It will be hard for me to say this more clearly than the Charlotte Observer already did in the op-ed calling the Legislature’s abortion-restriction bill “an insult to women.” So let me just give a big kudos to Gov. Bev Perdue for vetoing the bill today, her 10th veto this year of bills passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. (Ten vetoes will happen when the governor is a moderate Democrat and the Legislature conservative Republicans.)
The bill, which the Observer describes as the first of its kind in the nation, would’ve required not just an ultrasound (following a 24-hour waiting period), but for a doctor to describe what the ultrasound is showing. The bill included eliminating state funds for Planned Parenthood as well.
Let’s be clear: this is not about preventing abortion. Because the best, most effective way to do that is to increase funding for Planned Parenthood and other programs that educate women and provide contraception. If people whose stomachs are turned by abortion were serious about keeping abortion from happening, they would do the exact opposite of what this Legislature, and others around the country, tried to do. They wouldn’t be trying to shut down the organizations that provide women, in particular poor women, birth control, basic health care (including pap smears and mammograms) and – Hello – prenatal care. (They also wouldn’t be axing education and health care if they were truly “pro-life,” but that’s a separate issue.)
The bill was indeed an insult to women. It comes from a place of deep distrust of any woman – college student, middle-aged mother, whomever – to make decisions about her own pregnancy and childbearing. And, though nearly anyone can agree that terminating a pregnancy is a tragedy, I am and always will be vehemently suspicious of letting the government get involved with that decision.
(I don’t understand conservatives on this issue. Y’all are convinced that Democrats want to take your God-given right to own an assault rifle – even though no one has tried since the assault weapons ban expired during the last administration – and you think every attempt to simultaneously lower taxes and the cost of health care is either socialism or Nazism or somewhere in between, but you’re totally ok with a bunch of guys elected to two-year terms encoding in state law what your highly trained doctor can and can’t say to you during a medical exam?)
Abortion restrictions of this type are insult to women.
This part may be difficult to read. I intended it to be.
Let’s take me, for example. If you read this blog, you probably know that I was raped not quite four years ago. Afterwards, when I went to the hospital, I was offered the “Plan B” pill – basically a high dose of the common birth control pill, administered in two doses several hours apart. Hell yes I took it, and if it hadn’t been offered I would’ve demanded it.
But let’s say I’m unfortunate enough to live in a state that bans Plan B, or maybe I didn’t go to the ER. Now, a few weeks after being raped, I’m pregnant. Now what?
Well, maybe I happen to live in one of the 90 percent of U.S. counties without an abortion provider. So I have to find a provider somewhere else. Maybe I have a car. Maybe not, and I have to hitch a ride from a friend. Maybe the doctor I find is in the next county, or maybe two or three hours away. Assuming I get the ride, there’s that 24-hour waiting period to consider. So now I’m getting a hotel room on top of the gas and food (for my friend, too, if I’m hitching that ride).
Maybe I have a job with paid time off. Or maybe I work hourly, in which case I’m not only losing money, but I most likely don’t have health insurance. Boy, I sure hope I had hundreds of dollars lying around. For not just one doctor’s visit, but at least two, assuming I don’t need any follow-up care.
In the doctor’s office, I’m already 99 percent sure I don’t want and can’t handle this baby. But before the doctor can perform the medical procedure I came here for, she has to perform an ultrasound. Now, if you’ve ever been pregnant at this stage, you know that an ultrasound isn’t the thing you see in the movies where the doctor squirts jelly on your stomach and views from the outside. It’s a wand placed inside your vagina far enough to view the uterus.
Keep in mind that hypothetical me was raped a few weeks ago. Nothing traumatic about that.
I can tell you from personal experience that, within weeks of what happened to me, I was most definitely NOT in the emotional shape to deal with something like the above scenario.
Ok, ok, lots of abortion opponents who like to think of themselves as reasonable create little loopholes in their ethics like “only in cases of rape or incest.” Go back through what I just wrote, only this time pretend it’s not about what could’ve happened to me. Pretend the same thing is happening to a teenager, or a single mom who’s the sole source of income for her family, or a woman who desperately wants her baby, but knows that having him will kill both of them.
As with anything in life, reproductive rights are far too complicated and personal to be handled by public legislation. Any government is woefully inadequate to deal with this, and therefore should trust women, families and their doctors to decide what’s best for them.
And, for what it’s worth… if you’re someone who’s ever thought, forwarded an email or bought a bumper sticker telling the government to get out of your gun cabinet, then you should absolutely respect my wish that the same government stay out of my uterus.
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