Tuesday 7 April 2009

Sebelius v. Fetus Fetishists, Round Umpty-two

Oy. Seems both JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie and I here spoke too soon.

At the federal level, while not one fetus-fetishizing senator brought up her pro-choice credentials as an impediment to her confirmation as Health and Human Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius is still governor of Kansas and her home-grown fundies have just thrown her a doozy.

Across the Excited States, various state legislatures have been busily erecting more legal barriers to abortion. In Kansas, they recently passed a law requiring doctors to make an ultrasound available to women seeking abortions.

As a Kansas City Star editorialist puts it:
The bill was a win-win situation for abortion opponents. If Sebelius signed it, they'd get what they wanted. If she vetoed it, they'd raise a fuss in advance of her Senate confirmation hearings for the job of U.S. health and human services secretary.

She signed the bill.

They came up with a new one -- a bill
that would allow patients and their relatives to sue doctors for damages if they came to believe that a late-term abortion was illegal. Physicians would also have to give a detailed medical accounting to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment after performing a late-term abortion.

The editorialist and I agree -- she has to veto it. Imagine the shenanigans of zygote zealots trying to manipulate a woman who's had an abortion into 'coming to believe' that it was illegal. (WTF does that even mean?) And the detailed medical 'accounting' puts patient privacy at risk.

Sadly, while the grown-ups seem to be taking charge at the national level, the state houses are still full of panty-sniffers.

2 comments:

Alison said...

What an outrageous legal morass this new bill would create!

OT : Do you already know about the Blog Against Theocracy this Friday?

fern hill said...

No. Did not know about Blog Against Theocracy. Will get on it. On the other hand, that's pretty much what we do here. ;)

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