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Think Congress's Anti-Choice Legislation is Extreme? Look at the States.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed the latest in a series of extreme, but effectively symbolic, anti-choice measures. Last week's contribution, HR 3, nicknamed "Stupak on Steroids," a bill that if signed into law would eliminate abortion coverage for millions of women paying for insurance out of their own pockets, passed with the support of all House Republicans and sixteen Democrats. HR 3 piggy-backed on another symbolic vote to defund Planned Parenthood and eliminate all Title X family planning funding.
What happened to the Republicans' laser focus on the economy? Why is the House's GOP majority putting in this big effort to show how much they dislike women having reproductive choice - rather than say, spending their time creating jobs or finding meaningful solutions to the budget deficit? The first reason is clearly to pander to a far-right base at the expense of American women. But the second reason is that sometimes failed efforts to implement extremism on the federal level spawn often successful copycat legislation in the states. And that is exactly what is happening with these bills to strip away women's rights.
The House's attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, for instance, was dead on arrival in the Senate. But now, at least six states have taken matters into their own hands and are attempting to deprive their own residents of Planned Parenthood's services - often jeopardizing unrelated health services in the process. Yesterday, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed a bill that cuts off the $3 million in federal funding that the state directs to Planned Parenthood. Gov. Daniels signed the bill despite the risk that it will cause the state to lose the rest of its federal funding for family planning services. To this potential presidential candidate, making an anti-choice statement is worth the risk of jeopardizing millions of dollars in medical services to low-income residents.
New Hampshire, Kansas, North Carolina, Texas and Minnesota are also considering bills that would cut off state funds to Planned Parenthood. Texas's proposal has an extra twist to it: if Planned Parenthood sues to reverse the law and wins, the state's entire women's health and family planning operation will automatically be shut down.
This new flourishing of anti-Planned Parenthood bills in the states is not a coincidence. As the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins pointed out recently on Twitter, these efforts echo the success of the failed federal "marriage amendment" in the mid-2000s, which - with a lot of help from President Bush's reelection campaign - helped spawn 30 successful state-level constitutional amendments to prevent marriage equality. Extreme social measures that have no chance of making it through the checks and balances of a divided national government can instead serve as valuable rallying cries in states where extreme legislation can actually pass - and in the 2010 elections, when Republicans gained control of 21 additional state legislative chambers, the appetite of state legislatures for extreme social measures grew dramatically.
These Planned Parenthood measures are just the beginning of the harsh anti-choice laws women are now facing in the states. The Los Angeles Times reports that 15 anti-choice bills have been enacted by states this year, and 120 more have been approved by a legislative chamber. Many of these bills are designed to severely restrict the options that women have for obtaining legal abortions. Earlier this year, Virginia enacted a law so severely restricting abortion clinics that seventeen of the state's 21 abortion providers may be forced to close. South Dakota passed a law requiring women seeking abortions to undergo anti-choice "counseling" and wait 72 hours before having the procedure. Ohio is considering a bill that would outlaw abortions performed after the "heartbeat" of a fetus is detected - sometimes as early as eighteen days after conception.
Other state-level laws are designed to pressure women into refusing abortion services. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is on track to sign a law requiring women to view ultrasounds before obtaining an abortion, and Florida's governor is planning to sign a similar law. And in one of the most startling state-level attacks on the right to choose, Arizona's governor recently signed a bill making it illegal to seek an abortion because of the "race or sex" of the fetus - allowing the biological father or the woman's parents to sue an abortion provider based on suspicion of the pregnant woman's motivations for choosing the procedure.
The House GOP's attempts to restrict women's rights and compromise women's privacy are for show, yes. But they are a show with very real consequences for millions of American women. While Congress rattles its saber, pro-choice advocates should not be distracted from the real fights it has inspired in the states.
19 Comments so far
Show AllUnbelievable. This article reads like some horror novel or Hollywood movie script that everyone knows is "just a movie." Then, I remember that it not only is real, very real, but that this is what represents the nation I call home. The US has most assuredly lost its way. We are a ridiculous characature of a country.
