Abortion is the Impasse

[Stephen Morgan]

morgan you are such a charmer.

Charm is a way to manipulate people, which is a practice which has no place in a society which has discovered the unique appeal of argumentation.

[The Consul]

I wonder if there were a policy vote that abortion would only be legal for black welfare mothers with a sterilization stipulation if the over burdened white godful mob might bend out a little compromise to their secret need of such woeful spite.

[seemslikeadream]

Pregnant Women Who Lose Babies Face Criminal Charges In Mississippi, Alabama
By Marie Diamond on Jul 1, 2011 at 12:25 pm
This year, the Georgia legislature considered a bill that would require women to prove their miscarriages “occurred naturally” and weren’t secret abortions. In a similar vein, the Guardian reports that states including Mississippi and Alabama are charging dozens of women with murder or other serious crimes who have miscarried or had stillbirths:
Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.[...]
In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state’s “chemical endangerment” law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes. Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way.[...]
The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth. Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with “chemical endangerment” of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.
“That shocked me, it really did,” Kimbrough said. “I had lost a child, that was enough.”
Kimbrough is now facing a 10-year sentence if her case is not reversed on appeal — a 10 year sentence that will deprive her three other children of their mother.
A common tactic by prosecutors is singling out a group of women who are unlikely to draw public sympathy — women who may have used drugs while pregnant — to blur the line between abortion and homicide. Rennie Gibbs, for example, was 15 when she became pregnant and lost her baby in a stillbirth. Prosecutors charged her with a “depraved heart murder” after they discovered she had used cocaine, although there was “no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby’s death.” She now faces life in prison in Mississippi.
Targeting women who use drugs while they are pregnant is exactly the wrong policy for protecting the health of their future children. When a woman who is addicted to drug becomes pregnant, she needs immediate treatment to ensure that her addiction does not lead to serious birth defects for her child. But the threat of criminal prosecution — especially for a crime as serious as murder — will only drive her into the shadows. For this reason, dozens of public health organizations including the American Public Health Association have all denounced these prosecutions as harmful to both woman and child.
Other prosecutors are twisting laws designed to protect pregnant women and their unborn children into attacks on childbearers themselves. At least 38 states have introduced fetal homicide laws that were intended to be used against violent attacks by third parties like abusive male partners. But in South Carolina, only one case has been brought against a man for assaulting a pregnant woman, while up to 300 women have been arrested under the law, according to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
These prosecutions are part of a much broader assault on women’s reproductive rights. Indeed, it’s been a banner year for the right’s war on women, with state legislatures passing a slew of restrictive legislation across the country that not only impede women’s constitutional right to abortions but also jeopardize their access to basic health care. Four states have defunded Planned Parenthood so far, a new Ohio law bans abortions as early as six weeks without exceptions for rape or incest, and Texas is one of several states that now forces women seeking abortions to undergo waiting periods and mandatory sonograms. Some groups and lawmakers are even pushing to outlaw contraceptives like birth control pills.

[seemslikeadream]

Va. Governor McDonnell Expected to Issue "Emergency" TRAP Regulations Today

by Jodi Jacobson, Editor-in-Chief, RH Reality Check
August 25, 2011 - 4:42pm (Print)

Virginia Attacks Legal Abortion With Excessive Regulation

Aug 26, 11:24am
Rachel Maddow discusses Gov. McDonnell's new "Emergency" TRAP regulations in Virginia: "This is where we are at. The supposed small government cut the red tape, anti-regulation Republican governors using deliberately intrusive, shut-them-down, punitive regulations to get the government's way on what happens to your pregnancy."

Using a highly unusual "emergency" process, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is expected on Friday, August 26th to issue guidelines under what is known as a Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) law that will treat clinics providing first trimester abortions as a form of hospital. There are no medical or public health indications for such regulations.

In March, McDonnell, a virulently anti-choice Republican, signed SB 924, a law that requires clinics performing first trimester abortions to be regulated as hospitals. The bill gave the state's Board of Health 280 days to create and to enact the new regulations. Because McDonnell has invoked "emergency" status for the process, it is expected that temporary regulations--which will first be issued tomorrow and voted on by the Board of Health in September--will be put in place for a period of up to 18 months while permanent rules are developed through a more established process.

