Forced childbearing
The House of Representatives passed legislation Tuesday that would criminalize abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for instances where the life of the mother is at risk and in cases involving rape or incest.
The bill passed the House by a vote of 237 for and 189 against, largely on party lines.
The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which is similar to legislation that failed in 2013 and 2015, has support from the White House this time around.
The divisive issue of abortion has once again been brought to the forefront of national conversations since President Donald Trump assumed office. Trump issued support for the bill even before he won the election. In a letter dated September 2016 that was sent to anti-abortion leaders inviting individuals to join the campaign’s “Pro-Life Coalition,” Trump said he was committed to “signing into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would end painful late-term abortions nationwide,” as one of four points.
Sure he did; it’s a chance to stick it to liberals and make women’s lives harder. He likes that.
Similar legislation is already enacted in several states. But opponents of the legislation argue 20-week abortion bans are unconstitutional.
“This dangerous, out-of-touch legislation is nothing more than yet another attempt to restrict women’s access to safe, legal abortion,” Planned Parenthood Action Fund said online. PPAF also writes, “20-week bans are unconstitutional. 20-week bans are a clear attempt to erode Roe v. Wade. In fact, 20-week ban proponents are outspoken about their goal to challenge the 1973 Supreme Court decision protecting a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion.”
The Senate isn’t in a hurry to vote on it, and isn’t an easy yes…but still.
Apparently, a child conceived as a result of rape or incest is not ‘pain-capable’.
Certainly news to me.
Well, they didn’t even give it a witty-acronym-able name, so they can’t want it *too* badly…
And they are pretty sure they’ve got the Supreme Court now. So far, Kennedy has resisted totally overturning Roe v. Wade, but has been very open to all the thousand cuts that have reduced women’s right to choose.
If they get this to work, they’ll be coming after contraception next.
Frankly, I think some guys get enormously aroused at the thought of passing on their genetic material/making a woman pregnant.
The wishes, life choices and well being of both the woman and child are of absolutely no interest to them. The sense of virility, power and legacy (continuance) are the motivation.
My understanding, from articles a while back, is that this bill is aimed at Democrats. There is disagreement among Democrats regarding support for candidates who are not firmly pro-choice. This bill will pressure Democrats about that issue, perhaps hurting their election chances next year in conservative districts.
@Omar Indeed. In fact, not only that, but children gunned down (but not killed) by a man who decided today was the day he would shoot up a school are also completely incapable of pain or PTSD. The kids whose only decent meal each day is the one they get at school, they’re OK because they don’t actually feel hunger, so cutting food stamps or other programs to help get kids fed has no impact. And those kids whose bodies were exposed to lead contamination in their municipal water supply because the important thing was to cut spending on such frivolities as safe drinking water, totally not poisoned.
The psychopathy of it all makes me crazy. The US has scandalous maternal and neonatal mortality rates but I don’t hear the weeping and wailing and the rending of clothes over those babies and their moms. Malnutrition rates in children are another scandal, but strangely no “pro-lifer” seems too worried about that. Someone once came up with a maxim that for these “pro-lifers”, life begins at conception and ends at birth. From the evidence I can only believe that to be true.
How does this help? Pro-lifers are not going to find this attractive. They don’t want any abortions. And it does not help women, who should be allowed to have legal abortions without restrictions. I find it difficult to have any respect for legislators.
Claire @#6: Steven Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter has reportedly mystified authorities as to his motive.
IMHO a gun is its own motive. The gun owner’s self-confidence is inevitably enhanced, muchly and bigly.
That IMHO is the basis of the mass support for the NRA. There are all those tooled-up losers, Homer J Simpsons and Steven Paddocks out there who would be of zero importance in their own eyes but for their armoury.
Is the price of some rifle that for a few lousy bucks can be converted into what amounts to a machine gun too much to pay for self-esteem and pride?
The energy needed for pulling the trigger is tiny beside the devastation that can result from it.
‘Frankly, I think some guys get enormously aroused at the thought of passing on their genetic material/making a woman pregnant.’
I have known at least two well enough to have had that conversation with them.
Next up: the mandatory 21 week waiting period.
Fuck, these guys just don’t quit, do they?
I do greeter volunteering at PP. Since we own the property the clinic is on, women are able to drive past protestors and park in the lot, so it’s a clear walk to the door, so our main job is 50/50 between giving the women someone to talk to on the way in so they don’t have to listen to the shouts, and standing near the edge of the property to give the protestors someone else to yell at instead of women seeking health care.
It veers between rage-inducing blather and low comedy (such as the guy who struggled to put on his custom-built harness for his 20-foot tall flagpole with that ‘Christian flag’ at the top of it). But the lies and condemnation never, ever stop. Of course they repeat the bogus abortion-breast cancer claim, and they’ll invent any tale to support their skewed view of reality. (More low comedy–one of the regulars routinely talks about how “Just a couple weeks ago, I held two babies who’d been saved when their mother turned away from this place.” Per some of the old hands at the clinic, these ‘babies’ would need to be about 7 years old at this point, since that’s how long she’s been making the claim.)
I actually heard one of the worst of the regulars (they’re all bad, but some are more ‘sad’ than ‘vile’–this asshat is definitely at the ‘vile’ end of the spectrum) declare to a guy who had stopped his car to tell them to fuck off that, and I quote, “No woman ever died because of pregnancy. They died because of complications from the pregnancy.” I don’t think you could get an angel to dance on the edge of the razor he tried to split that hair with.
[…] a comment by Freemage on Forced […]
So, Freemage, pregnancy doesn’t kill people, complications kill people?
I think that guy had been taking lessons from the NRA.
I’ve found that a fine way to avoid complications of X is to avoid/end X. When it may kill you, it’s something to keep in mind.
iknklast: Exactly. It’s… guh.
On the upside, our Republican governor, whom is normally an ass of the highest order, just managed to stumble into doing the right thing–he’s literally first governor in the country to sign a bill expanding public aid for abortions (and also removing the old ‘if Roe v. Wade gets overturned, abortion’s illegal here again’ law that was passed in the initial pro-choice backlash against the SCOTUS).
I’ve seen some takes that this was basically a political punishment he doled out to his own party after some of them worked with the Dems to finally pass a state budget over his veto (he’d originally promised to veto the abortion funding, but then they broke ranks). So it’s ‘good thing for bad reason’. But hey, I’ll take my upnotes where I can get ’em, these days.
Freemage @ 15, you couldn’t make this shit up, could you?
Freemage @ 11, unfortunately this shit seems all too believable.
#7 Kevin
They may want a total ban on abortions, but if they can’t get a total ban in one fell swoop, they’ll settle for a thousand-cuts approach to it instead.