When you aren’t donating to your favorite personal weblog, you might consider throwing Planned Parenthood some many, because these fucking anti-abortion lunatics are certified nutjobs:
A bill to ban abortion introduced in the Ohio state legislature requires doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus – a procedure that does not exist in medical science – or face charges of “abortion murder”.
This is the second time practising obstetricians and gynecologists have tried to tell the Ohio legislators that the idea is currently medically impossible.
The move comes amid a wave of increasingly severe anti-abortion bills introduced across much of the country as conservative Republican politicians seek to ban abortion and force a legal showdown on abortion with the supreme court.
Fetus fetishists.
Friday Open Thread: One Slip And Suddenly It’s All Downhill
scav
Ohio. Not a state for actual people.
Chyron HR
Wow, such economic anxiety.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I live here and I’m fucking horrified. How the fuck is this going to be enforced? You can’t just throw a doctor in fucking jail for not doing a procedure that is impossible to do.
patrick II
@scav:
I thought that a reason for banning abortions was that a woman was overruling god’s will and not allowing a fetus to come to full term is a sin. In this case, as in other types of unfortunate natural interruptions to a full pregnancy, it would seem that god has decided otherwise. Overruling him would be a sin, but in the other direction.
Senyordave
Is it my imagination or is Ohio turning into Mississippi? Hard to believe that in 2008 Obama carried Ohio, winning the popular vote there by aout 4.6%.
This seems like a case where the Democrats in Ohio might want to put on some ads targeting women and independents. Remind them in a subtle way that this is what happens when a bunch of ignorant white men (aka Republicans) make medical decisions for women.
MattF
The earth is flat. Because it is. Additional debate violates my freedom of religion.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@patrick II:
I actually wonder how the advocates of such wingnuttery as the above would respond to an argument like that.
Sab
Term limits have done wonders to improve the caliber of Ohio’s legislators. ///
Sab
@Senyordave: Candace Keller is not a man, but she is a Republican loon.
Kent
These sorts of laws are usually aimed at punishing those who they want to punish.
So, middle class white women who wind up with a bad pregnancy. NEVER EVER going to be prosecuted by this sort of law.
However, some young single substance abuser of color who happens to get pregnant out of wedlock? It’s one more brick on top of the ton of bricks some asshole MAGA prosecutor can bring down on her head.
That is how these things are intended to work. Selective enforcement and selective prosecution of only those deserving of punishing.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
Kraux Pas
Some many what? I must know!!!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It sure feels like they are going off into fantasy land and not coming back, doesn’t it? Imaginary medical procedures mandated by law now. And it’s the same thing in essence as The Wall.
I really honestly think the problem with Right is they are old and over medicated.
So when is the first doctor going to say “I did the procedure, and you can’t prove I didn’t because it doesn’t exist, you idiots.”?
mad citizen
Who sits around thinking about shit like this?
trollhattan
@Senyordave:
My theory is they have a death compact with Indiana and at this point are only deciding who pulls the trigger first.
trollhattan
@mad citizen:
For starters, the VPOTUS, only he doesn’t grok the fancy words and has to rely on others for those.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Sab:
Yup. Idiots think term limits are a good thing.
Both my state senator and state rep swung R last year. The State Rep, Don Manning, ran as a Trumper and won by thin margins. He’s sponsored anti-vaccine legislation (which of course he denies, claiming it to be only about “transparency”).
He’s also introduced legislation designed to halt a localities ability to use eminent domain to set aside land for improvements, such as creating bike trails. I can only imagine how he and empty suit State Senator Michael Rulli (of Rulli Brothers supermarkets) will vote for this abomination
kindness
But the very same people are happy to put prisoners to death.
Jesus’ rules only apply to what they want them to apply to.
Roger Moore
This kind of thing is why I give PP a $100/month recurring donation.
JoeyJoeJoe
I did the Alexandria turkey trot yesterday, and anti abortion protesters were out on the median around the mile 1 mark. These are the people at numerous DC protests, for anyone from the area, and they were not appreciated
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
“I’m sorry, “Doctor”, but you made the all too common mistake of thinking that facts matter to fascists like us. The only thing that matters is power and we’ve got it and you don’t. Enjoy prison.”
That’s how I magine they’d like to play it
lit3bolt
Clearly, the Ohio GOP is just following the Hitleratic Oath: “First, Do As Much Harm As Possible.”
Xtian honor killings must be protect by the 1st Amendment, after all!
RepubAnon
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I expect they’ll pick some abortion providers and throw the book at them – either for treating the ectopic pregnancy, or for letting the woman die.
