Charges Have Been Dropped Against A Woman In Alabama Who Was Indicted With Manslaughter For Her Own Miscarriage

Governor Kay Ivey signed into a law, a controversial abortion bill that could punish doctors who perform abortions with life in prison. Under the bill, doctors could face 10 years in prison for even attempting to terminate a pregnancy.

Doctors in the same state who go ahead and complete the termination of a pregnancy, could be facing a life sentence. The act is legislated as a "Class A Felony" – others in the same category include first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree rape. For context, second degree rape – having sex with a minor or with someone who is incapable of consent due to mental disability or incapacity is a much lesser sentence of no more than 20 years in prison. Sexual abuse and incest is punishable by up to ten years in prison.

This is often a point at which a woman will not yet realise she is pregnant – especially if she has an irregular cycle or has taken the contraceptive or morning after pill and attributes a missed period to that. The number of weeks a woman is pregnant is calculated from the first day of her last period – though, conception usually takes place around two weeks after that when an egg is released. So for the first two weeks of pregnancy we're not really pregnant at all. Week five is the time that a woman will likely realise her period is late and, consequently, that she is pregnant. This leaves one week, if she is lucky, to procure an abortion.

The law in Georgia goes one step further than some of the other states that have imposed a six-week time limit on abortions, and considers fetus to be a "natural person", requiring full legal recognition, from the point of conception. Although the intention of the law as it is written, may not to be to punish women who are pregnant, as a worst-case scenario, women could find themselves criminally liable for carrying out their own abortion. Many have pointed out that further difficulties may arise when ascertaining whether a person has miscarried or aborted a pregnancy – sometimes the same drugs used to perform a termination are used during miscarriage to help the process. Laws similar to this have, in the past, led to gravely unjust and horrifying consequences for women. For instance in El Salvador, a country that still bans abortion outright, where women have been wrongly jailed after suffering miscarriages. Three women accused of having abortions and convicted of aggravated homicide were freed just this year, in March, after having served up to 11 years in prison.

Again, this may not be the primary intention of the law, but legal journalist Mark Joseph Stern writes for Slate that, 'A woman who miscarries because of her own conduct – say using drugs while pregnant – would be liable for second degree murder, punishable by 10-30 years imprisonment.'

Again, this is because lawmakers have voted to give foetuses 'full legal recognition' under Georgia law – making the abortion illegal even if it takes place out of state.

This could even be true of someone who simply drives another person to a clinic to procure a termination.

There are also currently three abortion clinics in Alabama. In the 1990s there were more than 20.

Louisiana looks set to follow suit with a similar bill.