A new Utah law could charge women with homicide if they miscarry, making women's rights advocates concerned that women will be brought up on murder charges for drinking, failing to wear a seatbelt, or falling down the stairs. 
 
 The bill passed Utah's state legislature last Thursday and still needs final approval by the governor, but it continues to gain attention this week for its unusually restrictive language. It doesn't address legal abortion, but allows punishment up to life in prison for an "intentional, knowing, or reckless act" that leads to a miscarriage or abortion without a doctor's supervision. Especially concerning to some Utah Democrats and many women's rights activists is the word "reckless" — writing for RH Reality Check, Rachel Larris says, 
 
 Using the legal standard of "reckless behavior" all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn't intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution. 
 
 Women might also make themselves open to prosecution if they failed to wear a seatbelt and got in a car accident, if they stayed with an abusive partner, or even if they fell down the stairs, like a woman in Iowa who found herself jailed on suspicion of "attempted feticide." This woman eventually got off only because she wasn't yet in her third trimester — but unlike Iowa's feticide law, Utah's new bill would apply throughout pregnancy. Given that 15-20% of recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage, 80% of those in the first trimester, Utah could have a lot of work ahead. Dan Savage writes, 
 
 If every miscarriage is a potential homicide, how does Utah avoid launching a criminal investigation every time a woman has a miscarriage? [...] And how is Utah supposed to know when a pregnant woman has had a miscarriage? You're going to have to create some sort of pregnancy registry to keep track of all those fetuses, Utah. Perhaps you could start issuing "conception certificates" to women who get pregnant? And then, if there isn't a baby within nine months of the issuance of a conception certificate, the woman could be hauled in for questioning and she could be indicted for criminal homicide if it's determined that she intentionally or accidentally induced a miscarriage. 
 
 Of course, Utah probably isn't going to create such a registry, but its new legislation is striking for the way it targets women themselves, as opposed to abortion providers. Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, says, "For all these years the anti-choice movement has said ‘we want to outlaw abortion, not put women in jail, but what this law says is ‘no, we really want to put women in jail.'" And Jill of Feministe asks why, if anti-choice advocates are so concerned about miscarried fetuses, they aren't "trying to find a cure for the close to 50 percent of fertilized eggs that naturally don't implant, and are flushed out of the woman's body." Her answer: "the concern here isn't really about fetuses or life or any of that. It's about punishing women." 
 
 Utah Bill Would Criminalize Miscarriage [Feministe] 
 
 Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage [RH Reality Check] 
 
 Measure On Illegal Abortions Heads To Governor [Salt Lake Tribune] 
 
 When Miscarriages Are a Crime... [Slog] ||||| A bill passed by the Utah House and Senate this week and waiting for the governor's signature, will make it a crime for a woman to have a miscarriage, and make induced abortion a crime in some instances. 
 
 According Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, what makes Utah's proposed law unique is that it is specifically designed to be punitive toward pregnant women, not those who might assist or cause an illegal abortion or unintended miscarriage. 
 
 The bill passed by legislators amends Utah's criminal statute to allow the state to charge a woman with criminal homicide for inducing a miscarriage or obtaining an illegal abortion. The basis for the law was a recent case in which a 17-year-old girl, who was seven months pregnant, paid a man $150 to beat her in an attempt to cause a miscarriage. Although the girl gave birth to a baby later given up for adoption, she was initially charged with attempted murder. However the charges were dropped because, at the time, under Utah state law a woman could not be prosecuted for attempting to arrange an abortion, lawful or unlawful. 
 
 The bill passed by the Utah legislature would change that. While the bill does not affect legally obtained abortions, it criminalizes any actions taken by women to induce a miscarriage or abortion outside of a doctor's care, with penalties including up to life in prison. 
 
 "What is really radical and different about this statute is that all of the other states' feticide laws are directed to third party attackers," Paltrow explained. "[Other states' feticide laws] were passed in response to a pregnant woman who has been beaten up by a husband or boyfriend. Utah's law is directed to the woman herself and that's what makes it different and dangerous." 
 
 In addition to criminalizing an intentional attempt to induce a miscarriage or abortion, the bill also creates a standard that could make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by "reckless" behavior. 
 
 Using the legal standard of "reckless behavior" all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn't intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution. 
 
 "This creates a law that makes any pregnant woman who has a miscarriage potentially criminally liable for murder," says Missy Bird, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Utah. Bird says there are no exemptions in the bill for victims of domestic violence or for those who are substance abusers. The standard is so broad, Bird says, "there nothing in the bill to exempt a woman for not wearing her seatbelt who got into a car accident." 
 
 Such a standard could even make falling down stairs a prosecutable event, such as the recent case in Iowa where a pregnant woman who fell down the stairs at her home was arrested under the suspicion she was trying to terminate her pregnancy. 
 
