“State Sanctioned Rape”: When States Abuse Women
Here’s what a woman in Texas now faces if she seeks an abortion.
Under a new law that took effect three weeks ago with the strong backing of Gov. Rick Perry, she first must typically endure an ultrasound probe inserted into her vagina. Then she listens to the audio thumping of the fetal heartbeat and watches the fetus on an ultrasound screen.
She must listen to a doctor explain the body parts and internal organs of the fetus as they’re shown on the monitor. She signs a document saying that she understands all this, and it is placed in her medical files. Finally, she goes home and must wait 24 hours before returning to get the abortion.
“It’s state-sanctioned abuse,” said Dr. Curtis Boyd, a Texas physician who provides abortions. “It borders on a definition of rape. Many states describe rape as putting any object into an orifice against a person’s will. Well, that’s what this is. A woman is coerced to do this, just as I’m coerced.”
“The state of Texas is waging war on women and their families,” Dr. Boyd added. “The new law is demeaning and disrespectful to the women of Texas, and insulting to the doctors and nurses who care for them.”
That law is part of a war over women’s health being fought around the country — and in much of the country, women are losing. State by state, legislatures are creating new obstacles to abortions and are treating women in ways that are patronizing and humiliating.
Twenty states now require abortion providers to conduct ultrasounds first in some situations, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization. The new Texas law is the most extreme to take effect so far, but similar laws have been passed in North Carolina and Oklahoma and are on hold pending legal battles.
Alabama, Kentucky, Rhode Island and Mississippi are also considering Texas-style legislation bordering on state-sanctioned rape. And what else do you call it when states mandate invasive probes in women’s bodies?
“If you look up the term rape, that’s what it is: the penetration of the vagina without the woman’s consent,” said Linda Coleman, an Alabama state senator who is fighting the proposal in her state. “As a woman, I am livid and outraged.”
States put in place a record number of new restrictions on abortions last year, Guttmacher says. It counts 92 new curbs in 24 states.
“It was a debacle,” Elizabeth Nash, who manages state issues for Guttmacher, told me. “It’s been awful. Last year was unbelievable. We’ve never seen anything like it.”
Yes, there have been a few victories for women. The notorious Virginia proposal that would have required vaginal ultrasounds before an abortion was modified to require only abdominal ultrasounds.
Yet over all, the pattern has been retrograde: humiliating obstacles to abortions, cuts in family-planning programs, and limits on comprehensive sex education in schools.
If Texas legislators wanted to reduce abortions, the obvious approach would be to reduce unwanted pregnancies. The small proportion of women and girls who aren’t using contraceptives account for half of all abortions in America, according to Guttmacher. Yet Texas has some of the weakest sex-education programs in the nation, and last year it cut spending for family planning by 66 percent.
The new Texas law was passed last year but was held up because of a lawsuit by the Center for Reproductive Rights. In a scathing opinion, Judge Sam Sparks of Federal District Court described the law as “an attempt by the Texas legislature to discourage women from exercising their constitutional rights.” In the end, the courts upheld the law, and it took effect last month.
It requires abortion providers to give women a list of crisis pregnancy centers where, in theory, they can get unbiased counseling and in some cases ultrasounds. In fact, these centers are often set up to ensnare pregnant women and shame them or hound them if they are considering abortions.
“They are traps for women, set up by the state of Texas,” Dr. Boyd said.
The law then requires the physician to go over a politicized list of so-called dangers of abortion, like “the risks of infection and hemorrhage” and “the possibility of increased risk of breast cancer.” Then there is the mandated ultrasound, which in the first trimester normally means a vaginal ultrasound. Doctors sometimes seek vaginal ultrasounds before an abortion, with the patient’s consent, but it’s different when the state forces women to undergo the procedure.
The best formulation on this topic was Bill Clinton’s, that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Achieving that isn’t easy, and there is no silver bullet to reduce unwanted pregnancies. But family planning and comprehensive sex education are a surer path than demeaning vulnerable women with state-sanctioned abuse and humiliation.
