Punitive and controlling. It couldn't be any more clear.

I haven't read in a few days and the weight of the last 10 posts is crushing. This world is fucked up and it makes me really sad and angry.

I wonder if any of these legislators has actually seen a first trimester ultrasound. There really isin't a whole lot to see there. The fetus shows up as a little black dot on a field a grey. There are no discernable features to make it look even remotely like a tiny baby. In fact, most people wouldn't even be able to pick out which part of the image is the fetus without the ultrasound technician pointing it out. I understand this bill is meant to shame women into not having the abortion, but in reality, there is not much to see on the ultrasound image. Yep. That's my dot.

On another note, this bill can further limit abortions for low income women. In addition to coming up with the money for the abortion procedure, she now also has to come up with the money for an ultrasound procedure. It just adds another hoop for women to jump through.

Surely you must understand that those who passed this believe abortion is murdering a human being. You disagree that it is a human being. But if you had the chance to stop a murder by showing the potential killer a picture of the victim to try and humanize them to him/her, you would do it in a second.

Oh, we've all heard that line before. Problem is, they are using religion and belief in legislation. 100% inappropriate.

There are many things about SC that I miss, compared to the Northeast, but at least up here I have more reproductive rights.

The rationale behind not advocating abortion for rape victims is that Godbags are convinced that these babies are somehow gifts from god, and how dare a woman not allow her body to be used for such a higher purpose.

No they are not. Many non religious people are anti abortion. Since there is no way to determine when a fetus becomes a human being, everyone's belief on both sides of the discussion is arbitrary as to when they decide abortion is ok. As someone who is against abortion, I completely understand that others believe this is not a human being and therefor their actions in pushing an agenda that is 100% women's health oriented makes sense. I therefor do not take each action they take (as others who are antiabortion often do) and assign murder intent to it because that is clearly no your intent if you do not believe this is a human being. I simply am pointing out that assigning anti-woman intent and abuse toward women to people who believe they are protecting a life is intellectually dishonest.

The fetus shows up as a little black dot on a field a grey. There are no discernable features to make it look even remotely like a tiny baby.

Seriously, it can be hard to tell which part is the baby and which part is the contents of your bowel to the untrained eye.

My best friend just had a baby. She showed me the ultrasound from the very last prenatal appointment. I couldn't tell where the baby was.

It skeeves me out...where do these records go? To the state? Where they could be leaked?

When retailers started doing digital signature stuff at POS, I'd always sign my name as Johnny Thunders. South Carolina women should sign their names as Fuck Off.

So, here's a thought.

When I had an ultrasound at 7 weeks, they had to use a vaginal ultrasound probe in order to visualize the embryo. I didn't mind, because for me, the exam was voluntary.

Are they planning (or permitted) to use vaginal ultrasound probes, and if so, what is the practical difference between forcing a medical procedure on an unwilling woman and state sponsored rape/assault?

Buffy, I understand your point in that it is hard for either side to see things from the other's point of view. This causes people on both sides of the debate to demonize the other and assume bad motives. Fair point.

However, I don't think it's valid to compare forcing an ultrasound viewing on a woman before an abortion with forcing a murderer to look at a picture of his/her victim before the murder would take place. First of all, murder is not a legal medical procedure performed by professionals in a clinical setting. Second, an abortion could never be characterized as a "crime of passion" or be a random act of violence. Trying to compare the two is a bit disingenuous.

Your analogy doesn't work, Buffy. You seem to presuppose that right-wingers feel so very much more passionately about their views than we do about ours that it justifies their interfering in medical practice. But you don't see feminists agitating for a law requring that everybody who opts out of the HPV vaccine be forced to view photos of a woman with genital warts or a woman dying of cervical cancer. Anti-feminists think that abortion is murder? That's their problem. It doesn't justify inflicting an unnecessary procedure on women whether they want it or not.

What also bugs me about this is how the anti-choice legislation is all designed to make women think extra hard about whether they really want an abortion. Like an unwanted pregnancy isn't something the woman has been thinking about long enough.

The next thing on the agenda will be to require the woman to think of a name so they can have something to write on the death certificate.

Buffy,

the issue, as I said, is belief as well as religion.

See, what this presupposes is the belief that the fetus, in it's parasitical status, overrules the rights of the host. This is a fundamentally inhumane and shortsighted belief. Nowhere else in our system would we allow such a belief.

You disagree that it is a human being.

Actually, we don't. Human beings don't give birth to squid, you know. They give birth to other human beings.

I personally acknowledge that an abortion ends a potential life. But so does miscarriage, which occurs when a woman's body recognizes something is wrong with the pregnancy and terminates it.
In my book, a woman who has an abortion because she doesn't want/can't afford to care for an(other) infant is performing a similar act. The only difference is she is doing so in response to external (rather than internal) circumstances which make a continued pregnancy unfeasible, for whatever reason.

Why should it be okay for a woman's body to determine "I'm not up to carrying this baby to term" but the woman herself can't decide, "my body may be capable of having this baby, but I can't afford to pay the medical bills/support a child/etc."?

If the anti-choicers really want to decrease the number of abortions, they should stop trying to pass laws to punish women for having them and start trying to pass laws that make pregnancy a more affordable (and appreciated) option. But that's not really what they're about. They don't believe in life, they believe in punishing the dirty sluts who don't know their place.