Some commercials showing young (white) women crying because their ectopic pregnancies are now death sentences might help.
Kraux Pas
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Fixt.
<blockquote>He’s also introduced legislation designed to halt a localities ability to use eminent domain to set aside land for improvements, such as creating bike trails. </blockquote>
What if it were something important? Like a wall, for example…
BrianM
The bill does say “take all possible steps… includ[ing], if applicable, reimplanting…” (my emphasis). Not a lawyer, but I’d hope that charging and conviction for failing to take an impossible step (by definition, not applicable) isn’t going to happen.
I’d call it virtue signalling, except that only libtards and SJWs can do that.
Kraux Pas
@Kraux Pas: I did the same thing both times. Why did the second blockquote not work? Was it because I was editing?
gene108
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It is possible.
The would be mother would likely die, as a result. but if do enough cutting – and no regard for human life – you can fit that clump of dead cells back in.
mad citizen
@trollhattan: Well, for our part in the Hoosier state, aside from more recent ignomies, in 1897 the legislature debated, and it seems the House passed a bill legislating the value of pi at 3.2.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2018/02/05/indianas-state-legislature-once-tried-to-legislate-the-value-of-pi/#15454184260a
I was born in Ohio but never lived there. We lived just over the border in Indiana–Hicksville (yes Hicksville, looks great on a birth certificate) Ohio was the nearest hospital.
Roger Moore
@BrianM:
It’s nice that it has that little “if applicable” caveat, but that’s not a lot of reassurance to doctors. Even if they can convince a jury that the procedure isn’t possible- and that may be harder than you think- it won’t keep wingnut prosecutors from arresting and prosecuting them, and you can bet the state will come after their medical licenses even if they’re acquitted.
FelonyGovt
My doctor friend has assured me that what they are asking doctors to do is impossible and dangerous. They clearly are not listening to experts. I can only hope this will drive more young women away from the Republican Party.
MattF
@mad citizen: A myth, mostly.
ETA: I see your link tells the same story as mine.
Kraux Pas
@Roger Moore:
Ladies and gentlemen, the party of business and small government.
Roger Moore
@Kraux Pas:
The Republican Party wants to shrink government until it’s small enough to probe a woman’s vagina.
Cameron
This sounds like a great to make sure Ohio has no doctors left in 5-10 years
Kraux Pas
@Roger Moore:
Now if only we could convince the people posting on this here website of that simple fact…
Gvg
Slowing the ending of ecotpic pregnancy endangers the lives of the women unlucky enough to draw that card. Doctors shouldn’t have to hesitate. There are few situations as medically clear cut.
i have no idea how, but I would like a way to punish and deter by lawsuit and such proposed laws sponsors and anyone that votes for one. Charge them with manslaughter when a woman dies. Ignorance is no excuse and I no longer believe such protests. They intend women to die from having sex, even if married, judging from what their actions are.
Kraux Pas
@Cameron:
Just obstetrician-gynecologists. And, really, who needs dedicated doctors for lady parts? Sounds like just another special interest to me.
Ksmiami
@Cameron: and hopefully no women either.
tokyokie
Republicans believe that industries should not be regulated, and that uteri must be.
LongHairedWeirdo
See, the thing is, if you think abortion is merely “wrong”, but not “murder”, it’s pretty obvious that it should be legal. We don’t make laws based upon what makes people feel all up-chucky. So, see, it *has* to be murder, if you want to use it as a political club, if you’re already partnered with misogynists, that all works out well.
Well: once you denounce it as murder, eventually the rubes don’t realize you’re conning them, and they think it’s murder too, and they start thinking about it in the ways you’d normally think about the deliberate killing of people. And there you have it… people who have been convinced, by repetition, that they are doing holy work, protecting precious babies.
I saw one Texas voter acknowledge voting for Trump to protect babies, and then slowly twigging to how, maybe, you know, you should protect children and moms and dads, not break families up in order to deter people from asking if they can come, live, and work with us, as new friends and neighbors. Not bad – but if you think just a tiny bit harder, you’ll realize the anti-abortion stance has nothing to do with compassion either, since compassion is self-evidently absent.
opiejeanne
@Kent: I thought the law was aimed at the doctor. And since he can’t perform the impossible, the reimplantation, if he saves the woman’s life by removing the ectopic pregnancy he will be a murderer.
The intent is to let the woman die, by criminalizing the only way to save her life.
lofgren
The thing that was growing inside my wife and nearly killed her was never going to be a human. Fetuses need the proper environment to develop, and floating in an abdominal cavity is not that. It was a monstrous blob of cells and barely differentiated tissues, and if by some mad science it had been transplanted to her womb the best we could have hoped for was something resembling Jon Carpenter’s Thing.
