The GOP Continuing War on Women™; Two Minnesota Bills That Would Limit a Woman's Right to Choose

I don't pay as much attention to local politics as I should, much to my chagrin.  I am changing that as we go into the silly season, though, because we have some important issues on our ballot - more on that in a future post.  One of the local groups that has me on its mailing list is NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota, and I woke up this morning to a request from them to sign a petition urging my state senators to vote against two bills approved of by The Senate Health and Human Services Committee.  If passed, both these bills would make it harder for a woman to exercise her right to choose*.

The first bill bans the use of telemedicine in the case of the RU-486 pill.  I wrote about this kind of bill before when it came up for discussion in Mississippi, and what I said then stands for the Minnesota version of the bill as well.   We have many rural communities in Minnesota, and it's not always feasible to see your doctor, get your meds, and return to your doctor in the same day, so telemedicine is a real advantage in such areas.

Proponents of the anti-telemedicine bill said that the RU-486 pill is simply too risky to take without a doctor physically present in the room in case the woman keels over, I suppose.   Not surprisingly, this concern is pulled directly out of the asses of the Republicans proposing the bill, and also not surprisingly, it happens to neatly align with their own anti-abortion viewpoint.

Hey, you know what patients are allowed to use telemedicine in Minnesota?  People who've had strokes.  No, that has nothing to do with abortion, but it does illustrate my point that telemedicine is used in many situations considerably more medically serious than a woman taking the RU-486 pill, which, therefore, reinforces my aforesaid statement that the Republicans are talking out of their asses on this bill.  There is no reason a woman should not be able to take legally-prescribed medicine in her own goddamn home if a doctor deems it safe to do so.

The second bill is commonly know as a Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) bill, and it seeks to impose restrictive regulations on abortion clinics and subject them to unscheduled inspections.  Proponents said that other industries had to do it, so why not abortion clinics?  Um, because they already are regulated and abortion is not as dangerous as the proponents of the bill claim, jackholes!

It's the deception, the hypocrisy, and the fake-piety of the Republican that really piss me off.  The Republicans know that they are not likely to make abortion illegal any time soon.  So, instead, they chip chip chip away at a woman's right to choose until there is a de facto ban on abortion, using whatever excuse they can manufacture to pass their anti-women bills.

Why do I throw hypocrisy in the prior paragraph?  Because it's the Republicans who bitched about how "Obamacare" put the government between a patient and her doctor, and now, every damn anti-woman law the Republican pass/try to pass explicitly puts the government into our ladyparts between a doctor and a patient.  I guess this is another case of IOKIYAR, but you would think their minds would explode from the cognitive dissonance**.

I'm mad that these two bills are taking up time in the MN legislature when we have very real and very serious issues to debate.   Stop fighting the culture wars, Republicans!  It's getting on my gotdamn nerves, and it's a waste of erryone's time.

The only silver lining in my cloud?  Governor Mark Dayton, who is Democratic and pro-choice.  I wrote a post back at the old digs about what a relief it was to have him keeping Minnesota from being West Wisconsin.  He has vetoed abortion bills in the last legislature, and I'm confident he would veto these two if they pass through the legislature.  It's nice to have him in my back pocket, so to speak; it keeps my anger about the War on Women™ at a low boil.

P.S.  Don't forget to visit TeamU for all the latest vaginae outrage!

*Which is completely legal, damn it!

**I can only hope.

image via Amanda Underwood, all rights reserved.