, a few women suffering severe health complications, or losing their jobs, or being thrust into poverty, or getting beat up, or getting killed doesn’t rally matter all that much to Campfield. If actual lives meant more to Campfield than cheap political grandstanding, then he wouldn’t have introduced a bill that makes such outcomes so very much easier.
#1 by LarryE at February 15th, 2007
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Another point is that requiring a death certificate can later be pointed to as having legally established that the fetus was a life. It’s easy to believe that Campfield doesn’t move to have abortion labeled murder because he knows there’s no prayer of that happening - now. But later?
This is actually in line with what anti-choice people have been doing for some time: Chipping away at the edges of choice and trying to establish a legal basis for having a fetus declared a life.
In a similar way, in a number of places there have been attempts to have laws passed that said if a pregnant woman is assaulted resulting in the loss of the fetus, that loss is a separate crime from the assault. Not an aggravating factor, but a separate crime - which sets down a legal principle that the fetus has an existence apart from the mother. (Such proposals were usually deceptively described as “protecting women.”)
#2 by Ted at February 15th, 2007
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When I heard about this I immediately thought it was the most transparent attempt to subvert R v. W yet. Or at least to lay the groundwork for future action, as LarryE mentions above.
I have not seen a Tennessee death certificate, so I’m not sure about the Social Security issue. Clearly a fetus does not have a Social Security number, so not sure how that would work. Maybe there is parental info on the certificate for people under a certain age? Obviously ignoring the fact that in this case the age would be a negative number..