I know three women who have survived ectopic pregnancies, and those are just my wife and my female friends who felt comfortable enough to divulge that information to me. I probably know more. Doctors have already tried to explain that this procedure is impossible. What exactly are they hoping to gain by being so willfully, toxically ignorant?
Sm*t Cl*de
This all seems like a lot of work just to send out the message “women are just incubators to us”.
WaterGirl
@Kraux Pas: Best guess? It looks like it might be a mismatch of quote methods between visual and text modes for commenting. Did you type in the HTML code yourself, or click the double-duoqte button you see when in visual mode? Did you do it the same way for both quotes?
burnspbesq
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
wanna bet?
Kraux Pas
@WaterGirl: I always type in the html myself. Is there a way the site can remember I prefer to do that?
matt
I read this stuff and I think about all the fucking assholes who tell me we just need better Midwesterner understanders running things to unite the country. We need to fucking no longer be dependent on these shit people for anything is what we need, not to unite with them.
LuciaMia
Too late. They had to leave for their Flat Earth Society meeting.
Ella in New Mexico
They floated this thing out in April about the same time Ohio passed the “6 week abortion ban” law which got them sued and never went into effect. What makes them think this bill is LESS likely to be shot down?
Morons gotta moron.
James E Powell
@Cameron:
Aren’t the doctors voting Republican?
Kraux Pas
@James E Powell: Some are, sone aren’t. There’s no predicting these things.
WaterGirl
@Kraux Pas: If you’re logged into WordPress it remembers whatever you did last, but not if you’re a regular commenter. If you’re not logged in, i believe it defaults to visual.
If you prefer to type in the code manually, you’ll need to hit the Text tab. Code in the visual tab will always end in your seeing the code itself, rather than the formatting that was your goal.
WereBear
Abortion demonization was the brainchild (see what I did there?) if Francis Schaeffer for purely political purposes.
It takes a wingnut mind to follow it to an Illogical conclusion.
Roger Moore
@Ella in New Mexico:
For a lot of these bills, the goal is to posture for the anti-abortion people, not to achieve anything. In fact, it’s much better to achieve nothing, since:
Marklar
Ohio bill would allow husbands reinsert their working wives back into the kitchen or face charges of witchcraft.
Ohio Mom
I’m not trying to defend my indefensible adopted state. But it should be noted that in addition to term limits (as mentioned by Sab above), our state government is also hamstring by gerrymandering.
My neighborhood was actually sending a Democrat (okay, she is on the conservative side but still a reasonable person) to the state Assembly. When she was term-limited out, she was going to run for the Ohio Senate. Then the majority party redrew the district to exclude her house.
Warblewarble
can we carpet bomb Ohio on behalf of generations not yet born. FUCK these shits.
Kent
Same difference. Good doctors who never do abortions or anything “controversial” will be left alone. But asshole prosecutors who can’t go after OB/GYNs who do legal abortions will use this sort of law to selectively prosecute “enemy” doctors who are already on the lists of the so-called pro-life orgs.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl:
When it feels like it, I’ll often get text mode(with no tabs) regardless of which mode I’ve used before. I’ve submitted a site feedback on this.
Snarki, child of Loki
It’s long past time to perform post-natal abortions of acephalic RWNJs. They’ve already gone ectopic in our polity.
Percysowner
I’ll defend my state slightly. The Republican SOS and legislature gerrymandered the HELL out of Ohio. When voters have been asked, they have approved a measure to stop or at least slow the gerrymandering. That Dear, Sweet Chief Justice John Roberts made certain that it will go into effect at the latest date possible, instead of the 2020 election.
We also passed a constitutional amendment to protect unions a few years back. The entire state isn’t nuts, although the southern part of it is very rural, and very conservative (OhioTucky) and that is what is running the show. Hopefully after the next census, when Roberts shouldn’t be able to override the fairer districting, the state will become more sane.
Kay
That’s not all it does. It creates a new murder category – “abortion murder” and directs that girls as young as 13 can be charged with it. It also has an “aggravated” abortion murder charge that is death penalty qualified.
When Kavanaugh and Co overturn Roe you’ll be fighting laws like this all over the country. Many will pass. We’ll see women prosecuted for abortion in at least 25 states.
The worse case scenario was never an exaggeration. The one and only thing stopping these people was the US Supreme Court. They won’t be able to execute the 13 year old girls they prosecute though- unless the current court overturns the decision on the death penalty for juveniles too, which they may.