The following Democrats voted to pass H.R. 3:
1) Altmire -- PA
2) Boren -- OK
3) Costello -- IL
4) Critz -- PA
5) Cuellar -- TX
6) Donnelly -- IN
7) Holden -- PA
8) Kaptur -- OH
9) Kildee -- MI
10) Likpinski -- IL
11) Matheson -- UT
12) McIntyre -- NC
13) Peterson -- MN
14) Rahall -- WV
15) Ross -- AR
16) Shuler -- NC
"This bill could take away women’s private insurance coverage of abortion in the new health-care system. It also could spur the Internal Revenue Service to audit survivors of rape and incest who choose abortion care."
Link: http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/get-involved/stupak-on-steroids/hr3-house-votes.html
Wow, some states actually want expectant mothers to view an ultrasound image of their unborn child? If they see their infant moving about in their womb, how is the abortion industry supposed to continue the lie that its all just a "mass of cells" throughout the entire porcess? Whatever you do, make sure women aren't told that their child has a heartbeat at 6 weeks and measurable brain waves at 10 weeks. Remember folks, he or she isn't a "real" baby until they magically turn into one while emerging from the birth canal.
Also, please drop the myth that Planned Parenthood exists to assist women regardless of their needs. 97.6% of all pregnant women who enter a Planned Parenthood facility end up getting an abortion. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood performs 340 abortions for every one adoption referral. Planned Parenthood is simply one more component of the abortion industry
If you wish to work against the devaluation and destruction of ALL human life, whether through capital punishment, war, lack of access to medical care, poverty or abortion, please consider joining consistentlife.com.
Republicans are hypocrites when they claim to be pro-life and deprive the poor and vulnerable of vital human services. Progressives are equally hypocritical when we talk about protecting the vulnerable and at the same time lobby for the removal of all legal protections for the most vulnerable and dependent component of the human family.
"Also, please drop the myth that Planned Parenthood exists to assist women regardless of their needs. 97.6% of all pregnant women who enter a Planned Parenthood facility end up getting an abortion. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood performs 340 abortions for every one adoption referral. Planned Parenthood is simply one more component of the abortion industry
If you wish to work against the devaluation and destruction of ALL human life, whether through capital punishment, war, lack of access to medical care, poverty or abortion, please consider joining consistentlife.com."
Well yes, PP assist women to have an abortion.
And people like you are lying hypocrites, when you on the one hand want to ban abortion, but then, do nothing to support, or even worse you oppose, contraception, sex education. People like you are hypocrites, when you want to ban abortion, but do nothing to provide for the women and the born babies.
Why do you want women to be maids and sex toys, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?
ABORTION the only killing the left enthusiastically endorses.
I think of myself as left but I prefer we had alternatives to abortion.
The best alternative to abortions is family planning and birth control. Where are these available for the poor? Planned parenthood is probably a good source.
I am 75 years old. Old enough to remember when abortions were supposed to be illegal. They never were illegal. For people with sufficient money, they were done quietly. For others, they entailed a cheap and dangerous procedure that could result in death. I grew up in a poor neighborhood. I never heard of anyone there having an abortion. Perhaps they didn't or perhaps they kept it quiet. When I moved up a bit in the world, I was shocked at the people who discussed abortion openly. Clearly, they did not think of it as a matter of law. Rather, they were concerned about budgeting and safety.
When I was young, there was absolutely no access to information on sex or birth control. This was before the "pill" was discovered. There was also a double standard in the treatment of young women. If you were poor without family support, you were automatically in the wrong category. For myself, I learned early on that I could never date. Fortunately, I was intelligent, worked hard, and managed to get a good education. When I grew older, I was in the category of the "older woman" who was supposed to be worldly and knowledgeable. I didn't fit into that category either. I hope that we never return to what I see as an era of hypocrisy where it didn't matter what you did as long as it looked respectable.
Well said, Ruth. We're virtually the same age, so I too remember that time of hypocrisy. My ears still burn, remembering the time I was treated like a whore because I momentarily forgot what country I was in and asked at a pharmacy what forms of contraception they sold.
