Abortion classified as murder if bill becomes law in Iowa

A group of Republican legislators has introduced legislation that would make all abortions illegal in Iowa and any doctor who performs an abortion in Iowa would face murder charges.

“What the bill does is it defines what a person is,” says Representative Tom Shaw, a Republican from Laurens who is the bill’s lead sponsor.

“We put it right underneath our murder statute. This is in keeping with Roe v Wade where Justice Blackman said that if the state ever defined the fetus to be a person, then, of course, it would have all the protections of the 14th amendment. ...”

“We just kind of sat down and thought, ‘We’re making this way too hard. We should be following what the Supreme Court said in their opinion,’” Shaw says. “And so the bill just merely defines who a person is and it defines a person from the moment of conception when the zygote is formed until natural death.”

“...we should not determine whether a person’s life is worth living based on their age or their stage of biological development,” Shaw says.

While the bill does indeed take a bold step I hope they left a little room in the fine print for special circumstances. It would be disgusting to see an expectant mother die because a doctor’s hands were legally tied ( this happened in Ireland recently). Maybe I’m the only one who remembers thalidamide. Then there are hydro- and micro-cephalics and a range of other really dangerous fetal conditions that risk death to the mother if not dealt with when problems start. And then who will be prosecuted when a doctor creates a miscariage by prescribing meds for other conditions and they wind up not being compatible with a full term pregnancy??? It happens all the time. Absolutes never work out in spite of best intentions. I just hope these bill writers have done their homework and not created a whole new world of problems?

I apologize for taking so long to answer your question.

My sister was in a car accident in July, 1987. She informed the ER personnel that she was pregnant but they just said she was mistaken and loaded her up with painkillers. The injuries to her neck and spine were severe and, quite frankly, she required the pain killers.

Unfortunately, she began having seizures within days because the pain medication toxicity accumulated in her baby. She said she was probably no more that 8 weeks along by this time and the pregnancy had become unviable; she had eclampsia.

Sen. Rick Santorum and his wife experienced eclampsia during one of their pregnancies. If it is late in term, medical treatment is possible in an attempt save the mother and unborn child’s lives until the baby can live outside the womb. In the Santorum’s case their son died due to involuntary abortion - a miscarriage.

My sister is built like a rock and there was no miscarriage, just a worsening of her condition. Doctors said there was no way to save either her or the baby, period, but she could not get an abortion at that hospital.

The hospital that gave her emergency care was a state-run, the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) Hospital. Conservative Republicans had gained control over the state legislature and passed a law making it a crime for any state-financed hospital to perform an abortion - FOR ANY REASON.

We carried her into an abortion clinic as she was no longer able to walk.

My family members and I are Roman Catholic. This event changed our lives, and though we are solidly pro-life and donate money to organizations that provide pregnant women with options to killing their babies, we no longer believe abortion should simply be outlawed.

My nephew was born in February, 1992. He was considered to be a miracle baby, as my sister had been advised she would never have another child.

The previous year I had a positive test for uterine cancer (false) and a subsequent hysterectomy. The pregnancy was conceived about the time of my surgery.

Do you believe in miracles? I do.

“...more woman die of botched abortions of convenience each year than woman died because they were denied medically necessary abortions before Roe.”

Agreed.

IMHO, the worst thing to have happened is that hospitals stopped performing therapeutic abortions primarily due to the adverse publicity of protestors ourside their facilities. Instead, we’ve had the creation of abortion clinics, which I know are sloppy, profit driven centers of death.

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Thanks EternalVigilance!