Virginia sez: "Ultrasound for women = Rectal exam for men"

[Baffalo]

The actual motives behind the amendment can be debated to death, and probably will. However, I know someone who personally could not carry a child fully to term without dying. As in, BOTH will be dead. In this case, such as a spontaneous moment of love making, it could lead to her having a child inside of her that she cannot carry, requiring an abortion. Now, this bill would mean that, despite the emotional toil of knowing she can never carry a child fully and has to do something horrible, she now has to look at an ultrasound as some doctor says "Sorry, state law. Here's the bill, we'll see you tomorrow." There are no clauses that exempt that I'm aware of. Every single time this happens to someone in this situation, they're looking at more emotional turmoil and they don't have a choice, unlike the people this bill aims at.

Yes, someone can and will make the argument that she should use condoms. Ok, sure, sounds great and very logical since we both know what would happen. But say there are no condoms in the house. You live 30 minutes away from a store. You're in the mood now. It'll just be one time. It won't result in pregnancy. BAM!

Laws that try and take the moral high ground never consider that sometimes, the moral high ground isn't the most stable platform to stand on. You can be careful but it's just that one time and that's it.

[Grumman]

Yes, someone can and will make the argument that she should use condoms. Ok, sure, sounds great and very logical since we both know what would happen. But say there are no condoms in the house. You live 30 minutes away from a store. You're in the mood now. It'll just be one time. It won't result in pregnancy. BAM!

That's grounds to have your wages garnished for the next twenty years, isn't it?

And as an aside unrelated to the morality of the question, I'd hope she'd be a bit smarter about not taking risks that will kill her within the year if not treated.

[Broomstick]

Yes, someone can and will make the argument that she should use condoms. Ok, sure, sounds great and very logical since we both know what would happen. But say there are no condoms in the house. You live 30 minutes away from a store. You're in the mood now. It'll just be one time. It won't result in pregnancy. BAM!

Laws that try and take the moral high ground never consider that sometimes, the moral high ground isn't the most stable platform to stand on. You can be careful but it's just that one time and that's it.

Actually, a better argument is that condoms can break - she and her partner are being all responsible and BAM! the damn rubber breaks. Be as careful as you can be, and random shit can happen and result in a pregnancy.

[Silver Jedi]

It's a contemptible tactic anyway. Even an idiot knows why social conservatives oppose abortion: because they don't want you to kill the fetus.

If social conservatives actually all believed that, they would never allow for exemptions for things like rape and incest, yet those types of clauses are added all the time.

The ugly truth is that most of these politicians couldn't give two shits about the fetus. It's about shaming and punishing "promiscuous" women, and looking good in front of their bible beating constituents (who may or may not actually care about the life of the fetus). That's all that this bill will do: punish the woman in question, and multiply the emotional trauma she's going through. If they really cared about the fetus, they'd be pushing for "life begins at conception"/total outlaw of abortion bills.

[Grumman]

It's a contemptible tactic anyway. Even an idiot knows why social conservatives oppose abortion: because they don't want you to kill the fetus.

If social conservatives actually all believed that, they would never allow for exemptions for things like rape and incest, yet those types of clauses are added all the time.

So it's impossible for someone to believe that killing the fetus is bad and that making a rape victim carry the fetus to term is bad?

There's no such thing as a person who believes in mitigating circumstances?

[Flagg]

It's a contemptible tactic anyway. Even an idiot knows why social conservatives oppose abortion: because they don't want you to kill the fetus.

If social conservatives actually all believed that, they would never allow for exemptions for things like rape and incest, yet those types of clauses are added all the time.

So it's impossible for someone to believe that killing the fetus is bad and that making a rape victim carry the fetus to term is bad?

There's no such thing as a person who believes in mitigating circumstances?

If you believe a fetus is a living human being then there is no "mitigating circumstance" that allows for it to be terminated. People who say otherwise are lying, stupid, or hypocrites.

[Bakustra]

Well, if a fetus is in fact a human life, then that raises the question of why no anti-abortion group wants to have abortion treated as murder in the first degree. The distance between the rhetoric and the actual positions leads one to conclude that there is some other agenda beyond the surface one, because the surface one makes no sense. And considering that many other positions (opposing contraception, promoting abstinence-only education, opposing the HPV vaccine, trying to shrink welfare for single mothers, opposing the UN Population Fund) held by many "pro-life" individuals are inconsistent with trying to decrease the number of abortions as well but are far more consistent with "pro-life" being code for "anti-women". Then, too, the support of many "pro-life" individuals for the death penalty and wars seems to suggest that life is not a high priority for them, though Catholics are slightly more consistent here.

[Baffalo]

I've heard rhetoric down here in Louisiana about "Be Fruitful and Multiply" being used as a convenient excuse for getting girls pregnant at an early age. When you grow up in a small town, everyone knows everyone else. So getting things like condoms and such are embarrassing, especially when you know both the pharmacists in town by their first name and they have fond memories of the first time you ever came in their stores. There isn't really a patient confidentiality, not when the pharmacist will likely see your parents at some point and make a comment that makes them suspicious. So what happens? Kids are scared to get condoms. And when there's no entertainment except to ride around the back country, there will be cars parked and doing a little bouncing. So what happens? Pregnancy. And because it's a small town, EVERYONE knows. So the shame isn't just for the girl, it's for her parents and for everyone in her family. "Oh, did you hear? The Johnson girl got knocked up" "NO! When did this happen?" "Couple a weeks ago" "tsk tsk tsk what's the world coming to"

We're only a few generations into equal rights for women, so I have no doubt that these acts will continue for the next few generations until the idea that women are equal finally sinks in past the "Grandpappy says girls aughta be in the kitchen and not at the jobs" mentality that's running rampant now. Adding additional shame is just a way for someone to try and guilt trip women into saying "See what happens when you wander out into the world of men? Now run along back into the kitchen. And take those shoes off, they're only for Sundays."