A political figure has cracked down on alcohol consumption and the media.
A political figure has decided that he and he alone will determine if a woman can have an abortion paid for by Medicaid, a man who has no medical education at all and who will be deciding based on his personal opinion.
More than a few political figures have decided that they will do their best to force a woman to carry an unviable fetus until her body rejects it or she is in such distress that her life is in danger.
And since I started this blog post, we have more politicians who are either woefully ignorant, terribly stupid or intentional liars when it comes to claims made on why women should not have the ability to get abortions after 20 weeks. They make false claims about rape and they make sad claims that 15 week old fetuses in the womb masturbate.
And the countries this is occurring in? Well, the first is in Turkey, where the president has been consistently trying to enforce religious law onto his citizens. Turkey is one of the few secular governments in the region. The president’s political party, the Justice and Development Party (always a giveaway when they must call it something no one would recognize it as being), has been working to decrease the freedoms in Turkey. Unsurprisingly, the restrictions seem to be based on religion, Islam in this case. Like many wannabee theocrats, they try to hide their intentions but in this day and age of recording devices, they are always caught on tape declaring how their religion is the only “right” one, the only source of morality.
The second and third instances are here in the US. We have men who are again intent on controlling women. In Iowa, the Iowa governor will have to personally approve payment for abortions. This means that he, or likely someone in his office will have to review medical records.
Now, having reviewed medical records and being very aware of how confidential one must be thanks to HIPAA laws, this should pose an interesting situation. In effect, the governor, or his staff, is now looking at medical records based on one person’s opinion of what should be considered a valid need for an abortion: rape, incest, to save the mother’s life, and severe fetal deformities. What I’m expecting is that the governor now can decide for himself if a woman was “really” raped. And since we know that at least some of the louder conservatives males are sure that rape never results in a pregnancy, we’ll have those same idiots making the same claims again. We’ll also have someone who has no medical training whatsoever deciding what “severe fetal deformities” are. It will be no surprise if he decides that his god “really” wants a deformed fetus to survive, to “teach” the parents something, like many Christians wish to claim.
And the most recent thing about rape and fetal masturbation? This is what was said “Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”
Rep. Burgess (unfortunately it’s no surprise that he’s from Texas), is supposedly an OB/GYN doctor, which makes his comments entirely inexcusable. What a choice, an ignorant OB/GYN or an OB/GYN that is a intentional liar. There appears to be no actual evidence of fetuses feeling pain or “pleasure”, only perhaps *one* study done in 1987 that is based on assumptions from sonogram images from that time, and one letter to a journal in 1996l, based on an anecdote about a fetus *twice* as old. It’s also very amusing since that if masturbation is done by fetuses, it sure shoots a hole in the claims that the Christian God hates masturbation. But I guess we can just go back to good ol’ original sin where it’s perfectly okay to damn babies to hell for masturbation in the womb. St. Augustine would be thrilled! The rape stuff is still from Rep. Franks, who has graduated to firm intentional liar rather than just pitifully, willfully ignorant since he has chosen to ignore facts and repeat his false claims.
The bill that the US House of Representatives will be considering is yet more work of Rep. Franks from Arizona. A similar bill in his home state has been struck down as being unconstitutional. Franks and his fellow theocrats continue to waste time and resources trying to force their religious opinions on everyone. And of course, all of those who have voted approvingly of this bill in committee are men and none are medical professionals. Yes, we have men who want to play doctor on anyone they can. They want to be just like the theocrats in El Salvador where the government can control a woman’s body and force her to keep a anacephalic fetus in her body despite the dangers to her health. It took intelligent empathic people who did have medical training to circumvent such pious stupidity, though it took them weeks to do it, weeks when the woman’s life was in danger. And the doctors, and the woman, could still be punished for what they did, save the life of the mother.
Our wannabee theocrats have passed the bill in the House, unsurprisingly, which makes anyone who voted for this nonsense just as much wannabee theocrats as Franks. Poor Marsha Blackburn, the rep from Tennessee, the new sycophant to the “master”. She was put in charge of the bill even though *no* women were allowed on the committee that was responsible for this bill. I guess she’s okay to be a female when the GOP needs a face, but horror if we have actual female opinions. Nice attempt to “pink-wash” a bill that is simply one more attempt at controlling women.
We of course rarely if ever see these “pro-life” representatives actually vote for thing that would make life better for these children that they claim to be so concerned about. Of course, there is no chance that this garbage will make it to be a law; it’s only more expensive pandering to one sect of one religion.
This is pure theocracy in action. It seems that in any religious population, we have a minority of those who feel they need to force their religious beliefs on others, those that must have everyone agree with them so they can pretend that they are the “chosen”. We also have the majority whose silence is tacit agreement with the theocrats, who seem to feel that as long as their religious beliefs are similar, they are safe. Unfortunately, this is never the case. Their agreeable silence does nothing but guarantee that the lunatics will continue grabbing all of the rights and freedoms from them that they can. In El Salvador it’s the Catholic Church that controls things, and in many Middle Eastern countries, Islam is in charge (Turkey has been a rare secular bastion). I wonder just how much our protestant evangelicals here in the US would like to be forced to obey laws that favor Catholics. I suspect about as much as I would like to be forced to obey laws that favor Protestants.
We have a religious based law against alcohol and we have religious based laws about how a woman is treated, so what stops theocrats from trying to legislate only one “true” way to worship and declares that all others are heretical? That can appear as a slippery slope argument but unfortunately it is a situation that happened many times in history; give those who want to control you an inch and they will do their very best to take a mile. It is very much the problem that Neimoller spoke of in his poem, when will someone speak up? Only when* their* particular rights are taken away?
As a pair of amusing side bits, now we have rabid teapartiers sure that Grover Norquist is now a secret Muslim. You know Grover, the “no taxes” guy who sadly has lost a lot of his clout? Poor thing. I do love to watch lunatics attack each other when they stray from the “one true path”. We also have the requisite lies from yet one more southern politician, Jeff Duncan. Tsk, it’s been how many years now and still nothing for the desperately bigoted to hang their hats on? Hmmm, we were supposed to get the “truth” from Donald Trump and good ol’ Sherrif Arapiao and golly they have gone so very quiet about their lies, false witnessing and abject failure. I do feel sorry for my friends in southern states. There are plenty of very smart people there, unfortunately the most virulently ignorant and deceitful are the ones you hear about.
Club Schadenfreude 