MattF
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Me too. Sometimes I get the ‘Text’ comment field without any tabs, so I can’t switch to ‘Visual’. Safari on iPad, current versions.
Kay
You know what will be really wild- the prosecutions for abortion by prescription drugs. Think about how they’ll investigate/charge those. It’s 40% of abortions now.
They’ll be raiding residences.
MattF
@Kay: That’s just awful. My hope is that this will turn out to be like Prohibition in the ‘20s. They’ll catch that truck, after chasing it all these years, but won’t get the result they were looking for.
ema
@BrianM:
Forget impossible steps such as reimplantation. There are no “possible steps” to preserve an ectopic pregnancy; the treatment is to destroy/remove the ectopic by medical/surgical means.
You treat ectopic pregnancies because an ectopic can cause significant morbidity and mortality. You also don’t go around preserving and reimplanting necrotic tissue, even if your patients happen to be mere uterine containers
The proposed law will throw Ob/Gyns in jail for rendering proper medical care.
Kay
What Roe really did was say “here the state may not go”. With that check gone they can and will go as far as they want- into your house, your medical records, your movements, your partners, and that’s just the criminal sanctions- every state has a whole separate code for abuse, neglect and dependency of children and if a fertilized egg is a child all of that applies. It can’t not apply. They’ll change the definition in the state code.
I just don’t think anyone has thought this through at all- how profound and nearly limitless it is.
It fundamentally changes the relationship between women of child bearing age and the state- it’s huge- and it does it in the context of a Republican Party that is further Right than anyone ever imagined.
I think there will be regret by the people who backed this when it plays out- too late of course. It was incredibly reckless.
Richard Guhl
The abortion debate, as framed by the so-called pro lifers, centers on the question of whether a fetus has personhood. The problem with this is that doing so negates the personhood of the woman carrying the fetus, and by extension, that of all women. But that’s the real intention, isn’t it?
The so-called pro lifers cite the Bible as the source of their moral claims, but the truth is the Bible offers no such justifications. In fact, the one passage that even comes close to touching upon the issue, found in Exodus 21: 22-25, suggests something quite different.
It involves the weird scenario where two men are fighting, a pregnant woman intervenes and miscarries. It then says if there was no harm (clearly to the woman), then only a fine is paid, but if she was hurt, then the eye for an eye rule applies.
The ancient rabbis interpreted this to mean that the fetus has no personhood. We become persons at birth.
Ultimately, the so-called pro life movement is about the subjugation of women.
James E Powell
@Kay:
And people will still argue that they were right to hate on Hillary.
Kay
@MattF:
I don’t think there’s a whole lot of interest in women’s health. I tell people they’ll be able to investigate miscarriages if one goes for medical help either during or after (very, very common) and they’re shocked- they simply don’t consider that miscarriage will absolutely be implicated in any statutory scheme to ban abortion. Pregnancy and delivery is implicated. Everyone’s pregnancy and delivery.
I don’t think they have given any thought to the scope. Once you let them in all bets are off.
Roe sort of saved people from having to deal with this. They didn’t have to delve into specifics or the practical applications of a statute because it was just an area a state legislature could not go.
patrick II
Rick Santorum’s wife had an ectopic pregnancy. The fetus had attached itself inside of her fallopian tube. The fetus died, but the Santorums refused to have an abortion. Mrs. Santorum carried the dead baby to term, had it delivered. It was in a small casket, in their home as I remember it.
Next time you see Santorum on TV commenting about anything, just remember, he’s nuts.
patrick II
I’m just imagining the look on the Blue Cross/ Blue Shield’s pay agent when he sees the bill.
Kay
@James E Powell:
It will be much, much worse than pre-Roe. Pre-Roe only contemplated “abortion”, a specific and at that time rare procedure that was firmly and narrowly defined in the criminal code.
These people will be regulating pregnancy literally from conception to delivery and all points in between. They are re-writing definitions. Literally inventing new categories of “person” and “murder”that never existed before. That won’t be limited to “abortion”, that specific procedure. It can’t be. That’s now how it works.
StringOnAStick
A co-worker had an ectopic pregnancy in May, she was 8 weeks along and had an IUD but still got pregnant. It nearly killed her because her OB/GYN was too busy to get her in for an exam since what she suspected was a perforation from the IUD. Emergency surgery, the huge copay, etc, and then the hospital sent her a “congratulations on your pregnancy, be sure to choose our hospital when it’s time to deliver!” letter. Pretty much the last thing she needed after such a traumatic event is a congratulations letter for a pregnancy that had zero chance of coming to term. You know some one in marketing came up with the rule that all positive pregnancy tests done in the hospital system get that letter; those birthing centers are expensive so Always Be Closing!