The catch is this: the McDonnell Administration is bypassing virtually all democratic processes in place for the creation of such regulations. Under the emergency designation, the normal process for public review and comment on regulations, which usually involves several opportunities for expert testimony and public comment and an economic impact assessment among other considerations, has been completely thrown out. Instead, draft regulations will be released tomorrow, and then voted on at a meeting of the Board of Health on September 15th. Instead of any public hearings or comment periods, the Board meeting will be the only time for the public to speak out. After the board votes on these temporary regulations, they will go to the governor for final approval. Moreover, the McDonnell administration has claimed it has the authority to rewrite without any further notice or input any temporary regulations presented to it for signature.

I'd say that is as close to government by fiat as it gets.

Analysts suggest that the temporary regulations will have an insidious effect of creating uncertainty among clinics as to what to do. Normally, such regulations would include a period of time--two years--during which clinics can make accommodations for any changes that might be necessary to comply with law, such as changes in physical structure, which can be expensive. But by issuing temporary regulations, the McDonnell Administration puts existing clinics on an uncertain path: Do they take on the expense of adapting to regulations that might be thrown out or replaced in 18 to 24 months when more "permanent" regulations are published? Or do they take the risk of being found in violation of medically-unnecessary regulations that are costly and impede their ability to provide services to women in need?

Virginia has a lot of company in creating medically unnecessary TRAP laws and regulations seeking to diminish access to abortion care. "Nearly 30 states have some sort of TRAP law," notes Elizabeth Nash, Senior Public Policy Associate at the Guttmacher Institute. "Regulations in some states essentially require clinics providing abortions to become miniature hospitals by mandating they meet ambulatory surgical standards."

The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) notes that TRAP laws generally fall into one of three categories: health facility licensing schemes, ambulatory surgical center requirements, and hospitalization requirements.

Health facility licensing schemes vary widely in their breadth and scope, but generally require that abortion facilities (but no other comparable offices or clinics) become licensed by the state and meet a range of regulations governing such matters as physical construction, staffing, and procedures.

Ambulatory surgical center ("ASC") requirements mandate that abortion providers – including, in at least one state, those that provide only first-trimester medical or surgical abortions – be licensed as ASCs, which are sophisticated facilities designed for the performance of a range of out-patient surgeries. "These requirements go far beyond the recommendations of the national health organizations in the field of abortion care, and converting a physician’s office or outpatient clinic into an ASC can be too expensive for many providers." notes a CRR report.

Hospitalization requirements mandate that abortions beyond a certain gestational age (generally at some point in the second trimester) be performed in a hospital. Although many states have some type of hospitalization requirement on the books, the vast majority of those laws are unenforceable because they been declared unconstitutional by a court ruling or state official, or have been superseded by another law.

In the case of Virginia, the TRAP laws specifically target first trimester abortion, one of the safest medical procedures performed in the United States. As I wrote in July:

More than 90 percent of abortions occur in the first trimester of pregnancy. Legal, early surgical termination of pregnancy performed by a trained provider is among the safest possible surgical procedures of any kind, anywhere. Early medical abortion (using medications to end a pregnancy) has a similar safety profile. Less than 3 percent of women who undergo early termination of pregnancy report any complications whatsoever; the vast majority of those "complications" are issues so minor they can be handled in a medical office or clinic. Fewer than 0.5 percent of women have serious complications from early termination that require hospitalization or surgery.

Does the "emergency push" by the McDonnell administration for abortion regulations come after a rash of problems found at clinics providing abortion care? No. There is no precipitating event other than the desire by Governor McDonnell and his Attorney General Bob Cuccinelli to turn back the clock on women's health and rights.

Advocates are unable to say at this time what will be included in the temporary regulations expected out tomorrow, but suspect they may in some form reflect those adopted in states such as South Carolina or in Kansas.

