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.
Furthermore, as “pro-life” lobbyist Sue Swayze pointed out, if you’re pregnant it’s because you previously allowed something else to enter your vagina. And once you’ve allowed something to enter, you have obviously waived any right to decide what else you will admit into those lady-parts. Using her “logic,” once you’ve had sex, you lose the right to pick and choose who or what else visits those regions. You are fair game to be raped.
Aren’t we all proud to be Hoosiers?
Stop whining, women! It’s not like someone is taking pictures of your farm!
How different are those Hoosier men to the Taliban? Are burkas next?
Sheila; for how many years have we women been at the mercy of men, who are often strangers, seated between our spread-eagle legs as they look, poke and probe into our bodies? All dignity removed from these situations and until recent years, when women could become physicians, we had no other options. Now they seek the legal right to probe further with instruments meant to be used for emergency situations and with our approval to do so. Yet; thousands of men die with prostrate cancer because they do not want their private parts to be invaded by another man;s fingers…could be homophobic fears for many of them. I ask again; WHERE ARE REPUBLICAN WOMEN WHO COULD HELP DEFEND OUR RIGHTS AND OUR BODIES AS WELL AS THEIR OWN?
That farm bill is a scary thing. I was in the food (meat) business for many years. If these farmers want a LAW to hide what they are doing, you really really NEED to know what they are doing. It is not good healthy wholesome practices that hey are so desperate to hide from the light of day. We need MORE inspections of our food supply.
On the other hand, adult humans do not need other adult humans probing their privates. That is just dumb. But hey…they are Republicans.
Good catch – I didn’t realize what a twit Holdman is.
I read SB 371 yesterday and was shocked by how far it went, and how it is contrary to Roe V Wade and other cases. The bill is offensive in multiple ways; read it and you may vomit at all it imposes. It’s so bad that I feel the General Assembly is pushing it with the full knowledge that it will be thrown out in court. In other words, the anti-abortion faction is employing ‘death by a thousand cuts’ – throwing any roadblock they can find in front of legal abortion, in the hope that 10% of it ISN’T thrown out by the courts.
This 1000 cut approach is employed by the left, too, on gun control. Background checks, recorded transactions, home inspections, mandatory training, limits on clip size, microstamping of bullets; and this year in New York state what amounts to an ‘ex post facto’ law requiring formerly legal equipment to be surrendered to the state.
I am male, and admit I don’t like abortion and wish it to be as rare as possible, not to remove the right, but in the hope that couples would use their heads. Abortion up until viability is a compromise that has worked for 40 years. (I realize I’m summing up a complex and charged issue in a short paragraph)
I also support broad gun rights, but wouldn’t want my neighbor to have a fully-automatic machine gun. Again, that’s sort-of been the compromise, and it works well enough.
So on both these issues if the two sides would stop endlessly trying to take away peoples’ freedoms, society could get along fine. If politicians understood that under constitutional government, they can’t take away freedom based on whim. Privileges and Immunities protects the right to abortion as well as the right to bear arms.
Eugene, I agree with some of your post and mostly want to remind you that it’s you men that impregnate women so maybe some self control on men’s part would lessen the need for abortions??? You know, women can’t get pregnant without men involved but I’m stating the obvious.
In 2013, the only thing to prevent pregnancies 100% is sterilization of women so what else would you offer we do to prevent another unwanted pregnancy?
And I beg you, please, do not compare gun violence with pregnancy, it further lessens your argument. Next.
I just wrote my Republican representative, telling him how this whole issue was such an embarrassment, that it makes us look like fools, and that it was on its way to becoming a national media sensation. Our governor is getting the reputation of “Governor Ultrasound II”. This is the stuff of nightmares, but in the next few days, I expect the usual pro-forma letter.
Eugene, I have brought up that same analogy before: that gun ownership is a right, but we can erode it by making it very difficult to exercise that right, just as abortion laws are a right that can be eroded to the point of unattainability. I’ve also used this argument with many NRA-supporting people – all men – who have *never* been willing to engage with me in discussing these similarities.
I wish we could all on both sides, as you say, try to get along better on both these topics. But in my role as a uterus-having woman I can’t help but feel that many, many men just refuse to acknowledge my point of view and valid arguments.
Also, AgingLittleGirl, he’s not comparing abortion and gun *violence*, he’s comparing abortion rights and gun ownership rights. Both relate to bodily integrity and the right to protect one’s own life. There truly is a lot of common ground in how we approach and discuss these two topics.
These insane bills by sociopath politicians prove something else: that Republicans actually love big government. ;}
The Virgina … I’m assuming that they are looking for something (the insertion of a trans virginal probe etc) will a search warrant be required?
This whole thing is absurd, what are these politicians thinking.
I’m pro-choice all the way (no insertion necessary)
As for the Politician’s “Bring on the Logic Probe”
Red George.
The argument that those of us who are pro-choice should agree with the NRA’s or some gun owners’ stand on gun restrictions is a false equivalency. If I have an abortion, I’m not endangering the general population with death and injury, as is, say, a white male with many guns which shoot numerous rounds a second. Despite the NRA’s scare tactics, the government is not coming to take away guns, and thus the gun owners’ rights have not and are not being impinged upon. Thus, the argument is a convenient tactic by the right to divert attention away from the erosion of abortion rights which, in reality, have occurred and are continuing to occur. Women have a constitutional right to safe, legal abortions. People who have guns have no right to shoot up a crowd of people. AgingLittleGirl is correct, your argument is specious. Move on.
Thank you Rosemary.
The parallel I’d make with gun rights and abortion is the matter of self-defense. Except in the case of abortion the threat is actual, not hypothetical.
If someone believes they can use lethal force to defend their property or life, then I should certainly be able to use it to defend myself against the long-term invasion of my body by another “person”, risking my health, life, and forcing me to pay for their medical bills. I think if some random person showed up at Travis Holdman’s house making demands like that and threatening his health, that person would probably end up dead or in prison.
“The argument that those of us who are pro-choice should agree with the NRA’s or some gun owners’ stand on gun restrictions is a false equivalency. ”
This statement makes a *mistaken* equivalency. I’m not saying that supporting abortion rights is equivalent to supporting gun rights. But I am saying the approach of legislation and public discussion of those two areas is the same. The NRA *is* saying, loudly, that proposed gun restrictions are eroding ACCESS TO a civil right, and the pro-choice side is saying, loudly, that the proposed restrictions on abortion – many of which have already passed – are restricting ACCESS TO another civil right. What I would like to see happen is the co-opting of the NRA’s language about erosion of access as a way to force their arguments to also support abortion access.
Also, please don’t shoot the messenger: I’m vehemently pro abortion rights. I’m not a fan, at all, of guns, but think they have their place. What I’m trying to do is figure out how to use the NRA’s successful lobbying efforts to support a cause I vehemently support.