New bill in Tennessee:
A new bill headed for a vote by a Tennessee House committee this week targets abortion providers by requiring the state’s Department of Health to publish detailed information about doctors on a public website.
Known as H.B. 3308, or the “Life Defense Act of 2012,” the bill would not actually level any real “defense” of human embryos. Instead, it would require the Tennessee Department of Health to publish more detailed information about abortions carried out in the state, including the names of doctors who performed them and the hospitals they work with.
It would also require detailed statistics on abortions, including time, date, the woman’s medical conditions at the time, the age of the fetus, the type of procedure performed, the location of the procedure, and the woman’s age, race and marital status, along with details on how many times she has been pregnant.
While all states collect some basic information on abortions, H.B. 3308 would make Tennessee’s reporting the most detailed in the nation.
Remember when it was just fringe extremist groups that did this stuff:
The threats started in 1995. It was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the American Coalition of Life Activists decided to create a poster for their annual meeting listing the names and address of a group of doctors who performed abortions. They called them “the Deadly Dozen,” and declared each guilty of “crimes against humanity.” They offered $5,000 for information leading to their arrest, conviction, or revocation of their medical licenses. ACLA members distributed the poster at the group’s events and published it in an affiliated magazine.
Then later that year, ACLA unveiled a second poster, this time targeting Dr. Robert Crist, an abortion provider in Kansas City. The poster listed his home and work addresses and featured his photograph. It offered $500 to “any ACLA organization that successfully persuades Crist to turn from his child killing through activities within ACLA guidelines,” which prohibited violence.
The following January, ACLA created the “Nuremberg Files” — a series of dossiers it had compiled on doctors, clinic employees, politicians, judges and other abortion rights supporters. Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kans., who was killed Sunday, was among them. They would be prosecuted, ACLA wrote, “once the tide of this nation’s opinion turns against the wanton slaughter of God’s children.” ACLA sent copies of the dossiers to an anti-abortion activist who posted the information on a Website. There, the names of those who had been attacked by “anti-abortion terrorists” — as the court called them — were listed, with a strike through the names of those who had been murdered. The names of those wounded were grayed.
So I guess we have advanced somewhat in the last 15 years. Before, it was just fringe fanatics who wanted to publish the private information of doctors. Now it is fanatical legislators.
PROGRESS!
It’d Be Easier To Just Paint a Bullseye on themPost + Comments (100)