For the sake of “unborn children,” a proposed statute in Tennessee would force many pregnant women to undergo drug and alcohol testing. MamaPundit summarizes, “So if this law is enacted, it means that any woman who suffers a miscarriage, stillbirth, or other serious pregnancy complications, or who gives birth to a disabled child, will face state-mandated drug testing.”
Particularly given the fact that most fertilized eggs naturally abort, this opens the door wide for the government to control women’s bodies.
This is hardly the first such Nanny State proposal. Here in Colorado, Democrats are trying to politically encourage HIV testing for pregnant women, despite the fact that women and their doctors already know the risk factors and are free to test.
Republicans have also tried to force women to get ultrasound information and delay getting an abortion.
From the Democratic side, this is just about Nanny Statism — forcing women to do what politicians think is good for them. For many Republicans, politically controlling pregnancy is a wedge to eventually treat the fetus, all the way back to a fertilized egg, as a person under the law, with equal legal protections as born infants. (Democrats would do well to consider what will happen under their Nanny State provisions in the hands of the religious right.)
A born infant is a person with rights that must be protected by government. Until then, the government must respect the rights of the woman to control her own body.