By: Nicholas Kristoff, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 3, 2012
“Not All Facts Are Created Equal”: The Right To Know Versus The Right To Withhold
In the debates over pre-abortion ultrasound bills, advocates often say such measures are vital to ensuring that women have all the relevant information. The argument is often based in part on the idea that abortion providers make money off of the procedures—and therefore may try to trick women into terminating their pregnancies. The reasoning also assumes that when deciding to have an abortion, a woman should know the physical details of the fetus, like how many fingers and toes have developed. That’s why—in a messaging win for social conservatives—the pre-abortion sonogram requirement is often called a “Woman’s Right to Know” legislation.
But, Kansas Republicans may spoil all the fun. The state House is working on legislation that would allow doctors to withold information if it will help prevent an abortion, as well as requiring doctors to tell women that abortions increase odds of getting breast cancer—a theory many public health organizations reject. Forget right to know—the proposal promotes misinformation and distrust between doctors and patients. And that’s hardly the only disturbing part of the bill, which ostensibly is meant to cut back access to abortions.
Huffington Post’s John Celock has more details on the measure:
The latest bill — which is scheduled to be discussed by a legislative committee for a second time on Wednesday — contains a number of provisions which would give the state one of the most sweeping anti-abortion laws in the nation. Among the provisions is one which would exempt doctors from malpractice suits if they withhold information — in order to prevent an abortion — that could have prevented a health problem for the mother or child. A wrongful death suit could be filed in the event of the death of the mother.
Other provisions include requiring women to hear the fetal heartbeat prior to an abortion, taking away tax credits for abortion providers and removing tax deductions for abortion-related insurance. The bill also requires that women be told that abortions would increase the risk of breast cancer, a controversial theory that the World Health Organization, the National Cancer Institute and gynecological groups in the United States and the United Kingdom have said is incorrect.
The bill was scheduled for discussion on Wednesday, but it looks like technical amendments have it stuck in committee a bit longer. But, Kansas’ state House is among the most far right in the country and will likely pass the measure—the Senate, on the other hand, is up in the air. In the meantime, Celock reports that Kansas Governor Sam Brownback—a vehement social conservative—is friendly towards the bill.
If passed, the bill would make it much harder to make the already dubious claim that the pro-life movement is all about giving women “the facts.”
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, March 1, 2012
Nebraska Revives “Justifiable Homicide” Bill To Protect Fetuses
Remember that bill in South Dakota a year ago that would have redefined “justifiable homicide” in a way that could have made killing abortion providers legally defensible? South Dakota had the good sense to shelve it, but then Nebraska brought it back. Now it appears the Cornhusker State is at it again.
RH Reality Check flagged the revival of the bill, which was debated in the Nebaska Senate judiciary committee this week:
Senator Mark Christensen introduced the legislation. He stated in committee that the bill would “make it clear that an individual may use force to protect an unborn child under the same circumstances that an individual may use force to protect any third person as currently provided under the law.”
The piece also quotes from the statement of state Sen. Brenda Council, a member of the committee. She noted that in the 2009 incident in which an anti-abortion extremist killed Kansas doctor George Tiller, the assassin attempted to use exactly this type of “justifiable homicide” argument:
Under your amendment, a person who believes that someone who was assisting a woman to obtain an abortion is threatening the life of the unborn child and would use that as a self-defense argument I am certainly aware of the case where that argument was made by an individual who shot and killed a doctor who was known to provide abortion services. And his self-defense argument was: I was protecting the unborn child, and I have a right if I believe that unborn child’s life is being threatened.
By: Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones, March 1, 2012
“The Second Coming”: Women Don’t See GOP’s War On Contraceptives As About Religion
Some Republicans thought the fight over birth control coverage would cost President Obama the election. Instead, it may have unleashed a second coming of the Anita Hill controversy, alienating women who otherwise might be attracted to a fiscally conservative, small government message.
The Obama administration looked weak at first when the Catholic Church balked at regulations requiring religious-affiliated institutions such as universities and hospitals to cover birth control under their employees’ health insurance. The White House had not lined up women to defend birth control as a critical part of preventive healthcare, so the chaste church elders dominated the dialogue, presenting it as an issue of religious liberty. The idea that women had the liberty, as well, to decline the rules offered by the church—particularly in cases where the female employees did not practice Catholicism—took longer to emerge.
But now, lawmakers at the state and federal level (along with presidential candidates) are continuing to hammer away at the issue, and it’s a dangerous game. The Senate today voted down a bill that would allow any employer to deny healthcare coverage of anything if it violates his or her moral principles, a standard so broad it invalidates any federal health insurance standards (which may well be the point). Even if the law were limited to religious teachings only, what would prevent a business owner who is a Jehovah’s Witness from denying coverage of transfusions? Or a Christian Scientist from denying coverage of any kind of medicine at all?
