The Republican “War Against Women”: Pre-Abortion Transvaginal Sonograms Make Their Way Into Law
As a bill requiring transvaginal sonograms passes in Virginia, Texas goes about implementing the version that it passed last year.
The Virginia Legislature has been busy passing legislation to limit abortion and promote pro-life agendas. I wrote Tuesday how the state House passed a bill changing the legal definition of “person” to include fetuses starting at conception. But the body also passed a measure requiring women seeking an abortion to first have a sonogram 24 hours ahead of time. The state Senate already passed an identical measure and the state governor has said that he supports the initiative—which means it will almost definitely become law.
The measure requires a medical professional to administer the sonogram and then offer the woman the chance to hear the fetal heartbeat and listen to a description of the fetus. Because abortions occur early in pregnancies, these ultrasounds aren’t the ones most people imagine with a bit of jelly smeared on a woman’s stomach. No, these require a more invasive procedure: a transvaginal sonogram. A probe—with a lubricated condom covering it—is inserted into a woman’s vagina. The probe is attached to a monitor to show images in real time. While the bill allows woman to say they don’t want to see the images, in many cases, the monitor will generally be showing the images right next to her.
Not surprisingly, the debate got fairly brutal. One Republican delegate said most women seeking abortions do so for “lifestyle convenience.” In a statement later, he said he regretted the choice of words. Ultimately the bill passed the House by a vote 62 to 36, with six Republicans voting no.
As I wrote earlier, the personhood measure raises many questions regarding implementation, since Virginia would be the first state to successfully pass such a law. But such is not the case with the sonogram bill. Oklahoma and North Carolina have passed similar laws that are currently winding their way through the court system. And Texas’ measure is already in place, both in law and in clinics across the state.
Texas began enforcing its version of the sonogram requirement last week, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a temporary ban and issued an opinion that the law is constitutional. While a lawsuit against the law makes its way through the courts, clinics are already reporting logistical difficulties. The measure requires a 24 hour waiting period between the sonogram and the abortion procedure, a requirement which was also included in the Virginia bill, which forces women to arrange for two days of medical appointments. (Both states allow women who must travel a significant distance to have the sonogram only two hours ahead.) However, in Texas, the doctor performing the abortion must also be the one to perform the sonogram. That requirement has produced many problems for clinics, as sonograms are often performed by other medical professionals. Virginia’s measure has no such requirement. Similarly, Texas law requires that women hear a description of the sonogram procedure, whether or not they want to, a caveat that isn’t in Virginia’s law.
Don’t think that makes Virginia’s law less stringent though: unlike Texas, the bill offers no exemption for victims of rape or incest, who would also have to have the transvaginal sonogram and then be asked if they want to hear descriptions of the fetus and listen to the fetal heartbeat. It will also mean victims of rape will be forced to have a probe inserted into their vagina. Only in cases of medical emergencies can the requirement be waived.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, February 16, 2012
“Outlawing Contraception”: Virginia House Passes Personhood Bill
Republican delegate Bob Marshall says critics are overstating things when it comes to the personhood bill he is sponsoring in Virginia. Opponents of his bill have argued that not only does the measure grant legal protections to all fetuses beginning at conception, but it could also be construed to outlaw birth control.
The bill is ostensibly less stringent than similar measures that came up in Colorado and Mississippi. As Marshall points out, it does not directly outlaw abortion, but would force the courts to include embryos in definitions of person. “I think I struck a middle ground,” says Marshall.
Try telling that to the bill’s opponents, who fear the bill’s consequences for women’s health. The House rejected an amendment by Democratic delegate Virginia Watts that would have specifically protected birth-control access.
Marshall called the amendment “a vehicle to entrap me,” arguing it would have hurt the bill in court. By specifically allowing birth control, Marshall says, the courts could interpret the bill as prohibiting anything not specifically allowed. “If I were to accept any one of these,” he said, the courts could say “here’s Mr. Marshall, acknowledging unintended consequences.”
But Watts argues the bill already has that problem because it specifically allows in-vitro fertilization. The last section of Marshall’s bill notes that “nothing in this section shall be interpreted as affecting lawfully assisted conception.” In other words, in-vitro is okay. Watts contends that because the bill specifically allows in vitro, it therefore disallows any other acts that would interfere with conception—like birth control. “You said it doesn’t pertain to one thing, therefore it does to everything else,” says Watts. “That’s why my amendment was so crucial … anything that keeps that from being implanted in the womb, kills a person under this bill.”
