State lawmakers introduced nearly 400 such bills in 2015, 47 of which passed, according to a report released this week by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The new laws are concentrated in Southern states, where many abortion providers have already been forced to close. At least 20 bills were introduced in response to undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress, which purport to show Planned Parenthood engaging in illegal sales of fetal tissue—claims that have not be verified by any of the numerous investigations launched since. At least a dozen states tried to defund Planned Parenthood. Others tried to ban fetal tissue research completely, or to impose costly new regulations about medical waste disposal.
Arkansas legislators earned a dubious distinction for being most rabidly anti-abortion. The state enacted more restrictive laws than any other, including a Planned Parenthood defunding measure. Arkansas also passed a bill that forces women to wait 48 hours between an initial consultation and an abortion procedure, and requires doctors to tell patients that medication abortion can be “reversed,” an assertion that isn’t supported by scientific evidence. North Carolina and Oklahoma increased their mandatory waiting periods to a full 72 hours, joining three other states with the country’s longest forced wait between state-mandated counseling and an abortion procedure.
Kansas and Oklahoma pioneered a new tactic for limiting the window in which abortion is legal, passing laws that criminalize doctors who perform a technique known as “D and E,” which is commonly used to end a pregnancy in the second trimester. The Center for Reproductive Rights calls it the “safest, most effective, and most commonly used” procedure in the second trimester. It’s also the only one doctors use after 14 weeks of pregnancy, and so the ban could effectively make all abortions after that point illegal. Legislators in West Virginia, where only two health clinics provide abortions, overrode the governor’s veto to criminalize abortion after 20 weeks. Wisconsin also passed a 20-week ban.
Texas managed to put up more red tape for women seeking abortion care: an “abortion ID” law, which requires women to provide “proof of identity and age” to verify that they are not a minor. The measure “could serve as a backdoor ban on undocumented women and low-income women,” the Center for Reproductive Rights wrote, because they are more likely than others to lack the necessary identification.
A number of the legislators who introduced these bills were Tea Party members who swore to their supporters that they were not interested in social issues and instead were focused on lowering taxes and reducing the size of government.
But the truth is that these conservative Republicans are NEVER going to stop attacking a woman's right to choose, and will continue chipping away at the Roe vs Wade decision until either they manage to get repealed or until people stop electing them.
Anybody who thinks any differently has simply not been paying attention.
And as a result I am sure we will see more cases like the Tennessee woman who recently tried to perform her own abortion with a coat hanger.
But don't worry, now she's in jail for it. Which I'm sure is exactly how the Republicans want it.
Fora ll their handwringing and ranting over illegals and minorities, do they not realize that those re the groups most likely to have MORE children when they shut down abortion and ban contraception(which is also on the agenda?) Rich white women will always be able to pay for an abortion; the poor never can and won't. So they will either just have more babies for us all to take car of, or they will try and kill themselves. WTF is the matter which people? Want to make abortion infrequent? Then make sure everyone has access to free contraception, and knows how to sue it. Oh, and maybe teach your boys that sex is not just fun and games, but serious? That girls and women are to be respected, not used and tossed away? Does that fly in the face of the GOP opinion of the female sex? You bet...we are nothing more than vessels to them. They are evil. There is no other word to describe the current GOP. If there is a Satan, he has taken over the Republicans.
ReplyDeleteSatan's biggest joke was to invent religion.
DeleteIf there is a GOD, he has taken over the Republicans. Satan is the chillest mofo in the Bible; God is the one who judges and condemns. And who demonizes (ha) free will. And choice. And sex. The Republican Party today is all God, and that ain't a good thing.
Delete@5:03: You're asking these willfully ignorant Repubs to use logic, and logic isn't in their playbook because it messes with their religion. If they were logical they would make sure that sex education was taught to students in at least middle school, with advice and instructions on using birth control so that abortions would eventually be unnecessary.
DeleteBut the other problem is that the bible-thumping Dominionists (like the Duggars) want couples to have as many little Dominionist babies as possible so that their dreams of taking over the country will eventually come true. Of course, whether that's before or after the "Apocalypse" is a matter for some interpretation......
Seems to me there is no answer to this major, major problem, other than sane, logical people getting out to vote and making sure as many other sane, logical people do as well.
Thank you.
ReplyDelete