Bro-Choice

Remember the 'Every Sperm Is Sacred' Amendment in Oklahoma?

This is the funniest Daily Show bit I've ever seen.



h/t @thishotplace.

Sauce for the Gander

Since the TeaBaggers took over so many state houses in the US, the Fetus Lobby has been revelling in an orgy of abortion restrictions.

Lately, though, female politicians have been pushing back. The birth control idiocy going on now seems to have revved things considerably.

We've reported on a few of them. Mostly, they are amendments to draconian legislation aimed at women's reproductive health. The push-back is aimed at men's health and sexuality.

One from Virginia would mandate a physical including rectal exam for men wanting prescriptions for limp-dick syndrome. File that one under 'unnecessary medical procedures intended to punish and humiliate'.

Another from Georgia asserts a state interest in men's reproduction and bans vasectomies.

House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams added, “The Republican attack on women’s reproductive rights is unconscionable. What is more deplorable is the hypocrisy of HB 954’s author. If we follow his logic, we believe it is the obligation of this General Assembly to assert an equally invasive state interest in the reproductive habits of men and substitute the will of the government over the will of adult men.”

Similarly, a female state senator in Oklahoma proposed an Every Sperm Is Sacred amendment.

any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman's vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.

And there's more. In Florida, state senator Eleanor Sobel introduced EIGHT amendments to what opponents are calling an 'omnibus anti-choice bill'.

In that bill are requirements for abortion providers to undergo regular ethics training and for clinics to be wholly owned and operated by licensed doctors.

Sobel's amendments are rather pointed.

In response to the ethics training provision of the bill, Sobel introduced an amendment requiring that a “legislator who offers to vote or who votes on legislation relating to human reproduction must annually complete a minimum of 3 hours of continuing education related to ethics.”

Much like a measure recently introduced in Georgia in response to anti-abortion legislation, Sobel also offered an amendment that regulates vasectomies and treatment for erectile dysfunction.

According to her amendment:

A vasectomy or treatment for erectile dysfunction may not be performed except with the voluntary and informed consent of the patient, or in the case of a mental incompetent, the voluntary and informed written consent of his court-appointed guardian. Except in the case of a medical emergency, consent to a vasectomy or treatment for erectile dysfunction is voluntary and informed only if the physician orally, in person, informs the patient of the nature and risks of undergoing or not undergoing the proposed procedure or treatment which a reasonable patient would consider material to making a knowing and willful decision at least 24 hours before the vasectomy is performed or the treatment is provided.

Sobel also introduced an amendment that would require that CPCs [crisis pregnancy centres, aka Fake Clinics] be “wholly owned and operated by one or more physicians who received residency training in performing dilation-and-curettage and dilation-and evacuation procedures or by a professional corporation or limited liability company composed solely of one or more such physicians.”

She didn't even get to present all her amendments, which were characterized as 'designed to waste time' by a ReThug.

Um. No. They are designed to mock and ridicule.

Weirdly, Sobel thought she was entitled to speak not only because she is a duly elected state senator, but because:

Sobel pointed out to the committee that she had the right to say something as “the only woman in the committee.”

Wow. One woman. An improvement over this though.



ADDED: Great minds and ganders.

The 'Every Sperm Is Sacred' Amendment

In Oklahoma, where legislators have been glorying in an orgy of anti-abortion bills and laws, one senator added a mocking amendment.

Anti-abortion lawmakers vowed Wednesday to continue pushing for tighter restrictions in Oklahoma as hundreds of advocates flooded the halls of the state Capitol as part of a rally to urge lawmakers to pass more anti-abortion laws.

But one Democrat, in a seeming attempt to fight the measure, added an amendment to the bill stating that “every sperm is sacred,” according to Think Progress.

State Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, added language which states that masturbation and sex acts other than vaginal intercourse could be considered detrimental to unborn children as abortion.

The Oklahoma bill is, of course, part of the 'personhood' movement, an attempt to confer rights on fetuses that would effectively render women third-class citizens, after menz and baybeez. Not to mention probably outlaw IUDs, hormonal birth control, emergency contraception, and in vitro techniques.

Which is where we're going here in Canada if Stephen Woodworth is successful with his private member's motion to create a Parliamentary committee to examine when 'life begins' and thus, when a fetus has rights in competition with the incubator's, er, woman's.

Some of the boyos are all revved by this opportunity to discuss the weighty matter of when life begins. Here's a classic mansplanation on the subject, kindly supplied to me yesterday in a Twitter spat.

