'We don't execute victims' - CORRECTED

By a narrow margin, legislators in South Carolina have decided NOT to ban abortion coverage under state insurance in cases of rape, incest, or threat to incubator's life.

The original draft of the $5.1 billion spending plan would have banned state insurance from covering any abortion procedure, but Democrats pushed for the change during an emotional floor debate. The measure narrowly passed by a 57-54 vote.

The emotional debate included an argument that all bay-beez are Gord's gift.

And this pretzelly-twister:

"We live in a civilized society," argued Rep. Greg Delleney, R-Chester. "We do not kill children for what their fathers do. We don't execute victims. That's all we're saying: The state insurance plan shouldn't pay to execute victims."

No, we just force them to carry their rapist's child to term. Or their father's.

Or both.

And maybe die in the attempt.

Wait. There seems to have been a compassionate voice in the house.

But it was Rep. Lester Branham, D-Florence and a retired minister, who seemed to sway lawmakers in his hushed tone during a trip to the podium.

"Some things are put on God's shoulders that are not God's. They're our sins, our crimes," Branham said. "That act of impregnating a girl against her will is not a gift of God. It's a crime."

(Read more about the squirrelly state of South Carolina as seen by deBeauxOs.)

CORRECTION: The source I quoted yesterday has issued a retraction. (emphasis mine)

Yesterday, TheState.com reported that South Carolina lawmakers in Columbia rejected a proposed ban on abortions in their health plan in every case except when a mother’s life is in danger. However, that information was incorrect and we apologize for repeating it.

According to numerous reports, South Carolina lawmakers accepted the ban for abortions to be covered in their health care plan. Lawmakers specifically pointed out that abortions should be covered in cases of rape and incest to give women who become pregnant in those situations the choice. However, the vote approved the plan without concessions for rape and incest victims by a 57-54 margin.

Sorry about that. Should have known better. There is NO compassion in South Carolina.

Another cruel hoop

Back we go to whacky South Carolina for this story of yet another niggling
hoop for abortion-seeking women to hop through.

A bill that would increase the mandatory wait time between a mandatory ultrasound and the desired procedure from one hour to twenty-four hours is advancing again. It had been stalled for a year.

Critics have said requiring two trips creates a burden, especially for poor, rural women who may have to take two days off work. Three clinics in South Carolina provide abortions.

Ah, but the fetus fetishists have come up with a solution and it's a doozy.

The Senate approved a tweaked version on Wednesday that expands where those qualifying ultrasounds can occur to crisis pregnancy centers statewide. . . . Supporters of the Senate change said women can more easily access the anti-abortion, religiously affiliated centers.

Because I'm betting there are waaaay more than three fake pregnancy centres in SC.

So, let's imagine a woman in rural South Carolina. She's had the 'oh shit' moment, thinks about it, and decides to terminate. She makes an appointment at one of the state's three clinics and is told she has to have an ultrasound 24 hours in advance. Before she can get into full rant mode about how stupid this is, the trained counsellor on the phone informs her that she can go to her handy Christo-Taliban-run fake clinic for it. If the counsellor is really well-trained, she or he will whip out a prepared list of fake clinics and direct her to the nearest one.

And now we direct you to an older post about the training of fake pregnancy clinic manipulators/counsellors.

Our task in greeting new clients was to determine, on a scale from 1-10, how "abortion vulnerable" the woman is. That is, is she considering abortion, or did she come here because she's already chosen life and wants help with the new baby?

Easy-peasy with this new law. An angry woman stomping in demanding: 'Is this the goddamn place where I can get a goddamn ultrasound before I get a goddamn abortion?' is probably a 10 on that scale.

Let's consider what happens next:

If a woman was deemed not abortion vulnerable at all, they were often given nothing more than an opportunity to volunteer at the CPC itself, on top of whatever real job they actually had. They were paid in diapers, wet wipes, formula, some second-hand clothing. Nothing substantial. Certainly no prenatal care or anything like that. The abortion vulnerable women, however, they were offered the lot. High chairs, cribs, brand new clothing, even financial assistance for prenatal and pediatric care in rare cases!