As I believe Dennis said in the run-up to the 2004 campaign, abortion should be cheap, readily available, and unnecessary.
If you are interested, this link provides a chart about the percentages of services ACTUALLY provided by Planned Parenthood:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-planned-parenthood-actually-does/2011/04/06/AFhBPa2C_blog.html
About 3% goes to abortion services. 16% goes to cancer screening and prevention, etc.
I am sick of people distorting and lying about Planned Parenthood and the services provided to people, to women and men as well, across the country by this organization.
Thank you, Kay... the 97% statistic is probably something the idiot got from "The 700 Club," or another American Fascist organization.
The day all those blocking women's REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS under the guise of protecting unborn fetuses start showing equal fervor in opposition to war, poverty, the U.S weapons-industrial complex, nuclear power, ecocide, oil drilling, and other items INJURIOUS to life... is the day they get to claim the moral high ground. For now, the Right is appeasing its fundamentalist followers, and throwing them a bone in the form of denying women control of their own bodies. They don't just want to stop abortion, they don't even want women to have access to reliable birth CONTROL! This is medieval stuff, attempts to leave women chained at home, barefoot and pregnant.
It has NOTHING to do with the preservation of life... it's misogyny clear and simple, however disguised. How many men would put up with an OUTSIDER telling them whether or not they could have intercourse? Whether or not they would be forced to conceive? And from there, demonstrate responsibility--emotional and financial--for another human being for at least 18 years. Tell them whether or not they could use a rubber?
If a person cannot control their own body, they lose their autonomy. And to the real fascists in our midst, who would like to push the abstinence approach onto women (blaming them for conceiving a child they didn't want, nor can adequately take care of), let them practice it.
Has there ever been more exposed sexual hypocrisy than that seen in all those right wing baboons found playing footsie in men's bathrooms, or "coming out" after 22 years of married life, their boy toys discovered by the press?
A nation that leads the world in incarceration rates, bombing raids, toxic chemical production AND trafficking in weapons, while pushing porn is going to PRETEND to know what's best for adult women? As another poster related, this SHOULD be the stuff of sci-fi or some Dystopian cautionary tale.
"If a person cannot control their own body, they lose their autonomy." -- Sioux Rose
Exactly!!
Great post, Sioux Rose!
As Angi Becker Stevens persuasively argues in "The Hypocrisy of 'Informed Consent' Abortion Laws"*, the state's rationales for imposing onerous conditions upon women seeking to safely and legally terminate a pregnancy amount to "a thinly veiled attempt at shaming women who seek abortion, a shaming made all the more hypocritical when carried out in the supposed name of women’s health and safety."
But of course, the anti-choicers with their superegos on steroids will indignantly reject the evidence that there is anything but a rational, responsible social interest in promoting community "health" standards, albeit an interest consistent with wholesome, high-minded morality, motivating such legislation.
When inflamed moral sensibility and cynical political demagoguery combine to ratchet up the compulsion to control, it results in the kind of self-righteous bumptiousness that declares that since abortion, after all, is really about Taking a Life, it's eminently reasonable to insist that women check their selfish homicidal impulses long enough to take a long, hard look at what they're really doing.
After all, what's a little therapeutic arm-twisting for the purpose of reviving a dormant or vitiated conscience compared to the prospect of twisting a Sacred Fetus to bits?
I'm surprised that they haven't thought of requiring women who get abortions to perform "community service" in nurseries and day care centers first-- and afterwards. Whoops, I hope I didn't give anyone any ideas.
* http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/15-9
It has become so difficult to manage the details of a legal abortion in this country, except for the wealthy, that I suspect the old underground back-alley horror must be thriving again. I hear little to nothing of fact, but I have this nagging feeling it must be going on. As someone who remembers when abortions were illegal and who had friends who underwent the indignities and risks of the kinds of abortions one had to settle for, I am wondering if it's time for those of us with a steady income (meager as it may be) to support women who need and can't afford or find the means to abortions. We could use the money we may have otherwise, for instance, have sent to worthless Democratic candidates. But considering how few comments this article has received, other than those who think they can scream us into compliance, I'm not sure enough people care. I have discussed the idea with friends, and we're uncertain how to organize such activity but are keeping the option open ---- probably sooner than later.