While sane people understand that biological life is completely irrelevant to legal personhood, that fact won't deter Woodworth's sneaky back-door attempt to muddy definitions of 'human' and 'person' and get that feverishly wished-for debate going.

We sane people will not let that happen.

We at DJ! suggest that all 'personhood' legislation be called ESIS bills. Because that's what their proponents believe.

Here's their hymn.

Pure Viciousness

In a burst of misplaced optimism, this piece at RH Reality Check is titled Sanity Prevails in Oklahoma.

In a sign that--perhaps, maybe--the extreme right's extremist attacks on the rights and health of women and children may have some limits, the Oklahoma legislature today allowed a bill to die in committee which, if passed, would have denied food vouchers and nutrition services to prenatal and pediatric clients served by Planned Parenthood of Tulsa County.

Huh? Food vouchers and nutrition services? How do they figure?

Read the story. It absolutely nauseating. In their orgy of defunding anything that has to do with abortion and/or Planned Parenthood, Tea Baggers fixed on a program called Women Infants and Children that provides dough for food for at-risk, i.e. poor families. The Baggers then discovered it would have defunded ALL organizations that participate in it.

They wrastled around with language to cut PP out while keeping the rest in.

An editorial in Tulsa World explains (bold mine).

Here's the crux of the matter: In kicking Planned Parenthood out of the WIC program, lawmakers won't be punishing Planned Parenthood. They'll be punishing poor women who chose to have their babies and are trying to take care of them. What kind of sense does that make?

If Planned Parenthood is banned from providing WIC services, then the 9,300 clients of that program currently served by Planned Parenthood will have to try to obtain the nutrition services elsewhere. For a mother of limited means, that could prove an extreme hardship and could mean some will have to drop out of the program.

In Tulsa, Planned Parenthood last year also provided about 5,600 pediatric care appointments and about 3,000 prenatal visits, among other primary health services it provides. Some of those contacts were with the same women and children currently receiving WIC through Planned Parenthood. Why not make their lives a little easier by letting them continue to receive all those services in one place?

Here's why: Because the foes of Planned Parenthood can win political points by saying, "We kicked Planned Parenthood out of WIC." The fact poor mothers and babies would be made to suffer as a result is an inconsequential by-product that doesn't matter to them.

I wouldn't call letting that bill die 'sanity'. I'd call it a step back from gratuitous cruelty.

I Can't Keep Up, continued

My apologies for the silence from this corner of DAMMIT JANET!, but again I can't keep up with the orgy of fetus fetishizing in USian state legislatures.

I mean, don't they have a recession down there? A couple of wars? Widespread unemployment? Massive budget shortfalls?

Ah, but that stuff's not as interesting or gratifying as fucking with women's rights.

By the end of March, 825 measures had been introduced in the 44 legislatures that have convened so far in 2010.

From the Guttmacher Institute here's an index of fascinating topics under the general heading of 'Laws for Ladies':

Abortion

Abortion Bans to Replace Roe

Crisis Pregnancy Centers: 'Choose Life' License Plates and State Funding

Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Fetal Pain

Health Reform

Later Term and Second Trimester Abortion

Mandatory Counseling and Waiting Periods

Medical Emergency Exception in Abortion Law

Medication Abortion

Minors Reporting

Parental Involvement

'Partial-Birth' Abortion

Physician Liability

Physician-Only Requirements

Postviability Abortion

Private Insurance Coverage of Abortion

Prohibiting Forcing a Woman to Have an Abortion

Protecting Access to Abortion

Protecting Access to Clinics

Public Funding of Abortion

Requiring Abortion Providers to Have Hospital Privileges

Reporting Statistical Information to State Agencies

Self-Induced Abortion

Sex and Race Selection

State Participation in Abortion

Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers

Ultrasound Requirements

With so many intrusive, paternalistic, authoritarian, slut-shaming laws to choose from, it's hard to say which is the winner of the coveted Maurice Vellacott Award, but Oklahoma is certainly a top contender.

Oklahoma's new anti-choice laws, one requiring all women to have a mandatory ultrasound before an abortion, and one allowing doctors to lie to their patients if the fetus has an abnormality, are stirring up a lot of anger (not to mention a looming court battle). But the anger isn't just in Oklahoma, but across the country, too.

From California:

Anti-abortion lawmakers in Oklahoma stooped to a new low this week by passing two bills that constitute a reprehensible intrusion of government into women's lives.

