My friend Sheila Kennedy, a longtime Dispatches reader and a law professor who has done some important work on church/state matters, has a blog post about the guy who submitted the bill to require transvaginal ultrasounds in her home state of Indiana:
A Facebook friend notes that Indiana Sen. Travis Holdman–author of the bill to require insertion of a transvaginal probe into a woman’s womb in order to take a video both before and after she obtains medication causing abortion–is also the author of a bill making it a crime to take a video of a farm or industrial operation.
After all, what happens on your farm or in your factory is private. Your uterus, evidently, is more like a high-school locker–yours to use as long as you follow the rules established by the relevant authorities, but subject to search when those authorities deem necessary.
It’s all about priorities, apparently.
22 comments
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tubi
February 27, 2013 at 10:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ironic, given that they tend to view women primarily as baby factories.
fifthdentist
February 27, 2013 at 10:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My irony meter, which had been sealed in a 5 foot square block of depleted uranium and placed in a quarter-mile-deep abandoned mine shaft in Mongolia that was then filled in with cement, just exploded spectacularly.
glodson
February 27, 2013 at 10:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I used to joke that the GOP sees a woman’s uterus as public domain. This is no longer a joke, it seems.
Mr Ed
February 27, 2013 at 10:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What if we rename the doctor’s office or surgery to the Doctor’s Factory? Would the two potential laws nullify each other.
Randomfactor
February 27, 2013 at 10:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wonder how hard it would be for a woman to declare herself a farm? Or a corporation, since those also seem to have special rights?
Larry
February 27, 2013 at 10:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Remind me again why any woman would ever vote for troglodytes like Holdman?
raven
February 27, 2013 at 10:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Comparing women to livestock is common among fundie xian leaders.
Under biblical law, they are considered chattel, the same category as children, property, and livestock.
Bronze Dog
February 27, 2013 at 11:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So a woman’s uterus is public domain, according to this wingnut. Sounds to me like they’re trying to legally define women as sluts so they can justify all the slut shaming they do on reflex. Conveniently for them, the probing amounts to state sanctioned and mandated rape, so that’s one step removed from legalizing rape in general.
Cute. So much economic injustice built on corporations being defined as persons, so I wonder if there’d be clever applications for economic justice that could be brought about by defining a person as a corporation.
Dr X
February 27, 2013 at 11:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Same Travis Holdman who cosponored a bill making recitation of the Lord’s Prayer mandatory in schools.
http://tinyurl.com/7jx6eh5
Phillip IV
February 27, 2013 at 11:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You could almost say that Sen. Holdman apparently wants to socialize the means of re-production…but the sad thing is, they aren’t even consistent about that one. Only one half of the means of reproduction belongs to the people, the counterpart is private property to be gently stroked by the invisible hand of Adam Smith.
Synfandel
February 27, 2013 at 11:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The plural of ‘chattel’ is ‘chattels’. It’s not grammatically analogous to ‘cattle’ even if we’re comparing them with livestock.
d.c.wilson
February 27, 2013 at 11:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s getting harder and harder to satirize the republican view on reproductive issues. I’d joke that the next step will be requiring a woman seeking an abortion to get a written consent form from her husband or, if she’s unmarried, her father, but I suspect there’s a state rep somewhere who is working on that.
raven
February 27, 2013 at 11:27 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
BTW, this Georgia bill, the women as livestock bill did pass.
It’s medical malpractice and guaranteed to kill a few women here and there.
Karen Satanorum had an abortion to remove a dying fetus. The woman Savita was refused the same procedure in an Irish hospital and died shortly afterward in agony from septicemia. You don’t carry around dead tissue for very long before it becomes septic.
Trying to explain Georgia’s Terry England or Indiana’s Travis Holdman in any normal terms is impossible. Just call them what they are. Sociopaths. Wannabe killers.
raven
February 27, 2013 at 11:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That used to be the case, pre Roe versus Wade
Abortion was regulated at the state level and the laws varied tremendously.
One couple I knew had an accidental pregnancy in school.
Under state law the husband had to give consent. They weren’t married. So they got the forms and faked all the names and filed the forms that said they were married.
In other words, they had to get married to obtain an abortion.
It turned out to be a bad deal. The state didn’t care that they faked a bunch of signatures. It wasn’t a good marriage combo. And eventually they had to get a real divorce.
Vall
February 27, 2013 at 11:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ Bronze Dog
“So much economic injustice built on corporations being defined as persons, so I wonder if there’d be clever applications for economic justice that could be brought about by defining a person as a corporation.”
Another way could be to define corporations as women. Then the people that dream this shit up would be forced to address women’s issues in a positive way.
slc1
February 27, 2013 at 12:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
For those who maintain that elections don’t matter and that that there is no difference between the parties, think again. All of this crap is a result of the tea party victories in 2010, brought on by the folks who were dissatisfied with Obama and stayed home in protest. Like the Nader voters in New Hampshire and Florida who saw no difference between Gore and Bush prior to the election in 2000.
iknklast
February 27, 2013 at 12:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks a lot, Philip IV. I won’t be able to get that image out of my head for a long time! Yikes!
tommykey
February 27, 2013 at 12:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s getting harder and harder to satirize the republican view on reproductive issues.
@ D.C. Wilson, The Onion had a satirical article about a new Republican bill that would require a woman to name the baby before getting an abortion.
glodson
February 27, 2013 at 12:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wait a few months. By then, we will be calling the same article prophetic instead of satirical.
cry4turtles
February 27, 2013 at 1:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Pretty soon we’ll have to name our periods!
leni
February 27, 2013 at 6:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m naming every single one Travis.
marcus
February 27, 2013 at 10:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@21 “No, sorry hon, not tonight, Travis is visiting.”
“Hey sweetie could you pick me up some tampons at the pharmacy, Travis is back.”
I like it!