Texas passed the horrible abortion restrictions last night.
The bill passed the Republican-controlled Senate just before midnight, two weeks after the Legislature failed to put the restrictions to a successful vote in its first special session. The bill would ban most abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy, place new requirements on which facilities could perform the procedures, and limit a woman’s ability to induce an abortion by taking a pill.
Abortion rights advocates, including Planned Parenthood of Texas, have said that the new law would effectively shut down all but six of the facilities where abortions are performed in the state.
The usual sentimental bullshit was talked about the fetus.
Gov. Rick Perry had made passing House Bill 2 a priority and said he will sign it into law.
In a statement after the bill passed, Perry said: This legislation builds on the strong and unwavering commitment we have made to defend life and protect women’s health. I am proud of our lawmakers, and citizens who tirelessly defended our smallest and most vulnerable Texans and future Texans.”
They’re not small vulnerable Texans, they’re developing fetuses inside the bodies of other people.
They’ve been busy, the haters of abortion rights.
Texas is only one of several states looking to tighten rules for abortions.
North Carolina’s House passed a bill Thursday that directs state regulators to change standards for abortion clinics to bring them in line with more regulated outpatient surgical centers.
Missouri’s governor Friday let a bill become law without his signature that requires doctors to be in the room for the initial dose of a drug used in medication abortions.
Wisconsin’s governor signed into law last week a measure similar to Texas’ that forces abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. That law was blocked by a federal judge.
Fox News talking head Erick Erickson has been gloating and jeering, in particular by telling liberals to stock up on coat hangers. Yes really.
Shortly after the Texas Senate passed legislation that drastically restricts abortion rights in that state, Fox News contributor Erick Erickson urged liberals to bookmark a website that sells coat hangers.
The Texas legislation, which was previously stalled by a filibuster on the Senate floor, would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, mandate new regulations that would force all but five of the 47 clinics providing abortions in the state to close, and require doctors who perform abortions to have admittance privileges at a local hospital. Texas medical associations have expressed opposition to the bill, saying that is “not based on sound science” and “does not promote women’s health.”
During Senate debate over the bill, opponents of the legislation appeared on the floor carrying coat hangers, warning that some women without the option of legal abortion would resort to back-alley methods. “Do you want to return back to the coat hanger or do you want to be able to give them the option to be able to terminate their pregnancy because they have been raped?” said state representative Senfronia Thompson.
In response to the Texas Senate’s passage of the bill, Erickson wrote on Twitter:
Oh hahaha that’s so funny. Like this:
They’re not small vulnerable Texans, they’re developing fetuses inside the bodies of other people.
Someday they might grow up to be big oil companies and pay back those politicians’ investment in care!
Not for me personally, but I suspect there is no small number of FtB regulars (and no doubt others) who will be seriously traumatised by that picture – could you possibly insert a trigger warning in there somewhere?
Sigh. I suppose I can, but the picture was meant to shock. That was the point. I don’t really want to get rid of all shock.
What a fucking monster……….
Moral majority? That’s a joke.
Compassionate conservative? No such animal.
Women have to be punished for having sex. That’s what God wants.
Ophelia
Sure, it shocks.
It might just shock the wrong sort of people. Those who are totally on your side, but who might be triggered nonetheless.
Well Ophelia, consider me shocked.
I was already disgusted by the Erick Erickson quote.
Now I have to wonder whether I should read articles that may add unnecessary “shock value” to already disgusting content because my resources for dealing with such stuff are quite limited.
That picture only shocks those who consider pregnant patients to be people rather than uterine containers with no say in their morbidity/mortality. A piece of garbage, like Mr. Erickson, who jokes about septic abortions doesn’t qualify.
In any case, my bias is that patient confidentiality always trumps shock value when it comes to patient pics/path specimens.
Ophelia, when someone is triggered it does not mean they say “oh how shocking,” it means they are curled up on the floor having a trauma flashback or a panic attack. You’re not required to provide a safe space in your personal blog, I suppose, but it means that readers who don’t have the mental resources to spend on withstanding the episodes you trigger will stop being readers. I agree that shocking content has a rhetorical purpose – the image had its intended effect on me personally, my triggers are elsewhere – so I guess it’s up to you.
