Just another piece of anti-choice legislation on the long list of abortion and abortion-related bans and regulations. Except this one is an abortion ban with no exceptions – any abortion, for any reason (including to save the life of the pregnant woman) is a felony. As the article implies, we can thank the Supreme Court for emboldening anti-choice forces:
Less than three months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ban on a controversial late-term abortion procedure, a Cincinnati Republican has reintroduced legislation to outlaw all abortions in Ohio.
Rep. Tom Brinkman Jr. hopes his bill will become the vehicle for overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which legalized abortion.
His introduction of House Bill 284 on Tuesday seems to fulfill predictions that such proposals would flourish nationwide after the high court narrowly concluded that a 2003 federal ban on what opponents call partial-birth abortion did not impose an undue burden on a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
The 5-4 decision gave hope to some anti-abortion advocates who said it illustrated the conservative influence of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s replacement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
But “pro-lifers” aren’t so indifferent about born human life that they’d back this bill, right? I mean, they can’t possibly support a bill that has no exception for the pregnant woman’s life. Except…
Ohio Right to Life Director Denise Mackura said the Supreme Court decision “opens the door for some kinds of legislation — more restrictions (on abortion) — but there was no indication that Justice (Anthony M.) Kennedy would be voting to overturn Roe.”
Since the retirement of O’Connor, Kennedy, who has shown mixed views on abortion, is considered a key vote on the issue.
On the state front, Mackura said, it has become next to impossible to outlaw abortion.
“With the governor that we have, I don’t think there is any possibility of getting a ban passed,” she said.
“While we do have a majority of pro-life legislators in the House and Senate, I don’t know that we have a veto-proof majority.”
How sad that the legislature isn’t pro-life enough to push through a bill that will kill women.
Thanks to Elizabeth for the link.
Similar Posts:
- This is what Anti-Choice Looks Like by Jill April 29, 2007
- Paying to Overturn Roe by Jill February 26, 2006
- South Dakota bill would allow the killing of abortion providers as “justifiable homicide” by Jill February 15, 2011
- Calls For Impeachment Are Just The Beginning by zuzu March 16, 2006
- Now, if you’ll just get the father of your fetus to sign on the line here by evil fizz August 1, 2007
I’ll have to admit that I was utterly surprised by the Texas Legislature’s inability to pass an abortion-repealing trigger bill, mainly because it had a negative fiscal note.
Now you shame your own legislatures with the knowledge that “even Texas wasn’t crazy enough to pass that shit!”
Jill,
You write,
You might have actually wanted to take some time to look over the bill (even though it is extremely long) before making claims about it. If so, you might have noticed this section
Doesn’t that mean that if a fetus is aborted as a result of some other treatment, it’s not criminal, but that if an abortion is done with the express purpose of saving the mother’s life, that it is criminal?
In other words, if chemotherapy kills a fetus, it doesn’t apply because the target is the cancer, not the fetus. But if the target is the fetus, it’s criminal.
“without intent to do so” is the key words there, Jivin — Basically what the bill is saying is “If she is getting chemo and spontaneous abortion results, that’s ok. But if the fetus is shutting down her organs and there’s no procedure for helping her other than removing the fetus, she’s shit out of luck.”
is = are. Pony are smarts with subject-verb agreement.
Actually, JivinJ, what you quote says that the criminal penalties do not apply to a person who – in the course of saving the life of the pregnant woman – inadvertently causes the death of the fetus. It does NOT state that an abortion can be performed to save the life of the woman; simply that should a fetus die in an attempt to save the woman, no criminal charges may be brought.
In fact, if you read the bill you’ll find that all of the language previously contained in the bill which allowed for health exceptions, parental notification, a minor’s sworn affadavit of fear of sexual or physical abuse should a guardian be notified of the abortion, even a provision which specifically spelled out that an employer doesn’t have to have their insurance pay for an abortion, unless it’s for the health of the woman – all struck out, as it very plainly states it wants to make all abortion illegal.