In many states with anti-choice legislatures and governors, such as Kansas, TRAP laws can literally become a farce. In July, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and the Kansas Department of Health put in place regulations targeting abortion clinics that proscribed the size of the janitor's closets, the temperature at which rooms should be kept, and the size of staff and patient lockers. They further required that clinics be prepared to deal with a "live birth," a completely superfluous and misleading regulation given that there is no such thing as a "live birth" in the first trimester of any pregnancy. In South Carolina, regulations mandate similarly irrelevant aspects of a clinic's physical plant, down to the types of faucets to be installed in sinks. The Kansas TRAP regulations were temporarily enjoined by a federal court in a suit brought by CRR and the American Civil Liberties Union.

These actions are separate from and go far beyond the normal regulation of health clinics--licensing of physical plant and providers, standards for cleanliness, operational standards for equipment used--under which abortion clinics and other clinics performing procedures with similarly low levels of risk must already comply.

While TRAP laws are ostensibly put in place to "protect women" or "protect patient safety," these terms are simply the Orwellian equivalent of a bait and switch. Guttmacher Institute's Nash notes that there is no credible research on the impact of these types of TRAP regulations on patient health or outcomes, and therefore no evidence that these improve either health or outcomes in any way. It is clear the vast majority of these laws are enacted simply to make create medically-unnecessary obstacles that anti-choice lawmakers hope will be prove too great for providers to overcome, and in turn make it more difficult for women to obtain early abortions by making clinics providing them more scarce. It is a nakedly obvious strategy to reduce access through harassment using the excuse of protecting health. In fact, the risks to women's health are far higher if they are forced by lack of access to seek abortions later in their pregnancies.

Contrast Virginia with the states of Delaware and Maryland, which in fact have or are considering laws regulating abortion clinics truly focused on patient safety, according to Nash. In these states, for example, laws actually do focus on protecting patient health and providing a safe and clean environment by writing regulations to ensure that the physical plant of a clinic is safe, functional, and sanitary without focusing on things like the size of patient lockers or the outcomes of operations not ever performed. In this way, Nash notes, states can focus on safety by allowing for each clinic to be configured differently as long as they meet basic standards.

Though legal organizations working to protect the rights and health of women can't predict what the regulations will contain and therefore are unable to comment on any legal strategy, women's groups from across Virginia have sprung into action to protest efforts by the McDonnell administration to strip women of their rights. The Virginia Coalition to Protect Women’s Health formed in 2011 as a response to the attack on women’s health and safety prompted by Senate Bill 924. The goal of the coalition is to "protect and ensure access for all women in all regions of Virginia to safe first-trimester abortion and comprehensive reproductive health care services," and to oppose "excessive, burdensome or unneeded regulations that undermine patient access to medical care for political or ideological purposes." The Coalition is expecting to collect at least 10,000 signatures to deliver to the Board of Health before the September hearing, and is requesting support from women in the state in this effort.

[seemslikeadream]

Then They Came for Your Birth Control

—By Kate Sheppard
| Wed Oct. 26, 2011 10:07 AM PDT
Birth Control futurowoman/Flickr

The "personhood" amendment on the Mississippi ballot on November 8 doesn't just ban all abortions—an issue that my colleague Tim Murphy has covered quite well. It would also likely outlaw several types of birth control and possibly make all forms of hormonal contraception illegal in the state.

Mississippi anti-abortion activists want to define personhood as starting when a sperm fertilizes an egg. In that case, it would likely make intrauterine devices (IUDs), which can prevent pregnancy by blocking the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus, illegal. (IUDs can also prevent sperm from fertilizing the egg in the first place, and IUDs with hormones also operate much like regular old birth control pills, but that doesn't seem to matter to anti-abortion activists.)

The measure would also almost certainly make Plan B, also known as emergency contraception or the "morning after" pill, illegal. This high dose of hormones is used to prevent a woman from ovulating, but anti-abortion groups also insist that it can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting (despite the fact that scientists say there's no evidence that's the case). Needless to say, anti-abortion groups don't like Plan B very much, either.

