Oklahoma Senate passes "personhood" bill
Man, what a week in fundie stupidity. We've got fundies saying that employers should be able to restrict women's access to contraceptives, fundies attempting to reinstate DADT, fundies trying to give high school credit for creationism, and the motherload: a backdoor attempt to outlaw all abortions.
It's no secret that many republicans do not understand the difference between a zygote and a living, breathing baby. Or hell, even the difference between a viable fetus and a mass of human cells. No, to them, any fertilized egg is the exact same thing as a human living outside of a womb, and they think that even unviable human tissue deserves the identical rights as everyone else even if that means ignoring the rights of the mother.
So they've been trying to overturn Roe V Wade for nearly 40 years now. But they can't, and they know they can't. So instead, they've been trying to increasingly limit women's access to family planning. They want to strip funding from Planned Parenthood, which they incessantly demonize, because something like 3% of its services are abortions. Now, I'm personally not in favor of unrestricted abortions. But for all their talk about keeping the government out of our lives, fundies sure try their damnedest to cram as much government into our lives as possible.
But I digress. The latest charade in this shallow attempt to strip women of their rights are "personhood" bills, which declare that a fertilized egg is a person. It's a movement driven by an antiabortion group called Personhood USA, and it has the potential not only to wipe out abortion without exception, but also to jeopardize in-virto fertilization and some forms of infertility treatment. Oklahoma now carries the dubious honor of being the first state to get one of these bills past its senate, which as one might expect is almost entirely male.
Of course, I'm sure that if a woman is going to be forced by the state to carry a pregnancy to term, the republicans will make sure that the state provides for all her health care needs during the pregnancy, pays for any work leave she must take if it's not covered by her employer, will provide for child care support while she's raising the child, and will pay for counseling if she was impregnated by a rapist.
No? Oh yeah, that would be the government intruding on people's lives, and we wouldn't want that would we?
It's no secret that many republicans do not understand the difference between a zygote and a living, breathing baby. Or hell, even the difference between a viable fetus and a mass of human cells. No, to them, any fertilized egg is the exact same thing as a human living outside of a womb, and they think that even unviable human tissue deserves the identical rights as everyone else even if that means ignoring the rights of the mother.
So they've been trying to overturn Roe V Wade for nearly 40 years now. But they can't, and they know they can't. So instead, they've been trying to increasingly limit women's access to family planning. They want to strip funding from Planned Parenthood, which they incessantly demonize, because something like 3% of its services are abortions. Now, I'm personally not in favor of unrestricted abortions. But for all their talk about keeping the government out of our lives, fundies sure try their damnedest to cram as much government into our lives as possible.
But I digress. The latest charade in this shallow attempt to strip women of their rights are "personhood" bills, which declare that a fertilized egg is a person. It's a movement driven by an antiabortion group called Personhood USA, and it has the potential not only to wipe out abortion without exception, but also to jeopardize in-virto fertilization and some forms of infertility treatment. Oklahoma now carries the dubious honor of being the first state to get one of these bills past its senate, which as one might expect is almost entirely male.
Of course, I'm sure that if a woman is going to be forced by the state to carry a pregnancy to term, the republicans will make sure that the state provides for all her health care needs during the pregnancy, pays for any work leave she must take if it's not covered by her employer, will provide for child care support while she's raising the child, and will pay for counseling if she was impregnated by a rapist.
No? Oh yeah, that would be the government intruding on people's lives, and we wouldn't want that would we?
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