JivinJ, that wording does create a small loophole, but is not equivalent to a maternal life exception. It means that if a pregnant woman had a medical condition which required a treatment that terminated pregnancy as a side effect, a doctor would be allowed to administer the treatment. For example, if a pregnant woman had uterine cancer requiring hysterectomy, the hysterectomy could be performed because the intent of the doctor was to remove the cancerous growths, not to terminate the pregnancy. On the other hand, it’s not clear if a woman would be able to obtain an abortion if her only life-threatening condition was the pregnancy itself. Doctors might refuse to perform an abortion in this situation for fear of prosecution. The legality of abortion in this situation would probably depend on the interpretation of Ohio judges.
Exactly, Cooper. Especially since the intent of an abortion is the termination of a pregnancy- which that section specifically forbids. You know, when it says that termination of the pregnancy can’t be the intent of the procedure.
I’m picturing all sorts of horrendous scenarios based on that medical non-exception. Imagine a woman in her first trimester of pregnancy who discovers she has cancer, and needs chemotherapy.
“Will the chemo affect the pregnancy, doc?”
“Quite likely. Either the fetus will die, or it will have major abnormalities, and we can’t predict what they will be in advance. Or you might get real lucky and have a normal baby, but that’s extremely unlikely – and the pregnancy is going to put a major strain on your body while you’re trying to heal from this disease.”
“If the fetus has major abnormalities, can we detect that later and terminate the pregnancy at that stage?”
“We can detect it, but we can’t terminate the pregnancy.”
“Can we terminate the pregnancy now? I’m only seven weeks along!”
“No, by law we can’t take any action with intent to terminate the pregnancy.”
“But you said that the chemo might terminate the pregnancy?”
“Yes, odds are it will at this stage, but there’s no way to know.”
“Please give me enough of a dose to kill the fetus outright, doc. Please.”
“I can’t do that. Not deliberately.”
The operative words, JivinJ
What the hell they think to accomplish with this bullshit I have no idea. If the pregnancy kills the mother the fetus dies with her; there is no living baby going to be coming from such a case no matter what you do. Allowing the pregnancy to kill her in the process amounts to nothing more than human sacrifice.
Which brings the question, is the fetus so holy that it deserves the life of an adult woman to be thrown away on its behalf over the technicality of what caused its death? Or is the woman so worthless that the hour or day of the fetus sitting in the womb continuing development it’ll never need is more important than her life and the happiness of all those who know and love her?
It’s senseless, ridiculous, misogynist, and shameful. Respect for human life, my ass.
The Constitution Party has had this sort of legislation on their platform for awhile now; they advertise at my county fair. I’ve named them “Two deaths are better than one” pro-lifers.
JivinJ has a reading comprehension problem.
Nice to know that, if I have an ectopic pregnancy, I will be refused treatment because removing the embryo is not a “proximate result” — it is the full intent of the treatment. So I get to die from internal hemorrhaging in the name of “pro-life.”
And since ectopic pregnancy is already the primary cause of maternal death, we’ll get to see that number soar even higher as doctors tell their patients, “Well, it’s an ectopic pregnancy that will eventually grow so large that the organ it’s attached to will burst and you’ll die of internal bleeding, but it’s illegal for me treat it because it would cause the embryo’s death. Have a nice day, and don’t forget to update your will.”
Yep, that’s exactly what they believe. My fetus is innocent, and therefore valuable. I am a slut who dared to spread her legs, and am therefore worthless. Fetus trumps woman every time.
Not necessarily — in 60% of the cases of maternal death (i.e. women who died while pregnant or in childbirth), the child survived. That’s what the fetus fans consider an acceptable outcome because, after all, it’s just a woman who died. (And, frequently, a minority woman.) No big loss there, right?
I believe the logic is “If you’re not fit to breed, you’re not fit to live.”
There are strains of white supremacy that run throughout the “pro-life” movement. Look at Eric Rudolph.
These people want cannonfodder for the always-upcoming Race War [tm] and women who can’t provide them are worthless.
Acceptable? I have the distinct impression that they consider this the optimal outcome.
This pisses me the fuck off. I’m reading a Handmaid’s Tale write now it’s like every day that passes we get closer and closer to women being slaves to their wombs. I want children when I am older, but fuck it I might just get my tubes tied.
*Headdesk*
What I am more worried about is that the outcry will be similar to that in South Dakota – no exceptions? no way! Now all the antis have to do there is introduce a bill with only life & rape/incest exceptions and it will pass. I think focusing on a lack of exceptions is too narrow-minded, because even with those exceptions the bill would be unacceptable to me. But the exceptions are easiest to protest, so that is what is used, regardless of what will almost certainly happen next year.
