April 16, 2012 6:06 AM

How long before Arizona decides that life begins when a woman thinks about sex?

Arizona lawmakers gave final passage to three anti-abortion bills Tuesday afternoon, including one that declares pregnancies in the state begin two weeks before conception…. A sentence in the bill defines gestational age as “calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman,” which would move the beginning of a pregnancy up two weeks prior to conception.

Man, I had NO idea that the Arizona Legislature was stocked with so many OB/GYNs. How else could you explain a new bill that declares a pregnancy to begin TWO WEEKS prior to conception?

What’s truly astonishing about Arizona Republicans is that, while medical science can determine gestational age only to within 10-14 days, Conservative legislators have developed their skills to the point where they can train judges to narrow it down even further.

For a long time now, I’ve said that a woman’s right to control her own body, up to and including having a safe AND LEGAL abortion, will not be destroyed with a sledgehammer. No, that right will be (and is being) nibbled to death by ducks. Between TRAP laws, arbitrarily setting the legal definition and date of conception, and all manner of other legal end runs around Roe v. Wade, anti-choice activists on on their way to achieving their desired end. Abortion (the concept) will remain legal, but access will be choked off by a series of ever-more restrictive laws designed to render Roe v. Wade a moot and meaningless point of law.

First, they came for a woman’s right to choose. Then, they came for the right to vote. I shudder to think what the Far Right might have planned next….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on April 16, 2012 6:06 AM.

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