Alabama: Let's Make Women Criminals!

The Republicans in various states have made a number of legal assaults on women's rights. From redefining rape, to limiting access to contraception and abortion among other initiatives, all are designed to remove existing rights that women have fought for for generations. Now comes yet another one: Alabama SB 301 and its companion HB 405.

introduced by Sen. Phil Williams (R-Cherokee, Etowah), is a proposal to amend the Alabama Code of 1975 to change the definition of the term “person” to mean: “any human being from the moment of fertilization or the functional equivalent thereof.”

In other words, they're attempting to shift the definition to what various religious and anti-abortion groups have been saying is "a person." That is, the moment of fertilization. Which manages to ignore reproductive biology.

During the period of embryonic development that begins with fertilization and ends with successful implantation of the blastocyst--known as "preimplantation development"--up to 50 percent of human conceptions fail to survive, says Lynn Wiley, professor of obstetrics and gynecology. One reason for this high failure rate is the inability of an embryo to implant. "Only certain cells within the embryo can implant and form a placenta. Without these cells, or if these cells are not healthy, implantation will fail," she says.

In other words, up to half of fertilized eggs - which, under this law would be "a human being" - never implant and are passed out during menstruation. There are other studies which show that even with implantation, not all actually carry to term.

In a 1988 study, researchers followed 221 women over a combined total of 707 menstrual cycles, with 198 total pregnancies. They found that 22% of the pregnancies ended before they could be detected clinically (such as by standard urine pregnancy tests).

There are other studies which indicate that the 22% figure rises with age. What this law does, by defining a "human being" as a fertilized egg, in combination with the number of fertilized eggs which never implant, and the "late periods" which are usually missed miscarriagese, is that over time virtually every single sexually active woman is going to have had "a human being" passed out of her body. Given the inclination for criminalization that the Republicans have, along with the frequent equation of that with "murder" by anti-abortion activists, what they've done is to set the stage where every woman is a criminal. They'll deny it, but that is the outcome.