Yutsano
@James E Powell:
BUT.
HER.
E-MAILS.
Ruckus
@lofgren:
What exactly are they hoping to gain by being so willfully, toxically ignorant?
Being toxically ignorant?
Because I can’t see any other option here.
Personally I think that conservatism has run it’s course, they have nothing to gain and everything to lose at this point. They have to dream up new things to attempt to do because they’ve run out of reality.
Geoboy
@Gvg: I worked in an ER for four years. One evening we had a young woman come in with severe abdominal pain. It was a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. We got her to the OR in 35 minutes. Another 30 minutes and it would have been too late.
gene108
@Sm*t Cl*de:
if they viewed women women as incubators, it would be a step up.
Thinking of pregnant women as incubators means you want the incubation to succeed, so they may rethink anti-abortion laws that have the “side effect” of shutting down prenatal care clinics for women.
Whatever the anti-abortion crowd wants is beyond slut shaming, because it puts the lives of married monogamous women at risk, too.
Chetan Murthy
@Kay:
Yes, this. Intermittently we get articles in the mainstream press about the conditions of women in Nicaragua and maybe a few other Latin American countries, where women are jailed for miscarriages b/c abortion is illegal and punishable like murder.[1] It’s all horrifying, and people just assume It. Can. Never. Happen. Here. ™. *cough*
All these laws, risible as they seem, are just the warmup act. Gotta get the rubes used to the idea, and the opposition relaxed with the foolishness of it all; then when Roe v. Wade is struck down, all those laws become operative and we’re at the brink of civil war.
[1] I forgot to add that women are jailed for miscarriages b/c it’s tough to tell the difference between one and an abortion. And, I’m sure, “pour encourager les autres.”
trollhattan
Lest anybody think we’re immune to this sort of nonsense in the Calif People’s Republic, a friend of my kid was enrolled in the local all-girls Catholic school and treated in health class to a guest speaker who was some sort of Scared Straight Abortion Survivor, out preaching the gospel of Never, Ever Do What I Gone and Done. She made up stuff about clinics out of vapor.
The story went from bad to worse and the kid began filming it on her phone. She tried to raise some technical objections and was shut down, so emailed the video to mom, an Ob/Gyn. Mom raised holy hell with the school and pulled the girl then and there.
I have no point other than this “movement” is pernicious and everywhere.
Mary G
@Kay:
They’re coming for contraception too. IUDs prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, so that’s murder, and they’ll just keep going if they aren’t stopped.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: [“edit comment” doesn’t seem to be working, ah well]
I forgot to add that women are jailed for miscarriages b/c it’s not trivial to tell them apart from abortions. And of course, “pour encourager les autres”.
Kathleen
Fetal Mania! Feel the Magic!
I was shocked to see that The Columbus Dispatch roundly condemned the Rethuglican legislators for this bill and castigated them for pandering to the religious right at the expense of the needs of people in Ohio:
https://www.dispatch.com/opinion/20191122/editorial-for-statehouse-gop-no-far-right-focused-bill-is-too-extreme
Citizen Alan
@Senyordave:
I don’t think this would pass in Mississippi. We beat back fetal personhood, after all.
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: For years I was represented by outstanding Democrats in the Ohio House and Senate. Then both districts were gerrymandered and I now have Rethuglicans “representing” me (my House Rep’s name, ironically, is “Blessing”). My zip code was split in 2 and the other half of my zip code has an African American woman representing the district. Grx!
Hamilton County Dems are a bright spot in the state, along with Franklin County (based on what Debbie has commented). We’ve gone blue for last 3 presidential and the majority in the county voted for the state Dem ticket in 2018.
ema
@patrick II:
I’m not familiar with Mrs. Santorum’s case but, it’s not possible to carry a pregnancy to term in the Fallopian tube (it would rupture in the first few weeks).
gene108
@Chetan Murthy:
pre-Roe, in some places in this country, had investigations about whether a woman had a miscarriage or abortion
It happened here. But people under 70 never lived through that era
pat
@ema:
I remember that. I think maybe the fetus died in utero but they allowed it to go to term, it was born and they took the dead fetus home to show it off to the other kids. Something like that, anyway.
Beyond creepy.
gene108
@Mary G:
Absolutely coming after birth control.
We are living in an era, where yesterday’s far right kooks have taken over the Republican Party.
