Cosgrove removes miscarriage bill

[SemperEadem]

http://democracyforvirginia.com/

Chris Graham of the Augusta Free Press (http://www.augustafreepress.com/stories/storyReader$30532 ) has just broken the news that Delegate John Cosgrove will withdraw HB1677 from consideration:

Legislation that would have required mothers who had failed to report fetal deaths to the police within 12 hours of the delivery to face a possible misdemeanor sentence will be withdrawn, its patron said on Monday.

"I've elected to withdraw HB 1677 from consideration by the General Assembly this year. The language is just too confusing," Del. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, told The Augusta Free Press.

Cosgrove's surprise move came after a firestorm of controversy spread across the World Wide Web over the weekend about the possible far-reaching effects of the measure.


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Seems he's backtracking and saying that everyone misunderstood him--he was only talking about stillbirths/livebirths and abandonment. If that was the case, then why use the phrase "fetal death"?

[AllyCat]

1. Maybe all the women in his family

threatened him at the dinner table. Freak

[Warpy]

2. Or maybe he was told about all the suggestions

that women send their used tampons and pads to him to personally inspect for "products of conception" and chickened out.

Or maybe some very compassionate person took him aside and explained in words of one syllable when and how most miscarriages happen, and what the consequences are for a woman who wanted a baby.

Or maybe he just realized how totally fucking stupid he looked.

Nah, he's a Repuglican.

[AllyCat]

3. Is it still cool to send our used sanitary products to him?

I'd really feel a sense of satisfaction in that.

[RadicalMom]

16. Oh, I wanna, I wanna!

[Erika]

5. Doesn't he

realize that miscarriages are common due to mother nature?

I'm surprised he hasn't introduced a bill to make chastity belts on females mandatory. The "government" can then track every move the woman makes, the food she eats, etc. A criminal in the making.

Now, do men play any role in the responsibility of the health of a fetus?

[proudbluestater]

17. Maybe his wife threatened him in the bedroom

}(

[The Doctor.]

30. I can imagine he and his wife don't spend a great deal of

time there.

[madfloridian]

4. Maura of the Democracy for VA group was right on top of this.

She got it around to the blogs, started at DFA, Kos, and others, and this guy got the message.

That is true grassroots power.

[Justitia]

19. yea! for common sense and the grassroots -eom

[Bouncy Ball]

22. Exactly!

Makes me wonder how many other kooky ass proposals lawmakers try to push through when they think no one's looking.

This should put them on notice--WE ARE LOOKING.

[tblue37]

26. Well,

Virginia being Virginia, there was the proposed bill that would make it merely a minor offense to sexually abuse a child, as long as the perpetrator was related to the child or in a supervisory position (i.e, coach, teacher, priest, babysitter, sunday school teacher). Apparently Virginia Republicans think that the current penalties for molesting children are just too harsh.

This was posted on the smirkingchimp.com message board:

Op-ed by Grier Weeks:
Virginia Crime Commission chair and criminal defense lawyer David Albo’s (R-Springfield) now famous sodomy bill rode into Richmond this month disguised as legislation to clean up Virginia’s laws in the wake of the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas case.

But amidst all the talk about morality and homosexuality, few people seemed to notice that the legislation was a mighty Trojan horse carrying a cargo of very bad news for Virginia's children.

At first glance, the Albo bill is about gay sex. Albo dances around the Supreme Court’s ruling, proposing to leave an unconstitutional sodomy law on the books while showing he’s serious about morals by creating special punishments for certain sex acts between adults in public.

But Virginians need to look again. Albo’s provision to get tough on public sex between adults is just a footnote to a much larger bill.

In fact, the heart of House Bill 1054 is actually a bold and deliberate attempt to decriminalize sex between adults and children.

The Albo bill would drastically reduce penalties for numerous sex crimes against children in Virginia.

It would make raping and sodomizing children a less serious offense in the commonwealth than stealing chickens— the legal equivalent of tampering with cable television service.

While Albo wants to increase the penalty for consenting adults committing sodomy in public, he wants to lower it to the same level—a Class 6 felony— for sodomizing a child in private.

Sodomy against a child aged 0-to-18 (also known as “crimes against nature”) would drop down three felony classes. Whereas before, a criminal could get 5-to-20 years for these acts, under Albo's bill, they could get away with just a fine.

The bill would also add sexual intercourse with a child aged 0-18 to the definition of “indecent liberties with a child,” which will get you a fine in Virginia.

Currently, this same act can get you five years to life in prison if your victim is under 13, and up to ten years if she is a teenager.

In another section of the Albo bill, it's open season on juveniles in state custody. State employees who use their position of power to have sex with minors who are incarcerated and under their care would be guilty of a misdemeanor.

If all this is not heartbreaking enough, Albo's legislation has a bizarre twist.

Criminal penalties for these serious sex crimes would not be lowered across the board: they would only be lowered if the victim is a family member, or a child under the custody or supervision of her assailant.

In other words, Albo's bill would reward perpetrators who betray a child's and a family's trust. He does this by taking advantage of an awful loophole in Virginia law.

