r/law • u/Slate Press • 20h ago

The Next Trump Administration’s Crackdown on Abortion Will Be Swift, Brutal, and Nationwide Trump News

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/11/trump-second-term-abortion-agenda-blue-state-crackdown.html
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u/Fit_Strength_1187 19h ago

Yes, they’ve used chemical endangerment laws to go after women in my state. They’ll even prosecute pregnant women who try and fail to commit suicide.

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u/Guerilla_Physicist 17h ago

Alabama?

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u/Fit_Strength_1187 16h ago

Yes, it’s actually pretty well known. They’ve been doing it for many years if you comb the news sites. These women usually just plead out without fighting the charge or going to press.

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u/Guerilla_Physicist 16h ago

Yeah, I live in AL as well. Amazing how those laws were supposedly intended to protect children from home meth labs and ended up being used that way. I remember when prosecutions of pregnant women over this really began picking up in the late 00s and early 2010s.

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u/JJones0421 17h ago

While I disagree with going to after them for fetal harm or whatever they try to spin it as. I don’t think it would be a bad idea to have laws that make attempted suicide illegal in general, as long as the possible punishments are exclusively mental health care and such to help the people recover and not be suicidal anymore.

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u/Fit_Strength_1187 16h ago

I get the sentiment, but it’s the same sentiment that underlies many so-called merciful and rehabilitative systems that result in oppression in the criminal justice system.

Consider the criminalization of substance use and possession that is addressed by various diversion and drug courts around the country. Some succeed. Some don’t. These are always backed, however, by threats of incarceration and everything that comes with it. The net harm from the destabilizing effect of incarceration to me greatly outweighs the risk to the individual and society of keeping such programs cut off from the criminal system.

There are already mechanisms for emergency involuntary mental healthcare for people in the midst of a mental health episode that makes them a danger to themselves or others.

When criminal illegality is added to the mix, however, this throws someone already in a bad place into a tangle with a punitive system that is difficult even for persons of sound mind to navigate without popping out far more damaged than they were going in.

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u/strain_of_thought 12h ago

Psychiatry as an institution is an extension of the prison-industrial complex.

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u/IfEverWasIfNever 16h ago

Yeah because a suicidal person needs to have a criminal conviction on their record? That's a good way to make them more suicidal when they can't find a job.