Well, yes.
I don’t set out to trigger people, I don’t want to trigger people, but I also don’t want to abandon all rhetorical use of shock.
I focus on stuff that is shocking. I think that’s pretty well known at least to people already familiar with the blog. The whole thing comes with an implicit trigger warning.
Yes, it does come with an implicit trigger warning. Also:
1. Weighing the use of rhetorical shock against the possibility that a reader might be triggered does not always result in the potential reader’s position taking precedence. Sometimes we judge the rhetorical value to be worth it.
Yes, that means sometimes people are going to be triggered. No, that does not make the author uncaring or irresponsible (necessarily).
Many good people at FtB are laudably concerned about emotional damage to vulnerable people. There is a risk, however, of prioritizing that excessively. The potential triggering is not, by default, always the most important, high-priority consideration when weighed against other outcomes. It isn’t. That’s a fact, and it’s part of the decisions we all make in life every day.
2. “Patient confidentiality” is particularly ironic way to protest the use of that image, Ema. The picture is in the public domain. It is widely circulated. The reason this is so is because the woman did not have a chance to be a patient at all because she felt forced into a self-induced abortion that killed her.
Jesus Christ.
Thank you, Josh.
Well, someone has to explain the bloody fucking obvious. Apparently. Grr.
Yes, you’ve explained the bloody obvious fact that, to you, some pregnant women are less worthy of confidentiality than others. I disagree.
ema what are you talking about? That photo was first published decades ago, as a protest against the desperation that drove women to try to self-abort. Are you seriously trying to claim that the important issue here is publication of that photo now? And are you seriously claiming that Josh or anyone is ranking pregnant women?
If so, that’s really disgusting.
I think Ema’s trolling.
Hm. I took a look at ema’s previous comments, and I don’t think so. They’re very medically informative, and not at all trolly.
Co-signing Josh and Ophelia here. Seriously, not every every political discussion should default to the sensibilities of the most fragile person in attendance, any more than it should default to those of the toughest person.
Ema, great job ignoring the content of what Josh had to say. Do you also think we should protect the privacy of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, while we’re at it? I’d say that cat’s pretty long out of the bag…
I think it’s also sort of a matter that anyone who’s read more than a couple of posts at this particular blog should know that Ophelia writes about things that are likely to trigger more often than not. I occasionally have to skip some posts because I know reading them will take me somewhere awful. And a post about septic abortions (actually multiple posts about them), well, is about septic abortions and the deaths that occurred as a result of no safe abortion access.
As far as patient confidentiality goes: she wasn’t a patient. Period. That photo is not of a patient who has undergone a medical procedure, that is a photo of a murder victim.
I’ll also share more than I am comfortable here: the post titled “The end is sharp not tapered” actually did trigger the fuck out of me, and also set off a phobia I have. Which I sort of suspected might eventually happen, given the subject being discussed. So I backed off as soon as I realized. Because talking about this stuff matters.
Thanks, Happiest. I’m sorry that happened. And yes that’s just it: talking about it matters. Shock is part of the point. We get numbed – it’s so easy to get numbed. So fatally easy. Part of what I try to do is break through the numbing. I think constantly posting trigger warnings would just subvert that.
Yeah, I’m not at all upset with you for the post, I think it’s more important for people who don’t know exactly what kind of tortures are involved in back alley abortions to understand exactly what Republicans are pushing women into, with their “culture of life” bullshit. As much as I was deeply triggered, there are the lives of many, many women at stake here, and talking about that is more important.
Thank you for hitting as hard as you do when talking about this. I hope enough people will be shocked enough to care.
follow-up via Salon: Erick Erickson wrote a post claiming illegal abortion isn’t really dangerous and reports of the bad old days are “more legend than reality”, citing an anti-abortion group’s report that cherry-picks its data.
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/15/erick_erickson_thinks_unsafe_abortions_are_hilarious/
According to the Guttmacher report, 39 deaths in 1972 was the tail end of many years’ decline as states began to make legal abortion accessible with a doctor’s or hospital committee’s approval. In 1965 there were over 200 reported deaths.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/06/1/gr060108.html#chart1
Also from the Guttmacher report, many patients obtained safe abortions by traveling: