Author Margaret Atwood rooter her novel The Handmaid’s Tale in real history. But in the present day a bill proposed by Ohio Republicans is drawing disturbing parallels to her work of fiction. Ali Velshi discusses what this pregnancy-tracking bill represents and the potential harms to women with Georgetown law professor Michelle Goodwin.
The bill introduced in Ohio’s State House would require medical professionals to file a “certificate of life” within 10 days of detecting a fetal heartbeat, and require all fetal deaths be registered, indicating whether the cause of death was an induced abortion, spontaneous miscarriage or stillbirth. Ohio Rep. Jean Schmidt, who proposed the legislation, insists, “It’s just an acknowledgment of life.”
But this bill would create a statewide registry of pregnancies, tracking their outcomes, and building the infrastructure for pregnancy surveillance.
Velshi believes it’s clear what kind of regime conservative lawmakers are trying to implement, saying, “It lays bare the purpose of the anti-abortion movement which has always been about controlling women and their bodies.”
Goodwin’s book Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood explains how the abstract legal doctrines of “choice” and “privacy” are not actually descriptive of the reality of women’s lives.
“It is absolutely insane,” Goodwin says. “And what it purports is exactly what you suggested was, is surveillance and the potential,the very real potential and probability of criminal punishments and civil fines and various other horrors.”
LISTEN: THIS BILL WOULD TRACK EVERY PREGNANCY
WATCH: VELSHI AND GOODWIN DISCUSS WOMEN’S RIGHT TO REPRODUCTIVE CARE
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