It's hard to tell which of the bills is the most repugnant.

The first requires doctors to force women to watch an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus within an hour before an abortion is performed. The requirement holds even for women who are victims of incest or rape. It will add gratuitous pain to a procedure that for the vast majority of women is already an anguished choice.

The second bill prevents a wrongful life or wrongful death lawsuit against doctors who withhold information about a pregnancy, even when a fetus has severe disabilities.

In other words, Oklahoma doctors are free to impose their beliefs on women and even to flat-out lie to them. Would a law making the same provision for an exclusively male condition ever get through Oklahoma's or any other legislature? Not a chance.

Lying to a patient would be clearly unethical. Fortunately, it's almost certainly unconstitutional as well. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit two hours after the Oklahoma House and Senate overrode Gov. Brad Henry's veto of the bill. The suit will argue that the laws invade a patient's right to privacy and fail to respect patient autonomy.

No kidding.

WARNING: Do not read the next paragraph if you are prone to head-explosions.

The justification for the mandatory ultrasound is 'informed consent' -- you know, we wimmin don't really know what we're doing when we make abortion appointments. Yet the wrongful life/death one enables (encourages?) fetus fetishizing doctors or technicians to withhold information on potential fetal deformities or other problems. Because we wimmin can't be trusted with knowing what's growing in our uteruses.

So, how's it working out? Well, the emotional torture part works good, but the preventing abortion part? Not so well.

Women became emotional and some cried after being shown fetal ultrasound images at a Tulsa abortion clinic Wednesday, a day after Oklahoma enacted what has been called the nation’s most restrictive abortion law.

None of the women, however, decided against terminating their pregnancies, said Linda Meek, the executive director of Reproductive Services in Tulsa.

Now go read Rape Me All Over Again at Those Emergency Blues, which is where I got this photo. And yup, it works just like it looks like it would. (I've had one of these dealies and 'horribly invasive' doesn't begin to describe it.)

More abortion laws! Lots more!

I can't keep up. The Merkin healthcare debate and its obsession with abortion has whipped up state legislatures all over the Excited States into frenzies of fetus fetishizing. Abortion! We need more laws on abortion!

And they're getting them. Lots more laws on abortion! Some of them quite nutty. (The people at RH Reality Check do a good job of keeping up with the fetus fetishizing lawmakers in the US.)

Where to start?

How about Georgia? You may remember that a billboard campaign there linked abortion to genocide. Yeah, yeah, you've heard that one before, but wait, the Georgia campaign specifically links abortion to black genocide.

Well, now they have a brand spanky new law enshrining that idiocy.

Last week, the Georgia Senate gave sanction to a bizarre, destructive and racially condescending conspiracy theory. By a 33-14 vote, it approved a bill that purports to outlaw the attempted genocide of black Americans through abortion.

Under the bill’s language, a health care provider could be convicted of a felony and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for performing an abortion “with the intent to prevent an unborn child from being born based upon the race, color, or gender of the unborn child or the race or color of either parent of that unborn child.”

(snip)

Until approval of SB 529, the dumbest legislation to pass the House or Senate this year had been a bill to outlaw forced implantation of microchips in human beings, which also passed the Senate. However, while it may rival the genocide-by-abortion bill in terms of weirdness, the microchip bill was at least largely harmless.

The abortion bill, on the other hand, puts the state Senate on record as endorsing the claim that black Americans are being targeted for elimination by health care providers. That’s absurd and flat-out wrong.

In Nebraska, where you might recall they are trying to outlaw abortion because of the unfounded claim of fetal pain, they've come up with another doozy.

Before an abortion, women are to be screened for 'potential post-abortion problems'. Well, what's wrong with that, you wonder?

Because the 'problems' they are concerned with are claims that abortion drives women insane.

Greg Schleppenbach of the Nebraska Catholic Conference said the bill doesn't call for drastic changes and would simply put pre-abortion medical consultation in line with normal medical practices in which patients are advised of risks.

"We're just saying that that if the abortion industry acknowledges risk factors exist, isn't it reasonable to screen people for them?" Schleppenbach said.

An official with the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights said there was no connection between psychological problems and abortions.

The measure is in fact a drastic shift in abortion policy, added Jordan Goldberg, state advocacy counsel for the center, and the real intent is to establish a "vague and unconstitutional barrier" to abortions by scaring doctors who might perform them. Goldberg, who tracks abortion laws across the country, said she'd never seen anything like the Nebraska bill.

