• memfree@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Emphasis mine

    Self-managed abortion is a criminal offense with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in the UK, as is any abortion performed after the pregnancy has progressed passed 23 weeks and six days, unless the patient is at risk of serious physical harm or death, or the fetus has severe developmental anomalies.

    …there has been a dramatic increase in the number of pregnant people and people who have experienced miscarriages or certain pregnancy complications being subjected to criminal investigation by the police … seizing computers and phones, demanding blood, urine, and placental samples for testing.

    Given that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, and the vast majority of them are unexplained, this rise in investigations of and the treatment of unexplained miscarriage as suspicious is deeply concerning…

    As Dr. Jonathan Lord told Tortoise Media, “It can never be in the public interest to subject a woman to criminal investigation following a pregnancy loss. They ought to expect compassion and sympathy. Not only are these investigations desperately cruel but they’re also an enormous waste of police resources.”

    Even thirty years ago, I was hearing estimates put miscarriage rates as low as 1 in 20 and as high as the stated 1 in 4 but neither rate makes them uncommon. No one who looks at the numbers EVER thinks miscarriages are rare (though they are most likely to happen in the first week and the woman might not have realized there was any pregnancy at all). I don’t understand how anyone thinks this is acceptable to criminalize something so common and frequently unavoidable.