Yesterday, I was asking for bets on when Del. Mark Obenshain was going to trot out the same ridiculous excuse Del. John Cosgrove did when he tried to criminalize miscarriages with an almost identical bill.   In an email to me in January 2005, Del. Cosgrove claimed:

This bill, which was requested by the Chesapeake Police Department, is an attempt to reduce the number of “trashcan” babies that are born and then abandoned in trashcans, toilets, or elsewhere to die from exposure or worse. There are numerous examples of these tragic deaths in Virginia, many in Northern Virginia and also in Hampton Roads. Once the body of a child is found, if the death of that child is undetermined by a coroner, the person abandoning that child can only be charged with “the improper disposal of a human body.

And yep, that’s exactly Del. Obenshain’s story, as he left it in comments at Waldo Jaquith’s site:

I have heard from people across the Commonwealth about S.B. 962, and I appreciate the comments of those who have weighed in here and elsewhere. This legislation was drafted at the request of the Commonwealth Attorney for Rockingham County in response to a specific law enforcement issue.

[ . . . ]

Let me tell you what motivated the bill. In the autumn of 2007, a student at Bridgewater College admitted to giving birth and subsequently disposing of the child’s remains in a trash bin. The body was then transported to the landfill and never recovered, so it is impossible to know whether the child was stillborn or born alive. In the course of the investigation that followed, the Commonwealth Attorney’s office discovered that, under current law, there are no direct prohibitions on disposing of fetal remains. Had the student in question not disposed of the remains on private property not her own, no charges whatsoever would have been possible.

Del. Obenshain then claims that he never intended that the bill would have such a wide reach, and pledges to fix it (remember, this is almost the exact same bill that brought national ridicule on Del. Cosgrove).  Frankly, I don’t believe Obenshain at all.  This is akin to drafting a bill outlawing the driving of any car you didn’t buy yourself, and claiming that it is aimed at reducing car theft.  This was a political stunt, and a pretty appalling one, at that.