Remember, this woman must must endure whatever the fetus fetishists fling at her in order to get the ultrasound she needs. Gory fetus pr0n, glurgey sermons, unending gord-talk. And, of course, all the usual lies about abortion causing breast cancer, insanity, and a permanent rift with Gord.

Loads of fun!!!! For the fetus fetishists.

For the unwillingly pregnant woman? Not so much.

I continue to marvel at the creative cruelty of fetus fetishists.

BONUS TRACK: In checking to make sure the story hadn't changed from when I copied the link this morning, I found another report. I think the writer is a little confused.

The legislation, according to CBS, would have stretched the the wait time between an ultrasound and an abortion from one hour to one day. However, a compromise in the Senate will allow women to have an abortion at any crisis pregnancy center in the South Carolina the day after receiving an ultrasound.

Mandatory Obstetric Photography (MOP)

Birth Pangs announces today that it is embarking on a new campaign, Mandatory Obstetric Photography (MOP).

To help pre-pregnant women understand fully the long-term, serious consequences of pregnancy, we propose a law that requires pre-pregnant women to have Mandatory Obstetric Photography. The women would strip naked for a series of full-body, harshly lit photographs. Special attention would be paid to perky breasts, tidy hips, and taut skin. Then the women must look at the photos. Before becoming pregnant, all women would be required to sign an affidavit that they had seen the photos and understand that they will never look like that again.

To give credit where credit is due, we stole this idea from our fetus-fetishizing friends in South Carolina, who this week pressed forward a bill that would require all women seeking abortions to have ultrasounds and then swear they had seen said ultrasounds. From an AP story:

Gone fishin'

Nice work if you can get it ... and you can evade work responsibility if your name is Mark Sanford and you're the governor of South Carolina.

In Canada - and I presume that applies in other countries as well - if you hold a job that involves important responsibilities, you don't spontaneously go incommunicado & AWOL, while not even ensuring that a colleague has assumed your key legal tasks. But an elected official in the US? Not so much, it appears.

The whereabouts of Gov. Mark Sanford was unknown for nearly four days, and some state leaders question who was in charge of the executive office. ...

Neither the governor’s office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford after he left the mansion Thursday in a black SLED Suburban SUV, said Sen. Jake Knotts and three others familiar with the situation but declined to be identified. ...

First lady Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press earlier Monday her husband has been gone for several days and she did not know where. She said she was not concerned. ... Jenny Sanford said the governor said he needed time away from their children to write something.

The governor’s office issued a statement Monday afternoon: "Gov. Sanford is taking some time away from the office this week to recharge after the stimulus battle and the legislative session, and to work on a couple of projects that have fallen by the wayside. We are not going to discuss the specifics of his travel arrangements or his security arrangements."

Thank gawd Sanford is a pale-skinned, English-speaking Republican otherwise US religious fundamentalist rightwingnutters in the state of South Carolina would have worked themselves into a state of shrieeeking frenzy by now.

Update: At Truth, Justice and Tacos, the blogger makes a good point about Sanford taking off for a hike on Fathers' Day and leaving his wife and four sons wondering WTF? Fundie Christian Family Values ©™ anyone?

One final note: Sanford has been acting squirrely for some time now. ... All of this should be deeply troubling to the people of South Carolina. Clearly, something is up with Sanford. Whether it's some kind of weird mental breakdown, or something as pedestrian as an affair, I have no idea. But should Sanford ever come down off the trail, I imagine he's going to have to do a loooooot of PR spinning.

Un grand merci to Canadian Cynic for alerting us to "Building the New Majority Conferenece" (sic).

Guns'n No Roses

South Carolina is a mighty special US state. It holds a special place in the heart of many Canadians because of the beauty of the seashore and its beaches, but dang! it is one squirrely place when guns or sex are mixed in with its politics.

