Objectify This

Right.  So I said I’d take a break, and I haven’t slept in a while, but this bears repeating: They’re passing a TRAP law in Wisconsin (curtsy to Pandagon ). Basically, this means that women who are trying to get abortions and abortion providers will both need to jump through more hoops to “prevent women from getting coerced into abortion.”

As Pandagon says, “Of course, the law is being passed by anti-choicers who wish to coerce women into having babies, so we can immediately assume that any and all hand-wringing about coercion is 100% unadulterated bullshit, and doubly insulting bullshit at that, like someone writing you a check after raping you or something.*”

The legislation being passed presumes that abortion providers do not take adequate care to make sure that women are not coerced into abortions, while data clearly indicate that women are in more danger of being coerced out of abortions, by abusive partners and obstructive legislation like this new law.

Alright, I’m tired, here’s more Pandagon: “The legislators presume that abortion providers are unethical and that abortion victimizes women. In fact, the bill states at the very beginning, “Under current law, a woman upon whom an abortion is to be performed …” as though the woman is completely passive in this process.

“It’s a fascinating turn of events, because in a weird way, the anti-choice movement didn’t actually get that far on pretending to care about babies. But now that they’ve stacked the Supreme Court more to their liking and have Carhart vs. Gonzales in their pocket, they look like they’re going to get very far with this new argument. To spell it out so you’ll know it when you see it (which you’ll see a lot of it), it goes:

• A woman’s main and possibly only purpose and joy in life is in motherhood.
• Therefore no woman in her right mind would ever really want an abortion.
• Women are stupid, inconstant cows who can’t actually make their own decisions anyway.
• Therefore any woman getting an abortion is probably being led astray by evil men.
• So we need to force women to give birth for their own good. They’ll thank us later when Jesus kisses their boo-boos.A

“I have another section on the podcast on this argument that abortion hurts women and women need to be turned into baby factors that have no real need for brains for our own good. The podcast also includes an interview with Louise Melling from the ACLU where she explains that anti-choicers are really gearing up to exploit the “women are stupid, so force childbirth on them for their own good” loophole that Justice Kennedy created in the Carhart decision.

“The irony in all this is that there’s probably more of a threat of women being coerced into pregnancy by people around her (and of course by the law) than into abortion, if for no other reason than you’re getting thorough counseling when you get an abortion that you don’t get in other situations. Feminist-minded gynecologists (the pool from which abortion providers generally comes) are far more likely to be hip to the care standards that are growing in gynecology of looking for signs of domestic violence. But it’s far too delicate in most cases to ask a woman if she’s being coerced into having the baby, even if you suspect that she is, because of the official social customs that greet every non-terminated pregnancy as an occasion of joy and congratulations. The legislators are clearly not interested in using the law to stop coerced pregnancy; in fact, they want to use the law to coerce pregnancy.

“The fact of the matter is this legislations is part of a larger package of coerced pregnancy. The legislators are trying to harass abortion providers out of business, so that women can’t access abortion and have to seek illegal means or have the baby whether they like it or not. That’s high-level evil, similar to starting an imperialist war and taking over a sovereign nation in the name of “freedom” or claiming to fight terrorism by starting the sort of wars that piss people off and compel more of them to take up with terrorists. This is going on a sadistic rampage against someone while telling her it’s for her own good. And because of the stupid Carhart decision, we’re going to see more of it.

*Sorry about the dark joke. This just makes me really, really angry, this pretend concern for women.”

The problem is that this kind of shit flies. All the time. Just check out the list of states on the TRAP law link up top. Hat tip to Broadsheet for these closing remarks:

“It’s so incredibly insulting. The 24-hour waiting period implies that women don’t think about it on their own and have to have the government forcing it on them. To me a lot of the abortion restrictions are about control of women, about power, and it’s insulting.”

–Dr. Susan Wicklund, author of “This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor,” talks to the New York Times about “informed consent” laws, mandatory wait periods, and other attempts at controlling a woman’s right to chose to have an abortion in these links. there. ahh, sweet naptime.