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Comment by nlitened | Hacker News Reader

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Then you haven't tried looking. Women are being arrested and even convicted for having miscarriages, including in the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59214544

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/georgia-arrest-miscarri...

https://churchandstate.org.uk/2015/01/conservative-dream-com...

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/06/health/miscarriage-criminal-c...

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/04/02/law-pregnancy-...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-increasing-risk-of-cri...

You should clarify that these are women who deliberately induce a miscarriage (ie. a home abortion) or whose extraordinarily reckless and dangerous behaviours result in a miscarriage that may or may not have been deliberately induced, but either way are unconscionable and directly responsible for the child's death. You don't do your cause any favours when you present these cases as "miscarriages", knowing full well that many people perceive this as the unfortunate loss of a child by a conscientious and responsible expectant mother.

Their reply was to "I couldn’t find instances of women being imprisoned for getting an abortion."

Replace "You" with "I"?

Every single of the six links you provided are about miscarriages and not abortions. Either I don’t understand something medical (not a doctor), or you’re mixing things to derail a conversation (dishonestly or unintentionally). Whether those miscarriages were natural or a result of human malice, is an absolutely separate discussion.

How does all that prove an original point that an abortion can get a woman to prison?

This comment in this thread explains it fairly clearly. Do not make the mistake of thinking this is just a semantic difference.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44247822

I agree that overreach of prosecution is possible (as with many other laws), but I disagree that a fix for bad laws or bad legal process is “make it easier for people to break laws and not get caught, and to cooperate discreetly on breaking laws”

if an unintentional miscarriage can get you punished, then an abortion most certainly can too, since an abortion is an intentional miscarriage.

"If Poolaw had had an abortion instead of a miscarriage, she would not have been charged at all, as abortion is legal in Oklahoma."

That was definitely not what I expected.

that is completely bizarre!

Lizelle Gonzalez was arrested and jailed for this in Texas.

It turned out that she was put in jail mistakenly for a couple of days — and is getting up to $1M compensation for the judicial mistake. How is that “women get imprisoned for abortion”? Something that looks good in a clickbait title, but actually shows proper functioning of legal system instead.

Because she was literally put in jail after being charged with murder for having an abortion. Full stop.

The fact that the prosecutors got the facts wrong and still threw her in jail is actually evidence that the legal system is not functioning properly. In a properly functioning legal system, she wouldn't have been arrested in the first place, but that's a different conversation.

try searching again. here is one example: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/abortion-laws-punishin...

it was overturned, but at least one judge believed that imprisonment was warranted and issued his verdict accordingly. and many politicians believe that too and push for laws to that effect.

Purvi Patel gave birth to a 5.5—6 months baby, sealed it in a plastic bag, and threw it in a trash container! I guess we could agree to disagree whether at least some jail time was warranted in this case.

i didn't see any of those details in the article, and even one of the linked ones says that it was under dispute whether the baby was born alive or could have survived. if in doubt...

the real problem is our treatment of these issues as a society globally.

judging people for having children out of wedlock. not educating them in ways that would give them the strength to avoid that. judging their parents. parents judging their children, instead of forgiving them and supporting them. society not supporting single parents. and don't use religion as an excuse. any religion that supports judging someone for this is wrong or misunderstood.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com