No no, dear, you won’t necessarily die – the pro-life compromise is to simply remove your fallopian tube and/or all your internal reproductive business. Sure, the little zygote-baby goes with it and dies, but you didn’t intend it to, so it’s ok. You’ll never be able to have kids again, but that’s certainly better than just removing the embryo and intending to kill it.
Jivin, as others have pointed out, you need to brush up on your reading comprehension skills. According to this passage, it remains true that inducing an abortion in order to save the life of a pregnant woman is a felony. What’s not a felony is treating her for something else, and the pregnancy terminating as a side effect. That is not sufficient. It means that if a woman has, say, weak kidneys, and her doctor tells her that she may die during childbirth or she may survive childbirth but experience kidney failure soon after, she can’t have an abortion. She can have dialysis or whatever other treatment is available, but she cannot end the pregnancy, even though it’s the pregnancy that may kill her.
What about that situation, Jivin? What’s a pro-lifer to do?
Small correction: if a tube is removed for an ectopic pregnancy, the woman is not necessarily infertile as a result. As long as she has her other tube, the other ovary works, etc. etc.
But of course, it’s the women who have fertility problems to start with who are most likely to have ectopic pregnancies. And ectopic pregnancies recur (meaning you can have two tubes removed for two separate ectopic pregnancies).
So yeah, this kind of legislation will tend to destroy women’s fertility, especially that of women who want children, in order to “save” a totally non-viable pregnancy that is life-threatening to the woman.
Jill,
Did you read the legislation before claiming it would “kill women?” If so, why didn’t you note the language above?
If I need to brush up on reading comprehension you need to brush up on taking a minimal amount of time to look up what you’re discussing. This situation reminds me of the “Virginia Right to Life” goof and claiming a mainstream prolife organization supported violence. At least this time, you’re not updating your post without mentioning it.
The language of the legislation is actually somewhat similar to language used in South Dakota which this blog and other pro-choice blogs said had a life of the mother exception.
Why the sudden “this isn’t a life exception?”
The legislation clearly allows physicians to treat pregnant women whose lives are at risk – a scenario you seemed to deny in your post.
With regards to your scenario, I would guess it would be up to the physician in charge.
JivinJ, abortion is permitted under no circumstances. What you quoted doesn’t change that.
Because there’s nothing to mention — my post here is accurate. The relevant part of the statute reads “Sec. 2919.12. (A) No person shall perform or induce an abortion.” If you can find an exception for the pregnant woman’s life/health or rape/incest survivors, I’d love to borrow your magic glasses.
Because it will still kill women. Christ, Jivin, is it really that hard for you? I’ll say it again: UNDER THIS LEGISLATION, ABORTION IS ILLEGAL. PERIOD. FULL STOP. Giving other medical treatment that as a side effect causes abortion would not be illegal, but terminating a pregnancy to preserve a woman’s life — if, as in the example I gave, she was going to die in childbirth — would be illegal. In other words, this legislation will kill women.
Right. He can choose to save his patient’s life, or he can go to jail on a felony charge. Way to answer the question. Now who’s lazy and dishonest?
Dianne,
Do you truly believe that? I guess I’m not too surprised. Anyone who attends prolife rallies and examines the crotches of prolifers (and encourages others to do the same) has to be more than a little out there.
Adding to what Jill just said, giving medical treatment that as a side effect causes the death of the fetus (which is the ONLY thing that’s allowed) is not an abortion.
Don’t change the subject, Jivin.
Jill,
So did you read the legislation or not before posting? Your posting “relevant parts” of the bill now but before your post did you read (or at least browse through) the legislation?
What about South Dakota’s abortion law? Did that have a life exception or not?
The language of the legislation could certainly be more specific/better worded – for example it could say “sole intent” or even just get rid of the “as a proximate result of the provision of that medical treatment but without intent to do so” but the obvious intent of the legislator seems to me to provide an exception for the mother’s life in those rare cases such as ectopic pregnancies where there aren’t other options.
Even if I’m completely wrong – and this legislator wants pregnant women to die (as Dianne believes) – don’t you think you owe it to your readers to at least browse through the legislation before commenting on it?