But the law could also introduce the possibility of banning any form of hormonal birth control. Generally, "the pill" (as well as the shot, the patch, and the ring) work by stopping ovulation. But some anti-abortion groups argue that there can be failures on that front, and the doses of hormone could possibly also work by stopping implantation should an egg and sperm still manage to meet up.

Irin Carmon has an excellent piece on the implications over at Salon:

If this initiative passes, and fertilized eggs on their own have full legal rights, anything that could potentially block that implantation—something a woman's body does naturally all the time—could be considered murder. Scientists say hormonal birth-control pills and the morning-after pill work primarily by preventing fertilization in the first place, but the outside possibility, never documented, that an egg could be fertilized anyway and blocked is enough for some pro-lifers. Indeed, at least one pro-Personhood doctor in Mississippi, Beverly McMillan, refused to prescribe the pill before retiring last year, writing, "I painfully agree that birth control pills do in fact cause abortions."

This kind of slippery slope reasoning has long been a favorite rhetorical strategy of anti-abortion groups, and the personhood measure fits into the strategy they've been using around the country for years. And as Carmon highlights, this isn't an "unintended consequence" of a vague ballot measure—it's part of the goal of extreme anti-abortion activists in the state.

[Stephen Morgan]

Isn't abortion outside the remit of the state legislature?

[Simulist]

I steer clear of anyone in white coats myself…

I trend that way, too — especially after a friend of mine, a medical doctor, once told me, "The best medical advice I can give you as your friend is this: do your best to stay away from doctors unless you think you might be really sick. You see, if there's really nothing wrong with you, some of us will still try and find something. Then, when we do, we'll treat it; you may get side effects from that. And then! — then we'll go ahead, and treat those, too. And before you know it, you're sick."

Strangely, that made a frightening amount of sense to me.

[seemslikeadream]

Virginia Ultrasound Bill: Republican Lawmaker Calls Abortion 'Lifestyle Convenience'

A top Republican legislative leader in Virginia described abortion as a "lifestyle convenience" during the floor debate on a controversial measure to require trans-vaginal ultrasounds before a woman can get an abortion.

State Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Woodstock) made the comment midday Tuesday as the House of Delegates took up consideration of the ultrasound bill. The bill -- which then passed the House 63 to 36 -- would require any woman seeking an abortion in the state to receive an ultrasound first. As an external ultrasound is not able to produce a necessary picture early in pregnancy, a trans-vaginal ultrasound would be needed to produce an image of the fetus.

While addressing the debate, Gilbert, the House's deputy majority leader, took to the floor to support the bill. The Shenandoah Valley lawmaker used his floor statement to describe most abortions as a "lifestyle convenience" for women. Witnesses said that Gilbert did not clarify which abortions he does not consider to be "lifestyle conveniences."

Within minutes of Gilbert's statement, two Democratic lawmakers -- Del. Mark Keam (D-Fairfax County) and Del. David Englin (D-Alexandria) -- both sent out the remarks on Twitter. Englin, who commented "Wow" in his Tweet about Gilbert's floor statement, said that Gilbert's exact words were "a matter of lifestyle convenience."

Gilbert has not returned a call from The Huffington Post for comment on his statement. Aides to Gilbert said the lawmaker was on the House floor and then in meetings off the floor following adjournment of today's session.

Debate on the bill ended shortly after Gilbert's statement, preventing Democratic lawmakers from responding. The bill's passage followed the state Senate's approval of a similar bill earlier this month. Virginia legislators are expected to pass final versions of the ultrasound bill before the legislative session ends in March. Lawmakers also passed the state's personhood bill today.

During the ultrasound bill debate, Englin offered an amendment requiring a woman's consent to the trans-vaginal ultrasound procedure, which was rejected by the Republican-controlled House.

Democrats have criticized Gilbert's floor statement, and Englin said that the statement is in line with previous Republican comments on the issue. He noted he had a conversation with one GOP lawmaker regarding his amendment where the lawmaker had told him that women had already made the decision to be "vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant."

"For him to be so dismissive of women to control their own reproductive decisions is shocking," Englin said. "This is not abortion as contraception this about women facing difficult circumstances. It is unfortunate that he used that language."

