Chipping Away at Roe: Missouri Edition

Another day, another setback.

The Missouri Legislature has justed passed new restrictions on access to abortion. The margins weren't even close (121-33 in the state House, and 28-5 in the Senate). This means that even if Democratic Governor Jay Nixon vetoes the legislation, there are more than enough votes to make the bill law anyway.

Missouri already prohibits aborting fetuses after doctors determine they are viable, except to protect the health of the parent. The new legislation takes things further:

State legislators have decided that all fetuses are potentially viable after 20 weeks of gestation (typically fetuses are viable after 22-24 weeks). If a parent is 20 weeks or more into pregnancy, ze'll need to have two doctors sign off that the fetus isn't viable.

Making another medical judgment, the Legislature defined what constitutes the health of the parent. Once the bill becomes law, the only health exceptions after 20 weeks will involve abortions the risk of death or "permanent damage to a major bodily function because of the pregnancy." Once again, the parent will need two doctors to attest to this.

About these two doctors: they can't have a "legal or financial affiliation or relationship [that] is a result of being employed by or having staff privileges at the same hospital as the first physician." This only serves to underscore that this bill isn't about medical professionals' judgments, it's about stopping "big abortion" ("financial affiliation"? really?), the fictitious entity that supports cis women and trans men's bodily autonomy.

Doctors who perform abortions in violation of these restrictions will be felons, potentially going to in prison and paying substantial fines.

Regular readers may know that I have a 3-year-old daughter. At the time of my partner's pregnancy, we:
1) Were both employed
2) Had jobs that allowed us to take plenty of time off during the day
3) Were living in a metropolitan area (with multiple health care options)
4) Had reasonably good health insurance
4) Owned not one, but two cars

Getting to the OB/GYN's office was still a major hassle. Even for a relatively uneventful pregnancy, it seemed like we were always going to or coming from the doctor. Getting an appointment was a major pain in the ass, too. Usually we'd be told the exact date and time to show up, unless we wanted to wait a bazillion weeks, which we were advised against because OMG BABY!

Of course, we didn't need an abortion, which would have been even more of a logistical nightmare.

Now consider the proportion of parents who don't have health insurance that covers abortion (if you recall, that number may soon be going up). For that matter, think of how many people don't have health insurance at all. Then there are the people that live a long ways from one, let alone two different clinics. And so on...

Remember, there's also a time-crunch here. This law accords the 20-week mark with magical powers. If you find out at 18 or 19 weeks that the fetus might not be viable, or that health complications are developing, you don't have very long to make a decision, find a doctor, and come up with a way to pay for an abortion. This is already difficult, and that's precisely the idea.

This time-crunch contrasts nicely with all the legislation requiring parents to wait prior to getting an abortion. Anti-abortion activists want cis women and trans men to take their time in considering whether to have an abortion, but only if they've already decided to have one.

It's transparently obvious that this bill (sponsored in the House by a man who describes abortion in graphic and largely fictional terms) is an attempt to make it harder for anyone in Missouri to get an abortion. Yet there are Democrats in Jefferson City who were willing to talk about "compromise." Given that there 56 Democrats in the state House, it would appear that plenty of Democratic Representatives who voted for the legislation.

As per usual, President Obama is silent.

Judge Denies Restraining Order; Indiana Planned Parenthood Will Be Immediately Defunded

As I mentioned yesterday, Indiana Governor Mitch "World-Class Garbage Legislation Signing Monster" Daniels signed a bill that makes Indiana the first state in the nation to cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Today, a federal judge has blocked Planned Parenthood's request for a restraining order that would block the legislation until they can appeal the legislation:

U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt said in her ruling that the criteria for issuing a temporary restraining order have not been met. The judge said that the ACLU provided information showing the legislation would have a gradual affect on Planned Parenthood as opposed to the immediate harm required for a restraining order.

"This ruling should not be viewed as a signal on a future ruling," said Walton Pratt, indicating her decision should not be considered in future legal battles of the legislation.

The two sides will meet in court again on June 6 for an injunction hearing.

In the meantime, please donate to Planned Parenthood of Indiana and/or the ACLU of Indiana, if you can.