 "This statute and the standards chosen leave a large number of pregnant women vulnerable to arrest even though they have no intention of ending a pregnancy," Paltrow said. "Whether or not the legislature intended this bill to become a tool for policing and punishing all pregnant women, if enacted this law would permit prosecution of a pregnant woman who stayed with her abusive husband because she was unable to leave. Not leaving would, under the 'reckless' standard, constitute conduct that consciously disregarded a substantial risk," Paltrow explained. 
 
 While many states have fetal homicide laws most apply only in the third trimester. Utah's bill would apply throughout the entirety of a woman's pregnancy. Even first trimester miscarriages could become the basis for a murder trial. 
 
 Bird said she is also concerned that the law will drive pregnant women with substance abuse problems "underground;" afraid to seek treatment lest they have a miscarriage and be charged for murder. She said it directly reverses the attempts made, though a bill passed in 2008, to encourage pregnant women to seek treatment for addiction. 
 
 Paltrow added that the commonly thought belief that pregnant women who use drugs are engaging in behavior that is likely to cause a stillbirth or a miscarriage is wrong. 
 
 "Science now makes clear that drug use by pregnant women does not create unique risks for pregnant women, although it is likely that among those targeted for prosecutions by this statute will be women who go to term under drug usage," she said. 
 
 The bill does exempt from prosecution fetal deaths due to failure to follow medical advice, accept treatment or refuse a cesarean section. Bird said this exemption was likely because of a 2004 case where a woman who was pregnant with twins was later charged with criminal homicide after one of the babies was stillborn, which the state deemed due to her refusal to have a cesarean section. 
 
 Planned Parenthood and the ACLU of Utah worked together to "amend the hell out of the bill," Bird said. One of their few accomplishments was at least dropping the legal standard of "negligence" from the bill, a much lower standard than "recklessness." 
 
 Bird was shaken with emotion after the Senate vote. "I broke down and cried," she admitted. "I normally never let these kind of [legislative] battles get to me." 
 
 "What really sucks is that we had three supposed allies in the Senate, three [Democratic] women, who voted for the bill," Bird said, adding she didn't yet know why the three senators switched votes. 
 
 Marina Lowe is legislative and policy counsel for the ACLU of Utah. She worked in tandem with Bird on trying to derail or at least mitigate the worst aspects of the bill. Lowe says at this point she doesn't know if there is a potential constitutional challenge to the law once it is signed by the governor. 
 
 But she points to cases like the one in Iowa as exactly the kind of situation that might arise once this law is put into place. 
 
 Paltrow says this bill puts a lie to the idea that the pro-life movement cares about women. 
 
 "For all these years the anti-choice movement has said ‘we want to outlaw abortion, not put women in jail, but what this law says is ‘no, we really want to put women in jail.'" ||||| (Updated on 10/27: San Salvador’s Third Criminal Chamber has absolved María Teresa Rivera. She is free.) 
 
 On an early November morning in 2011, María Teresa Rivera awoke with a twinge in her stomach and hastened through the pre-dawn light to the outhouse behind her home. She hadn’t been feeling well, but didn’t realize she was pregnant. 
 
 Doubled over in pain, she suffered a miscarriage in her outhouse. She tried to stumble back to her bed, but collapsed on the way. Her mother-in-law found her slumped on the ground, dazed and bleeding, and rushed her to the nearest public hospital. 
 
 That’s when María Teresa’s morning really got bad. 
 
 She had a miscarriage and was sentenced to 40 years in prison for murder. Then an appeals judge absolved her. Now the Attorney General wants to send her back to prison for the same crime. 
 
 The doctor took one look at her, then turned her over to police, who handcuffed her and told her she was under arrest for “aggravated homicide.” Maria Teresa said she was taken from her hospital bed to the police station, then straight to jail. “I never got to talk to a lawyer,” she told me. 
 
 The whirlwind mockery of due process ended with a judge’s gavel that sentenced Maria Teresa to 40 years in prison. She was only 28 years old at the time, and raising a 7-year-old son by herself. 
 
 This is what justice looks like in El Salvador, the country with the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the world. Maria Teresa’s head-spinning story may sound unbelievable, but it’s a frighteningly common tale in a country that criminalizes all forms of abortion and mistakes miscarriage for murder. There are currently 25 women—all poor, all young— behind bars in El Salvador for suffering spontaneous abortions. 
 
 “There is no justice. There is only injustice, especially for poor women, the most vulnerable people in the country. It’s poverty. When you have money, there is no problem. But when you don’t have money, everything is stacked against you.” - Maria Teresa Rivera 
 
 But even in her darkest hour, María Teresa, who grew up in an orphanage before getting a job hunched over a sewing machine in a Salvadoran sweatshop, remained hopeful that she would get out of jail and reunite with her son. 
 
 Then last May, after more than four years in prison, the unthinkable happened: An appellate judge agreed to rehear María Teresa’s case, realized she had been railroaded on flimsy murder charges, and ordered her immediate release from jail. 
 