"I think there's a serious chance it will make doctors wary of performing abortions because they just don't know if they're complying with the law," Goldberg said.

You wanna make women insane, say to them: 'Sorry, honey, I think having an abortion would drive you crazy, so, no, you won't be able to have one.'

Now, more mandatory ultrasound bullshit from Louisiana. What makes this one a little different is that it is being pushed by a Democratic woman.

Senate President Pro Tem Sharon Weston Broome, D-Baton Rouge, said the bill is designed to make a woman "think twice about having an abortion. This is such a serious decision that a woman makes, the process should be exhausted with all the medical information on the procedure" available, she said.

In the privacy-invadingest state in the union, Oklahoma, they're busy taking apart a previous anti-abortion bill that was deemed unconstitutional on the technicality that it dealt with more than one issue and turning it into four anti-abortion laws, including the privacy-invading part.

The information includes race, education level, miscarriages, induced abortions, method of abortion, reason for the abortion and method of payment.

While the woman's name would not be included, the info would be published. As critics point out, some counties in Oklahoma are so underpopulated, it would be a doddle for busy-bodies to figure out who the local slut is.

On to Missouri for another omnibus fetus fetishist bill, dealing with coerced abortion and another stunning bit of privacy invasion.

The bill would also require prosecutors to be informed when an individual under age 18 inquired about an abortion, whether or not the woman completes the procedure.

Ask a question about abortion and get reported??!!! (The specious 'reason' for this is that they want to identify cases of possible child sexual abuse.)

Barriers, lies, shame, intimidation -- all the usual weapons. It's been a grand few weeks in the Excited States for fetus fetishizers.

And a very bad time -- and future -- for American women.

But wait! There are some grown-ups down there. In Michigan, no less, Bart Stupak's state.

Legislation moving to the state Senate would require Michigan emergency rooms to provide emergency contraception to individuals who are sexual assaulted.

Four bills, originally part of a 15-bill initiative promoted by Planned Parenthood, passed the Michigan House last week and would extend access to contraception, said state Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing.

“These are reasonable and applicable methods and laws, which would help prevent unwanted pregnancies,” said Meadows, who sponsored a bill in the package that would require crisis pregnancy centers to tell patients they do not provide information about birth control or abortion.

The bills need to gain the support of the Republican-led Senate to become law.

Other bills that passed include a bill requiring the Michigan Department of Community Health to educate the public about emergency contraception and a bill requiring all school districts to teach “medically accurate sexual education.”

We shall see whether the state-level Stupaks get their knickers in knots and stop this too.

Slut-Shaming Law Rejected

Oklahoma's panty-sniffing, slut-shaming legislation is declared unconstitutional.

Called the Statistical Reporting of Abortions Act, the law would have required all doctors to file information on a woman's age, marital status, education level, number of previous pregnancies, cost and type of abortion, as well as the mother's relationship to the father, with the Oklahoma Department of Health.

Though it did not ask for names, the form posed 37 questions detailing a woman's personal situation. Critics say the first eight questions alone could easily lead to the identification of a woman who lives in one of the state's many small communities.

Doctors who fail to provide information would face criminal sanctions and loss of their medical license.

Sadly, it was found unconstitutional not because of its prurience or invasiveness, but because it violated the state's requirement that legislation deal with one subject only.

So, natch, the old white male farts in the state leg are working on new bills that do address single aspects of a woman's right to bodily autonomy.

But the Oklahomans are a bunch of pikers compared to Florida Baptist-minister-turned-legislator, Charles Van Zant.

Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Keystone Heights, cites the state and federal Constitutions, as well as the Declaration of Independence, in asserting that all people are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that the first among these rights is the right to life." Nearly one-third of his "Florida for Life Act" is devoted to legislative "findings," including statements that life begins at conception and that the high court’s 1973 and 1992 rulings legalizing abortion were wrong.

The bill also states that about 50 million abortions have occurred since the Roe v. Wade ruling 37 years ago. It contends that "the standard of decency of the people of this state has evolved" to a point that the people of Florida want the ruling reversed.

"I’m the brand-new kid on the block, as far as being in politics, but I believe that this appeals to the will of our people," Van Zant said in an interview. "I believe it is the will of the Lord but beyond that, this country was founded on a Constitution that was a flat-out attack on every act that would take rights away from the people — and the very first of those is life, which includes the unborn."