No, I did not read the legislation before posting. Do you honestly believe that bloggers who link to reputable news articles have an obligation to read through every piece of legislation they write about? Every court case? Should I also call and confirm the quotes that the New York Times gets from its sources? I would love to parse through every bit of legislation that I write about, but I do have a full-time job, and I’m not a professional journalist who gets paid for all the hours I spend writing here. Do you read every bit of legislation and every court case and every medical report before you post?
I have since read the legislation and, shocker, the news story that I quoted from was accurate.
Sorry, but your “gotcha!” attempt isn’t going to work. But way to side-step the question about what you would do in a case where a direct abortion was needed to prevent the pregnant woman’s death.
Don’t give up so easily jivinj. That’s Troll 101- when losing an argument, change the topic to something entirely different.
JivinJ, your little attempt at “gotcha” blew up in your face because your a half-wit who can’t even understand the sentence in the bill over which you’re trying to crow so hard you’ve probably herniated yourself. You were dead wrong, admit it, and stop trying to extract some admission from Jill so you can pretend you’ve won. But thanks for showing us the real motivation of all you groovy “pro-lifers.”
No, the obvious intent of the legislation is to forgive abortions when, and only when, they are a side effect of a life-saving treatment. In other words, abortions as collateral damage. In the case of ectopic pregnancies which are doomed to begin with, they would be forced to wait until the mother’s life, not simply her health, was in jeopardy. And then the only action that could be taken would be removal of the portion of the tube, not the dissolving of the fetus with medication.
Read it again,
It’s not simply abortion as a “proximate cause,” but it quite clearly states that abortion cannot be the intent even when the mother’s life is at stake.
These people work very hard at the wording of these documents. Their language is no accident.
Also, JivinJ, if you are active in any kind of pro-life groups or discussions, (which I’m guessing you are, if you ferret out feminist blog postings about abortion to criticize) then your claim that this bill protects maternal life is disingenuous. I was nominally raised in the Catholic Church, and pro-lifers frequently discuss how they believe abortion as a “side effect” is morally-neutral, while outright abortion procedures to save women’s lives are immoral. I find it hard to believe even that you misinterpreted the language of this bill; I think you were trying to deceive us outright.
There were cases in Ireland where the woman was denied any treatment (even sufficient pain management) for uterine cancer because it would harm the fetus.
YES – there are some supposed pro-lifers who would prefer that women die. The world is not a nice place (especially for women), whether JivinJ wants to believe or not.
Ohio’s already had huge issues with this sort of thing– a nearly identical bill was proposed in 2005, when they had a Republican governor and a more Republican congress. While it didn’t pass, another bill declaring the state’s official policy to be valuing “childbearing over abortion” and denying state and local funds to subsidize abortion for women who can’t afford it did. It was signed into law two weeks before our current Democratic governor took office.
I’m surprised the Ohio Republicans doing this again now that they’ve lost a lot of their former strength in the state government, but from what I can tell from his website, this particular guy is an idiot anyway. *sigh*
If pro-lifers’ real motivation is the preservation of life, how do you explain situations like this one? An 8 year old girl is raped and becomes pregnant. Officials attempt to deny her the right to rid herself of her attacker’s fetus and state, “It would be better if she had died that day.” A clear statement that they don’t care about the girl OR the fetus, their agenda is making sure that she is hurt as much as possible. And it isn’t my fault if self-proclaimed pro-lifers get a rise out of the idea of enslaving and killing women either. Sorry if my having caught “pro-life” men doing so offends you. Perhaps they could think of something erection killing, like, say women living free and happy lives, to avoid embarassment.
But back to the subject at hand: What would happen to a woman under the law proposed in Ohio in this scenario: She unforunately develops breast cancer while pregnant. Normally, that might not be too big a disaster. Some studies suggest that pregnant women with breast cancer do fine and can be successfully treated with little danger to themselves or the fetus. That’s the average case. But some breast cancers are highly estrogen driven. Suppose the pregnany is causing the cancer to rage out of control in her body. It does not affect her uterus so taking out the uterus per se isn’t particularly useful so the “innocent double effect” doctrine doesn’t come into play, but the presence of the fetus is clearly killing her. Or a woman with PPH: she’ll die before the pregnancy advances very far, without ever having any particular uterine disease that could justify removing it. Or severe CHF. Or…you get the idea. What would the law allow or not allow when the pathology is not uterine but the pregnancy is clearly deadly? As written, it does not allow abortion. An honest pro-lifer who really wanted elective abortion to be illegal but abortion in cases where the mother is likely to die from the pregnancy to be legal would oppose this bill. Anyone like that out there? (Crickets.)
