The war on women

Part the infinity: they’re winning

Part The First:

Getting government off our backs and into our uteri

A bill that would deny medical licenses to abortion providers advanced from the state House of Representatives’ Public Health Committee Wednesday on a 6-4 vote.

The legislation, SB 1552 (already passed by the state senate), would prohibit, under penalty of de-certification, medical personnel in the state from performing abortions, which, it should be noted, is still legal in this country, which means it’s still legal in Oklahoma, which means it’ll wind up in court, which means we’ll spend means gobs of money we don’t have fighting it (and losing) and for what? Nathan Dahm (R-Broken Arrow), who abhors government intrusion in our lives, yet authored this detritus, thinks the idea of bureaucrats keeping a watchful eye on the doctor performing a dilation and curettage to make sure nothing hinky’s going on is sound public policy—the law of the land, the sanctity of patient-doctor confidentiality, Orwellian echoes be damned.

This is a core function of government,” he said. “This is our proper function, to protect life.”

Of course it is, but timing is everything, so once the fetus is born and develops into a beautiful child and, say, is about to be shot in the head at an elementary school by some lunatic who shouldn’t come within an area code of a loaded weapon, Dahm thinks government should stay out of the protecting business.

Here was his homily after the massacre at Sandy Hook.

And yes, somebody should not take that right and violate somebody else’s right, and take a life, and they should be punished accordingly if they do that. But you don’t understand what a right is, and that’s the problem here.

Yeah, that was the extent of his outrage, his soaring rhetoric—“somebody should not take that right and violate somebody else’s right, and take a life.” 

Your child, my Colt. Same same.

Former Representative Barney Frank was right about these guys when he said, “For them, life begins at conception and ends at birth.”

Part The Second:

Trump inadvertently exposes the hypocrisy

Recently, Donald Trump got in trouble for musing that perhaps women, too, should be punished for having abortions if Roe v Wade is overturned. The reaction, even among the GOP and right to life groups, was swift and condescending—it is the physician, not the patient, who should suffer.

From Ted Cruz:

Of course we shouldn’t be talking about punishing women; we should affirm their dignity and the incredible gift they have to bring life into the world.

From March of Life:

“Women who have chosen abortion need healing & compassion, not punishment.”

How precious. We must save these helpless, hapless impregnated women who would otherwise keep their babies but for these depraved medical professionals who prey on them. 

Why shouldn’t women be punished, though, along with the doctor? What about the person who drove the woman to the facility, what about the father—aren’t they accessories, as well, to the crime? You keep telling us it’s a human life that’s being snuffed out—don’t lose your nerve now. The fertilized egg is counting on you—and if abortion is murder, as you keep telling us, the only intellectually supportable position is to call for all those, including, most importantly, those who undergo them, to be punished. That is, unless you’re more concerned about what the electoral optics of thousands of women in orange smocks being marched to the hoosegow would do to the GOP brand than you are the innocent zygotes.

Part The Third:

The Dupe, explained.

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who’s usually as maddening as a traffic jam, reveals the long con.

The Republicans said, listen, we’re going to have all of these trade deals and tax cuts that benefit our wealthiest donor class, but we’ll give them the social issues,” Scarborough said of the last 30 years. “We’ll give them abortion, we’ll give them gay marriage, we’ll give them guns and they’ll vote for us.”

And it worked. In Oklahoma that approach translated to tax cuts for the Republican elite, while the GOP rank and file got Sharia Law bans; the elite got charter school contracts and reduced drilling fees, while the poor got 10 Commandment monuments and fetal heart beat legislation. For decades, Republicans have tossed cash to the luxury boxes, while handing out cheap souvenirs (mostly in the way of nostrums for a better America) to those in the cheap seats, dangling the cultural/social shiny objects at the base while corporate marauders were stealing the inventory. So, no, it’s not just SB 1552 that’s problem. It’s the entire raison d’être of the GOP, a party that has been intubating and incubating the worst America has to offer of late—that’s the problem.

From Georgia: 

State Rep. Terry England was speaking in favor of HB 954, which makes it illegal to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks even if the woman is known to be carrying a stillborn fetus or the baby is otherwise not expected to live to term.

He then recalled his time working on a farm:

“Life gives us many experiences…I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive. Delivering pigs, dead or alive. It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.”

From Texas:

The doctors and nurses at St. David’s Medical Center in Austin cried with them, but said because of Texas law HB2, they could not help speed Taylor’s labor. Technically, the baby was healthy and the mother was healthy, so to induce labor would be an abortion, and to do it at this stage in the pregnancy would be illegal.

The Mahaffeys were sent home to wait for their baby to die or for Taylor’s labor to progress. “We cried ourselves to sleep, waiting for him to come,” Daniel said in an interview with The Daily Beast.

From Mississippi:

The Mississippi law makes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest and includes only a narrow exception for medical emergencies or fatal fetal abnormalities. Earlier this year Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant (R) announced his intention, during his state of the state speech, to “end abortion in Mississippi.” As it stands, there is only one abortion clinic remaining in the entire state.

From Florida:

Also on Tuesday, a new Florida law went into effect banning abortion at any point in the pregnancy once a fetus is deemed viable unless two doctors certify in writing that it is necessary to protect the health and life of the woman. If two doctors are not available, one must certify in writing that a second was unable to consult on the matter. The law also further limits abortions after 24 weeks – allowed if the pregnant person’s life or health is threatened – by removing mental health conditions as a reason to allow a late abortion.

And now comes Oklahoma.

McDaniel said she resented the reference to “unprofessional conduct” applied to providing legal abortions and said she “felt like you’re comparing me to a road or a bridge, and women don’t need that.”

Today’s political divide, especially when it comes to women’s rights, is not a matter of degree—it’s a matter of kind. Democrats, who can be just as craven and spineless as Republicans, do not dream up and traffic in this kind of heartlessness. Promoting free college tuition and healthcare to all Americans is not akin to threatening doctors and forcing women to carry dead fetuses to term. GOP representatives like Dahm who write and revel in bills like SB 1552 are at best chauvinists, at worst misogynists, and they’re dismantling, coarsening and dividing America and Oklahoma in the process. 

For more from Barry, read his article on HB 2665, a piece of legislation that would have eliminated Medicaid benefits for 111,000 Oklahomans.