 It was an unlikely second chance in a country that rarely gives first chances to impoverished single mothers. 
 
 “It was such a feeling of happiness that I couldn’t even believe it,” Maria Teresa told me when I asked her about the day of her release. “To hug my son again after four and a half years…It was the happiest feeling that I could have felt, something I will never forget.” 
 
 Amnesty International 
 
 Tragically, that happy moment could be short-lived. El Salvador’s Attorney General, in an act of mustache-twisting nastiness, is now challenging the judge’s decision to release María Teresa a month after she was granted freedom. The government’s top prosecutor claims the judge did not use “sana crítica” (reasonable review), and that new forensic evidence proving the neonatal death was cased by perinatal asphyxia does not constitute “new facts.” 
 
 If the Attorney General’s appeal is upheld, María Teresa could be rearrested next week and sent back to jail for the same crime she was already absolved of. 
 
 This is Kafka on steroids. Maria Teresa’s only “crime” was failing to have a successful pregnancy in a land where machismo has been codified into law. Now the country with the highest murder rate in the world is treating this single mother as if she were public enemy No. 1—a threat that needs to be removed from society and put behind bars for the rest of her life. 
 
 El Salvador isn’t the only country with punitive and backwards laws against abortion and reproductive rights. Worldwide, there are five countries—all, pathetically, in Latin America—that have total abortion bans, including two of El Salvador’s closest neighbors: Honduras and Nicaragua. 
 
 The U.S., for all its posturing, is also pretty stupid about reproductive rights. A total of 38 states have fetal homicide laws on the books, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, although Indiana is apparently the only state that’s actually sentenced a woman to jail time for feticide. 
 
 But when it comes to punishing pregnant women, no other country is as determinedly misogynistic as little El Salvador. Since criminalizing all forms of abortion in 1998, El Salvador has locked up dozens of women for having unsuccessful pregnancies—and they’re showing no signs of slowing down. 
 
 The sisterhood of ‘The 17’ 
 
 To raise awareness about the issue, human rights activists in El Salvador started a campaign in 2014 calling for the release of “The 17,” a group of incarcerated women serving sentences of 12-40 years for having miscarriages or spontaneous abortions. Since the campaign has started, three women have been released or pardoned, but another dozen have been incarcerated on similar charges. 
 
 Maria Teresa says the incarcerated women have formed a strong sisterhood in El Salvador’s dangerously overcrowded women’s prison, which is reportedly overpopulated by 900%. 
 
 “We spent a lot of time together, and we talked about our cases. We got along very well. We were all in there for the same reason, 25 women at least. At first we were 17, then we were more,” Maria Teresa told me. 
 
 She says there were some desperate moments when the women lost hope. “We didn’t see any solution. We thought the world had forgotten about us.” 
 
 But when El Salvador’s feminist movement started the “Las 17” movement two years ago, it came as “a great relief and a light of hope” for the women in jail, Maria Teresa said. “It gave us strength to keep fighting.” 
 
 Now that she’s out of jail, María Teresa says she’s determined to remain a free woman so she can raise her son to become a professional one day. 
 
 Related Teen sentenced to 30 years in jail for having a miscarriage could be pardoned in El Salvador 
 
 “This is difficult process right now, but things will work out. I trust in God and I know that nothing more will happen; I am not going back, and I trust in God that I won’t go back to jail,” she told me. 
 
 God might be her last best chance, because Maria Teresa says she has no faith in El Salvador’s justice system. 
 
 “There is no justice. There is only injustice, especially for poor women, the most vulnerable people in the country,” she said. “It’s poverty. When you have money, there is no problem. But when you don’t have money, everything is stacked against you, and that’s what happens to us women in El Salvador. The Salvadoran women has always been discriminated against. Always trampled on. That’s the huge problem here. Women have no rights. Women’s rights don’t count in this country.” 
 
 Maria Teresa said her fight is also for all the other women jailed in El Salvador under similar circumstances. 
 
 “It’s not just me, there are lots of women who are suffering an unjust jail sentence. So I have to fight for them too.”
– A Utah bill designed to outlaw do-it-yourself abortions has drawn national attention, with bloggers railing that the law could punish women for accidental miscarriages. The bill, which has already passed both chambers of Utah’s legislature, would allow women to be charged with homicide if they committed an “intentional, knowing or reckless act” that led to a miscarriage. It was created after a woman allegedly paid a man to beat her until she miscarried. But critics warned that the legal definition of “reckless” is so broad that women could be jailed for not wearing a seatbelt, or returning to an abusive spouse, notes Jezebel. It’s also the rare abortion law directly targeting women. “For all these years the anti-choice movement has said, ‘We want to outlaw abortion, not put women in jail,'” one pro-choice group tells RH Reality Check, “but what this law says is, ‘No, we really want to put women in jail.'”