For many candidates the road to public office means fundraisers, shaking hands, kissing babies, and firing machine guns? Well, firing machine guns may not be that common on the campaign trail but a man running for South Carolina’s Adjutant General decided to use machine gun fire to get votes.

“You know most political candidates, republican side in particular, they want to get out to the country club and stand around with a glass of wine in their hand,“ said candidate Dean Allen. He held a “machine gun social” at Allen Arms Indoor Range in Greenville.

For 25 dollars, donor to his campaign got barbecue and a chance to fire a machine gun of their choice. “Well I wanted a place where we could have some fun,“ said Allen.

Allen chose the venue because it relects his emphasis on Second Amendment rights. The Adjutant General is responsible for overseeing South Carolina’s defense forces. Allen says that, if elected, he would try to increase funding for the National Guard. He also advocated bringing the National Guard home from Afghanistan to help control illegal immigration.

“The plan on paper says the national guard will reinforce law enforcement,“ said Allen. “Well if the National Guard is in Afghanistan it can’t do that.“ Allen is countin (sic) on his pro gun-ownership stance to help him win votes.

Did we mention that Allen shindig also included a raffle to win a Kalashnikov? The assault weapon was in the news recently because the Russian weapons manufacturing company is facing bankruptcy; the revenue-deprived army has stopped placing orders and cheap AK-47 knock-offs manufactured in China and Eastern Europe are flooding the arms market.

We wonder if the Kalashnikov that Allen raffled off is the real thing.

Republican "Family Values©™" - absent Dad, exit Mom.

South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is in the news again. In June he went A.W.O.L. and as a result, the expression "hiking the Appalachian Trail" entered the political dictionary of euphemisms for adultery. Then he tried the Bible high road, to shame his detractors.

All to no avail, it seems.

A day after estranged S.C. First Lady Jenny Sanford announced that she was divorcing her philandering husband, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford, the traditional Sanford family Christmas cards began arriving in select South Carolina mailboxes …

This year’s cards are not like their predecessors, however – another reminder of the highly-publicized drama that has consumed South Carolina’s First Family ever since the governor confessed earlier this year to having an extramarital affair ...

For starters, this year’s “family picture” includes the couple’s four sons [...] but no governor. And no first lady.

Won't somebody please think of the children? Beyond their public relations value, that is.

Dead Fetus Monument

From a blogger named Greg Hambrick in South Carolina, more dead fetus fun.

Thirty-three state House members, including four local legislators, have put their support behind a proposed statehouse monument that would memorialize “South Carolina children whose lives ended before their birth.”

Reps. Wendell Gilliard (D-Charleston), Jim Merrill (R-Daniel Island), Tim Scott (R-North Charleston), and Mike Sottile (R-Isle of Palms) are co-sponsors of the bill. The monument would be paid for through private donations (the bill stresses that donors would not have to be revealed in public financial disclosures), and the state would be expected to pay for the maintenance of the monument.

You know, you'd think legislators would have better things to do.

I snaffled the photo from the site. Mr. Hambrick explains:

The picture at the top is a monument in a Penn. cemetery. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled against a monument to the unborn dead, again at a cemetery, over a law against using gravesites as an ad board for political reasons.

My goodness, sense from Kansas, of all places. Will sense prevail in South Carolina? Stay tuned.

Don't get all testerical, Mr Police Chief.

The police chief of a small South Carolina town will ask a jury to decide if a woman broke the state's obscenity laws by driving a pickup truck with plastic testicles hanging from the back.

Bonneau Police Chief Franco Fuda ticketed Virginia Tice, 65, in early July at a local convenience store after spying the adornment dangling from her truck.

South Carolina law considers a bumper sticker, decal or device indecent when it describes, in an offensive way as determined by contemporary community standards, "sexual acts, excretory functions, or parts of the human body."