Roger Moore
@Richard Guhl:
Personhood is a necessary but not sufficient justification for outlawing abortion. Even if you assume the fetus is a person whose life deserves legal protection, you still have to ask if their claim on their mother’s womb is stronger than her claim to personal autonomy. Anti-abortion people are assuming the answer to this question as a way of avoiding being challenged on it.
opiejeanne
@Kent: You missed my point. Entirely.
the prosecution will be of DOCTORS who do not allow a woman to die of an ectopic pregnancy. The doctors are the target.
gene108
@ema:
Did a google search on it. Karen went to the hospital, at 19 weeks, and was informed the pregnancy was not viable. The Santorums are not clear with when they were informed, versus the time frame Karen was admitted.
Anyway, Karen went in with an infection. The ectopic pregnancy had turned septic. She had a high fever.
The Santorums refused to induce labor, best as anybody can tell. Karen went into labor anyway, because her body wanted to rid itself of the infection.
Doctors were treating her with antibiotics
Premature baby survived a couple of hours outside the womb.
She did carry the pregnancy “to term”, but not the full nine months
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
And they don’t actually care about the facts, either. They’re perfectly happy to claim that forms of contraception that prevent ovulation are actually preventing implantation.
zhena gogolia
@opiejeanne:
This is what happened in Romania under Ceaucescu.
zhena gogolia
Just to lighten the mood.
Chetan Murthy
@Roger Moore:
Thanks for reminding us of this. Conservatives are 100% OK with denying real existing persons their lives, or sustenance, or medical treatment, all the damn time. All the damn time.
Like they say: the right to life starts at conception, and ends at birth.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia:
He should see ‘The Amazing Alexander’, it’s much better Cats, I’m going to see it again and agian.
The guy in the first couple should look familiar, it’s Lawrence O’Donald.
Kay
@gene108:
I just love how cavalier the entire Right and most of media are about this. They’re fundamentally redefining “a person” in the law and changing the entire relationship between the state and pregnancy and all women of childbearing age, and it’s just breezed past as if we’re talking about the traffic code.
It’s not even that they “have no idea”. It’s that they don’t give a shit enough to give it any real thought.
These are big questions! This will be a profound change and it’s unprecedented in modern US law. The state will reach INSIDE one person and give a full set of rights to another. Conservatives like to sneer at Roe as “poorly reasoned” but it’s a fucking impossible conundrum and they will rue the day they set it asunder. Roe isn’t a good or bad answer- what it is is the only workable answer.
It lasted this long because no one has a better one, and we are about to find that out.
Gravenstone
Once again, the state of my birth is doing the nation proud…
/facepalm
Is it any wonder I moved out 30 years ago?
opiejeanne
@patrick II: I don’t think it was an ectopic pregnancy. Here’s part of the article from WaPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/personal-tragedy-becomes-political-pawn/2012/01/19/gIQA75LdDQ_story.html
Haunting the political landscape is the ghost (or soul or spirit or memory or image, depending on how you see these things) of Gabriel Michael Santorum. Born at 19 gestational weeks, too young to live outside the uterus, Gabriel died within two hours.
The story is well known. In October 1996, Karen Santorum underwent surgery to try to fix a fatal malfunction in the kidneys of the fetus. After the operation, she contracted an infection and she and her husband, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum (Pa.), were faced with a terrible choice: End the pregnancy or lose the mother.
zhena gogolia
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Oh, that’s funny.
Baud
In the Baud! administration, women will be able to incorporate their fetuses, this rendering them unregulateable by conservatives.
Kay
And the Right has NOTHING to replace it with. Nothing. They are content to leave it up to the dumbest and most far Right state legislators and litigate it on a case by case basis.
They have no set of rules for all the ramifications of overturning Roe. They simply didn’t bother to come up with any. All of the thousands of far Right lawyers sitting on their asses and opining at those think tanks and foundations came up with nothing past “make it illegal”. They just don’t care what happens to women. They’ll throw us all to the mercy of religious nuts happily. It’ll take decades to sort it out. No one will have any idea what it really means until it moves thru each state and each set of courts and each case.
Baud
@Kay:
Their plan is “take what we can get.”
ema
@gene108:
According to this article it was an IUP, not an ectopic:
Here’s a second source mentioning an IUP:
At 19 wks IUP either labor was induced or she went into spontaneous labor due to sepsis.
Jay
The “solution” is rather simple, given the possible liabilities that could be incurred.
starting tomorrow, no Medical Professional from a Dentist’s Tech to a Pharmacist should provide any medical service to any female between the ages of 6 and 86.
