The War on Women is such a strange and unique animal. We criticize young girls for having sex, we mock them for using birth control and we damn them if they chose abortion. We promote the idea of virgins until they find the 'One' and we equate women who chose what to do with their body to images of the holocaust.
Sometimes, though, that just isn't enough. Maybe now is the right time to introduce legislation that makes you a potential criminal for not being able to carry a child to term, because you know, that's your only real job. Sound like something out of 'The Handmaiden's Tale'? Sorry, concubines, it's not.
http://thinkprogress.org/...
A bill advancing in Kansas would mandate reporting for miscarriages at any stage in pregnancy, the first step along the path to criminalizing pregnant women’s bodies. Under an amendment attached to HB 2613 — which was originally intended to update the state’s procedure for issuing birth certificates for stillborn babies — doctors would be required to report all of their patients’ miscarriages to the state health department.
HB 2613 has the potential to impact a lot of the female patients in Kansas, since miscarriage is fairly common within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, about 15 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage.
So, how does this really work out?
The American Psychological Association has for many years worked to help us better understand the issue of miscarriage.
http://www.apa.org/...
"Because it is medically common, the impact of miscarriage is often underestimated," says Janet Jaffe, PhD, a clinical psychologist at the Center for Reproductive Psychology in San Diego and co-author of the 2010 book "Reproductive Trauma: Psychotherapy with Infertility and Pregnancy Loss Clients." "But miscarriage is a traumatic loss, not only of the pregnancy, but of a woman's sense of self and her hopes and dreams of the future. She has lost her ‘reproductive story,' and it needs to be grieved."
This difficulty of dealing with loss can be profound. The sense of mourning can go for years, even after another child is born. Women often take this as a personal failure - despite it being common, and go through many stages of direct grief. The issues are complex, morally difficult and can be crushing for those who go through it.
John Doll, a Republican, recognized this.
“I can’t support the bill as it was amended,” Kansas Rep. John Doll (R) told ThinkProgress. “I think it waters it down and makes it into a political statement. I wanted a bill to help give closure to some families — I didn’t want it to have anything to do with pro-life or pro-choice issues.”
The original legislation had nothing to do with reporting all miscarriages to the state. It had everything to do with honoring a families wish to receive a death certificate in case of a miscarriage so they could have closure.
Now that legislation is being twisted, perverted to become a measure not to give people solace in their time of need but to put on them an exigen fear - that maybe there is something wrong with them, and maybe they do deserve to be blamed.
The state at the same time won a court battle for today, allowing them to gut funding to Planned Parenthood, and other prenatal care. These steps don't decrease the likelihood of a miscarriage, but that's OK we'll do it anyway.
On Tuesday, a federal court of appeals agreed to let Kansas strip family planning funding from Planned Parenthood while a legal challenge on the matter proceeds. The national women’s health organization is decrying the attack on low-income women’s access to reproductive health care, and pledging to remain open in Kansas despite losing its funding there.
Before this ruling, the two Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas used Title X funds to provide birth control services to over 9,000 women, as well as more than 2,800 cancer screenings and 8,000 STD tests.
http://thinkprogress.org/...
The Kansas government in power now doesn't want you to have an STD test. It doesn't want you to have a low-cost cancer screening. Affordable birth control is out. But if you fail to carry a child to term, maybe you should go on a list so people know that there is something wrong with you. Or maybe you should be investigated in case you actually did so through malicious means, and investigating you for a crime is a great way to handle the emotional turmoil going on in your life.
Just a message to those who have the female anatomy.. Kansas thinks you're good for nothing but breeding stock. This year Kansas tried to ban surrogate pregnancy - though thankfully it failed. ( http://www.kansascity.com/... ), we've put in one of the most aggressive anti-choice bills into the law, and now we're going to start investigating miscarriages.
At this rate, the next move may be to start branding women as 'unworthy' if they don't start pumping out kids successfully.