Weirdest Laws In New Hampshire's State History

June 2024 ยท 1 minute read

USA Today reports that in 2017, New Hampshire legislators drafted a new law that unintentionally gave pregnant women, and sometimes their doctors, the right to commit murder. Drafted as a kind of abortion law, legislators aimed to define a fetus as a human being once it reached 20 weeks of age.

According to HuffPost, the original Senate Bill 66 (via Legiscan) resembled reproductive legislation seen in 38 of our nation's other states, but with one key difference: It created a legal loophole for pregnant women to commit murder and evade all punitive repercussions. That is because the bill contained the following clause, legalizing "any act committed by the pregnant woman" and then went on the describe "cases of second-degree murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide, or causing or aiding suicide."

It's uncertain how all that murderous verbiage managed to pass the Republican-led legislature. Rep. J.R. Hoell claimed, "The bill as drafted allows for physician-assisted suicide and allows a pregnant woman to commit homicide without consequences." It has since been revised.

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