Oh Iowa, you're breaking my heart. Half the time you're a progessivist state pulling off amazing legal battles.

Wait, was this simply a case of mandatory reporting laws gone amuck? It doesn't look she was actually charged. Me thinks Dan just likes to get outraged.

Why is attempted feticide a crime while being a nosy self-righteous asshole is still legal? Seems to me if it's anybody should be going down here, it's the doctor and nurse, not the pregnant woman.

She broke up with Ben Stiller?

i dunno, Graham. If I had to spend two days in jail for falling down the stairs and choosing to go to a doctor about it, I'd be pretty miffed.

I'd argue that the nurse's brain is not technically alive and thus could be aborted.

Nobody else thinks her story is at all fishy?

Reymont, if she was trying to miscarriage on purpose, why would she go to a hospital for a check-up?

Maybe the whole thing was a plot to get the support she needs to raise her kids.

Knowing how completely eff'ed the system is, she may have known the outcome of certain actions. Now she will be able to sue and buy a house.

But if she was just a victim, man, that says everything we need to know about public employee unions.

Sorry, I know I seem obsessed. It's OK. Just read the recent economist article about how the jailer's unionand police union got a bunch of laws on the books in California so that they could feed prisoners into their fiefdom, you will really, really start to tear the hair out. I'd try to find a link but currently too pissed off about it all.

@ UJ, because she's stupid? I'm not taking any sides here, I'm just pointing out that logic is usually a faulty indicator of most people's behavior, particularly the poor, wounded & desperate.

While I'll say up front that this sounds like a stupid application of a stupid law, I'd say it's equally logical that the nurse and doctor didn't call the cops until they were reasonably sure their suspicions were well-founded.

Let's all agree to read way too much into EVERY aspect of the untold story, not just our pet one.

Here it is.

Ahh, the jaws are wide open, feeding criminals, along with naifs and fools and the unlucky, to an organized, legal, demonic system supplying jobs to a greedy workforce.

really, really, freaking terrifying.

http://www.economist.com/world/united-stat…

@CC: I tried doing some basic research on this case. Near as I can tell, this is a 22 year old with two kids already and a third on the way. Father of the kids is gone. Oh, and more basic research also tells us that in the police report, it says that Taylor told hospital staff that she intentionally fell down the stairs to try and get rid of the baby. She then told the same thing to the police.

Charges were dropped because Taylor was not in the third trimester of her pregnancy when this all occured. Thus, no crime or attempted crime happened. Pretty much all of this reporting is just fear-mongering.

In general, this type of fear-mongering if justified. Many authorities and politicians ARE trying to limit a woman's right to choose. There's all that bullshit happening in Utah right now and in general Roe V Wade is getting chipped away at. But it makes all of us Pro-Choice people look bad when we rally to the cause of someone who is throwing themselves down flights of stairs to kill their fetus.

I guess I would've been arrested under this law during my first pregnancy.
I was a teen, 9 months pregnant, and had already set up an open adoption when I fainted and fell. Hit my head pretty good and was out for a few minutes. Doctor said I was fine and my chart already had the information that I intended to give the baby up. The nurse from the article would've thought I was trying a DIY abortion.

If people would quit having their panties in a twist over a legal medical procedure, they wouldn't have as many DIY abortions to worry about.

Graham,

Umm, you're going off of the police report? When such things are routinely falsified police versions of reality, which in this case, would have had to provide justification for jailing this woman?

Excuse me while I cackle quietly.

I can just see the ER Dr, the chief of staff, the radiologist, getting together after the fact and deciding/declaring that this must be a pregnancy of uncertain dates (like so many pregnancies, really), so they could get this woman out of jail before the hospital got any more horrible publicity....

I think my heart just stopped. I agreed with Graham and find his arguments most insightful and compelling.

@ Graham, nice work - this is about the way I thought it had happened.

@ gonetorio, as a victim myself of a self-serving police report, and as someone who has reviewed quite a few iffy ones, I agree that they are not to be taken as gospel. However, full confessions to two separate groups (cops & hospital staff) can't be dismissed out of hand as utter fabrications without more. This is evidence. Not dispositive, but still fairly damning.

There doesn't seem to be any better reason to choose the author's position of the woman "becoming lightheaded and falling down a flight of stairs" version over a multiple-confession police report.

And for bonus points, if anyone wants to tackle the following prickly question: The Iowa law prevents attempts to intentionally end a pregnancy in the third trimester. If you think that's a totally spurious law, please explain the moral difference between throwing yourself down the stairs two weeks before your due date, and simply strangling the baby to death the moment it leaves the birth canal ON the due date.