The bill is headed to the state Senate, where no one seems to know what will happen. While the House committee that dealt with Marshall’s bill was stacked in favor of the Republicans, the Senate’s committee is almost split: seven Republicans who vote pretty consistently with the pro-life advocates, seven Democrats who usually vote pro-choice. Then there’s Senator Harry Blevins, a Republican who’s record is less absolute. Without Blevins’ vote, the bill would probably not make it out of committee. Neither Marshall nor Watts had a clear idea which way Blevins was leaning and the senator was unavailable for comment this afternoon.
Watts is hopeful the debate over her amendment specifically allowing birth control will highlight what’s at stake. “I think that my amendment being so clearly before the body really underscores what’s there,” she said. “Up until then, you could just obfuscate all this with a lot of verbiage.”
Meanwhile Marshall’s busy painting an almost inverse portrait of his bill. “People who are otherwise intelligent keep bringing up these red herrings,” he said, noting that “when it comes to sex a lot of people can’t think straight.” At least that’s something both sides can likely agree on.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, February 14, 2012
Mitt Romney And The GOP’s War On Birth Control
The night of the Florida Republican primary, Hotline National editor Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) Tweeted, “Romney line about religious liberty CLEAR reference to Obama health law on contraceptives. Sleeper issue in general.”
With the Colorado Republican caucuses on Tuesday, I can only respond, “Oh please oh please oh please.”
Here’s the real question: How much will former Gov. Mitt Romney and the Republican Party’s hostility to birth control cost them with voters, especially women voters, in the fall?
This is not about religion. This is about a Republican party actively campaigning against contraception, something that is enormously popular with the electorate. I would love nothing more than Mitt Romney going around the country telling voters he wants to take their birth control away, which he’s pretty much doing already. Seriously dude, bring it.
According to the Center for Disease Control, 99 percent of American women use birth control during their reproductive lifetime. According to a Reuters report on a Guttmacher Institute study, 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use some form of birth control banned by the church. And a NPR/Thompson Reuters poll found that 77 percent of Americans favor insurance coverage for the birth control pill.
In swing state Colorado, there are approximately 114,000 more women voters than men, and they vote in higher percentages than men do. Personhood measures that would ban birth control have failed repeatedly by landslide margins, and the 2010 version probably cost Ken Buck a Senate seat. Personhood even failed in Mississippi, the most religious-conservative state in the country.
Meanwhile all the Republican candidates are actively campaigning against Title X and family planning funding. A plank in the Republican platform upholds the “life begins at conception” foundation of “personhood”, which would ban the most commonly-used forms of contraception such as the Pill and IUDs. Mitt Romney has repeatedly embraced “personhood”, most notably in 2005 when he vetoed a bill expanding access to emergency contraception for rape survivors “because it would terminate a living embryo after conception”.
For those of you, like Mitt Romney, unsure how birth control works and why “personhood” would ban it Rachel Maddow goes into the Man Cave to explain it all to you.
As for the Obama administration’s decision that Catholic institutions have a year to figure out how to include birth control in their insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, Rep. Xavier Becerra, a Catholic, explained it beautifully on Meet the Press: Religious employers, like any other business that offers insurance, can’t discriminate against women by excluding reproductive healthcare.
Anyone who doubts the power of contraception and women’s healthcare as an issue need only see the blowback against the Komen foundation by supporters of Planned Parenthood. I’ve been in politics for 20 years, and I’ve never seen a public fusillade like this one. Komen badly underestimated not only how many Americans have used Planned Parenthood’s services—1 in 5—but how many people support Planned Parenthood because they provide healthcare, including birth control, without judgment.
The pundit class piled on George Stephanopoulos for asking a question about contraception at the January ABC News debate. Apparently since it didn’t fit within the Cool Kids Acceptable Topics list, it wasn’t worth asking. And Romney fumbled the question badly, just as badly as he did the question on releasing his taxes. It was the rhetorical equivalent of strapping the dog kennel to the top of his car.
But it’s entirely worth asking for the millions of average American working families who get by on $50,000 a year and can’t afford to have another kid. It’s entirely relevant to millions of American women whose economic and physical well-being is dictated by when and if they get pregnant. Self-determining the size of your family is a baseline economic issue.
Mitt Romney and the Republicans are welcome to campaign against contraception all they want, because they are on the wrong side of that issue with voters by a landslide.
By: Laura Chapin, U. S. News and World Report, February 6, 2012
“Personhood”: Romney Tries To Have It Both Ways
Trying to figure out where Mitt Romney stands on the issues can be difficult. Climate change, gun control, gay rights—the waffling is so bad, there are multiple websites devoted to it.