Jill,
The reputable news organization you linked to never specifically said the legislation didn’t have a “no exceptions.” You came up with that yourself withthat claim and the “kill women” claim without even looking up the legislation. I expect good bloggers to take at least a bare minimum amount of time to examine legislation before making grandiose claims about it.
You may not like the language of law’s exception but an exception is there.
Cooper,
Your logic is faulty. What does me being active in prolife work have anything to do with whether this legislation would protect a mother’s life or whether I’m being disingenuous? I’ve been around numerous prolifers for years and I don’t know of very many who think procedures which save the mother’s life by ending the life of an unborn child (such as removing an ectopic pregnancy) are immoral.
It’s unfortunate that you put such bad motives on me. When Jill screwed up and claimed a mainstream prolife organization was in favor of violence and then changed her post without noting it in the post or in the comments – I didn’t personally think she was being intentionally deceptive. I thought she made a mistake – probably because she views prolifers with so much animosity that the idea that a mainstream prolife organization supporting violence didn’t sound that off. To me it sounded so off I took a couple minutes to double check her claims.
Tom,
Legislators typically don’t write their own legislation and the language of legislation can often change during the legislative process because language often doesn’t start out as carefully written as it should be.
You may not like the language of law’s exception but an exception is there.
Bzzzt. Already refuted. Go back to square one.
You’re right. It just said:
So excuse me for reading “all abortions” as “all abortions.”
And I’m beginning to doubt that you know how to read. Look, the bill outlaws performing abortions. Period. Removing a woman’s entire uterus because she has cancer is not performing an abortion, even if she’s pregnant — the pregnancy ends, but there was no abortion. Under this law, you cannot perform an abortion. You can “accidentally” terminate a pregnancy as a side-effect of other treatment, but as far as I can tell there is no reading of the statute that would allow a doctor to purposely perform an abortion procedure.
Try this: If a woman has weak kidneys and childbirth will kill her either during the birth or soon after, can the doctor, under the language in this statute, perform a D&C abortion procedure and only a D&C abortion procedure to end her pregnancy?
Please explain how one could stretch the language of the statute to encompass her situation. I’d love to hear it.
Or, please tell me of ANY situation under the statutory language that would allow a doctor to perform a direct abortion, with the intent of performing a direct abortion.
Oy. First of all, if the language isn’t carefully thought out, why would you link to it as some sort of “gotcha!” take down of the post? You presented the excerpt of the legislation as though flatly contradicted what Jill said. It did not. The language quite clearly stated that abortion would not be prosecuted if it were a “proximate result” of life-saving measures and that abortion was not the intent.
So now you switch gears and say that the language isn’t carefully written. If that had been your argument from the beginning, you would have been fine. It wasn’t. You went on about the language of the legislation and what it allowed as though it were carefully written to allow life-saving abortions. Until you were proven objectively wrong by the passage you cited. Now, not only is the language not careful, but they didn’t even write it! A-And it could change!
This language is carefully thought out. The notion of abortion as an unintended result is reiterated twice.
Your trolling skills need work.
Katealaurel: I’m surprised the Ohio Republicans doing this again now that they’ve lost a lot of their former strength in the state government, but from what I can tell from his website, this particular guy is an idiot anyway. *sigh*
He is a particular idiot. he’s from my home town, unfortunately. and you’re right — it’s absolutley ridiculous for them to be doing this right now (not that it ever isn’t ridiculous, but you know what I mean) because Gov. Strickland has straight out stated that he will veto. There is really no way this legislation will ever get passed (thank god), and they know that, which kind of pisses me off all the more, because it’s just such a fucking waste of time, you know? It’s nothing more than an attention-mongering trick to prove to everybody how good and brave they (the legislators introducting/supporting this) are, all the while distracting from any real issues possibly going on in Ohio. I just find that so many of these abortion debates are distracting. It’s the whole salt-in-the-wound thing: these laws suck because of what they’re actually about, and they also suck again because they distract legislative, media and politicacl attention from business that might, you know, actually help people.