Because Virginia already has two indecent liberties laws—one less severe if the victim is the perpetrator's own child or in his care— Albo was able to slip sexual intercourse and sodomy into the crime of custodial indecent liberties.

This would literally make proposing sodomy to the neighbor's child a more serious crime than actually sodomizing a son, daughter, student, team member or other child in a “custodial or supervisory relationship.”

When the National Association to PROTECT Children caught Albo in this bold attempt to decriminalize child abuse, he defended it unapologetically.

Since that time, we've watched Albo and the Crime Commission try out a long list of denials, explanations and excuses.

At this point, it will clearly take the protests of Virginia voters to kill this legislation and send the message to lawmakers everywhere that selling out children has real political consequences.

The only conceivable beneficiaries of HB 1054 will be criminals and the criminal defense bar.

The losers will be Virginia's littlest crime victims.

_____

Here is a link to a page that says the idiot who proposed this bill did back down (at least for now--with these jackasses, you never know):

http://www.protect.org/virginia/vaNews.html

Under mounting pressure from PROTECT and a growing coalition of Virginia citizens, Crime Commission Chairman Dave Albo appears to have completely backed down from his attempt to downgrade sex crimes against children. Albo introduced a proposed substitute for his sex crimes bill (HB 1054) in subcommittee on Sunday, February 8th. Gone from the bill are provisions that would have made raping and sodomizing children a minor felony! This is a huge victory for Virginia's children and families.

[ImADeanDem]

27. OMG, is this true?

Do you have a link or any more info about this proposed bill? This sounds like something else we need to organize a mass response to!

[tblue37]

28. Yeah--

I just posted the info. It looks as though public outrage has already straightened his ass out. But the thing about Republicans is you have to watch them like hawks. They are constantly coming up with crap like this, and if someone doesn't make it widely known, it just slips by under the radar and gets voted into law. It feels as though we are trying to push back the tide with our hands. They are simply relentless about introducing these outrageous bills.

[Hekate]

33. So let me get this straight: he's taking care of the inbred

Is he trying to legitimize every dirty joke and low rumor about inbred hillbillys? "I am my own Grandpaw" and all that?

Humor aside, this is sickening. The people of Virginia are lucky to have at least a few alert citizens among them keeping an eye on the idjits in their legislature.

Hekate

[WildClarySage]

38. Are there really that many people in Virginia commiting sodomy in public?

[SemperEadem]

31. funny you should ask that

Delegate Robert Marshall in Richmond has introduced HB1807, which is aimed at charging a person with a Class 6 felony for providing contraceptives to minors under "certain circumstances".

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?051+sum+HB1807

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Republican women have miscarriages, too

and I bet some of them let him know that they were NOT amused.

[SemperEadem]

15. exactly

I was reading the responses at DFA and quite a few of them were from antichoice women who were horrified that not reporting their mishap within 12 hours could put them on the same level as a statutory rapist, arsonist or stalker.

when those women went off, he probably thought twice about continuing.

[yardwork]

36. Like a typical Republican, he doesn't know much about science

He probably went to a school that thought teaching science was akin to teaching atheism. He didn't know that most fetal deaths are not deliberate. In other words, he's a typical moran.

Probably thinks that Sadamma bin Ladensein caused 9/11.

[Wapsie B]

7. Looks like a trial balloon to me.

They just wanna see how far they can push their agenda before people start to wake up and take notice.

[laheina]

13. Or they are trying to implement

something that can be used as a loophole later, i.e. "fetal death" being regulated in one way can later be used as a basis for further reaching criminalization-re abortion.

[Hekate]

34. "Fetal death" in a crime bill is always another increment...

... on the road to recriminalizing abortion. It's beyond sad, but true. It's not enough for the anti-choice people that legal abortion is no longer available in the majority of US counties, and that most doctors who know how to perform surgical abortions are on the verge of retirement, or that many medical programs no longer will teach it and med students are intimidated into not asking for this knowledge.

Abortion for any reason has to be recriminalized, because, you know, women just can't be trusted with decisions like this. And that being the case, the authorities probably need to know about their miscarriages (AKA "spontaneous abortions") just in case they're doing it on purpose. (barf)

Hekate

[imax2268]

8. I had a feeling...

that this morons bill would never be taken seriously...

this just goes to show that these retards are truely retards...

[FM Arouet666]

9. Next it will be a law declaring masturbation.

Every self indulgence kills millions of potential little Christian Republicans. 24 hours to declare every non-productive ejaculation, sound like a good law to me.:evilgrin:

[Elwood P Dowd]

10. It's called pre-productive ejaculation

unless you're a drug addict like Rush Liebaugh, then it's called non-productive ejaculation.

[FM Arouet666]

11. Thanks, but

The thought of Rush Fatball ejaculating has caused to run screaming into the night. :evilgrin:

[ChairOne]

25. LOL - the telephone lobby would LOVE that! /eom

[Hekate]

35. Well...the "sin of Onan" in the Old Testament

...is that Onan "spilled his seed upon the ground" and the Lord God punished him for it.

