Empty Vessels

by digby

Women are just slightly dumb animals who need to be drawn a picture and lectured to like a four year old before they can understand what they are doing. That goes without saying. But giving doctors immunity from liability for failing to tell their patients about fetal birth defects? That seems just a tad much to me. Sure the dumb bitches can’t be allowed to make their own decisions about taking on a lifetime of care or consider implications for their own health and well being. What the silly little twits don’t know won’t hurt them, right? But you’d think that the important members of society like insurance companies and employers would have a stake in something like this.

The Oklahoma Legislature voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to override vetoes of two highly restrictive abortion measures, one making it a law that women undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus before having an abortion. Though other states have passed similar measures forcing women to have ultrasounds, Oklahoma’s law goes further, requiring a doctor or technician to set up the monitor where the woman can see it and describe the heart, limbs and organs of the fetus. No exceptions are made for rape and incest victims. The second measure passed into law Tuesday protects doctors from malpractice suits if they decide not to inform the parents of a unborn baby that the fetus has birth defects. The intent of the bill is to prevent parents from later suing doctors who withhold information to try to influence them against having an abortion. Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat, vetoed both bills last week. The ultrasound law, he said, was flawed because it did not exempt rape and incest victims and was an unconstitutional intrusion into a woman’s privacy. He painted the other measure as immoral. “It is unconscionable to grant a physician legal protection to mislead or misinform pregnant women in an effort to impose his or her personal beliefs on a patient,” Mr. Henry said. The Republican majorities in both houses, however, saw things differently. On Monday, the House voted overwhelmingly to override the vetoes, and the Senate followed suit at 10:42 a.m. Tuesday, making the two measures law. […]

Two other antiabortion bills are still working their way through the legislature. One would force women to fill out a lengthy questionnaire about their reasons for seeking an abortion and then post statistics online based on the answers. The other restricts insurance coverage for the procedure.

I’m sure there’s lots more “abortion reduction” common ground like this we can find if we look hard enough.

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