Texas does everything big... including stupidity. They've forced me to weigh in on a topic that I usually avoid with every fiber of my being, abortion. I'm keeping my personal thoughts on the topic quiet intentionally, because they have no place in this article.
John Seago, Senior Legislative Associate with Texas Right To Life, says with the Republican supermajority, the bill has a strong chance of becoming law. “We do have a pro-life majority in the House,” says Seago. “We know that it’s the personal agenda of several legislators to get important pro-life legislation passed in this particular session.”
The purpose of the bill? To force women to look at a sonogram of their fetus before performing the procedure. This is the equivalent of torture, without medical need and is being pushed purely as a punitive action against women undergoing a legal procedure. To attack the procedure itself is one thing, but this isn't the way to make this particular point. This is a sour grapes reaction to failure to overturn Roe vs. Wade, and it was surely no coincidence that it was released on the 38th anniversary.
“If an ultrasound is required and medical necessary, we will absolutely provide that information, as would most physicians,” Tafolla (Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast Spokesperson) says. “Politicians really have no business telling doctors how to practice medicine.” In addition to the sonogram, the bill would require women to hear a doctor explain the physical characteristics of the fetus as well as listen to audio of the heartbeat.
This is as wrong as it gets in my book.
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23 comments:
Not even remotely close to as bad as the "Rape the Sluts" bill that keeps getting passed by the freakazoids in the Kentucky Senate.
That one specifically requires that a camera be forced up a woman's vagina and into her uterus to film the clump of tissue there.
That IS rape and it IS torture, and it is hysterically demanded by two of the three gubernatorial candidates this year.
The purpose of the bill? To force women to look at a sonogram of their fetus before performing the procedure.
Good. I hope it passes. I hope some idiot sues Texas and loses, thus tightening the screws on Roe v. Wade.
This is the equivalent of torture, without medical need and is being pushed purely as a punitive action against women undergoing a legal procedure.
Call the waah-mbulance. It's just awful for a woman to actually have to see images of the baby she's thinking of having killed. Too freakin' bad.
“If an ultrasound is required and medical necessary, we will absolutely provide that information, as would most physicians,” Tafolla (Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast Spokesperson) says.
Bull. The only thing Planned Parenthood cares about are their revenues.
This statement is a howler:
“Politicians really have no business telling doctors how to practice medicine.”
And what the hell does she think Obamacare is going to do? That's right; politicians telling doctors how to practice medicine.
Didn't the Gosnall atrocity teach you all anything? It was the ultimate for pro-abortion zealots; no regulation, no inspections, no oversight, no problem with access. And this is how Gosnall was able to do what he did for decades.
It's absolutely awful, but part of the roll-back to the gilded age. In the new amerika women are merely vessels for growing babies. For the right-wing crazies this is the quickest path towards having absolute control over a womens reproductive system, and by association, her life. When women don't control their own lives they are less engaged in all aspects of modern society.
Sad.
@steveAR
what other liberal blogs are you polluting with your claptrap today? we both know it's all you do with your free time.
does the phrase "free time" even apply to someone who apparently has no responsibilities besides working to annoy liberals with boilerplate conservative tripe all day?
loser.
@innocent bystander
What is it you do exactly? Are you a sock puppet?
SteveAR, shouldn't you be out assassinating health care workers? Randall Terry's going to be so disappointed in you if you don't bag your quota.
Allan:
SteveAR, shouldn't you be out assassinating health care workers?
Is that what you're calling those like Gosnall? Health care workers? Is health care what he was doing? That's what the pro-abortion officials in Pennsylvania wanted people to believe while letting Gosnall commit mass murder.
See, Roe v. Wade is slowly going down the toilet. Legally. The question is, who are you going to murder to keep it from happening? Because you're the type America should be worried about.
And yet Steve AR is exactly right here:
"And what the hell does she think Obamacare is going to do? That's right; politicians telling doctors how to practice medicine."
But that's a moot point. Here's what's going to happen:
Tens of millions of women are going to lose their insurance over the next few years. You'll have to buy it as an individual, paying probably twice what you're paying now.
And by law, none of those plans will be allowed to cover abortion.
Obama has already signed that into law with an executive order.
So, ten years from now, there will be no abortions performed in America.
Obama sold you out, my dear woman.
You should be directing your rage at him.
See, this is just what America called for - another layer of instructions to doctors before they can perform their job. Considering that most fetuses look the same at any stage, why not just show the pictures of development in health class, a required class at least when I was a kid, and leave it at that. I know what an ultrasound looks like, and I don't even have a womb.
