Sometimes, This Country Scares Me
In South Carolina, state reps are pushing a law mandating that
any woman considering having an abortion would first be required to view an ultrasound of her fetus.
Jesus, you people are sick.
And lest you think it's just our scary brethren to the south pushing such anti-female legislation, similar laws exist in...well...
other Southern states.
Pro-choice advocates often want reporters to ask anti-abortion Republicans the question, "If abortion is murder, how should women who have abortions be punished?"
Because it's a trick question and all, designed to make these candidates look heartless, which, to be sure, they generally are.
Seems to me that such laws are the answer to the question—except that they're actually trying to punish a woman
before she has an abortion; to suggest that, simply for considering that option, she's a shameful person who hasn't for a second considered the implications of that decision.
Sometimes you wonder if the (almost invariably) male lawmakers pushing such legislation have actually ever spoken to a woman who's had an abortion. I know a few, and for every single one of them, it was an excruciating, agonizing decision, one that they knew would live with forever. Women making that decision casually? I'm sure they exist—statistically, they'd have to—but that has to be a tiny minority.
And then, of course, there's always the simple—but to me, incontestable—truism that if it were men who got pregnant, this wouldn't even be a discussion.
The debate about abortion isn't really a debate over human life; it's simply a fight over power, and whether men will continue to enjoy the dominion over women's bodies that they have possessed throughout history. As is usually the case with fights over power, morality is merely the wrapping paper.
