Yeah, yeah, here comes
moiv, fretting about abortion rights again.
As half the world must know by now, Texas law already makes doctors deliver a laundry list of heavily biased misinformation to a woman at least 24 hours before she can have an abortion.
The doctor has to give her the URL of the state's "Woman's Right to Know" web site, and then also must offer to provide her with written copies of the same information that is already posted online - including photographs of fetuses, graphic descriptions of late-term abortion procedures that are performed nowhere in the state, dire hints of the breast cancer and suicidal depression lurking in her future, and county-by-county lists of the antiabortion propaganda centers known as CPCs.
If she wants them she can say "yes," and if she doesn't, she can just say "no."
But if you thought that was enough, you were mistaken -- because when Texas Republicans get women's private lives in their sights, there's always more.
Up until now, a woman in Texas has at least had the legal right to say "No, thank you." But now Frank Corte, the Baptist deacon from San Antonio who imposed this medico-legal travesty on Texas doctors and their patients in 2003, has come back for more. His new and improved antiabortion bill,
HB 1469, redefines the waiting period, renders obsolete the website that Corte insisted upon as vitally necessary only two years ago, and says that a woman won't be allowed to have an abortion until 24 hours after the state's nifty written materials are placed into her hands - even if she strongly objects and doesn't want to accept them.
Keep in mind that Texas occupies roughly the same land area as France, and only 6 of its 254 counties even have providers of abortion care. Thousands of women a year must travel considerable distances, sometimes hundreds of miles, even to reach a doctor who can provide an abortion. Because the law currently lets doctor record the mandated information so that a woman can hear it when she calls for an appointment, and because a woman can read the state's materials online if she wants to, it is also important that up until now at least, she's only had to make that road trip one time.
But if Frank Corte has his way, she can forget about that, too. Deacon Corte has decided that doctors should have to read the state's laundry list individually to each woman, in person or on the phone, in real time. The few remaining doctors in Texas who provide abortion care are already stretching their available time to the maximum extent. Many of them have crisscrossed the state on a weekly basis for years in order to meet the need for qualified abortion providers, while others barely manage to squeeze enough hours out from their full time OB/GYN practices to see patients at clinics once or twice a week.
These are already-overworked doctors who don't idle their lives away hanging out at clinic reception desks while chewing gum, reading the papers and waiting for the phone to ring. Even if they were occasionally available, "once in a while" just wouldn't cut it, because delivering the required information to one woman at a time at our clinic alone would take a doctor about five hours a day. If this added burden on time that they don't have to spare would make it unfeasible for some doctors, and impossible for others, to continue providing abortion services at all - well, good old Frank would like that just fine. Because the only real alternative is to have the woman come in person for her "doctor information."
Anyone who understands Corte's peculiar obsession understands why Corte wants to force a woman to make that long trip twice, first to hear the doctor's state-scripted spiel and to pick up her printed copies of the state's materials, and then a second trip at least 24 hours later to have her abortion procedure performed. My colleagues in other, smaller states with this law in place tell me that it's an everyday thing for women who can't afford to pay for two trips or an overnight motel room to spend the intervening night camped out in their cars in clinic parking lots, often with their small children. Way to watch out for women's health and safety, Frank. Hey, maybe they should just stay home.
The abortion gospel according to Deacon Corte further saith that the only way for a woman to avoid that risky overnight vigil with her kids in an abandoned parking lot would be for her to agree to receive the state booklets by restricted delivery mail at least 72 hours before she was permitted to have an abortion. As Brother Frank knows, waiting three days to sign for those materials at their front doors would increase the number of women who had to delay their appointments and have later abortions, would violate the medical privacy of many women -- and would place women living in abusive domestic situations at risk of actual physical violence. Like Conway Twitty said, "Thank about it, darlin" - maybe you'd just better forget about gettin' that abortion at all. And like Deacon Corte so often says, "Praise Gawd and amen."
Alabama passed a law just like this one a few years ago. It said that abortion providers had to pay the state for the antiabortion booklets, as Texas doctors do now, and added that women who wanted an abortion had no legal right to refuse to accept written copies of the state's materials. The Center for Reproductive Rights sued, alleging that the law violated the rights of both women and doctors under the First Amendment - and both the state and federal courts agreed with them. But that was there, and this is here . . . deep in the heart of Texas.
If you live in Texas, it's time to call the members of the House State Affairs Committee. Then fax `em - if you don't have time to write a letter, just print this out and sign it, which is more "hard work" than some of them do in a whole day. And then call them back again to make sure they got it.
Because please take my word for it that for women all across the state who don't even know it exists, this very bad bill is some serious trouble.
And, as always, thank you.
Update [2005-3-29 19:24:29 by moiv]: Thanks to everyone who has contacted the committee members on the list. For anyone who still plans to email, call or fax them, today I learned that the hearing on all the abortion-related bills before the State Affairs Committee should take place next Tuesday or Wednesday.
Link to State Affairs Committee Members Contact Info
Chair David Swinford
Phone: (512) 463-0470
Fax: (512) 463-8003
Vice-Chair Sid Miller
Phone: (512) 463-0628
Fax: (512) 463-3644
B&O Chair Dan Gattis
Phone: (512) 463-0628
Fax: (512) 499-8354
Byron Cook
Phone: (512) 463-0730
Fax: (512) 463-2506
Jessica Farrar
Phone: (512) 463-0620
Fax: (512) 463-0894
Jim Keffer
Phone: (800) 586-4515
Fax: (512) 478-8805
Trey Martinez Fischer
Phone: (512) 463-0616
Fax: (512) 463-4873
Mike Villarreal
Phone: (512) 463-0532
Fax: (512) 463-7675
Martha Wong
Phone: (512) 463-0389
Fax: (512) 463-5896