Welcome to the Handmaiden's Tale

A woman had a miscarriage in Spokane, Washington and Spokane police treated it as a crime, and swore out a search warrant against her.

This sort of sh%$ needs to be slapped down hard by the Feds.  The local US Attorney should make their lives hell:

In March, a woman miscarried in a Spokane hotel. Police investigated. They searched her room, told her they’d meet her at the hospital and found it suspicious when she did not show up. They filed a search warrant in hopes of finding her.

Considering the fetus her dependent, officers suspected that the woman could be guilty of criminal mistreatment of a child if she did not call 911 soon enough to potentially save her pregnancy, according to a warrant filed at the time.

Police later closed the investigation without pursuing criminal charges, but to Paul Dillon, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, the move to investigate was “a huge violation of privacy and very stigmatizing.”

………

“Under Washington law, everything about this is discriminatory and potentially violating of constitutional rights,” Ainsworth said.

………

The case arises as reproductive freedoms have been restricted in Republican-led Legislatures from Texas to Idaho, and with the U.S. Supreme Court seemingly poised to curtail or even overturn the abortion rights enshrined in the landmark Roe v. Wade case. While abortion remains legal in all 50 states, Ainsworth said under Washington’s Equal Rights Amendment, investigating pregnancy losses could be discriminatory as such investigations are necessarily biased against women, Ainsworth said.

“Here this person is suffering, an ambulance is called to make sure they’re OK, then the police show up and the police are surprised they didn’t check themselves into a hospital,” Ainsworth said. “This person needed their autonomy and grief to be respected and instead there’s a search warrant.”

The goal here is to eventually make a miscarriage a matter for law enforcement, and it must be aggressively fought at every level, because any step back will be occupied by people who want to keep women in chains.