Kay
So let’s talk about abortion by prescription drug. 40% of abortions. Let’s insist the far Right walk us thru this enforcement scheme. I go to my doctor and I get a prescription for an abortion drug to end a 6 week pregnancy. How does the county prosecutor find out and how is that investigated? Say I’ve already done it- they think- although lots of pregnancies end spontaneously and maybe this one did too. How does this investigation of me proceed? The charge is murder.
Martin
Shows how far the GOP has come since Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote ‘Anything is a dildo if you’re brave enough’.
Martin
@Kay: I prefer to take our local approach – the right to not have a child is in our state constitution and everyone can fuck off if they don’t like it.
Seriously Ohio, fight us on this.
patrick II
@ema:
To term was the wrong way to describe it. However, she was carrying a dead fetus for some time. It could have killed her. How long or how the pregnancy ended I do not specifically recall.
Feathers
@patrick II: It’s worse than that. The original theological justification for saving the life of the child rather than the mother was that the mother had had her chance to “get right with God” and die in a state that would allow her to go to heaven. The child, however, was unbaptized, and thus would be forever trapped in limbo, unable to go to heaven and achieve salvation. This was well known and discussed into my 60s and 70s childhood. This is why many Catholic women refuse to give birth at Catholic hospitals. Come to think about it this could be why the US has such a shitty record of maternal death and injury in child birth. There is a major health care player with an active anti-maternal health outlook.
Once neo-natal care drastically improved and abortion became a huge issue, the “sanctity of life” became the issue. The fact that non-baptism was previously seen as the issue just sort of vanished. Just like the Baptists used to believe that a child got their soul when they drew their first breath, but ditched that foundational theological truth when they couldn’t pretend racism was biblical morality anymore.
Kent
@opiejeanne:
No, I understand the point. What I am saying is that the right wing passes these sorts of insanely horrid laws knowing full well that they don’t intend to actually pursue cases against any doctors or patients who meet their approval (or the approval of some right wing MAGA fundamentalist prosecutor. Mostly they know this stuff is for show. But having these laws actually on the books gives right wing fundamentalist prosecutors incredible power to actually selectively prosecute doctors or patients who are not sympathetic to their fundie base.
So my prediction would be that no OB/GYNs who are in good standing with the fundie community and who are good Republicans (and white) would never ever be prosecuted under this sort of law. Because everyone knows the law was just for show anyway and they didn’t really mean to actually enforce it. But if some some left-wing activist pro-choice doctor comes along, maybe even one who does abortions. Then all gloves are off. If they can’t prosecute them for abortions because of Roe then maybe they can put them into jail for something like this.
That’s how these sorts of things ALWAYS play out. The only prosecutors in Ohio who would ever dream of prosecuting a case like this would be the extreme fundie pro birther types. And they are only going to go after the most unsympathetic (to them) defendants. Which would be “troublemaking” pro-choice activist doctors who need to be taught a lesson.
Roger Moore
@Jay:
Sadly, there are plenty of right wingers who would be just fine with that.
ema
@patrick II:
No worries.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kay: SENTENCE FIRST – VERDICT AFTERWARDS!
trnc
Does anyone else think this will actually be counter-productive for the anti-choicers? After all, it has zero chance of surviving a court challenge but will require courts to spend time hearing and ruling on it rather than a bill that has some chance of surviving. Also, it’s pretty easy to hang it around the neck of every one of those assholes.
Jay
@Roger Moore:
male right wingers. A fundi’s wife learning she has to go out of state for a tooth bleaching, might view it a little differently.
Procopius
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): How do they respond when you point out that their Rabbi forbade public prayer? Do they stop demanding public prayer in the schools? I’ve never once heard them respond to that.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
You just have to remember that Republicans are fine with the War on Drugs; they’re just adding a new category of drugs and a new category of penalties. Pharmacies would be forbidden from carrying drugs that can induce abortions, and pharmacists who dispense those drugs would be considered accessories to murder. Doctors who prescribed them and patients who took them would be guilty of murder.
Naturally, though, people who were rich enough to travel to another state where abortion-inducing drugs are legal wouldn’t be guilty of anything so long as all their abortion-related medical care took place there. With some of the suggested laws, they’d also need to make up an excuse for traveling out of state.
Ohio Mom
As a Jew, I find the anti-abortionists infuriating. My tradition has no problem with abortion.
Life is considered to begin at the first breath; the mother’s life always takes precedence because she is woven into her family and her community. Her loss would be widely felt. Those relationships are real and important, while no one has an ongoing, reciprocal relationship with the fetus.