But, again, the GOP has to muck about with the lives of professionals and/or women because this is the most important thing in their lives; that and Dancing With The Stars.
And I am pleased with my word verif: gynchemi, but that is because I am easily amused.
part 2:
i'm not Z's "sock puppet" (i'm the sort of vaguely anti-obama lefty regularly derided by Z as "manic progressives" and "useful idiots"), i'm writing to you because i honestly think that what you're doing is sub-moronic and purposeless. you will never change anybody's mind and as you can plainly see from the responses your posts engender, all you really manage to do (here and on the other blogs you visit) is reinforce the stereotypical image that many lefties have of righties.
what you do seems sick and compulsive to me. i'm not going to urge you to get help (that would be an easy laugh and wholly insincere to boot), but i'd be lying if i didn't admit to thinking that you're a badly damaged and extremely sad human being. i'm sure you feel the same way about me, but in a court of genuinely objective observers i happen to think that you're the one who'd end up looking bad.
PS: i'm currently unemployed and consequently have time to fart around on the net like this. but i don't troll conservative (or libertarian) blogs. even considering how much of it i have lately, i got better things to do with my free time
@steveAR
i don't like trolls, plain and simple. the proprietor of this blog is a liberal who posts articles written from a liberal point of view. for a hardline conservative to visit this blog and continually post contrary opinions is like someone visiting a site devoted to how great heavy metal is and then insisting in post after post that heavy metal music is terrible. what's the point other than angering people? there is none. you know going in that no one at that blog or website is interested in your point of view and all you want to do is aggravate them. what you're doing is stupid and considering how much of it you seem to do, almost frightening.
you actually think there's some value in confronting everybody who disagrees with you? there isn't. other than declaring yourself the winner of every argument you have with liberals, where exactly is all this getting you? have any liberal blog proprietors renounced their beliefs after being shown the error of their ways? has any liberal blog shut down rather than face the withering onslaught of conservative wisdom you have to offer? would it ever in a million years occur to you that sometimes people close comments threads due to how frighteningly oblivious you seem in debates? and lastly: why do all you guys seem to believe that anybody who hasn't heard your doctrinaire conservative horseshit is somehow missing out on the finer things in life? get over yourselves, for christ's sake. nobody's crying because you force them to confront such harsh truths about themselves and their political beliefs. they're crying because you bore the living crap out of them. you haven't got an original idea in your head.
(this is actually part one of the comment. for some reason it wouldn't post. is there a profanity filter on bon's posts or is it because i'm off topic?)
WHY ARE MY POSTS BEING DELETED? IF SOMEONE HERE HAS A PROBLEM WITH WHAT I'M WRITING, PLEASE TELL ME WHAT IS WRONG.
hello. i don't understand why you won't allow me to post my entire reply to steveAR, but i would like to request that you delete "part 2" there. it's kinda pointless without the first part. also, could i possibly get an explanation as to why you won't allow me to put it up? you're not obligated to give me one, but i am curious.
I don't think it's anything personal or deliberate, By. A few weeks ao, I spent quite a while writing a post in reply on some thread, and it didn't go through. Did it again, nothing. Went back next day, everything worked - it's the Internet.
Yeah, I kind of gave up on long comments (especially the kind that need to be split up) because blogger just seems to be stupid with it.
I don't think it's your fault or any particular problem with your posts. One suggests, though, you find a way to share a longer posts and link it. That might work better.
SteveAR, last time I checked, Gosnall is now engaged with the criminal justice system, and will receive a trial by jury of his peers. I sincerely apologize that your co-conspirators have been deprived of taking him out with another act of domestic terror. Shouldn't you be out planting warfarin tainted nail bombs where decent people like to gather? Isn't there a Democratic congresswoman somewhere whose brain is waiting for your next bullet? More little girls for you to shoot through the heart for the crime of being near a Democrat in public? A gay youth you haven't yet crucified on a lonely fencepost? Get busy, we're not all dead yet.
I'm not deleting people's posts. You're tripping the spam filter. It's odd. I clean it out most days and tell the system to post the things caught in it.
innocent bystander:
...i'm writing to you because i honestly think that what you're doing is sub-moronic and purposeless.
Really? You admit you're a liberal. Liberals say they want debate, but there you are saying you don't. You don't like what conservatives say, so you don't address what they say, nor do you care to learn anything. These aren't my words, these are yours. And you call me sad? Spare me.
Allan:
...last time I checked, Gosnall is now engaged with the criminal justice system, and will receive a trial by jury of his peers.