Now, with a number of states trying to pass laws that would redefine fertilized human eggs as people, Romney has been asked multiple times whether he thinks legal personhood should begin the moment a sperm penetrates an egg. He hasn’t been consistent on the subject.
In 2007, Romney told ABC News he supported a “Human Life Amendment” to the Constitution that would “make it clear that the 14th Amendment’s protections”—equal protection under the law, for example—”apply to unborn children.” The proposed amendment, long a part of the Republican Party platform, is the national equivalent of the state-level personhood measures that have proliferated in recent months. Both the state and federal versions of the proposals would extend legal rights to early term fetuses, effectively making all abortions illegal. Voters in Mississippi considered, and rejected, a ballot initiative on the matter on November 8, but activists recently launched similar efforts in Wisconsin and Georgia.
Supporting such a radical restriction on abortion rights represents a shift for Romney. As a Senate candidate in 1994, he declared, “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country,” and he continued to voice support for Roe v. Wade as governor of Massachusetts. These days, though, Romney says he is “pro-life” and that abortion should be “limited to only instances of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.” But the Human Life Amendment he has supported would go much further.
For years, social conservatives have tried and failed to get the two-thirds majority necessary to pass a Human Life Amendment in Congress. Rather than overturning Roe and sending the abortion debate back to the states, the majority of these measures have redefined personhood as beginning at conception—thus extending legal and constitutional rights to fertilized eggs.
The most recent effort on this front is HR 212, Rep. Paul Broun’s (R-Ga.) “Sanctity of Human Life Act.” As Mother Jones’ Nick Baumann has reported, the language of Broun’s bill is nearly identical to Mississippi’s recently defeated personhood amendment, granting “all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood” at the point of fertilization. Like the Mississippi amendment, the federal measure would not only outlaw all abortions, but it could also make some types of birth control, in vitro fertilization, and medical interventions for a pregnant woman’s health illegal.
Despite publicly supporting this type of measure in the past, Romney is still trying to play both sides of the issue. In a September debate, Romney was asked explicitly whether he would support a Human Life Amendment. He said he believes that the Supreme Court should return the decision on abortion to the states and promised he would appoint judges who would do just that. As to whether Congress should act to draft a constitutional amendment that includes the unborn, he argued:
That would create obviously a constitutional crisis. Could that happen in this country? Could there be circumstances where that might occur? I think it’s reasonable that something of that nature might happen someday. That’s not something I would precipitate.
The fight over personhood grew much more heated in the weeks following the September debate, and Romney’s position shifted yet again. Asked about personhood during an October television appearance, Romney said that if he had been presented a bill that defined life as beginning at conception while governor of Massachusetts, he “absolutely” would have signed it. He has also made clear that he believes life begins at conception.
As Jason Salzman points out on his blog for the Rocky Mountain Media Watch, Romney has flip-flopped repeatedly on this subject. So does Romney support a federal law that defines “personhood” as beginning at conception, or not?
Romney’s team has tried to finesse the issue, arguing that although he endorses a federal Human Life Amendment, he also thinks that that abortion should be a state-level decision.
That’s not a coherent argument. In order to amend the Constitution, two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states must approve the change. That’s a high bar. But after an amendment passes, the states can’t pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they like. If the Constitution were amended to say a fertilized egg is a legal person, state law would have to be brought in line with the new constitutional reality. It would be as if every state had passed the Mississippi personhood amendment.
“Anywhere they give legal rights to and define ‘person’ as beginning at fertilization, you have the ‘personhood’ effect,” explains Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project.
Such a change would not simply be a reversal of Roe. “If there’s a Human Life Amendment that gives unborn children the rights of people under the 14th Amendment, then it wouldn’t go back to the states,” says Suzanne Novack, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “It would be the law of the land.”
Romney’s flip-flops on personhood don’t help him politically. But they do fit in with the broader goals of personhood advocates. The movement’s measures aren’t likely to pass, and if they did, they would inevitably be challenged in court. But although personhood measures have failed everywhere they’ve been tried so far, the sustained effort has managed to put the issue on the national stage.
Instead of arguing about whether abortion is a woman’s legal right, people are fighting over whether to issue passports to the unborn. “It’s really broadening what the anti-abortion movement is going after and trying to force candidates to go there with them,” Kolbi-Molinas says. For the personhood movement, getting GOP presidential contenders like Romney to weigh in on their issue is a win in itself.
By: Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones, November 22, 2011
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