Stephanie Kunkel, state director of Planned Parenthood, called the bill "totally unconstitutional." She said polls and experience in other states show the public to be pro-choice, although the Republican-run Legislature leans the other way to varying degrees.

"This is the most rigid and inflexible ban on abortion in the United States," said Kunkel. "Not only does it ban abortion, it also has absolutely no exceptions for rape or incest."

The only exception would be to save the life of the mother but the approval of two doctors would be required.

Take that, Roe v. Wade!

Lila Rose: I have a fantasy.

Last month the odious Lie-Là Rose shared her fantasy and described how women would be treated if they required an abortion: a live medical intervention in a public place for the purpose of naming, shaming and blaming by rightwing fundamentalist gynophobes.

How very 12th century. This form of persecution could only happen in the dystopic fiction of The Handmaid's Tale, right? Except the state of Oklahoma is moving in that direction. Now, in the 21st century.

On Nov. 1, a law in Oklahoma will go into effect that will collect personal details about every single abortion performed in the state and post them on a public website. Implementing the measure will “cost $281,285 the first year and $256,285 each subsequent year.”

Here are the first eight questions that women will have to reveal:
1.Date of abortion 2.County in which abortion performed 3.Age of mother 4.Marital status of mother(married, divorced, separated, widowed, or never married) 5.Race of mother 6.Years of education of mother(specify highest year completed) 7.State or foreign country of residence of mother 8. Total number of previous pregnancies of the mother: Live/Births/Miscarriages/Induced Abortions

Although the questionnaire does not ask for name, address, or “any information specifically identifying the patient,” as Feminists for Choice points out, these eight questions could easily be used to identify a woman in a small community. “They’re really just trying to frighten women out of having abortions,” Keri Parks, director of external affairs at Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma, said.

Jasper, a frequent commenter here, and at unrepentant old hippie, idolizes Lie-Là Rose and thinks her fantasy is a good idea.

Jasper was challenged about the inherent gynophobia of this fantasy, when I asked him why not give men who impregnated those women a public vasectomy in front of cheering crowds? Wouldn't that encourage them to stop breeding irresponsibly? Perhaps it would be become a well-attended reality and sports event. Women would certainly attend in hordes, I think.

Jasper got very huffy and opined that: "the women allowed the man to impregnate her (the women gets the final say in sex, not the man)."

And that neatly summarizes how religious rightwing zealots fundamentally view women.

O-o-o-Oklahoma: Where law and reason came sweepin' down the plain.

And The Fetus©™ fetishists were smacked down again.

From the NYT, by way of Broadsides 'State-utory Rape':

On Tuesday, Judge Vicki L. Robertson of the Oklahoma County District Court ruled the omnibus abortion bill - which lawmakers passed over the veto of Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat, in 2008 - violated a clause in the State Constitution requiring that bills deal with only one subject. Judge Robertson did not rule on whether the law, which rolled together five separate anti-abortion measures, violated constitutional protections of privacy and freedom of speech. ...

In recent years, several states have passed laws requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before an abortion and at least three - Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi - require doctors to offer the woman the chance to see the image. But Oklahoma’s Legislature went further. ...

In early stages of pregnancy, when the fetus is tiny, the law would have required the ultrasound to be done vaginally to get a clear image, providers said. No exceptions were made for rape and incest victims.

Imagine that. Abortion criminalizers were seeking to pass a law that would force every girl or woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy to submit to these invasive procedures. All in a zygote zealot day's work.

Oklahoma's is the not the only state legislature in the US beset with obstructive, fundamentalist religious, right-wing conservatives busy-bodies. The Centre for Reproductive Rights called this tactic "Most Extreme Ultrasound Law" in the US. But this war is being waged in other jurisdictions as well.

In Canada, The Fetus©™ fetishists do not currently own the ears of Stevie and his Harpocrites. But that doesn't mean they're not planning their next lunatic overstatement or MASSIVE tactic.

Another grown-up WIN!

From Oklahoma:

An Oklahoma judge has ruled against a law that required women seeking an abortion to receive an ultrasound and a doctor's description of the fetus.

Oklahoma County District Judge Vicki Robertson granted a permanent injunction against the law Tuesday afternoon, saying it violated constitutional requirements that legislative measures deal only with one subject.

Well, you know the panty-sniffers will just re-write the damned law, but still, it's nice, to quote Albert Alligator, 'us winning a little'.


Previous grown-up WIN!