Oklahoma moves toward making an embryo a legal person.
Considering the overwhelming rejection of the "personhood" concept -- that a fertilized embryo is a full person under the law -- by the voting public of several states, including Colorado (twice) and even Mississippi, you'd think the extremists behind this movement would finally see it as futile. But some speculate that their end-game is to get such an abortion ban passed so that it ends up being challenged legally, and thus challenging Roe, which would stand on shaky legs given the makeup the Supreme Court.
Now they've found a potentially far more successful way to get these measures made into law: find states with extremist GOP legislatures, and let them pass there. Case in point: Oklahoma, where a personhood bill may become state law very soon after passing both legislative chambers.
Reuters reported on Thursday, February 16:
The Republican-controlled state Senate voted 34-8 to pass the "Personhood Act" which defines the word person under state law to include unborn children from the moment of conception.
The measure now goes to the state House where pro-life Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than a 2-1 margin.
Oklahoma's Republican Governor Mary Fallin, who signed every anti-abortion bill sent to her last year, did not issue a reaction...
The consequences of passing "personhood" are obviously manifold, which explains: by defining "conception" as the start of personhood, such measures threaten the legal standing of everything from in vitro fertilization to the morning-after pill to miscarriages to many kinds of birth control -- and this particular bill has no rape or incest exceptions.
In a less legal sense, it pathologizes women who struggle with fertility (are their bodies murderers?), and contrary to its name, makes them into less than full persons. If this bill gets signed into law, it will be the first genuine personhood law that goes into effect.
Iowa considers a bill making abortion a felony punishable by 10 years in jail.
During the first wave of the "war on women" in 2011, Iowa banned most abortions after 20 weeks. But now a new bill is up to vote thanks to one of the most extreme members of that state's elected Tea Party officials, and it's one of the most draconian yet -- a full-on ban that scrubs out all references to abortion in Iowa law and sends everyone involved in providing abortions off to jail.
The bill:
would eliminate all mentions in Iowa law to allowing abortions, such as references to parental notification when pregnant teens seek abortions and in regard to health insurance coverage.
The bill would amend the code to make feticide -- performing or causing an abortion -- a Class A felony at any time during a pregnancy, not only after the second trimester. A Class A felony is punishable by up to 10 years and fine of no more than $10,000.
Kansas considers letting doctors lie to patients seeking abortions.
The entire year for reproductive rights in Kansas has been extremely rough. Last summer, the state came perilously close to shutting down the three remaining abortion providers in the state; a move that would have effectively banned abortion in Kansas, even though abortion is legal in the United States. The proposed law would have required abortion providers to conform to ridiculous standards for things like room temperature and the size of janitorial closets (not a joke).
Those plans may have been thwarted, but now state lawmakers are considering several new pieces of anti-abortion legislation that are even broader and more nefarious. Planned Parenthood of Kansas spokesperson Sarah Gillooly called one of the bills "the largest and most sweeping overhaul we've seen to date," which is saying something in Kansas. Worse yet, most lawmakers only learned of that bill's existence six days before the legislation went up for debate last week, giving the impression that Republicans were trying to ram the legislation through.
Supported by anti-choice groups like Kansans for Life and Republican lawmakers including Rep. Lance Kinzer, the recent legislation includes a dizzying array of abortion restrictions. Among them, via the HuffingtonPost and the Kansas City Star:
· Women would be required to undergo a sonogram and listen to the fetal heartbeat before receiving an abortion.
· Physicians would be exempted from malpractice lawsuits if they withheld information that could prevent an abortion. In other words, a physician could choose not to tell a woman something important about her own health if the doctor thought the woman might seek an abortion because of that information. If the woman then suffered health problems, she would have no legal recourse. (Though it is little consolation, her family could still sue the doctor if she died.)
· Abortion providers would be required to inform women of a link between abortion and breast cancer and reproductive health problems -- links that have been widely discredited over many years by the medical establishment.
· Providers would be required to inform women that fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks, another widely discredited myth anti-choicers have been propagating for years.
· Physicians would no longer be eligible for tax credits and exemptions for abortion-related insurance, drugs and expenses.
· Groups that perform abortions would be banned from providing sexual education materials for teenagers in schools.
The above examples make it clear that the GOP is continuing to throw anti-women measures against the wall to see what sticks -- and thus attempting a piecemeal chiseling away of women's bodily autonomy. The result is that even if the more extreme provisions go by the wayside, women's rights continue to be siphoned off. Even more insidiously, what we have is an attack from all sides with a very clear aim, which Melissa Harris-Perry described chillingly last year:
Women who can't control their fertility will be unable to compete for degrees or jobs with their male counterparts. Likewise, without affordable childcare women would be less likely to work outside the home. And without basic rights to organize, women teachers, nurses and other public sector workers would be compelled to accept lower wages and harsher working conditions, shoving many women out of the workforce altogether.
In other words, this isn't just a war on women's bodies, but on women's participation in the public sphere.
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