I know it's entertaining to argue endlessly about who to vote for and whether to support primary challenges and all that sort of thing, but none of that does any good to alleviate the suffering that is going on around us. I would so very much like to see some practical solutions, no not solutions, but something that would just help the people who have real-life consequences as the result of this power-struggle between these corporate parties. I do see some, such as the groups that interfere with evictions, and more of that would be welcome.
Recently I found a link to info about abortion laws around the world. It's worth a look to see, as we move closer to making abortion impossible if not illegal, the sort of company we keep.
http://www.pregnantpause.org/lex/world02.jsp
Sherry,
I have also talked to friends about solutions -- pooling money and funding abortions when necessary. I think that Katha Pollitt may have written a column about this topic, and possible ways of organizing and raising funds. However, I looked for the column and couldn't find it. Possibly, we could contact Ms. Pollitt through the Nation magazine and she could reprint that column.
Like you, I remember when abortions weren't legal, and very desperate women were forced into back-alley abortions. At that time, I lived in Des Moines, IA, and was working and going to school. I worked at Iowa Methodist Hospital on the gynecology floor. Women who lived through the emergency room, recovered on this floor. I can still see the fear and desperation in their eyes. To this day, these women haunt me!! The nurses on the floor were so sympathetic and empathetic. I remember hearing, more than once, the head nurse telling one of the nurses, "Another woman died last night."
Something I have noted is that women who have abortions are shamed and shunned, and women who have the child (out of wedlock) are also shamed and shunned. The people who heap this humiliation onto others are beyond the pale, as if they have the right to judge others.
When I was researching this new bill, H.R. 3, I learned that 16 Democrats voted for the bill, including Marcy Kaptur (OH), and I also learned that the bill will enable the IRS to audit women who choose abortion. More legalized harassment and threats by the authorities. Since we have a Democratic president, the audits could only take place if he allows them -- notice that we are having NO discussion on this issue. Of course, the deeper issue is that the right-wing authorities, including a number of Democrats, want to do away with contraception -- any pill or device that stops the sperm from fertilizing the egg.
Remember Monty Python -- Every Sperm Is Sacred?
I'm a Roman Catholic,
And have been since before I was born,
And the one thing they say about Catholics is:
They'll take you as soon as you're warm.
You don't have to be a six-footer.
You don't have to have a great brain.
You don't have to have any clothes on. You're
A Catholic the moment Dad came,
Because
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
CHILDREN:
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
GIRL:
Let the heathen spill theirs
On the dusty ground.
God shall make them pay for
Each sperm that can't be found.
As far as the U.S. and the U.N. -- the U.S. votes with the Vatican when the issues involve women's reproductive rights. NO federal funding is behind the meager 3% of Planned Parenthood funds that are used for abortion services.
If anyone is interested, Mike Leigh made a very good film -- VERA DRAKE -- about the issue of abortion, and the difference between services that are available to wealthy women and to poor women. The film is worth the time!
Sherry, thanks for the link!!
It is a horror reality in real time. What these 'class acts' called republicans are doing is to ensure a supply of slave labor because they are the not so new slave holders that really never went away even at the time of the civll war with Lincoln's emancipation proclamation.
You will have to get and read Howard Zinn's book 'The People's History of the United States' where zinn told how slavery was abolished but so much laws remained or were made to maintain a virtual slave condition where there were some blacks or ex-slaves who were elected to state and federal legislatures and congress but by the turn of the 20th century, there were virtually none serving.
And this brings to mind, or at least my mind, that the term United States is in reality a misnomer. There is just about NOTHING that is UNITED in this country anymore and with the slime of today pulling these kind of wreckless shenanigans, I can't see this country being anything but even less united as every day goes by and when people like the neocons leader boehner coming out with some other new destructive bills to further crash this country... And boehner is damn well doing just that along with the FACT that he IS THE BIGGEST THREAT TO ALL PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY except his buddies in the top 1% club.