Right. So one would think that Bonneau cops hand those $447. tickets to every truck driver passing through town whose vehicle sports a version of the mudflap below, thus generating thousands of dollars in revenue for that hardscrabble burg.
That would be an incorrect assumption to make, however.

"This is certainly not a staple of my ticket writing in Bonneau," the police chief told Reuters on Wednesday.

From here.

Religious Wingnutty Factor Gets Wingnuttier.

The saga of lost-and-found South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford just keeps getting wingnuttier.

He's now back at work and, needing a powerful metaphor to gloss over his little escapade, he reaches for the Old Testament. Appropriate, you'd think, for a Republican who based his campaign on the GOP's obligatory fundamentalist religious Family Values©™ - right?

First Mrs Sanford, with the obligatory stand-by-your-man sound bite:

South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford says she discovered her husband's affair in January when she found a letter to the governor from his mistress. Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press on Friday she told him to end the affair and was shocked this week when she found out he'd gone to Argentina to see his mistress. She says she believed Gov. Mark Sanford had gone somewhere to work on writing a book.

The scripted standard of a good, loyal political spouse response that's become a cliché.

Meanwhile, Sanford was back at work today, telling his state agency chiefs that he's sorry for keeping them in the dark when he went to see Argentina to see his mistress. The Republican on Friday held his typical public meeting with the agency chiefs, but started with apologies and likening his confession and future to the biblical plight of King David. Sanford says King David fell mightily but picked up the pieces and built from there.

The question remains though - will the Republicans require Sanford to fall on his sword? Or will it all get swept under the carpet, as it was for other GOP presidential candidates? I'm thinking that Sarah Palin will throw a spanner in their well-lubricated presidential electoral machine if the old boys try any of their old tricks.

How to Ban Abortion

Fetus fetishists have have pulled off a brilliant ploy in South Dakota.

While abortion providers and patients have kept on keeping on in the face of ever-tightening restrictions---demonstrating the power of the demand for this service---South Dakota may have just managed to ban abortion without actually banning abortion outright. . . .

How did South Dakota do it? The new law requires women seeking abortion to speak to the doctor, then wait 72 hours, then get counseled at an anti-choice propaganda station called a “crisis pregnancy center,” only after which would she be allowed to obtain an abortion. This law received quite a bit of attention for overt misogyny inherent in the implication that women are too stupid to be aware of what they’re asking for when they seek abortion, or that women are so ignorant and incurious that they can’t be expected to have considered anti-choice arguments unless forced. But it’s looking like this law may do more than that, and may actually make abortion impossible to get in South Dakota.

This works in two ways. Right away, it was clear that the 72-hour waiting period was an attempt to force the sole abortion provider in the state, a Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls, to drop the service. The doctor that performs abortions flies in to provide the service, and this requirement is obviously intended to push out any doctor who doesn’t work full time at the clinic by making the travel requirements onerous.

The “counseling” requirement seemed more condescending than truly burdensome at first, though it is true that many women seeking abortion really don’t have the flexible schedule to work in a few hours to be hectored by anti-choicers before obtaining their abortion, which pushes this requirement from being irritating and sexist to being truly an obstacle. But recent news indicates that something more devious is likely going on. As Robin Marty reported last week, not a single crisis pregnancy center has agreed to counsel patients seeking abortion so that those patients can fill their requirements to get their abortions. Not even the centers that lobbied to get the requirement pushed through. Without centers willing to say they saw the patients seeking abortion, patients could be caught in a red tape nightmare that makes getting abortions impossible.

I mean, really, you gotta admire the chutzpah. Lobby to force women to submit to a session of lies, manipulation, and guilt-tripping, then refuse to do it.

The Alpha Center, which lobbied for passage of the new law, also is undecided about whether it will register with the state.

Leslee Unruh, president and co-founder of the Sioux Falls nonprofit agency that counsels women against abortion, said the decision to register will be up to the board of directors, who meet this month.

"They haven't met yet, and those are big decisions," she said. "Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure."