As if on script, supporters of the bill say, “It’s not about contraception,” and it is this repeated comment that stands to get them into the most trouble with female voters. If you’re not of the gender that can get pregnant, you have the luxury of seeing the issue as theological. If you stand to lose control over your life and future because you can’t prevent yourself from becoming pregnant, it is indeed all about contraception. The lecture sounds particularly annoying to a woman when it is being made by men, as has largely been the case on the moral exception bill. It’s the same as when male lawmakers were so utterly baffled and skeptical when Anita Hill told a story of sexual harassment that has been shared by so many, many other women.
Virginia state lawmakers took it even further, considering a bill that would have required women to have ultrasound exams before getting an abortion. Many women found the whole basis of the bill to be fairly insulting, since it suggested that women really have no idea what goes on in their bodies and need to be schooled about it before having an abortion. That could be the only reason a woman would seek an abortion, the thinking went—she simply was too simple or ignorant to know what she was doing. But the mostly male lawmakers knew.
Except that they didn’t. Remarkably, in seeking to teach women about their own bodies, they hadn’t done much learning on their own. They did not know that the jelly-on-the-belly sonogram that makes for such touching scenes in movies is not done in the first trimester of pregnancy (when the vast majority of abortions are performed) because the pregnancy hasn’t developed enough at that point to see anything. Women at that stage of pregnancy must undergo a “transvaginal probe,” an invasive procedure. The phrase itself made some lawmakers so uncomfortable that they didn’t want it uttered aloud during debate, so as not to offend the young pages. The bill was watered down somewhat, so that women would not have to endure a procedure critics described as state-sponsored rape. But the guts of the bill passed the state Senate and are making their way to the governor, who will sign it.
The contraception legislation may well do what it was intended to do—shore up the social conservative base of the Republican party and convince some people that Obama or Democrats are antireligion and pro big government. But proponents also risk energizing a group of women who long ago earned the right to control the size and timing of their families. For those women, it is, indeed, all about contraception.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, March 1, 2012
“Coat Hanger Legislation”: Virginia Passes Sonogram Bill After All
Protests and national attention couldn’t stop legislators from ushering ultrasound legislation through the statehouse.
In the end, even Jon Stewart couldn’t kill the Virginia ultrasound bill. After more than a week of protests and national attention, the state Senate passed an amended version of the measure Tuesday afternoon which will require women seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound 24 hours ahead of the procedure. The Senate did unanimously pass an exemption for victims of rape and incest, but other amendments fell flat, including one to mandate insurance coverage of the sonograms. The House has already passed a version of the bill and it appears now to be headed for law.
Much of the protesting focused on “transvaginal” ultrasounds, highly invasive procedures that would be required to get a clear image of a fetus in the very early stages of pregnancy. Opponents called the bill a “state rape” mandate. The Daily Show even had a bit on it. Public support for the measure tanked and, under pressure, the state’s socially conservative Governor Bob McDonnell announced he opposed requiring transvaginal sonograms for women. It looked like a victory, until Republicans came back with a revised version of the bill, mandating transabdominal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions. The governor has said he’d support an amendment bill.
The new requirement may be less invasive, but the bill lacks basic logic: if a woman gets an ultrasound early in her pregnancy, the transabdominal ultrasound won’t show anything. “I might as well put the ultrasound probe on this bottle of Gatorade—I’d see just as much,” said Democrat state Senator Ralph Northam.
As the only doctor in the chamber, Northam was particularly vehement in criticizing the measure. “It’s telling me, it’s telling my colleagues how to practice medicine,” he said. “And it’s coming from nonphysicians.
“Nobody in this room would choose or like to have a woman have an abortion,” Northam continued. To actually decrease abortion rates, “we need to talk about things like education, promoting abstinence amongst our children before marriage, about access to healthcare, and contraception for our young women.”
Democrat Louise Lucas gave the most impassioned speech against the measure. “This is a veiled effort to guilt women, ” she said. “Women who want to have abortions will go to back alleys. Women will die.”
The bill’s sponsor and those supporting the measure didn’t say much to defend the bill. They just passed it.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, February 28, 2012
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