It's not about abortion. It is about rights. Really does anyone think there are women and girls out there getting pregnant just so they can have an abortion? It's absurd. I do think just about everyone agrees that we all wish for fewer abortions, but disagree about the means to get there. There are those who want to ban abortions (and also family planning which paradoxically would help avoid abortions) and those of us who believe that we can achieve reduction in the number of abortions only through sex education and affordable, uncomplicated access to family planning services.
How many of the men (and women) who vote for this type of legislation are willing to give up their own family planning methods? Or are the men perhaps willing to give up all sex where the goal is not procreation?
We need a Lysistrata-style revolt!
Just to make things clear, these anti-choice laws are designed to enact religious belief into law. It's done primarily by means that render it almost impossible for the poor to get abortions. As a result, unwanted children proliferate in environments that would never be tolerated by the anti-choice people for their own children. And the children who would otherwise have been aborted end up in prisons, and sometimes put to death by the same religious zealots who assert that an unthinking, nonviable nascent human individual is morally equivalent to themselves. This doctrine of "life begins at conception" is sinister; it harms society much more than it helps, and brings happiness only to those who want to impose their religiously held beliefs on the rest of us. It's a shame that religions that have good moral teachings fall for the dismal business of the "pro-life" movement masquerading as love and compassion.
Additionally, the same people who force this problem of unwanted children upon society are responsible for the conditions that lead to parents wanting to abort children because of the low quality of life facing the children and those already born. I refer of course to the conservative agenda of winking at discrimination, lowering taxes for the wealthy, and then, by claiming the country can't afford to help the poor, taking away from them educational and employment opportunities, and slashing medicaid and other benefits (including, ironically, contraception services that could reduce the need for abortions).
Religious ostentation -- the public wearing of religious gear, proselytising, etc. -- should be treated the way public sex acts or eliminatory acts are treated: first as a public-nuisance misdemeanor, soon as a problem requiring sequestration.
Every healthy person accepts that sex and elimination are natural and desirable functions, but few people want them practiced in public, and those few are usually damaged in some important way.
Religious ostentation is a sociopolitical weapon, and is so recognised even in Xian scripture, by Jesus himself. So nobody could legitimately claim that forbidding public practice is oppressive.
If religion were relegated by law to the private sphere, the world would become a much better place, quite quickly.
Thanks, Mairead. I think your comments have some merit, although I would approach the matter a bit differently.
If I could again revise my remarks, I would change this sentence -- "Additionally, the same people who force this problem of unwanted children upon society are responsible for the conditions that lead to parents wanting to abort children because of the low quality of life facing the children and those already born." to: "Additionally, the same people who force this problem of unwanted children upon society are responsible for the conditions that lead to parents wanting to abort pregnancies because of the low quality of life facing their offspring, both those not yet born and those already born."
Wow, eighteen comments and only two from misogynist wankers!
@ dave_m
“ABORTION the only killing the left enthusiastically endorses.”
No, we’re also happy to flush reactionary shite that wants to reduce women to the status of incubators!
@ PP
Your attempt at sarcasm is simply sad. As rfloh said, right-to-lifers are hypocrites for whom ‘life’ begins at conception and ends at birth.
@ Sioux Rose
“If a person cannot control their own body, they lose their autonomy.”
Kudos upon kudos, Sioux Rose! A society that allows women to control their own bodies (and especially their own fertility) may not be ‘godly’ in terms of abrahamic oogie-boogie superstition, but is healthier, happier, more equitable and more productive in every respect that really matters.
Free, safe, medically-performed abortion on demand *at every stage of pregnancy*, reliable advice on contraception and on all aspects of gynaecological health, fully-paid maternity leave and socialized childcare and domestic work for all, as art of a total reconstruction of society in the interest of need, not greed — a programme for which all women (and men too) should be fighting!