I was just watching local (Chicago) news coverage of the ruling and the coverage is, as expected, totally abysmal. It's being (mis)represented as a principled stand against allowing federal funds to pay for abortions, even though Planned Parenthood is already restricted from using those funds to pay for abortions by the Hyde Amendment.

This is going to be a long, ugly, and upsetting fight.

The women (and men) of Indiana have been told by their government that their lives and health and bodies and rights and agency don't matter, and other states are looking to follow suit. All we can do is raise our voices and say, over and over and over again, that we do matter, until we are heard.

[H/t to @scatx.]

Governor Mitch Daniels Signs Bill Defunding Planned Parenthood in Indiana, Of Course

Garbage governor is garbagey:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has signed a measure to further restrict abortions in Indiana and make it the first state to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood.

WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

The Republican governor is considering a run for president in 2012, and adding his signature to the abortion bill could help his image among social conservatives who say they worry he's too much of a fiscal hawk to get involved in such issues as abortion.

The abortion bill wasn't on Daniels' legislative agenda, but he signed it Tuesday along with 79 other bills.

So much for that truce on social issues, eh, Mitch?

Planned Parenthood of Indiana says it will seek a temporary restraining order and injunction Tuesday in federal court to try to prevent the measure from taking effect.

Sob.

Number of the Day

[Trigger warning for misogyny, miscarriage, sexual violence, victim-blaming, and Christian supremacy.]

1 in 6. The number of US hospital patients now treated by Catholic hospitals, which "are required to adhere to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services—archconservative restrictions issued by the 258-member U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops."

Because of the directives, doctors and nurses at Catholic-affiliated facilities are not allowed to perform procedures that the Catholic Church deems "intrinsically immoral, such as abortion and direct sterilization." Those medical personnel also cannot give rape survivors drugs to prevent pregnancy unless there is "no evidence that conception has already occurred."

...The Catholic directives involve not just abortion and birth control but ectopic pregnancies, embryonic stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization, sterilizations and more. "The problem with [the directives]," says Susan Berke Fogel, an attorney at the National Health Law Program in Los Angeles, "is about substandard care becoming rampant in the U.S., threatening women's health and women's lives."

...How did we get to the point where 258 right-wing bishops—all (supposedly) celibate male clerics—are prohibiting doctors from practicing medicine and denying women essential reproductive care? The debacle starts with anti-choice legislation. The U.S. Congress started to pass "conscience clauses" pushed by the Roman Catholic Church and anti-abortion forces in the immediate wake of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973. Today, these laws apply not only to physicians and nurses who oppose abortion, but to entire institutions whose "consciences" allow them to withhold medically indicated care.

You may remember, in 2006, Joe Lieberman's defense of Catholic hospitals' right to practice whatever kind of medicine they wanted because "it shouldn't take more than a short ride to get to another hospital." The practical reality, however, is this:

Kathleen Prieskorn gasped in shock as her medical nightmare began. Still reeling from the heartbreak of an earlier miscarriage, Prieskorn was three months pregnant and working as a waitress when she felt a twinge, felt a trickle down her leg and realized she was miscarrying again.

She rushed to her doctor's office, "where I learned my amniotic sac had torn," says Prieskorn, who lives with her husband in Manchester, N.H. "But the nearest hospital had recently merged with a Catholic hospital—and because my doctor could still detect a fetal heartbeat, he wasn't allowed to give me a uterine evacuation that would help me complete my miscarriage."

To get treatment, Prieskorn, who has no car, had to instead travel 80 miles to the nearest hospital that would perform the procedure—expensive to do in an ambulance, because she had no health insurance. Her doctor handed her $400 of his own cash and she bundled into the back of a cab.

"During that trip, which seemed endless, I was not only devastated, but terrified," Prieskorn remembers. "I knew that if there were complications I could lose my uterus—and maybe even my life."

In the US, that is considered an acceptable risk in order that we might indulge the religious ethics of a group of men employed by an international organization rife with institutional misogyny, homophobia, and rape apologia.

And I use the word "men" advisedly: Sister Margaret McBride was, of course, excommunicated last year for allowing, as part of a Catholic hospital's ethics committee, the termination of a pregnancy to save a woman's life.

By all means, let us continue to treat women's lives and bodies and consent and agency like so much garbage, so that we may protect the delicate sensibilities of some of the most women-hating men on the planet.