Yes, and thanks to pro-abortion zealots like yourself, not before your policy caused the deaths of many babies, perhaps thousands.
See, the right way to dump Roe, the way I support, is the way Texas is going about it. As the impact of Roe is being shown, more of what Texas is doing will proceed. Nice and legal.
So the question remains, what are the pro-abortion zealots going to do? Well, if they are like most decent people, they will wonder how they could have been so wrong and then move on. But if they are like you and the pro-abortion officials in Pennsylvania, people who sanction murder, I shudder to think what you're capable of. It is you who are descended from the supporters of Scott v. Sandford, those who have no respect for human beings. You're dangerous.
Yeah, I just realized I had a reply that was gobbled as well. It would be beating a dead horse now, but good to know in the future.
That's refreshing: Steve is sort of comparing himself to the old style abolitionists. I can now add to Steve's plus column: Doesn't believe in Time Cube, or in cavemen riding dinosaurs, or that black people are not human. Awesome.
However, to extend the argument 'and fetuses are human with full rights too' misses the important fact that one critical group that is not asserting this either way are the fetuses themselves. The slaves were very much involved in making themselves not slaves, fetuses are sort of there. Women on the other hand, are quite active in asking what can and can't be done with their body.
I recall that a few months ago, the Tea Party was all in a huff because the government was going to make health care choices for people which equaled 'tyranny'. What happened Tea Party? You used to be all about the music!
When the government makes tepid suggestions about choices that might improve one's health and quality of life, it's tyranny.
When the right-wing/tea-party/"pro-life" (in no sense of the words) scream about whores and sluts and how you should have kept your legs closed if you didn't want babies you craven godless whorebag don't you dare kill that innocent baby god hates you slut now go die giving birth to that precious baby... well, that's just for her own good, you know. Those little ladies have such trouble making the right choices and Jesus is the way.
TL;DR -- It's tyranny when someone they don't like does it, it's saving babies from those evil wimmens and saving the wimmens from themselves when they do it.
abanterer:
However, to extend the argument 'and fetuses are human with full rights too' misses the important fact that one critical group that is not asserting this either way are the fetuses themselves. The slaves were very much involved in making themselves not slaves, fetuses are sort of there. Women on the other hand, are quite active in asking what can and can't be done with their body.
That doesn't make sense. No matter how it's spun, fetuses are still the same species as any human being that is born; they are human beings and aren't going to be anything else.
To me, you're argument doesn't stand for three other reasons. One, there were no mass slave uprisings in the U.S. (something akin to the Spartacus uprising against Rome); the most famous legal attempt to end it outright, Scott v. Sandford, failed. While I'm sure slaves didn't like what was happening to them and would have wanted to be free, there wasn't much they did about it. But that doesn't mean slavery should have been maintained.
Two, nobody, including women, legally has the right to do just anything to their bodies. For example, we have the right to drink alcohol, but we don't have the right to drink and then put other people at risk by driving while intoxicated; before anyone says it, I'm not comparing being pregnant with being intoxicated.
Third, newborn babies don't literally have the ability to express themselves through language until usually around their first birthday. I don't think you would consider non-speaking human infants as humans without civil rights, yet the criteria you set could very well apply to non-speaking human infants. To me, a human fetus is still the same species as every human being born, and therefore guaranteed the same rights. Roe v. Wade, just as Scott did in the 1850s, claims otherwise.
I submit that there have been no fetus uprising themselves as well, ever. However, there is the other point that many of the first abolitionists were themselves escaped slaves. Slaves certainly did escape their status when they could, when they had the opportunity, and the means. And when they did win their freedom, they often gathered and fought to end it. That is a fact; they were not helpless entities unable to enforce their rights as humans.
Similarly, women also have rights to their own bodies, and to deny them the rights to their own health and well being turns them into slaves as well. It turns out that drinking alcohol is not a basic human right, but the right to make their own health decisions is.
A fetus is a potential human - it may not survive to full birth, it may not be healthy enough to survive long outside of the womb. It is totally dependent on the woman until well into gestation, a fact that was well prepared for in Roe. Until it is actually born, by hook or by crook, there is no person to exercise rights. I'm not saying that it has none - it does, but that is also addressed in Roe, which is why you even have the trimester system in the first place. And they are not sufficient to overwhelm the rights of the woman to force her to bear a child that for whatever reason she does not want.
And this law, making a woman see a sonogram before the procedure, is still a silly attempt to shame women - I see it having minimal effect if any. Like I said, everyone's seen a sonogram of a baby at some point, and they look pretty identical.
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