It all started on Monday when my week got tossed upside down at work. Then Sweetie came home and told me that, yes, the ax had fallen on some guys in his departments at the school district. I finally understand how you were feeling last year, he said, referencing the three RIFs my company went through and the sadness that overwhelms. I can’t help him except to tell him I love him and to be there. Still, I think he’s worrying himself sick, and in turn, that worries me.
In the meantime, we’ve got Arizona going crazy.
And in Oklahoma, women seeking an abortion will now be subject to government-mandated object rape. Ah yes, the male-dominated Oklahoma state legislature (90% men) voted to override the governor’s veto and determined that it is in a woman’s best interest to be be forced to undergo an ultrasound in order to obtain an abortion.
Oklahoma has two new abortion laws today, one said to be among the toughest in the nation because it requires a woman to have an ultrasound — with the monitor in her view — and to hear a detailed description of the fetus before having an abortion.
The ultrasound has to the kind that will allow for the best view of the developing embryo and in the first trimester, when most abortions are done, that is a transvaginal ultrasound. I’ve had one. Willingly. To screen for possible cancer. It’s not fun. Basically, you’ve got a large dildo-like probe pushed up your vagina up against your cervix. Can you move this way? Now, lift your hips. Okay, now turn this way. I’m sorry, some pressure now. Ugh.
Just thinking that there will be women who are forced through this procedure after they’ve already made the very difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason, be it finances, timing, or as the result of a rape or incest, or whatever reason she determines, makes me physically ill. But it gets worse. Not only do doctors doing this ultrasound have to describe what they see to the helpless woman lying there, See? There is the spine, the feet, the toes. Oh look, there’s the heart beating, the ultrasound monitor screen must be turned toward the woman so that the woman can see it all. Finally, doctors do not have to describe any defects they see. Got that? The law frees doctors to engage in medical malpractice in order to advance an ideological agenda. 
The other law forbids women who have disabled babies from suing a doctor for withholding information about birth defects discovered while the fetus was in the womb. Backers say it tries to prevent women from discriminating against disabled fetuses, but opponents feel it makes getting an abortion harder.
Obama is all up in arms about Arizona’s new law. Hell, he was all ready to move immigration “reform” to the front burner until Lindsay Graham had his snit fit.
What has Obama said about Oklahoma’s new law?
Crickets.
Peter Daou (Hey Ms. magazine, THIS is what a FEMINIST looks like) lets loose:
Reflecting on Oklahoma’s law, two things strike me:
The thrust of the measure is about women, not babies. In other words, the underlying assumption is that women want to do something uninformed and frivolous and the state has to ‘educate’ them and shame them out of it. I think it’s safe to extrapolate from Oklahoma to the broader anti-choice movement. There are justified ethical concerns about ending a budding life, but it seems that this is primarily about assuming women are murderous, immoral fetus-killers who must be stopped at all costs.
The pervasive abuse of girls and women across the globe and the entrenched sexism in our society supports the argument that this is more about suppressing women’s rights than protecting new life. If men were the ones carrying babies, do you really think Oklahoma would enact such laws? Do you think doctors would be gunned down for providing a legal service? Do you think rape and incest victims would be further humiliated? For some reason, I doubt it.
Which brings me to the second reason I believe this is more about women than babies. The virulence of so many in the anti-choice movement is matched by a corresponding silence about the brutalization of girls and women around the world. Here in the U.S., there are nearly 17,000 homicides a year due to intimate partner violence. In places like Congo, the monstrosities committed against girls and women defy imagination – I’ve chronicled a few of the horrors in previous posts.
It’s hypocritical, to say the least, for someone to fight tooth and nail against a woman’s right to choose — under the idea they are protecting “life” — while standing by as “life” is slashed, mutilated, burned, raped, mangled, hacked, and strangled out of women and girls in every corner of the planet.
But the bay-bees!!!
There are justified ethical concerns about ending a budding life
I noticed that Daou still threw in that equivocation. Perhaps, in the philosophical universe, I might grant him a point.
However, here in real life, it’s far more an ethical concern to require women to give birth to babies while providing no or inadequate pre- and post-natal care, then not guaranteeing reliable and affordable health care for that child and the parents raising her.
Not to mention the basic ethical concern of: “Quit dictating what I’m supposed to do with my own body!!”
I have a suggestion that would solve the unwanted pregnancy problem — forced birth control for men. Line ‘em all up and administer the treatments. A man has to apply for a permit – from a panel of women – to father a child, which will only be granted if his record on partner/spouse abuse (and potential child abuse) is clean, and if he proves ability and commitment to support the child, in time and money.
Try proposing that and watch the civil libertarians howl!
But women forced into intrusive medical procedures that amount to rape – eh, no problem.
Like my Sweetie, Daou is firmly committed to the idea that when all is said and done, abortion is a woman’s decision only. Game. Set. Match. I’ll give Daou that one slight note (I don’t even see it as equivocation) because his work has been so extraordinairly pro-woman when nearly all of his “progressive” contemporaries have seen women’s rights as something as a “nice to have” but not necessary to the advancement of humanity. Make sure you read his whole post.
I love your idea of forced birth control for men. Would that wake them up?
I’ve long been a promoter of forced birth control for men, sister. It makes no sense to focus on a woman who will only produce one or two babies at a time (except in the rare, generally medically-facilitated instances), when a man can impregnate (and many often do) several women a month. I always tell my female students who refer to their baby-daddy as the “sperm donor” that there are no sperm donors; only sperm pushers.
I love BL’s rape-object rhetoric. That’s exactly right, and someone ought to sue on that argument alone. Until men are forced to have instruments intruded into their bodies for simple procedures, this is beyond the pale.
PS: Sorry to hear about Sweetie’s work.