You guys. Today I totally had a light-hearted post about leggings as pants planned, but then last night, I heard some news. From Utah. And now we’re going to get serious.

Or, well, I’m just going to tell you about this and probably get all stabby and teary-eyed and you’ll sit at your computer screens in awe of how pretty I can be while crying and then we’ll all go have coffee and talk about the douchebag Republicans that run the state of Utah. Deal?

On February 18, the Salt Lake City Tribune reported that the Utah Senate had joined the Utah House of Representatives in support of a law that would allow for criminal charges to be brought against an expectant mother who arranges for an illegal abortion.

Now, federally, abortion is legal, but I assume here that each state gets to define the term “abortion,” and decide for itself what the legal issues that surround said abortion are. In Utah, an abortion is legal:

Before 20 weeks, abortion is necessary to save mother’s life or health, if woman was raped or incest committed, or child has grave defects; after 20 weeks, necessary to preserve health, life of mother or if child would be born with grave defects

Any other kind of abortion is illegal. This law, passed now by the Utah Senate and House of Representatives, will extend criminal charges to women who have miscarriages.

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.

They’re doing this, supposedly, because a woman in October was being held and facing criminal charges because she paid a man $150 to beat her, in an effort to try to abort her baby. Clearly, that is not on the “legal abortion” list. At that time, she was released, because there was no law criminalizing her actions. Her pregnancy did not terminate.

But she had to take such extreme measures because of the restrictive nature of what constitutes a legal abortion in the state of Utah.

If the governor signs this new law, it is feared that women could and will be prosecuted for any negligent behavior that causes a miscarriage. A glass of wine, improper diet, failure to wear a seat belt in an auto accident, or slipping and falling down the stairs. And if you’ll notice, it says up there that a woman can be charged with UP TO LIFE IN PRISON for such a careless mistake.

Even more to the point, how is Utah possibly going to police this law? Jezebel.com writer Anna N. listed a quote from Dan Savage with a possible solution. A pregnancy registry. I won’t even go into the logistics of trying to force all women who become pregnant to go sign in to a registry, so that the government has an easier time prosecute them later for possible negligent behavior.

Rachel Larris, of Reality Check, writes:

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.

I’m just amazed that ANYONE, but particularly any woman, can find this new law palatable. Some people believe that birth control pills already overstep the bounds into MURDER because they prevent (if ovulation manages to happen) the egg from implanting into the uterine wall. But what has most people so concerned about this law is that it is aimed specifically at pregnant women. Most other laws about such matter to date, have been aimed at a third-party. This makes women the criminals.

This is an issue that is very close to my heart. As a woman who has had a miscarriage and who has had an abortion, I can tell you this: Neither is easy. I don’t want children anyway, but accidents happen. Life happens. I had an abortion because I chose me over a ball of cells in my uterus. My miscarriage was caused by several things. Not realizing I was pregnant and therefore continuing to take my birth control pills for a month or longer. Not eating, because I had just gone through the most painful heartbreak of my life. And contracting the flu, because things weren’t bad enough already. If the governor signs this law in Utah, it would be possible to prosecute me for those actions. I was negligent and reckless with an unborn fetus. And in Utah, a mass of cells in a woman’s uterus is more important than the woman carrying it.

Is that really okay with you?