The anti-abortionists are forcing their religious beliefs on me and mine. Which is, as I recall, is supposed to be against the law.
i don’t have any doubt that any and all abortion bans will only be in place for a while. It might be a long while, and there will be carnage in the interim. Women will die, lives will be ruined, there will be terrible suffering. People who think they are somehow immune will find out they aren’t.
But they will be overturned, just as they were in Ireland, and just as someone already mentioned, Prohibition was.
Sandia Blanca
Thirty years ago, after lengthy treatment by a fertility doctor, I finally became pregnant. However, we soon learned that something was wrong. Although I was less than two months along, my symptoms were not those of a normal pregnancy, and I was in a lot of pain. Of course, it turned out to be ectopic, and I had emergency surgery.
For many years I considered the experience to be like a miscarriage, because there was NO WAY it could have come to term. I don’t think it really registered with me at the time exactly how much danger I was in, but given the reality of the situation, I will always be thankful to my excellent OB/GYN who did the right thing and saved my life.
What cruelty could lead anyone to think that either the doctor or I deserved punishment for that?
Feathers
Hmm. A thought. Perhaps the purpose of this bill has nothing to do with the reimplanting. What it seems aimed to do is force doctors to perform a damaging surgical removal of the pregnancy, in order to be able to look at the clump of cells and say they determined that there was no way to implant them back in the uterus. This would bring procedures everywhere in line with the awful Catholic hospitals.
Can anyone tell me why there hasn’t been a class action suit about the damaging-non-medically indicated care women receive at Catholic hospitals.
Mary
Gretchen
@ema: https://www.salon.com/2012/01/06/karen_santorum_did_not_have_an_abortion/ she had an infection at 19 weeks and lost the baby. There was some question of whether she would have accepted induction of labor to remove the infected fetus if it were required to save her life, but it seems labor happened spontaneously.
Ksmiami
@Martin: Save America, destroy the GOP
patrick II
@opiejeanne:
Thank you for that correction. I was repeating something I had read without fact-checking. A really dumb thing to do nowadays. And, while the Santorums that a drug-induced forced delivery is ok for them, I am not sure how it squares with their stance on the rights, or lack thereof, of others who face serious health issues during pregnancy and wish to end it.
ema
@Gretchen:
No way to know for sure without access to medical records. And none of our business, as it should be in a normal world.
Unfortunately, the health/life, privacy, freedom of movement, and sanity of women and their loved ones are hanging by a thread.
trollhattan
As a coda to the Santorum mess, the story at the time was that they took the fetus home and passed it from kid to kid, to grieve and whatnot. Not to worry, those kids are totally not messed up.
Gvg
@Kent: they have killed white doctors. I assure you they won’t only come after minority doctors. Racism is a big problem, but this time the hatred is for almost everyone. Women, logical scientific people, liberals, men who think women are people….not many people are in the small category of miserable spiteful immoral but actually think they are righteous.
I think there will be some fairly dramatic examples possibly including every doctor in a state and many women leaving it. This is stupider than prohibition and only the fact that it is obviously too far has prevented it from happening and then proving its a bad idea.
debbie
@Percysowner:
I know you’re long gone, but gerrymandering only made it worse. This state didn’t need gerrymandering to become a backwoods shithole. Ohio was moving toward banning abortions well before the districts were redrawn.
debbie
@Kay:
Then they literally need to pass a law making it a capital offense for the man who couldn’t keep his fucking pants zipped.
Jay
@debbie:
women need to pass an “every sperm is sacred” law.
every sperm that does not result in a to term pregnancy is a charge of murder.
Gretchen
@ema: You’re right, and I really have no interest in accessing Karen Santorum’s medical records. The problem is that they don’t seem to understand that pro-choice means that when you hit a terrible situation like theirs, you ought to be able to access the best available medical advice and choose the best course of action informed by that advice, rather than adhering to whatever some uninformed state leglislator thinks is best.
ema
@Gretchen:
Or maybe they understand but just resent our position that women should be allowed to make their own medical decisions.
scav
Changed my mind on the drive today. It’s
Ohio. The Heartless of it all,
Glidwrith
@Feathers: I can’t speak to why there hasn’t been a lawsuit, perhaps because it isn’t well known what ectopic pregnancy is and its necessary remedy.
I have read that IF a Catholic hospital will deal with the problem, that rather than try to save the woman’s fertility they will remove the entire Fallopian tube and therefore justify that they didn’t directly kill a baby, it just “happened”. Bastards.
gene108
@Kay:
The thread’s dead, but anyway, if we can track cough medicine purchases, there will be ways to track these prescriptions.
I don’t know how they will tinker with laws to get around HIPPA, but they will think of something