When I see or hear men treating women like children or talking about women like they are less than equal adults I still get pretty angry. I’m a woman who has been a feminist forever, and have seen some men treat women as property and possessions for much of that life. It’s not always obvious or overt, it’s an attitude that some men have about women in general. There is a lack of respect and regard, but mostly respect. I hate to tell people this but it’s actually gotten worse in the last 10 years, not better. I don’t know what is causing it. Politics, insanity, religion?
Anyway, I hate hearing mostly conservatives (both men and women) talk about women and women’s roles in a way that they consider “traditional” and I consider ancient history. Right-wingers and conservatives are not 100% of the problem. Some of the problem is religion. Some of the problem is right-wing women who apparently hate themselves and don’t feel women should be free to be themselves as other people are. Some of the problem is an attitude shared by random people that being against abortion is being “pro-life” when it’s simply anti-abortion. Here is the latest issue presented by Think Progress. It’s about a new law in Oklahoma that publicly chastises women for having an abortion by making their names public, which really has to be against some federal law. Below is the story — feel free to comment.
State Rep: In Oklahoma, There’s A ‘Feeling That Women Aren’t Capable Of Making Reproductive Decisions’
Oklahoma recently passed a law that will collect personal details about every single abortion performed in the state and post them on a public website. Women will have to answer questions about their age, income, race, number of previous pregnancies, type of health insurance, whether they’re a state employee, date of abortion, and location where the procedure is performed. Although the questionnaire does not ask for name, address, or “any information specifically identifying the patient,” as Feminists for Choice points out, many of these questions could be used to identify a woman in a small community.
In recent weeks, the law has been generating attention nationwide. On Monday, ThinkProgress spoke to Oklahoma state Rep. Jeannie McDaniel (D), an outspoken opponent of HR 1595, which was sponsored by two male lawmakers — Sen. Todd Lamb (R) and Rep. Dan Sullivan (R). McDaniel stressed that this bill is part of a pattern by the Oklahoma legislature to take away power from women:
McDANIEL: I’ve served five sessions, and I have one more term to go before I’m up for reelection. Each of the successive five years, there has been a bill introduced in the Oklahoma legislature regarding women’s reproductive rights. … Each year, it creeps a little more toward taking away women’s freedoms, more restrictions between the doctors. [...]
TP: So how did this get passed?
McDANIEL: Well, in our state, we have a very strong feeling that women aren’t capable of making reproductive decisions when it comes to terminating a pregnancy. It’s a very strong effort pro-life. And while I don’t advocate abortion, certainly, I understand the Supreme Court gives us the right to have availability to that service, and I do believe that women have the right to make the choice and to make healthy choices.
In the interview, McDaniel stressed that not only is the bill trying to intimidate women from receiving reproductive care, but it’s intended to discourage doctors from providing the services in the first place. Physicians are required to fill out the survey — even if they work at a private institution — and if they don’t, they will face sanctions. “I think what we’re doing is we’re driving them out of the services completely to providing women’s health care,” said McDaniel. Listen to excerpts of the interview here:
One of the recent bills McDaniel mentioned that takes away women’s reproductive choices was legislation that would have required a woman to submit to an ultrasound and hear descriptions of the fetus’s heart, limbs, and internal organs before receiving an abortion. The law said that the woman would be allowed to “avert her eyes.” However, a judge struck down the law, saying it “violated a clause in the State Constitution requiring that bills deal with only one subject.” The Center for Reproductive Rights is now challenging the new abortion law on the same grounds. On Monday, the court postponed activation of the law until Dec. 4 as part of the legal challenge. The state attorney general had requested the delay in order to have “more time to respond.”
As Megan Carpentier notes, “Making abortion illegal or difficult to obtain doesn’t reduce its prevalence in a country. It simply increases the health risks to the women who seek them anyway. The only proven way to stop women from having abortions is to help them make their own choices about when to become pregnant.”
Unfortunately, if the court doesn’t overturn this law, there may not be a legislative fix coming anytime soon. McDaniel said that she’s sure there aren’t the votes right now to repeal the law right now. “I think it’s an education process, and I think the more educated a constituency is, or people in a state are, that they will realize that access to affordable reproductive health care is the key,” McDaniel replied.
See the website for the transcript.
The best prevention for abortion? Free, effective and easy to obtain birth control. That’s it. It’s so simple even a Republican could think of it, if they really tried. The problem is, they don’t want to try. Republicans mostly just want to tell everyone what to do and how to live, which makes their apparent fears of Obama doing that — instead of them– incredibly fake and hypocritical.
It’s not just Oklahoma. This kind of thing is also happening in South Dakota and other states.
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