Choice: Something Women Can’t Have

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Some days I’m really sad to be an Oklahoman. It’s not enough that we have hate-filled bigots holding public office, now we have legal rape for women who dare step out the tiny confines of sexuality allowed them.

Here’s a clue: when you stick something, anything, inside a woman’s vagina without not only her consent but without giving her the choice to not consent it is rape.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a doctor, lawyer, gardener, or crazy hobo. It doesn’t matter if it’s a penis, handle, toy, or medical instrument. The point, which seems to be so missed on “pro-life” people is consent and choice. A woman’s body does not belong to her husband, father, politician, or president. She and she alone gets to decide what goes in, and out, or her body. Because, hey, it’s her’s.

The Oklahoma House has recently voted 80-12 in support of the Freedom of Conscious Act. This act was sold as letting pharmacists decide to get the pay without doing the job so they can look down on women with an air of moral superiority, however it also includes this fun little tidbit.  [via Alternet]

 Under the guise of obtaining informed patient consent, this new law requires doctors to withhold pregnancy termination until an ultrasound is performed. The law states that either an abdominal or vaginal ultrasound, whichever gives the best image of the fetus, must be done. Neither the patient nor the doctor can decide which type of ultrasound to use, and the patient cannot opt out of the ultrasound and still have the procedure. In effect, then, the legislature has mandated that a woman have an instrument placed in her vagina for no medical benefit. The law makes no exception for victims of rape and incest.

In case it’s not clear the law says that before a woman can even obtain consent to have an abortion she has to get an ultrasound, which ever gives the best image of the fetus. Which gives the best image in almost all cases? The vaginal ultrasound, a painful and sometimes humiliating process. Why? Why would you mandate a woman having something inserted with no medical reason? There’s a great discussion going on about it here.

Anti-choicers are willing to do anything — even make women suffer through invasive, sometimes painful procedures (as anyone who has had a vaginal ultrasound can attest, they are not pleasant) — to punish women. It’s not about “life,” and it’s not about saving babies. It is about controlling, punishing and doing harm to women who make unapproved sexual choices.

And there’s a discussion on the entire bill going on at Menstrual Poetry that you should read as well.

[tags]abortion, women, Oklahoma[/tags]