Terrifyingly anti-woman law passed in Oklahoma

[SethStarkaddersMum]

I am absolutely at this.

A law has been passed in Oklahoma to force women who want abortion to undergo vaginal ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus and view the ultrasound image before terminating a pregnancy.
Even if they are rape or incest victims.

words absolutely fail me.

"Shame them into keeping their baby"???

FGS Leonie, and who is going to pay for the upbringing and care of such baby?, who is going to offer a woman who was raped counseling to accept a baby that only reminds her of her rapist? who is going to pay the medical care and associated costs of caring for a disabled children?

The doctor who looked at the scan and told them it was ok when it wasn't?, the lawmakers?, the voters? no, ...THE WOMAN who is bearing that baby, and she will be well on her own once the baby is born. The others would get on with their lives, they won't be there to support that child or the woman they "shamed" into continuing the pregnancy.

I have just typed a long ranting post and it disappeared. Bugger.

Leonie I think you are lumping the whole 'abortion as contraception' crowd in with people whose abortion has failed throiugh no fault of their own. Remember that not all contraception is 100%. I got pregnant on a bloody mirena coil before, and how effective is that (99.8%or something).

And anyway, I fully support the choices made by people who use abortion as contraception anyway. It is not something I would do personally, but I am glad that people are able to.

Humiliation and shame? Rificulous. Why should anyone be ashamed of having an abortion. I am not. Not at all. I did not kill a baby. I didn't do anything wrong. So if a doctor did try and show me a scan photo to shame me, it wouldn't work. I am intelligent enough to make a decision which is best for me and my family. A doctor going 'look at your baby's spinal cord, that's a life, look' would make utterly no difference to me, as to me it is not a baby anyway. It is a potential baby. And that is the difference. So I would feel no shame. And I would tell the doctor so.

And that perhaps they deserve a little humiliation - not my opinion necessarily, but i tihnk that is probably the goal.

What is your opinion, then? You're happy to be the spokesperson for these legislators while disavowing the position yourself. Convenient.

Toccata, I don't mean to downplay your very strong convictions at all. I hear you loud and clear. This is why it's clever propaganda; women like you, who have very strong religious/moral positions, but who don't want to interfere with another woman's choice, feel caught between camps.

But honestly, speaking as an atheist, its'-a-bunch-of-cells, better-not-to-have-it-if-you're-at-all-unsure type? I absolutely count you onside. Because what you believe for your life is irrelevant to me. I only, only, want people to stop interfering in mine.

So, yes, if you believe women should be allowed to choose, you're pro-choice. And that doesn't detract from your own beliefs about sanctity of life at all.

You said 'necessarily'
Which is a nice little qualifier isn't it?

Pretend that first sentence is in quotes, please

I just don't see why a woman who got pg by mistake/ contraceptive failure should be forced to let the embryo develop into a fetus and then a baby if she doesn't want to.
Also, this whole business of calling 5 week old embryo a 'baby' is a relatively new concept in Church, as they had come up with many different periods over the last thousand of years of when the foetus 'gets' a soul.

no one derseves humiliation. and it is horrific that woman should be forced to look at a scan and listen to a doctors description before termination....but i know someone who does use abortion as contraception.She does not use condoms or the the pill, she frequently chooses to have unprotected sex and has 3 abortions in as many years , she also has a 12 year old son who she walked out on and ignores. Although , i dont think she is justified in using abortion as contracepton, i think it would be a lot worse if she left a trail of abandoned children .Scans would not stop her choosing to act the way she does.
the law that has been passed is wrong..unfair and distressing on the people who need abortion for genuine reasons (whatever they may be), and unaffective as a deterant against the few who just dont give a shit.

GetOrfMyLand-exactly-potential baby.Huge difference.

to add to Slug's 'what about?' post:
what about the medical care system that denies women with pregnancy-related illness such as hyperemesis gravidarum effective treatment for their disorder?

because when I used to go on a hyperemesis forum that was based in the US there were women who were thinking of terminating in mainly because their insurance company wouldn't pay for effective treatment (Zofran, which for some people is the only thing that works, costs about £70 a day.)

perhaps if they showed up in Oklahoma the so-called Christians who voted for this would pay for their drugs.... Or not, probably.

"Chandra: i'm glad my parents didnt think of money when they were deciding to keep me."

And where your parents in the same predicament? Was your mother raped? do you require 24/7 medical care? Those are the cases that worry me the most.

And for the record , out of the many women i know who have chosen to terminate , nearly all of them have agonised and had thought very carefully about their situation, before making their choice.

Here's the thing Leonie, if you don't want to be called a nutter, don't post opinions that make you sound like one. By trying to justify this legislation you offended a large number of MNetters. You can't expect to post comments like that and not expect to be challenged.

I'm glad my mum didn't worry (too much) about money when she chose to have me. But if she had decided not to have me, I wouldn't have known about it. I wouldn't have existed. The World would have been a teensy bit different I guess but I'm not so important that I think it would have been a disaster.

As far as I know it takes two people to create a pregnancy.

If the point of this thing is to make only one of them feel guilty, distressed and humiliated than that is outrageously sexist and misogynistic.

Required medical procedures are one thing but sexist and antiwomen 'tough abortion laws' are another altogether.

Drloves, exactly, the women who are paraded as classic irresponsible anti-Madonnas, aren't they the ones who should least end up in charge of children?

I have a friend who sort of used abortion as contraception, in that she and her husband knowingly relied on a really unreliable form of contraception for years, knowing that if the odds turned against them they'd abort. And they did, once. They went on to conceive and birth twins. I don't think it was ideal of them to do what they did (I was at LEAST as cross with the husband whose failure to use condoms subjected his wife to a surgical procedure) but I'm glad they got to choose.

Every child should be wanted.

Beachcomber, yes, in all this talk about women who use abortion as contraception there's no talk about the men. What are the men playing at that they're not making sure contraception is in place? Are we to believe that these cavalier women are lying to men about having hormonal contraception in place and then having abortions? This seems unlikely to me.

Should the belief of one group of people (pro-life, an embryo has equal rights to the mother) be used as the basis for laws that affect everyone?

I might believe that chickens should have equal rights to people and that you shouldn't be allowed to eat their eggs and put them in a pie. That doesn't mean we should pass a law and force everyone to follow what I think is the moral right course of action.

I wish no one ever had to consider an abortion. I do think life begins at conception, but until such time as the foetus can exist independently of the mother, her right to life comes first.

This is all the rage in the US now - making abortion not illegal but impossible, throwing up obstacle after obstacle to that in theory a woman can have an abortion but it is practically impossible.

A prime minister in my country once said 'the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation', I would extend this to having no business in the uteruses of the nation.

It never fails to amaze me just how much the status quo despises women.

Well I suppose that's one way to stick two fingers up to the pro abortion lobby.

Disgusting.

Disgusting. Really, really horrific anti-woman nastiness. (Not really much difference between these bible-belt nutjob Americans and their arch-enemy Taliban. Different God, different part of the world, same hatred and fear of women).

Oh, and Leonie, you have that special aura of self-hatred and bigotry that permeates from almost every hardline pro-lifer I have ever know. Congrats.

I just don't get laws like this.

If a state government believes abortion is wrong, and has the support of the people of that state, then they should just go ahead and ban abortion. (As a fervent pro-choicer I think this would be wrong, but it would at least be honest).

This kind of law is just dishonest. It won't stop women having abortions. It will just make them feel worse about it. And what exactly will that achieve?

I still can't get over the fact that the people who made this law are the ones who call themselves Christians. I mean, Jesus specifically said not to throw stones at the woman taken in adultery