[Hallucinaut]

Merits of this particular case aside, as it seems like it would be a generous good faith assumption, given your general statement, in your ideal world when do we start harbouring criminal suspicions on a process that happens to between one and two thirds of all women?

23 weeks is the size of a grapefruit. 12 weeks is the size of the lime; is that small enough for you that you wouldn't put a woman going through the trauma of a miscarriage (or abortion) through criminal investigation?

Do we need to automatically assume that when a woman wants to not just flush it down the toilet like waste that is reason for suspicion?

May you never have a partner who has a miscarriage and then has to decide whether to put themselves at the mercy of the criminal system whether they go through "proper channels".

[viridian]

I think your grapefruit comparison is inaccurate unless you are referring to just the head. The Mayo Clinic's guide to pregnancy lists a baby's head at 24 weeks, just the head alone, at 8.7 inches (circ), but total length heel to crown is also 12.2 inches, which is about 60% the average length of a full term baby.

23 weeks is also more or less the borderline for where we have standardized national practices for saving an extreme premature delivery. I've read studies that put viability in the NICU at week 23 anywhere from 10% on the extreme low end, to 50% on the extreme high. By week 24 that jumps to ~30-75%.