The Arizona legislature is passing a lot of anti-choice legislation this year. One bill defines pregnancy as beginning on the first day of a woman’s menstrual cycle, which we know is a scientific impossibility. For convenience, doctors calculate the due date of a pregnancy at 40 weeks after the first day of the woman’s last period. But pregnancies only occur roughly 11-21 days after the first day of a woman’s period. We know this because the uterine lining must regenerate after the menstrual period in order to be thick enough to allow implantation. So, even though we talk about a 40-week gestation, it’s really more like 38 weeks. When women have their 20-week ultrasound that tests for abnormalities in the developing fetus, that really occurs at about 18 weeks. That’s why the Arizona legislature wants to ban abortions after 18 weeks, because that would keep women from having a good ultrasound before the cut-off.
Another bill passed by the Arizona legislature removes any criminal or civil liability if a doctor fails to tell the parents about significant abnormalities in the pregnancy because they fear such information will result in an abortion. Your doctor can simply lie by omission without that being against the law.
Both of these laws are designed to prevent parents from learning about problems with their pregnancies, effectively taking away their choice about whether or not to become parents to a severely disabled or doomed child.
The intrusion into the doctor/patient relationship seems particularly egregious to me, as it undermines the moral standards of medical practice.
But, apparently, the court is okay with this law. At least, they are so far.
It also interferes with a patient’s right to make a health care decision based on her own health. Combine that with laws that make no exception for when the life of the mother is at risk (complications also often first discovered by ultrasound), and that “lie of omission” sounds a lot more like an attempt at premeditated murder of the mother.
The people promulgating these laws think they are acting out of some sort of moral compass. I really do not understand that moral compass. I really don’t. The baseline looks a lot more like pure hate to me.
Wasn’t Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods, among others, whining about the government coming between patient and doctor? And about government intruding on religious or personal freedom?
Cognitive dissonance is a rightwing intoxicant. It makes them high.
It is hate. And as typical of hate, it only knows the moment. There is no thought to outcomes or the cost one way or another to community.
By denying choice, interestingly they are simultaneously promoting outcomes that will deny a woman and her child any Ayn Rand ideals for individual achievement. Ayn Rand would have demanded choice.
Afiak the new “life begins before conception” AZ law is novel, but the other bit about not requiring doctors to inform mothers about fetal complications has already been done in some states, or at least one that I know of.
It’s true, as you note, that this erodes the moral standards of medical practice, but it’s just one line of battle in a multi-front assault on…on precisely what is hard to say, progress? Science? Cultural advances of the 20th Century (the 21st century got delayed by the Bush years)? Enlightenment?
It’s as though the right wing in America is determined to drag us all back to the Dark Ages, and to a surprising and horrifying degree, they seem to be winning on a number of key fronts. This is just one more in a long line.
We’ve got pharmacists who refuse to fulfill prescriptions for women’s reproductive health, based on personal belief and faith. Entire counties, regions, sometimes practically states where family planning and abortion can’t be obtained.
There is the ongoing assault on teaching of science in schools, again on the basis that what a student personally believes is more important than science itself, coupled with new initiatives to give massive government funding to private schools teaching such inanities as dinosaurs coexisting with humans, and the likely presence of dragons in the fossil record.
There was even an attempt early this year, offhand I can’t remember the state, but they tried to pass a law through the state legislature that citizens could ignore state law if they felt it ran contrary to their religious beliefs.
The assault on reason (not to mention established law) is writ large in state legislatures all over the Union, which, btw, is facing increasing defiance from governors who threaten secession or proclaim that they will refuse to carry out federal initiatives.
I could go on and on. I wonder if this is all due to ALEC-sponsored legislation, or if there are similar organizations out there that haven’t been outed yet authoring this violently regressive agenda, passed in state after state.
However it’s being enacted, this is just one piece of a much larger concerted effort aimed at establishing a privileged class of religious adherents, weapons manufacturers, and who knows what.
That Chris Matthews takedown of Priebus was epic. It’s so shocking to see any media figure actually confront a politician about blatant lies, but this one is for the history books. And Priebus is soooo smarmy and preppy and such a weasel, which makes the slapdown all the more satisfying. wow.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/chris-matthews-gop-priebus-race-card-birther-welfare.php?r
ef=fpb
It does not stop with reproductive rights.
The assault goes to a lot of women’s rights, the sort of assault that sent Rosie the Riveter back to the kitchen in the late 1940s. “Go home, raise a family, and let the guys have some jobs.”
And you have right-wing pundits pushing the envelope of the crazy. Eliminating child labor laws is almost mainstream GOP now. The new crazy is disenfranchising women: “The biggest mistake we made was giving women the right to vote.” says one designated crazy. And re-enslaving African-Americans; Pat Buchanan maintains that slavery was a great deal for the kidnapped Africans–Christianity, civilization, the whole white man’s burden. And it’s not as much philosophical as entrepreneurial; it is an appeal for attention, continued relevance, and most of all those media gigs.
Meanwhile, illegal abortions never stopped in lots of places because safe, legal clinics were never ever available.
It is not an assault on “choice”, it is a complete and total war on undoing the gains that feminists made in the 1970s. To borrow an ideological meme, it’s the sequel–The Patriarchy Strikes Back.
The new crazy is disenfranchising women: “The biggest mistake we made was giving women the right to vote.”
Bryan Fischer(of AFA fame) was Tweeting just that this weekend.
That’s the guy. I couldn’t remember to cite it.
Sounds like AZ is just the state for this service.
http://www.personhoodfunerals.com
OT:
Why is “Easy” Ed Rendell on the TV saying we need to cut entitlements, especially raising the age of Medicare eligibility? He really is a moron.
Simpson-Bowles and da Grand Bargain.
Watch out for a lame duck session if the downticket races don’t turn out a substantially more progressive Congress and deliver a strong mandate against doing this nonsense. And even in that case, watch the lame ducks try to stick their ideas in concrete before they slink out of town to their new lobbying jobs.