1/7/2005 02:23:36 PM|||Mike|||There is a law in the works in Virginia that makes it a serious crime to fail to report a miscarriage within 12 hours.
At any stage of pregnancy.
There is a claim that this is a law to protect babies from being abandoned. Look it up, see what you think. The language is legal but not all that incomprehensible. Doesn't look like abandoned babies to me. Looks, well, bizarre. Like if a woman has an egg fertilized and it doesn't implant, she has to report it. Which would be difficult, I'm told (being male, I don't really know) a woman does not know when that happens.
But even in the non-absurd case, it seems an extremely intrusive burden at a very, very bad time. A really bad intrusion on the privacy of a very intimate tragedy. For no good result.

Unbeleivable. A lot of things like this that are unbeleivable are bogus, so I had to check it out on the VA legislative web site. Don't take my word for it. Look it up yourself.

Here's what the summary on the official VA legislative site says:

Summary as introduced:
Report of fetal death by mother; penalty. Provides that
when a fetal death occurs without medical attendance, it shall be the woman's
responsibility to report the death to the proper law-enforcement agency within
12 hours of the delivery. Violation of this section shall be punishable as a
Class 1 misdemeanor.

|||110513006651749624|||HB1677