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) is expected to sign the ultrasound bill.

[seemslikeadream]

Virginia Poised To Enact ‘State-Sponsored Rape’ Law Forcing Women To Be Vaginally Probed Before Abortions


By Ian Millhiser on Feb 17, 2012 at 9:45 am
Earlier this month, a bill requiring women to receive an ultrasound before they can receive an abortion passed the Virginia senate, and it recently cleared a state house committee with an overwhelming majority. As Dahlia Lithwick explains, the effect of this bill would be to force most women to undergo a stunningly invasive procedure for no medical reason whatsoever. “Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced.”
In case Lithwick’s description doesn’t completely drive home what this means, here is a depiction of the procedure that women would be forced to endure under the Virginia bill:

Simply put, it is difficult to distinguish a law requiring women to be vaginally penetrated by a long metal object from state-sponsored rape. Worse, discussions among lawmakers leave little doubt that its supporters understood just what they were trying to write into law — they just didn’t care. As an unnamed lawmaker told a fellow Virginia delegate, a woman already consented to being “vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.”

Foster Friess, a major donor to the super PAC backing Rick Santorum, has apologized for a joke about contraception that prompted outrage from women's groups.
"Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives," Friess said on MSNBC on Thursday, adding: "The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly."

[wordspeak2]

(mistake, edited out)

[Allegro]

.
State Senator’s Comeback to Mandatory Ultrasound Bill:
Mandatory Rectal Exams for Men Seeking Viagra
— Mother Jones | By Maya Dusenbery | Tue Jan. 31, 2012 11:30 AM PST
— links in original

In a tongue-in-check effort to add “some gender equity” to a mandatory ultrasound bill proposed in Virginia, state Sen. Janet Howell proposed an amendment requiring men to undergo a rectal exam and cardiac stress test before getting prescriptions for erectile dysfunction drugs. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right?

Well, apparently not in this case. Legislators rejected Howell’s amendment Monday by a rather slim 21 to 19 margin. The original bill, which is expected to pass the full Senate on Tuesday, requires women to have an ultrasound and be offered an opportunity to view the image—despite the fact that a routine ultrasound is not considered medically necessary for a first-trimester abortion (PDF). Explaining her amendment on the Senate floor, Howell said, “It’s only fair, that if we’re going to subject women to unnecessary procedures, and we’re going to subject doctors to having to do things that they don’t think is medically advisory, well, Mr. President, I think we should just have a little gender equity here.”

Many states have such so-called “informed consent” laws (PDF), which, as MoJo’s Kate Sheppard has pointed out, are based on the premise that “women don’t know what’s in their uterus.” While abortion foes argue that ultrasounds are necessary to ensure that women fully grasp the consequences of their decision to abort, there’s no evidence to suggest that women don’t understand that abortion ends a pregnancy. Indeed, the Texas Tribune/New York Times recently reported on the effect of Texas’ similar new law, which was allowed to go into effect earlier this month even though its constitutionality is being challenged in court. The law has resulted in a “bureaucratic nightmare” but, according to both clinic directors and abortion opponents, it hasn’t caused a single woman to change her mind about getting an abortion.

[Project Willow]

Georgia Democrats propose limitations on vasectomies for men

As members of Georgia’s House of Representatives debate whether to prohibit abortions for women more than 20 weeks pregnant, House Democrats introduced their own reproductive rights plan: No more vasectomies that leave "thousands of children ... deprived of birth."

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/21/georgia-democrats-to-propose-limitations-on-vasectomies-for-men/?hpt=hp_c3

Earlier this month, Democratic Oklahoma Sen. Constance Johnson added – then withdrew – a provision to an anti-abortion bill that read "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." The state Senate passed the bill this month.

[American Dream]

Every Sperm is Sacred




The Catholic who is singing the lead does not believe in contraception... and neither do his many, many children, who are singing the backup.

[American Dream]

[crikkett]

Earlier this month, Democratic Oklahoma Sen. Constance Johnson added thrusted – then withdrew – a provision to an anti-abortion bill that read "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." The state Senate passed the bill this month.