I'm not saying I agree with the law, I'm just saying it isn't totally spurious.

@gonetorio: I'm inclined to disbelieve consipracy theories without proof. Simpler explenation is that Taylor changed her story after she was arrested. I'm sure the police and hospital staff thought it would be jolly ol' fun to arrest a pregnant woman for Attempted Fetuscide.

@penthesilea: You'd only be arrested for this crime if in the ER you'd said, "I'm trying to kill my baby". But you're correct about everything else.

@spartacus: I'm sorry. I can tell you to go fuck off if that'd make things easier between us.

@ Graham, I kind of wish I thought like a conspiracy theorist sometimes. It's just more fun to imagine a world where large groups of otherwise ordinary people are always making frantic, airtight pacts to lie to everyone else for their own benefit.

It's not a prickly question, third trimester abortion is equivalent to infanticide, at whatever point in that trimester the baby in question becomes developed enough to live outside of the uterus.

This is an inconvenient truth that the partial-birth abortion supporters like to ignore, for fear that somehow recognizing it would undermine first trimester abortion rights.

It's all good, infanticide is a big part of human culture, partial-birth abortion supporters. Just go visit the ruins on the Mayan peninsula, or the ruins at Carthage. Whenever rulers wanted to maintain power over slaves, they got a good belief system going that would make people gladly give up their kin.

@CC: I just realized I should mention that I'm from Iowa and that I've got a vested interest in showing that Iowa isn't a state full of retarded hillbillies. The upper-midwest is VERY socially progressive. Or alternately, the upper-midwest believes in minding their own business. Same thing really. Hell, Iowa's got the gay marriage and should have the medical marijuana within a couple of years.

Hell, I'm moving to IOWA!

@Gonetorio: Cathage didn't sacrifice babies, and your conspiracy theories are ridiculous.

@Graham - Great work on the police report. Got a link?

@Dan Savage - Want to update your post, regarding the confessions, since Graham was nice enough to do the basic research YOU should have done? Maybe you want to apologize for misreporting and sensationalizing the incident? I don't know why I'm bothering to type - this isn't the first time we've pointed out factual errors in your posts, but I've never seen you respond. It's becoming disgusting.

@ Graham, I thought we all left the Midwest because if it isn't FULL of retarded hillbillies, they're certainly in control of everything. I regard more stupid/draconian laws as wonderful - more smart, progressive people headed our way!

One day, all the progressives will live in four states and there will be a retarded hillbilly supermajority in Congress for years (until they enslave/eat us all).

I'm not even gonna get into this thing with the woman in Iowa, here. What I want to know is WHY do people keep saying that Utah is about to criminalize miscarriages??? This is the third time I've heard it put exactly that way, but a simple examination of the facts shows that this is not the case at all... As both the Times article and the text of the bill itself clearly state, what would be criminalized is not miscarriage itself, but illegally self-induced abortions... Look, don't think I'm coming out on the side of the pro-lifers here, nothing could be further from the truth, but language matters, people! Use it correctly or you'll end up undermining your own arguments...

@Reymont

I walked around an ancient gravesite detailing the slaughter of multiple generations of babies and children, in Carthage, Tunisia. This tour took place in 1981, before you were born, most likely. I think what you might be trying to say is that the civilization that flourished in Carthage and made it a famous place didn't have an infanticide issue. But, you see, the geographical area of Carthage had OTHER groups that resided there beforehand, and they did have infanticide issues.

As for conspiracies, I just don't believe the contents of a police report rule out that there was a miscarriage of justice in the Iowa case. But please, as a police apologist extraordinaire, feel free to believe any police report you read.

@gonetorio: So what you're saying is that some random ethnic group that may or many not have lived near Carthage at some undetermined point in the past may or may not have killed babies?

I'm saying infanticide is a part of human history that is alive and well today, and currently has a legal protection in the form of late third trimester abortion.

Because people have their heads so way, way, up their asses that they think that if they admit late third trimester abortion is infanticide, then, somehow, roe vs wade will be overturned, and noone will be able to get an abortion any more, even if the fetus is the size of an ant and completely non-viable outside of the uterus.

This is the humanity we share, for better or worse.

lets put our opinions aside and help her and her kids under these difficult times go to www.helpchristinetaylor.blogspot.org

Lets give christine and her kids a helping hand in these difficult times make a donation at www.helpchristinetaylor.blogspot.org