JCC Virginia GOP introduces bill to instrumentally RAPE all women who want an abortion (seriously)

Not kidding. This is beyond messed up. Way over the line. What are they thinking?

This week, the Virginia state Legislature passed a bill that would require women to have an ultrasound before they may have an abortion. Because the great majority of abortions occur during the first 12 weeks, that means most women will be forced to have a transvaginal procedure, in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced. Since a proposed amendment to the bill?a provision that would have had the patient consent to this bodily intrusion or allowed the physician to opt not to do the vaginal ultrasound?failed on 64-34 vote, the law provides that women seeking an abortion in Virginia will be forcibly penetrated for no medical reason. I am not the first person to note that under any other set of facts, that would constitute rape under state law.

What?s more, a provision of the law that has received almost no media attention would ensure that a certification by the doctor that the patient either did or didn?t ?avail herself of the opportunity? to view the ultrasound or listen to the fetal heartbeat will go into the woman?s medical record. Whether she wants it there or not. I guess they were all out of scarlet letters in Richmond.

So the problem is not just that the woman and her physician (the core relationship protected in Roe) no longer matter at all in deciding whether an abortion is proper. It is that the physician is being commandeered by the state to perform a medically unnecessary procedure upon a woman, despite clear ethical directives to the contrary. (There is no evidence at all that the ultrasound is a medical necessity, and nobody attempted to defend it on those grounds.) As an editorial in the Virginian-Pilot put it recently, ?Under any other circumstances, forcing an unwilling person to submit to a vaginal probing would be a violation beyond imagining. Requiring a doctor to commit such an act, especially when medically unnecessary, and to submit to an arbitrary waiting period, is to demand an abrogation of medical ethics, if not common decency.?

Evidently the right of conscience for doctors who oppose abortion are a matter of grave national concern. The ethical and professional obligations of physicians who would merely like to perform their jobs without physically violating their own patients are, however, immaterial. Don?t even bother asking whether this law would have passed had it involved physically penetrating a man instead of a woman without consent. Next month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument about the obscene government overreach that is the individual mandate in President Obama?s health care law. Yet physical intrusion by government into the vagina of a pregnant woman is so urgently needed that the woman herself should be forced to pay for the privilege.

The bill will undoubtedly be enacted into law by the governor, Bob McDonnell, who is gunning hard for a gig as vice president and has already indicated that he will sign the bill. ?I think it gives full information,? he said this week on WTOP radio?s ?Ask the Governor? program. ?To be able to have that information before making what most people would say is a very important, serious, life-changing decision, I think is appropriate.?

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This is just sick.

Am I misunderstanding this at all? I sincerely hope I am. This is the year 2012, the 21st century. This cannot be happening in America in this century, can it?

 

its not rape if they consent to it.

 

The bill is that it must be performed, even without their consent.

 

a hitler thread and a rape thread. i can't wait for number three.

 

Don't some states already require this?




Anyway, hooray for misogyny and the gradual erosion of Roe.

 

Dead Kittens.

 

They do? This is news to me. It wasn't mentioned anywhere in the article.

 

This is incredibly objectionable for several reasons, but could probably do with a less sensational title. The story is about erecting arbitrary obstacles to abortions. As your title itself hints, the problem is that there's no clear reason to obligatorily tie ultrasounds to an eventual abortion. It's not a consent issue at all.

 

Man, it's almost like the GOP is attempting to force as much reproductive rights controversy into the spotlight as possible in order to rally their base in the upcoming presidential election.

... Nah, I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

 

That doesn't really make a lot of sense, Ramza. Well, not if you're trying to tie it to the contraception issue, anyway. The Catholic Church is pretty unique in equating contraceptives to abortive agents; most of the "pro-life" movement is fine with their use.

 

I'm not really sure how you define "most" or "pro-life movement" but I see a lot of what I consider to be the pro-life movement peddling misinformation about contraceptives in order to discourage their use.

 

birth control is cheap back in my day women put aspirin between their legs lolololololol it's funny because you're deviants

 

Apparently I am behind the times (?) or something. Or they are.

 

In Britain, an ultrasound involves rolling a probe over the outside surface of the pregnant woman's torso; why does the proposed procedure involve being inserted?

 

God bless America

 

What What Whaaat?

 

How do I put this nicely?....








[image=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_N844oc5XKuc/SOFplAm8owI/AAAAAAAAAig/IKmwEszS78g/s400/America-Fail.jpg]

 

I had one of these ultrasounds during my first checkup while I was pregnant. Even though I consented to it (not that I felt I had a choice in the matter) I still felt pretty violated afterward. It hurt! Plus having a stranger's touching me there for for quite a while was pretty uncomfortable too. I can't imagine having to sit through that after being raped. It would seriously scar some one even more than they've already been scarred.

EDIT: Oh yeah and they didn't tell me what type of ultrasound I was getting until I was already in the room.

 

This isn't a Britain vs. America thing, they're two different procedures that allow the healthcare professionals to get different views of your internal organs and I guarantee that transvaginal ultrasounds happen in Britain.

 

I had one of these because my GYN though I had endometriosis and it is SO painful. I made me incredibly uncomfortable and I actually cried when I was putting my clothes back on.

 

While I don't support instrumental rape, I do support making the mothers look at their unborn soon-to-be-aborted children.

 

lol
i'm so shocked

 

This is an abhorrant thought.

What they are doing is difficult enough and while I don't feel abortion should be used as a contraception, sometimes accidents occur and sometimes the woman is abused to an unimaginable extent, and to make them suffer this borders on psychological cruelty at a level I cannot comrehend and how anyone feels this is an appropriate response is beyond me.

horrifying absolutely horrifying