A 24-year-old Tifton woman faces criminal charges after experiencing a miscarriage, raising concerns about the application of Georgia’s strict abortion legislation.
What We Know: Selena Maria Chandler-Scott was arrested and charged with concealing the death of another person and abandonment of a dead body following a medical emergency on March 20. According to police reports, emergency services responded to Brookfield Mews Apartments around 6 a.m. Thursday after receiving a call about an unconscious woman who was bleeding. Medical personnel determined she had suffered a miscarriage and transported her to Tift Regional Medical Center for treatment.
Police claim a witness reported that Chandler-Scott had placed the fetal remains in a bag and disposed of it in a dumpster outside the apartment complex. Officers later recovered these remains, which were sent for autopsy.
The Autopsy: According to the autopsy, the fetus was 19 weeks old at the time of the miscarriage. There were no signs of trauma and the fetus did not take a breath. The coroner’s office ruled it to be a occurring miscarriage. At 19 weeks, a fetus is about the size of a mango and lungs are just beginning to develop but are not fully developed yet.
In Context: Georgia’s “heartbeat law,” officially the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. The law also grants personhood status to embryos and fetuses, potentially exposing women who miscarry to criminal charges if authorities believe they contributed to the pregnancy loss or improperly handled fetal remains.
Reproductive rights advocates have warned that such laws could criminalize women experiencing pregnancy complications or miscarriages. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, miscarriages occur in about 10-20% of known pregnancies, with most happening in the first trimester.
What Should Women Who Miscarry Do?: We asked several Tifton Police Department and Tift County officials what women who miscarry should do with the remains of the fetus. So far, only Tift District Attorney Patrick Warren has answered and said typically miscarriages are not handled in this manner.
“There is no applicable case law on this issue as it is generally deemed a medical condition and prosecution is not warranted. Georgia courts have held that once a baby is ‘born alive and has had an independent and separate existence from its mother’ then what happens to the child (injury or death) will be subject to criminal prosecution,” Warren said.
Not many 2A defenders around these days.
"But we need it to be able to revolt in case of a fascist takeover of the government!"
I challenge you to look at this from a different perspective.
The people with the (severely under-powered) guns come out, shoot some people, and then what?
The American populace has shown itself to be completely spineless and incapable of doing anything useful. At least 50% of the country will condemn your actions as "not the right way" - even as fascists are rounding them up and sending them to El Salvador.
So what did you just throw your life away for? Making no change, and potentially even setting back the cause. Guns will not fix the deep seated rot in America - no matter how many times you say it. Anyone with a brain looking to win (not the same as being correct!) will not show their hand now.
No no, I did think of that.
Edit i thought the wrong context but the general sentiment still applies even though I thought I was deeper in the thread. End edit
And in the case where a supposed home invader is armed, pulling an gas powered rubber bullet gun is a really bad choice.
But that's why context matters.
Jim Jefferies makes good points about hypothetical home invasions. Supposed to keep the guns locked up instead of sleeping with a gun under your pillow, so what's the use when you have to get them out of a safe (but that's not a critical point as there's plenty of fast acting finger print etc safes in the us etc).
Anyway it's kinds comical that Jim Jefferies made such good points in this (pt1) routine (pt2) that they ended up showing the clip for law students in universities when discussing the dicussion around gun laws.
The point I'm making about the 2A defendenerds (that's on purpose) haven't been seen much for the past few months, because even the conservatives in the US see how obviously Trump is fucking up America. Ironically, usually the people who defended the 2A and people who voted for Trump overlap a lot in venn diagrams.
Their main excuse for defending it was "it's to protect against authoritarianism and abuse of power".
Now the Trump administration is clearly totalitarian and no-one is forming "well regulated militias."
Meaning we get to say "we told you so" about 2A. Which isn't too happy because of why we get to say it. But... we do. We told them so.
Agreed, the "well regulated militias" argument was always nonsense.
People can barely work together in office spaces, have zero appreciation for democracy, and have zero discipline. Yet we expect these same people to painstakingly learn combat, change their lifestyles, and agree who the enemy is.
For full transparency, I support 2A - but I support it because it is the best way to be uncooperative with violence. This is extremely important for not only having any chance against a corrupt government, but also your hysterical neighbors - who want to lynch you for being a witch.
P.S. Remote areas tend to be significantly more violent than populated areas. This is a phenomena observed through both anecdote and data. Protecting yourself from rabid neighbors in remote (often rural) areas is a genuine use case!
I think the rule of thumb is to never take a conservative at their word. They seem to only argue in bad-faith for their own personal gain (whether it be money or pleasure); and will go as far as changing the meaning of words and reality to be "correct".
When a conservative makes a hypothetical, just assume it has no nuance, practicality, nor scientific process. If it did the militia argument would've been dead-on-arrival.