Congratulations, South Dakota, you've outdone South Carolina, where fake clinics are also used to harass women seeking abortions.

Goin' ... goin' ... soon to be gone?

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford - many recent news items invariably use the qualifier "embattled". This is why. Thanks to Sanford, hiking the Appalachian Trail has become a political euphemism for the illicit shenanigans of yet another adulterous, hypocrite, Fundie Christian Family Values ©™ Republican.

Now his travel history is under scrutiny, as many former supporters from his own party try to push him out of the statehouse.

Sanford, the embattled Republican governor who last week rejected calls for his resignation from the state GOP and 61 of the 72 House members from his own party, faces an ethics investigation of his travel habits. A growing number of legislators are discussing the prospect of impeachment.

The governor's travel became the focus of attention after he returned from a mysterious absence in June to announce an affair with an Argentine woman he later called his soul mate. The married father of four sons said he began the adulterous relationship while on a state trip to South America in 2008. ...

Throughout his political career, Sanford has cast himself as a frugal conservative, known to demand that state employees use both sides of Post-It notes. His 2002 gubernatorial campaign included attacks against other state officials for what he called wasteful travel expenses.

Both sides? How does that work, since only one side has the sticky glue strip? How does Sanford feel about the single-use wastefulness of toilet paper?

Mark Sanford: re-defining tacky AND sticky.

Public Funding for Fetus Fetishists?

It seems the Ontario Government supports fetus fetishists with public money.

Pregnancy Support Services of the Upper Ottawa Valley is receiving $8,600 to purchase office and computer equipment.

This is to better equip the organization to serve pregnant teens in need of support services in the Upper Ottawa Valley.

Pregnancy Support Services does not appear to have a website (maybe they learned a lesson from First Place Pregnancy Centre in Ottawa), but I found this listing . (bold mine; I also corrected a couple of typos, you're welcome)

Mission Statement: We are a mental health organizationfounded on a Christian medical model who promotes informed choice, with follow up counseling being of uppermost importance, so women and men, can move forward after an unplanned pregnancy, or pregnancy loss, to live healthy positive lives in our community. We also have Post Abortion Recovery Education Groups available for women who are experiencing regret and feelings of loss. We train volunteers to walk with these women, shoulder to shoulder, on this healing journey. I received this training and the ability to train other facilitators in Greenville, South Carolina. Our service encompasses all of the county, and is free and confidential.

Such a center as this is a relatively new idea in this area, but PSS centers are operating through out Ontario, and other parts of Canada and the United States, for over 30 years.Check them out at www.capss.com and www.care-net.org you will see a picture of me for our center. WOW ! exciting huh!!!

We do not receive government funding and therefore we depend on the generosity of the community, to commit to donating time as volunteers. If this something that interests you contact us to enrole in out 21hour training. This training is open to the public as a personal interest course. this training is valuable and can be used in any crisis situation. Give us a call or visit the center, on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 12-4 PM, and Thursday evening till 6 pm.

Woo-eee. See all that zygote zealot code-speak?

Sound to me like one of those Crisis Pregnancy Centers, which in the US have been determined to offer 87% lies.

(Here are the links if you want to check out Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services and Care Net.)

Mental health organization? Since when is pregnancy a 'mental health' issue? According to fetus fetishists, it's only after one has an abortion that one goes totally bonkers.

Christian medical model? WTF is that?

Informed choice? Informed by lying bullshit like abortion causes breast cancer and inevitable mental problems?

Post Abortion Recovery Education Groups? OK, that completely outs this outfit.

It is a Crisis Pregnancy Centre.

Funded by The Trillium Foundation, the arm of the government that doles out some of the profits from the government-run numbers racket to 'community groups'.

Here is its contact info:
1.800.263.2887
416.963.4927
TTY: 416.963.7905
Fax: 416.963.8781
trillium@trilliumfoundation.org

I am going to write to the foundation to ask about this grant. I'll let you know what happens next.