Time for Scotland to follow the rest of the UK and punish violent partners who cause pregnancy loss

[Pelican Press 0]

Time for Scotland to follow the rest of the *** and punish violent partners who cause pregnancy loss

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

On May 2, the Scottish Parliament will debate whether it should be a ****** in Scotland to cause the loss of a partner’s or former partner’s pregnancy through ********* or ******.

In not having such a ****** already, Scotland is an outlier in the ***. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, someone who attacks a pregnant woman and causes the loss of her viable fetus can be charged with the ****** of “child destruction” as well as being charged for ********. This has been the case in England and Wales since 1929, and in Northern Ireland since 1945.

The case for a new ****** in Scotland is clear, and the most appropriate way to create it would be to amend the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. The Ministry of Justice categorizes “child destruction” as a “

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

” in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

It is well known that domestic ****** can

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

during pregnancy or

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

when a woman becomes pregnant, even where the relationship has not previously been abusive.

During the past few decades there has been a rise in the number of prosecutions for child destruction, and victims of the ****** have

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

about how important it is to them that the loss of their pregnancy is acknowledged in a separate charge, as opposed to merely reflected in sentencing.

This stands to reason: the loss of a wanted pregnancy is a unique and traumatic kind of harm to a woman, distinct from the injury suffered during an *******. However, while the law in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is able to acknowledge this kind of serious harm, the law of Scotland currently cannot.

Harrowing cases

Domestic ****** during pregnancy is

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, of course, and there have been harrowing Scottish

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

which, had they occurred elsewhere in the ***, would undoubtedly have resulted in charges of child destruction.

Scotland does have one existing ******—the common law ****** of “procuring *********”—which perpetrators in Scotland could be charged with. The ****** of ********* has never been used in this way, however, and with good reason. The harm of losing a wanted pregnancy through ********* or ****** is wholly different from a situation in which a woman has decided that she no longer wishes to be pregnant.

Legally, these scenarios must be kept separate. The creation of a new ****** would ensure that they are.

In the rest of the ***, the ****** of child destruction is deeply entangled with ********* law, and this has been problematic. Because anyone can be guilty of the ****** of child destruction, it can be used to prosecute women who end their own pregnancies after the point of viability—now judged to be 24 weeks.

In practice, women are almost never charged with child destruction, and there has been only

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. The possibility exists, however, and

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

involved a woman being investigated for three years and taken to court before the case was dropped due to “evidential difficulties.”

Scotland can avoid any risk of prosecution for pregnant women by creating a new ****** that sits firmly within the framework of domestic ****** legislation, and that can only be committed by partners or former partners. Framed in this way, the sole purpose of the ****** would be to recognize and punish a unique kind of harm to women, and neither pregnant women nor their doctors could be charged with it.

The proposed Scottish ****** could also improve on its *** counterparts in another way. Elsewhere in the ***, perpetrators can only be convicted of child destruction if it can be shown that they intended to cause stillbirth.

This can make it

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

to hold attackers to account for the loss of the pregnancy. They can only be convicted if they admit that they intended to end the pregnancy or if there is evidence to indicate such intention; for example, if they attempted to coerce the woman into having an *********, targeted the woman’s stomach in the ******* or made statements of intent during the *******. If none of this can be shown, no conviction for child destruction would result.

Campaigners in England have

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

that the difficulty of proving intention shields perpetrators. Learning from this, Scotland could allow the ****** to be committed through recklessness, making it easier to convict those responsible by removing the need to prove intention.

On May 2, Holyrood can take an important step in the right direction. Instead of remaining the only part of the *** that lacks a specific ****** punishing this kind of behavior, Scotland can take the lead and develop a truly workable and woman-centered approach to this particularly intimate and distressing kind of harm.

Provided by
The Conversation

This article is republished from

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

under a Creative Commons license. Read the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Citation:
Opinion: Time for Scotland to follow the rest of the *** and punish violent partners who cause pregnancy loss (2024, May 1)
retrieved 1 May 2024
from

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Science, Physics News, Science news, Technology News, Physics, Materials, Nanotech, Technology, Science
#Time #Scotland #follow #rest #punish #violent #partners #pregnancy #loss

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

For verified travel tips and real support, visit: https://hopzone.eu/