The incrimination of abortion by the HB 481 of Georgia is more horrible than one admits on both sides.

Last week Georgia passed the country's most extreme attack against Roe v. Wade, prohibiting abortion after six weeks and granting full legal personality to fetuses. Its entry into force is currently scheduled for 2020. After the signing of HB 481 by Republican Governor Brian Kemp, I explained how this would allow prosecutors to bring criminal charges against women who abort and even target women who have a miscarriage. A number of personalities of politics and law, including the Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, also described Harris rightly qualifies the dangers of this bill: "a blatant attempt to criminalize a woman's right to take her own health care, constitutionally protected", which "would threaten women to years in prison. " But others, on both sides of the spectrum party have suggested that this characterization was alarmist and incorrect.

On the technical side, these criticisms are false: the law as it is written would do exactly what Harris and I have described. Those who claim otherwise have not read and understood the wording of the bill or have other motivations to minimize what the law would do if the courts did not override it first – which is the likely outcome, but not inevitable.

Journalists, however, should resist the temptation to indiscriminately adopt the story, pushed by both sides of the debate, that this bill could not possibly be as horrible as it may seem. As Sen. Jen Jordan, a lawyer and Democratic opponent of the bill, said Friday, HB 481 is "like a puzzle that must be assembled" by examining "the entire legal regime. ". Journalists, academics, and advocates on both sides can not rely on the truisms and talking points that have dominated the debate on abortion for decades. HB 481 is a new and dangerous weapon, which requires a deliberate naivety to believe that it will not be used against women.

The unprecedented nature of the bill has been rejected by respectable publications for reasons that do not stand up to scrutiny. Saturday, Deanna Paul and Emily Wax-Thibodeaux published the Washington Post article describing my article as "incorrect". The article by Paul and Wax-Thibodeaux is a prime example of confusing and gullible reporting on HB 481, and it is helpful to correct their misstatements to illustrate the extreme nature of the Georgia Bill over the restrictions of the law. ;abortion.

At first, it is important to recognize that HB 481 is a radical change from historical anti-abortion legislation. Before roemost of the laws governing abortion penalized those who performed the procedure. Women were rarely prosecuted, but they were often threatened with prison if they did not testify against the provider who had terminated their pregnancy.
Since fetuses are not considered persons, abortion has not been classified as murder; Separate laws in each state provided for specific sanctions for those convicted of abortions.

HB 481 is not a typical abortion prohibit.

HB 481 is a different beast, in two main ways. First, the law explicitly broadens the definition of Abortion encompass self-termination. In Georgia, the previous law on abortion defined abortion as something that a person "administers … to or inflicts" on a woman ". That is, it's something one person does to another. The HB 481 redefines abortion as "the act of using, prescribing or administering an instrument, substance, instrument or other means intended to interrupt a pregnancy. "This means that abortion includes something that a person does to her only. A woman who takes misoprostol to cause miscarriage "administers" a "substance" to "terminate a pregnancy" and is therefore liable under the law. This change is important because self-termination is becoming more commonplace: women can easily buy misoprostol, a drug meant to treat stomach ulcers that also terminate pregnancies on the internet.

In case of doubt about the purpose of this review, HB 481 includes a provision creating a defense for women who may be prosecuted. "Under this section, prosecution is an affirmative defense if … [a] One woman requested an abortion because she reasonably believed that abortion was the only way to avoid a medical emergency, "he said. To state what should be obvious, women accused of abortion would not need an affirmative defense to pursue if they could not be pursued in the first place.

Paul and Wax-Thibodeaux do not explain why, they believe that HB 481 immunizes women from prosecution. Instead, they cite Staci Fox, CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeast, and Carol Sanger, researcher and advocate for reproductive rights, to say that "HB 481 could not be used to sue women." In conclusion, Paul and Wax-Thibodeaux hold to Sanger's speculation that "if a woman suffered a miscarriage, she could be dragged into an investigation to determine if anyone had practiced her a illegal abortion ". Sanger's concern was the same for the older woman. generation of restrictions on abortion. But it fundamentally ignores HB 481, ignoring its direct impact on women.

David French wrote in National Review a more enlightened argument that the Georgia bill would not be used to prosecute women in court, but this argument is also rejected. French emphasizes that in Hillman v. Statethe Georgian courts have interpreted the law on abortion as prohibiting the prosecution of women suspected of being dismissed. True, but Hillman involved the old law, which, again, criminalized the fact of performing an abortion on someone else. HB 481 revises this definition to criminalize also the act of voluntary cessation of activity. Hillman can no longer be used to block the prosecution of women, because HB 481 replaces it, redefining criminal abortion by taking back what a woman is doing.

