Yesterday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) appeared at the First Baptist Church of West Monroe to sign HB 636, a measure that “requires women to be informed of their specific legal rights and options before they undergo an abortion procedure.” Abortion providers will now have to post signs around their facilities stating that “it is illegal to coerce a woman into getting an abortion, that the child’s father must provide child support, that certain agencies can assist them during and after the pregnancy and that adoptive parents can pay some of the medical costs…. “When officers arrest criminals today, they are read their rights,” [Jindal] said. “Now if we’re giving criminals their basic rights and they have to be informed of those rights, it seems to me only common sense we would have to do the same thing for women before they make the choice about whether to get an abortion.”
When last I checked, the right to a safe and legal abortion had been guaranteed by the Supreme Court…in 1973. Roe v. Wade allowed women to regain control over their own bodies and to make decisions about their reproductive health. Of course, as we’ve all seen, the anti-choice lobby hardly took their defeat lying down. Over the past few years, they’ve patiently and persistently work to achieve their ends- denying women the right to an abortion by nibbling around the edges. While states recognized (for the most part) that, because of Roe v. Wade, they couldn’t outlaw abortion, they developed strategies designed to rob the patient of air and choke it to death. Patiently, persistently, and with an abiding hatred of women, Social Conservatives in state after state have worked tirelessly to kill abortion by surrounding the legal right with all manner of legal hurdles. From Texas to Lousiana to Kansas to South Dakota and points in between, abortion is being strangled by a series of ever more blatantly unconstitutional laws designed to restrict a woman’s access to abortion and reproductive health care services.
The best way to deny women access to abortion and reproductive health care services is to criminalize women brazen enough to still want an abortion. You’d think that in an era when “small government” seems to be the working mantra of Social Conservatives and the Far Right, that state government would recognize that it has no place functioning as the Uterus Police. Of course, “small government” only works insofar as it can be used to support the Conservative agenda, which is really only code for “rank hypocrisy.” Remember, “small government” is what’s used to keep the evil hand of Liberalism out of our pockets. Conservatives see no problem with inflating the size and cost of government if it’s done to support their narrow agenda.
Louisiana is just the latest example of a state with a Conservative majority and a collective hatred of women. That states like Louisiana are willing to skirt the law in order to create other laws designed to criminalize abortion is as reprehensible as it is immoral. The act that Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law likely would not withstand a court challenge…which, I suspect, is exactly what Social Conservatives are hoping for. These folks know they have a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court, and they’re itching for a fight. What they really want is an abortion case to get to the Supreme Court, where they believe that the Conservative majority will strike down Roe v. Wade.
Stare decisis, my ass….
Remember, when a Liberal does it, they’re trying to force their evil, Godless agenda down our throats. When a Conservative does it, they’re just obeying God’s law.