Part of the agenda for ultra-right-wing Christians is to "return" the US to a "Biblically based" set of laws, which means however they misread the Old Testament, including the death penalty for witches and gays.

And those guys aren't kidding.

Hekate

[fortyfeetunder]

12. Wow, did he take a common sense pill?

Or did he get a new one ripped into him?

But I wouldn't rest easy... this guy may stick his head into that new ripped out hole and come up with something else.

[SemperEadem]

14. actually he was stunned by the fast response over the weekend

he didn't take into account that the internet is a powerful tool of communication--and the Democracy for Virginia site had about 40,000 hits in a 24 hour period, investigating this issue.

He brought such a hue and cry down on his head that he'll be lucky if he can tell the difference between shit and shinola for the next 6 months.

[Cheswick2.0]

20. Thank Gore for the Internets!

I wonder how many people visited the web site of his very conservative Baptist church. I wonder if that freaked them out a bit too.

[noamnety]

18. So when's he up for reelection?

Not that this should be used against him, mind you.

[Bouncy Ball]

21. And why use the phrase "miscarriage?"

As someone who has experienced more miscarriages than I care to think about (secondary infertility), I shuddered at this story. It was unthinkable to me, the thought of having to REPORT that I was no longer pregnant to the POLICE???? Whatever happened to freaking PRIVACY?

With some pregnancies, we never told ANYONE. We knew we were experiencing problems and we saw no point in telling anyone until I was past 12 weeks, when you are generally out of the woods, miscarriage-wise. Well, except for my daughter, I never GOT past 12 weeks, so most people never knew.

That proposal was downright chilling. :scared:

And I can tell you right now, had that crazy thing been law here when we were going through that, you can BET I would not have been sharing our personal medical and fertility heartbreaks with the POLICE and lawmakers.

Damn, what nerve that guy's got.

[MsConduct]

23. I'm pretty sure he thought no one was paying attention. Fooled him! n/t

[gollygee]

24. If he used the term "miscarriage" he meant before 20 weeks

after 20 weeks it's called "stillbirth."

He knew exactly what he was doing.

[Cheswick2.0]

29. This guy introduced the anti-gay marriage ban for the VA constitution

The codified bigotry right into the constitution of VA and this is the fool who did it. He belongs to a very conservative Baptist Church. This is all part of their aggenda to make their prejudice law.
He'll bring this bill back in some other form later.

[SemperEadem]

32. actually, the term he used was "fetal death"

which, if we're going to parse words, is the textbook definition of a miscarriage. Maura Keaney, from Democracy for Virginia is the one who put it into context by using, correctly, the term, miscarriage.

According to VA statues: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+32.1-249

2. "Fetal death" means death prior to the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother of a product of human conception, regardless of the duration of pregnancy; death is indicated by the fact that after such expulsion or extraction the fetus does not breathe or show any other evidence of life such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles.

What Cosgrove introduced as HR1677: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?051+sum+HB1677

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.

As you can see, this is why a hue and cry was brought down around Cosgrove. He knew, or should have know, this definition and it has nothing to do with the live birth of a newborn, born without the aid of medical personnel, who either dies upon birth or shortly thereafter or was stillborn, and then abandoned.

Astonishingly, he actually believes that he's being mistreated and misunderstood by those who blew up the blogosphere over the weekend over this bill. Christina Nuckols of the Virginian-Pilot writes: http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=80370&ran=43780

"Del. Cosgrove pulls bill after Internet fuels fiery protest".

Del. John A. Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, was shaken by the speed and volume of the response as word of his bill traveled across the country via the Internet.

“I’ve never been blogged before,” he said. “The tone of the e-mails has been disgusting. It’s, 'You’re a horrible person. You ought to be crucified.’ And those were the nice ones.” ...

Cosgrove said he spent the weekend responding to all 500-plus e-mails he received from people as far away as California and Texas. The original Web site that raised the alarm also posted his response to criticisms.

“They’ve been fairly responsive, but they never talked to me prior to going on the Web,” he said. “I was absolutely mistreated on this.”


He actually believes, on some level, that he should be spared the fall out to this bill. I don't, for one minute, buy his feigned nonplussed act. If he meant for the bill to be about the abandonment of live newborns who subsequently die, then he should have written that... it's not like he has no understanding or command of the English language. He worded that bill exactly the way he worded it because he's trying to inch Virginia closer to outlawing Roe v. Wade. He never expected that even the conservative christian women who've suffered miscarriages would hurl heat seekers at him and the bill.

Now he knows.

[montanaliberaldem]

37. Montana has a like-minded state legislator.

His name is Roger Koopman, R-Bozeman, and he proposed a bill that would require death certificates to be issued for all abortions performed in Montana. What happened to a woman's right to privacy? Death certificates become public record and a woman who chose an abortion becomes a target. To the Right to Life faithful who believe it is okay to target clinics that perform abortions and approve of murdering doctors, would a woman who chose an abortion be any less guilty and any less deserving of attack? Chilling.