French then cites the law of Georgia on feticide, which imposes special sanctions on anyone who causes the death of the fetus by wounding a woman. This law, he says, states that "nothing in this section of the Code shall be interpreted as allowing the continuation of … [a]French seems to believe that this immunity extends to any woman who puts an end to her own pregnancy. But note the restrictive wording: "Nothing in this code section"Can be used to punish women" with respect to "her fetus.The law does not grant immunity from prosecution to pregnant women in all circumstances; it grants immunity exclusively with respect to the status of feticide. Other articles in the code can still be used to prosecute women, such as the new HB 481 provisions.

Let us now turn to the broader implications of Georgian law. Fox told La Poste that "news headlines … speculating on the unintended consequences of bills are, at the very least, not productive. At most, they are harmful. However, there is a difference between "harmful" and "false". And while Planned Parenthood is in damage control mode since HB 481, minimizing the effects of the bill in an apparent effort to placate Georgians, this does not mean that reporters have to repeat the claims over and over again. of the organization.

The most surprising disposition of HB 481 allows fetuses to become fully independent after about six weeks of pregnancy. It states that fetuses must have due process and equal protection, and that they should "be included in population-based determinations". The office and legislative counsel of Georgia – the office that houses the state parliament own lawyers– Already recognized some of the radical ramifications of this change, l & # 39; writing fetuses of undocumented women may be entitled to benefits that their mothers can not legally use.

However, granting fetal personality has more serious repercussions: If fetuses are human beings within the meaning of Georgian law, abortion, including voluntary cessation, is murder. A woman planning and terminating her own fetus "caused the death of another human being" in violation of Georgia's murderous status. The penalty for this crime is life imprisonment or the death penalty. A woman who seeks an illegal abortion from a provider may be involved in a murder (sentence: life imprisonment); a woman who causes her own miscarriage because of alcohol or drugs may have committed second degree murder (sentence: 10 to 30 years in prison); a woman who travels out of the state to obtain a legal abortion may be engaged in a conspiracy to commit murder (sentence: 10 years in prison). Absolutely nothing in HB 481 specifies that the killing of a human being does not do not to be a murder when this human is a fetus. On the contrary, the law erases the legal distinction between the man and the fetus.

The argument that no woman suspected of voluntary termination would ever be charged with murder seems to assume that no prosecutor would dare to use the law that way. This trust is misplaced. In 2015, a Georgian prosecutor indicted a woman for malicious murder, which punishable in perpetuity or in perpetuityafter using misoprostol on the black market to cause miscarriage; he only dropped the charges after deciding that the law in force did not support the prosecution. At the time, after all, a fetus was not a human. Now, a fetus will be a human under Georgian law. There is no legal reason why prosecutors can not murder women who are convicted of murder, just as we tried a few years ago.

Finally, let's move on to the most astonishing statement in Post's article: "HB 481 can not possibly take effect because Roe v. Wade remains good law and can not be overthrown. I agree that the courts will probably block the bill, as will Senator Jordan. But it is absurd to say that the bill can not take effect because the Supreme Court is not allowed to overthrow Deer. And yet, that's exactly what the post has said badly: l & # 39; writingAccording to a doctrine known as stare decisis, judges are bound by jurisprudence. They can not overturn a case simply because new judges have joined the court. (The sentence was later changed without a noted correction). In the end, the Post's assertion that HB 481 is actually no threat to women who spontaneously lay off is convinced that the Supreme Court "can not overturn a case simply because new judges we're joining". (Paul and Wax-Thibodeaux might be surprised to learn that SCOTUS on Monday canceled a 40-year-old precedent just because new judges joined the court, as Judge Stephen Breyer pointed out in his dissent .)

It is important to ask: why is the post so fraught with errors? And why does Planned Parenthood adopt the same vision of HB 481 as David French, a bitter enemy of abortion? The problem here seems to be that neither proponents of choice nor of life want to recognize the potential impact of the bill for very different reasons. Advocates of Pro-Life recognize that prosecuting women for abortion is a poison for public relations, and many are keen to avoid this outcome. Supportive advocates, such as Planned Parenthood, face panicked and terrified patients and seem to be seeking to allay their fears.

But reporters must not lose their heads in the sand and the dubious assertions of parrot activists. HB 481 is not a typical abortion prohibition. The bill marks an effort to reform the Georgian legal system to give fetuses the same protections as ordinary human beings. It is foolish to pretend that the extreme provisions of this bill could not lead to extreme results. The draft law on Georgia means what he says. And what he says opens the door to the prosecution and imprisonment of Georgians who dare to exercise control over their reproductive rights.