Wow, it looks as though 2010 is the year of eliminating states from my list of possible new homes in the US. Oklahoma's new abortion legislation (HB 2656 and HB 2780) is up there on the f-ed up scale with SB 1070 in Arizona. And I have not heard as much about this new legislation, maybe because everyone is distracted trying to bring awareness to Arizona's new law. Vetoes to both bills were overruled, meaning that HB 2656 and HB 2780 are now laws in Oklahoma. How does this all happen so fast?
Let us begin with HB 2780, which makes it so that a woman having an abortion is required by state law to see an ultrasound of the unborn fetus before the abortion, and have it described to her in detail. So she knows what she's getting into, you see... This is supposedly going to deter women from using abortion as a first-resort method of birth control. While I do believe that having an abortion is a serious matter requiring careful consideration of the consequences and what exactly all of this means, I must admit that I cannot see that too many women getting abortions are going about it all willy-nilly. This is an intense medical procedure, and I am sure that a lot of hard thinking goes into the decision for such a serious procedure. Currently, pro-choice advocates are relating this procedure to state-mandated rape, because these women have no choice whether or not they will be penetrated by the instruments used to produce an image of the fetus. Of course, nay sayers are poo-pahing the whole thing. According to one representative, you use similarly (or more) invasive techniques in order to perform an abortion, so it falls under the same umbrella. Oh wait, except the whole definition of rape revolves around consent, (meaning that there is a lack thereof in cases of rape), and in all of these cases the abortion procedure itself would have been requested by the woman, but not the ultrasound.
Moving on to HB 2656. According to this new Oklahoma legislation, doctors can outright lie to a patient about the state of her unborn fetus. Why would s/he do that? In order to prevent the woman from aborting a fetus if it shows signs of birth defects. To quote Mary Alice Carr in the above-posted article, this is "anti-motherhood and anti-medicine." You should definitely read her article, because she puts my outrage better than I ever could, speaking as a mother who was always relieved to hear that everything is fine with her unborn fetus in the doctor's office. Now, a doctor in Oklahoma stating "everything is fine" may not bring this relief, as they are allowed to violate their Hippocratic oath if they think that telling you there is a problem with your fetus will lead you to seek an abortion.
Frankly, I am a little confused with the conservative push for so much controlling legislation lately. If you buy into the liberal-conservative dichotomy as it is popularly illustrated, you will see that conservative=fights for freedom (and small government), and liberal=fights for equality. Talking to my family about the healthcare bill you would definitely get the impression that our freedom in this country has gone out the window. Yet the biggest violations of freedoms that I am witnessing are being posited by the conservative representatives. Do you like freedom? Well in Arizona you're going to have to sacrifice just a little bit of that and carry documentation of legal citizenship around with you, no matter who you are. That is so that no one else can enjoy the freedom that you earned(?) by being born in this great nation. Do you want an abortion? Well not so fast now. We didn't make it ILLEGAL, so you still have your freedom there. But we will make it an even more uncomfortable process. Oh, and there might be even more medical woes for you in the process, but no biggie, right? I mean that affects so few people, that it shouldn't even matter. Hey, 50% of us don't even have to worry about pregnancy, so there's some more freedom! FREEEEEEDOM!
Well, Oklahoma, you can now join North Dakota and Arizona on the list of states I won't be visiting or frequenting any time soon. To inhabitants of those states, keep fighting the good fight. Show the world that freedom and equality are not mutually exclusive.
A friend of mine posted a link about this on her facebook page and I wanted to throw up. Having multiple Latino friends with multiple backgrounds I am upset by the legislation in AZ but as a woman I am outraged by the legislation in OK. OK is not OK in my book. Excuse the LAME pun.
ReplyDeleteSo, unfortunately, due to having to finish a book about how our government openly hated gays and lesbians during the Cold War by tomorrow, I don't have time to write everything I want to say right now. But, as the one who inspired the title for this post, I want to express my agreement with everything you've said here, and add to it: WTF 2010? Because really, this has been one screwed up year so far... More to come...
ReplyDeleteSo, I just re-read my comment after it was published and for karmic reasons I feel the need to clarify that by "more to come..." I meant that I plan to respond more in the future, not that this year has been really screwed up so far and that there's more to come, although unfortunately that's probably also true
ReplyDeleteWow Melissa! great article... I didn't know about the law in Oklahoma, that is so scary!! I agree with you, we should boycott all those states and stand up for equality and freedom of choice. We still have a long way to go and many institutions that need to be challenged but I believe that the world is waking up and people are realizing that we are the majority against those who are in power, so I have faith that we will see the change we want if we keep fighting for it ;)
ReplyDeleteMujeres Fuertes!