Fuck. This anti-woman bullshit never ends. The bills are coming so fast at us, it’s hard to keep up. Today, I give to you two bills from Mississippi, one designated to make it harder for a woman to take the RU-486 pill, and the other strives to countermand Roe v. Wade without directly repealing it.
Let’s tackle the RU-486 pill bill first since it’s marginally less-loathsome than the other bill. In Mississippi, a woman can take the RU-486 as telemedicine while a doctor monitors her remotely. For example, a woman in the country may not have a pharmacy and a clinic that are near each other, so she can’t visit both in one day. Obviously, it helps if she can take the meds while receiving instructions by phone or the internet. Well, the Mississippi House just passed a bill that would require a doctor to be in the same room as the woman when she ingests the pill, and the bill is on its way to the Senate. Really. I wish I were making this up, but I’m not. One Democrat was quoted as saying he was damn sick and tired of all these motherfucking anti-abortion bills being considered in this House! Ok, I’m paraphrasing slightly, but it’s basically what he said*.
That bill is a cakewalk compared to the next one, however. Bill number two mandates that when a woman goes in for an abortion, the doctor has to search for a fetus’s heartbeat. If said heartbeat is found, the woman can’t get an abortion. There is an exception if the woman’s life is at risk or if the woman can prove she was raped or pregnant as a result of incest. How fucking generous of the state of Mississippi, but it also proves the hypocrisy of this bill and most of the bills like it. If pro-forced-birthers really truly believe that every life is sacred (ha!), then they wouldn’t make an exception for rape and incest. They would say as Rick Santorum did about rape**., “Suck it up, toots, and make lemonade from lemons. It’s a gift from God!”
Back to the bill. If a woman is less than six weeks pregnant (roughly when a heartbeat can be found), she would probably have to undergo the transvaginal probe – and, as an aside, if I never have to type those words again, it would still be too soon – which, again, is a wand shoved up her vagina for no medical purpose. The language in this bill is similar to the language in the personhood amendment bill that was soundly defeated at the polls in November of last year, and Personhood Mississippi is giddy with excitement that this bill made it out of the House and is also on its way to the Senate.
House Judiciary B Committee Chairman Andy Gipson, R-Braxton, says the bill would ban 90 percent of the abortions in the state because most women seek abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detectable.
They are not going directly after Roe v. Wade, but they are making it as impotent (pun intended) as possible. An abortion ban after six weeks. I can’t even with this bullshit any more. I’m tired and sad and pissed off and overwhelmed by the onslaught of forced-birth bills/laws that are being passed all over our nation. We have to fight back as hard as we can and not stop until we win because the alternative is unthinkable.
h/t @underwoodchamp on the Twitter Machine for both links.
*If he were in a Samuel Jackson movie.
**I’ve captured the spirit of his statement, if not the actual words.
I’m slightly confused about the second one (and yeah, I will go read it)… if it’s really a direct ban on abortions after 6 weeks, isn’t that just going to get overturned? How does the probing play in? To prove you’re at 6 weeks?
Um, ignore comment above. Haven’t had coffee and somehow I skipped reading a whole paragraph.
It’s amazing how main stream news outlets obscure the real issues by focusing on inflammatory personalities and rhetoric. At first I was just unclear as to why tax payers are obliged to fund birth control or abortions. Seemed like a non-starter to me.
Nice job of spelling it out on the this blog. Now I get it.
If you want to hear something really bad, check out this: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/pennsylvania-gov-women-just-close-your-eyes-
I don’t even know what to do anymore. Just before I read your entry I was looking up information on women who have actually been arrested for having miscarriages (btw, as of Wednesday Bei Bei Shuai has been in a jail for a year because she tried to commit suicide while pregnant) And you know what? That reminded me how horrifying all of this was A YEAR AGO. It’s gotten so bad that we’ve gotten desensitized to how fucking shitty it was then.
I don’t even… They don’t care. They don’t even think of us as people. :/ Someone else just pointed out to me that the women IN THEIR OWN PARTY haven’t been putting all of these bills and amendments forward, it’s been almost ALL men. And they have women in their party who are against abortion and birth control. But they don’t even think enough of us to let us deal with each other on this topic.
I know, spitfire. I wrote about Bei Bei Shuai last April, and like you, I thought this shit was bad back then. The GOP is really out. of. control.
They’ve become sadistic assholes, pure and simple.
True that. And, they let the inmates run the asylum, and now we see the true-believers running the show, especially on a state level.
And we’re going to see a raise in back-ally abortions if they all get their way. But this will cheer you up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5YrB7TpT1Y
There is a subset of people who relish the suffering of others. It’s a luxury to them, as long as it’s from a distance, so they never get their own lily-white hands dirty in the process.
I used to think Cheney was the leading exemplar of this. My mistake.
I hate the fucking assholes with a blind red passion! They don’t give a flying fig about women. In fact, I believe they hate us. Nothing else can explain the flood of bills being passed to restrict and even take away a woman’s right to control of her own body!
Now I’d better go practice some measured breathing before my blood pressure causes the top of my head to blow off.