"Pro-lifers" really do hate women.
How else can you possibly explain the increasingly creative and despicable tactics they invent to harass, terrorize, shame and punish women who don't think their bodies are God's incubators? Sure, they say that all of the obstacles they invent to strip women of their reproductive rights are really intended to protect women, but they don't care about women. They really, really don't.
Take, for example, the latest tactic from the oh-so-caring Vigil for Life terrorists in Wisconsin:
“Have you seen the pregnant mom? The young pregnant woman, probably in her 20′s, had a darker complexion with dyed red hair and tattoos on her neck and right shoulder. She also had some facial piercings. The woman looked obviously pregnant….please let us know immediately if you have seen a woman with this description.”
After reading this plea you may grow worried – what could have happened to this woman? Certainly this must be a call for help from the pregnant woman’s family, desperate to locate her. You can’t be blamed for thinking that – but you would be dead wrong.
This is an All Points Bulletin – an APB! – issued by radical Wisconsin anti-choice group Vigil for Life to track down a pregnant woman seeking services at Planned Parenthood. Yes, you read that correctly.
Oh noes! Alert the authorities! A woman was seeking medical care! Quick, track her down, shove a rosary in her face and call her a baby killer—for her own good, of course.
And then there's this: Michigan Proposes Helpful Law To Harass Women Who Miscarry. The headline is snarky, but the story is anything but funny:
Last year a group of rabid little anti-choice trolls in Michigan pretended to find a bunch of “fetal remains” while they were rummaging through a dumpster behind a women’s clinic, which, right, TOTALLY PRETEND. [...]
[S]o they are working to pass a new “dignified disposal of fetal remains” law commanding hospitals and clinics to immediately send someone in to force women who just have suffered first-trimester miscarriages to get them to make some “funeral plans” for the cell blobs… mostly to help rub it in, we guess?
Funeral plans for miscarriages. Laura Berman at The Detroit News explains:
Women who have miscarriages in hospitals would have to sign forms deciding how the hospital should handle the remains, by cremation, interment or burial.
These options would newly involve funeral directors, or the option of using them, in situations where women aren't necessarily emotionally prepared to think they've "lost a baby," and where historically there's little precedent for doing so.
It also introduces the potential for new costs, not likely to be covered by insurance. [...]
Patients would be handed Kleenex, as well as a form to sign, requesting the remains be cremated, buried or interred.
Given that this bill is the work of Right to Life of Michigan, and sponsored by "pro-life" Republican state Sen. Rick Jones, I think it's fair to say that concern for women is not the primary motivation behind this bill. No, something far more cynical is at work here: the growing push to define eggs as people and to legislate the religious belief that life begins at conception. Which, ultimately, is about depriving women of their right to make decisions about their own reproduction, including whether and when to have a baby. Because if that cell inside your womb is a "person," entitled to the same rights and protections as any actual, full-grown person, you surrender your right to make decisions about your own womb. For your own good, of course.
It's the logical continuation of the state-mandated guilt trips doctors in some states are already required to deliver to their patients under the guise of "informed consent." Sure, you can have an abortion, but not before you look at this ultrasound and listen to this heartbeat and review this booklet about how cute your baby will be if you don't kill it, which you shouldn't do because that baby will be so cute—with arms and legs and everything!—if you don't kill it. Which you shouldn't do, because that's a real person in there, and if you have an abortion, you're terminating "the life of a separate, unique living human being." But hey, it's your right, you heartless bitch.
So miscarriages—which are an extremely common, natural biological occurrence—become an opportunity to further push a religious and political agenda, not to mention a boon to the funeral home industry, forcing an already traumatized patient to sign on the dotted line of fundamentalist rhetoric. Oh, sure, you can decline to buy a casket and hold a funeral for your miscarried microscopic clump of cells. But really, what kind of a heartless bitch would allow the hospital to dispose of medical waste when she could prove she's a grieving mother by purchasing an itty-bitty casket for her miscarriage?
No pressure, ladies. It's totally up to you. Just sign on the dotted line: grieving mother or heartless bitch? Here, have a tissue.
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This week's good, bad and ugly below the fold.