In 37 States, It's Illegal For a Pregnant Woman to Fall Down the Stairs

[mekagiannis]

Christine Taylor, a pregnant woman from Iowa who became lightheaded and fell down her stairs on January 19, found herself arrested and jailed for attempting to kill her fetus.  Disturbing much?  The awful thing is that this is actually legal.  Iowa is one of the 37 states in the country with a "feticide" law, which criminalizes the intentional termination of a pregnancy without the knowledge or consent of the pregnant person.  These laws were, for the most part, written to explicitly protect pregnant women from being prosecuted - but as Taylor's case proves, they can easily be turned against pregnant women who admit doubt and uncertainty about their pregnancies.

What happened with Taylor: the mother of two girls, pregnant with a third, was estranged from her husband when she fell down the stairs.  She was taken to the hospital to make sure that her fetus was unharmed, and while there, she confessed fear about raising three children alone to the nurse who was there.

"I never said I didn't want my baby, but I admitted that I had been considering adoption or abortion," she said. "I admit that I said I wasn't sure I wanted to continue the pregnancy. My husband sends me money, but money doesn't make a parent. I don't have anybody else to turn to."

The nurse called the doctor who called the police, and Taylor found herself in jail - for the "crime" of admitting her very real fears to the nurse.  According to the Des Moines Register, "Police said in a report she fell intentionally because she did not want any more children with her husband."  It was only after reviewing the facts of the case for three weeks that prosecutors decided not to charge her with a crime.  Her baby was unharmed.

This case raises obvious problems with confidentiality - as Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women told the newspaper, "You want women to be able to talk to their doctors without being accused as a baby killer.  Transforming some mothers' obviously difficult and painful circumstances into a crime would make every pregnant woman in this country vulnerable to criminal prosecution."

But the truly disturbing part of this is that the police were called because the nurse believed that Taylor was in the first week of her third trimester - when in fact she was still in her second.  Assistant Des Moines County Attorney Lisa Taylor said the attempted feticide charge was dropped because Christine Taylor's doctor confirmed she was in her second trimester.

Wait, what?  So Taylor could have been charged if she had been a few weeks further in her pregnancy?  We're not protecting the lives of unborn children by prosecuting their mothers ferociously - or by breaking confidentiality, or by imposing our own values and fears onto people we don't know.  Even if Taylor had been in her third trimester, she should not have been arrested, and the nurse should not have told the doctor or called the police.  This egregious breach of privacy shouldn't be masked under the cloak of how far along Taylor was in her pregnancy.  It was a horrifying encroachment on pregnant women's rights - and needs to be recognized.