Someone over the rainbow

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

The Washington Post takes the “someone” approach.

Democrats said the legislation would put someone experiencing a miscarriage at risk by forcing doctors to take extra time determining whether they qualify for an abortion. It also sets unrealistic time constraints for someone to report rape or incest to qualify for an abortion exception under the bill, they said.

Any particular kind of somone? Dunno.

Abortion rights advocates are vowing to fight the measure. If it is passed, Planned Parenthood North Central States will challenge the law in court and refer patients out of state if they need an abortion during the next few weeks, the group said in a statement.

“We intend to show that in numbers on Tuesday at the Capitol, reminding those politicians really of the fact that they will be held accountable for every vote that they take to strip Iowans of their rights,” said Mazie Stilwell, the director of public affairs at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa.

It’s women who lose when abortion rights are demolished.

Comments

2 responses to “Someone over the rainbow”

  1. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    From the (paywalled) NYT article:

    Less than a month after a deadlocked Iowa Supreme Court left a six-week abortion ban unenforceable, lawmakers returned to the State Capitol on Tuesday and passed a nearly identical set of restrictions on the procedure.

    Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican who said, “I believe the pro-life movement is the most important human rights cause of our time” when she called the special session on abortion, plans to sign the bill into law on Friday, her office said.

    “The voices of Iowans and their democratically elected representatives cannot be ignored any longer, and justice for the unborn should not be delayed,” Governor Reynolds said in a statement on Tuesday night.

    The session further cemented Iowa’s sharp political shift to the right, and was set to end its increasingly rare status as a Republican-led state where abortions are allowed up to 20 weeks post-fertilization, or roughly 22 weeks into pregnancy.

    Gov. Kim Reynolds here manages to persuade herself and her supporters that a potential human’s right to life begins with the onset of that said human’s first fetal heartbeat, and at an arbitrary 22 weeks max.

    The Catholic Church is a tad more logically consistent, maintaining that human life begins with the fertilisation of the ovum. This has led its priesthood in times past (maybe still) to rant and rail against use of contraceptives. But logic and consistency can only be stretched so far. That same church does not require its female supporters to bring their used tampons and sanitary pads to a priest just in case they contain a fertilised ovum (zygote) and so need the last rites before being accorded a proper Catholic burial. Otherwise, the immortal soul of the zygote could finish up in Limbo, or worse: in Purgatory or Hell. Because if its very first zygotic thought was impure, that could possibly, even easily, happen.

    Maybe someone could inform Gov. Kim Reynolds of the above philosophical problems of her present position. I would if I had the time, but right now I have to feed the chooks.

  2. Holms Avatar
    Holms

    Naked hostility to rights on one side, deference to trans concerns from the other. Real nice.

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