“…assigning anti-woman intent and abuse toward women to people who believe they are protecting a life is intellectually dishonest.�

The net effect is more important than the intent in this case. Especially for legally binding legislation. And the net effect here is that women seeking a legal medical procedure are forced to do something they don’t want to do.

Look at Akeeyu’s comment, with a vaginal probe required to conduct an ultrasound. This should be tolerated as a requirement?

Just because someone’s intent may (in their own eyes) be pure doesn’t mean we shouldn’t blast them all the same.

"Surely you must understand that those who passed this believe abortion is murdering a human being. You disagree that it is a human being. But if you had the chance to stop a murder by showing the potential killer a picture of the victim to try and humanize them to him/her, you would do it in a second."

For a long time, I thought that was a valid argument and believed in it myself. It's very easy to say you have one opinion but you respect this other opinion because this that and the other thing, and because they believe in it so earnestly and feel so strongly. And then you can feel good about yourself and your opinions because you can say, "Well, I support women's rights, but, gosh, I'm no baby-murderer, you know!" It's very easy, and it's very wrong, and it does nothing but lend credence to woman-hating, deluded ideas. Because why should we have sympathy for them just because they happen to be really, really thoroughly convinced of their incorrect stance? Or highly emotional about it?

I don't think a fetus is a human being in any philosophical sense, and I think it's ridiculous to say otherwise, but in the end, it doesn't matter, because even if it is a human being, no human being has the right to violate the health, body, or free will of another human being's body. Women are human beings, too; no amount of crying out "Baby murder!" is going to change that.

"They don't believe in life, they believe in punishing the dirty sluts who don't know their place."

I totally agree with you on that one. If the right wing conservatives really wanted to end abortion, then they would be pushing for "real" sex education classes that teach young people the facts about sex, reproduction and birth control. If they really wanted to get rid of abortion, they would make birth control more easily accessible to young men and women so as to prevent those unwanted pregnancies.

VT has a point, in a first trimester ultrasound, it doesn't look like much. Shoot, when I had a second trimester ultrasound the tech had to point out the body parts that I was seeing. But, what you can usually see on a first trimester ultrasound is a heartbeat and I think that is what they are going for. I think that they believe that if women find out that it has a heartbeat that they will get all sentimental.

This is getting to be an even scarier world to live in if you are a woman. It is almost to the point where it doesn't matter if Roe V Wade were overturned because not enough people are getting pissed about the controlling laws that are being put into place which are quickly chipping away at women's rights. In my state, Michigan, you have to complete "counseling" which consists of watching a slide show about abortion and babies, not too surprising that it was created by an anti choice group.

“But you don't see feminists agitating for a law requring that everybody who opts out of the HPV vaccine be forced to view photos of a woman with genital warts or a woman dying of cervical cancer.� Hey that’s pretty brilliant! It almost makes me want to do just that! Or at least show up in front of high schools with a bunch of some such pictures.

"what this presupposes is the belief that the fetus, in it's parasitical status, overrules the rights of the host. This is a fundamentally inhumane and shortsighted belief. Nowhere else in our system would we allow such a belief."

Of course it's a belief, just don't pretend your opinion is not also a belief. And how exactly is abortion not premeditated? Again, I'm not trying to get in an I'm right/you're wrong conversation here. I'm simply pointing out that the underlying difference is when is it a human. At any point at which we all decide it is a human we fully protect it. All of us, every one. So people taking strong measures to protect the human in the equation makes sense and is nbot evil in intent form either side of the debatre. We can disagree without assigning stupidity, heartlessness, and illogic to the other opinion. It's the only way compromise can happen.

buffy, last time i checked, women were human. and as long as thats true i dont understand why when the zygote is human matters.

I'd say, fine, show me the little twerp so I can see what I won't have after you give me this abortion. Or "You can watch the ultrasound, I'm taking a nap."

These are the same people that say abortion is psychologically damaging, yeah? Tell me how it's LESS damaging to force a woman to stare at her fetus before she gets an abortion than trusting that MAYBE she already has made the responsible decision as to whether or not she can have a child and making the whole procedure as painless as possible.

buffy, I understand that it's easy to feel ambivalent about abortion. It's not fun to think about. But, frankly, I think that the women who have to make the decision for themselves know what the best decision for them is. For some it's abortion, for some it's adoption, and I don't think anyone not involved in making or raising the potential child should have a say. If you want to prevent abortions, support easily available emergency contraception, which doesn't cause an abortion but only prevents pregnancy. Support real sex education, not abstinence only teaching that has been proven to be almost useless and inaccurate. I think if we had those things in this country, we'd see the rate of abortions go down drastically.

But if you had the chance to stop a murder by showing the potential killer a picture of the victim to try and humanize them to him/her, you would do it in a second.

buffy,that's naive.

What about murders like the BTK Killer and Jeffery Dahmer who knew, touched and even talked to their victims? The BTK Killer allowed one woman to drink a glass of water she'd asked for before strangling her. How nice of him. But he still killed her.

You can show as many photos as possible but if someone has their mind made up there's nothing you can do about it. A killer will kill and a woman is going to have an abortion if that's what she truly wants by any means necessary, just like the back alley abortions before Roe V. Wade prove.

A blurry photo of a dot isn't going to change a woman's mind it's only going to feed into the fact that these people want her to feel ashamed for having sex in the first place, whether or not it was voluntary.

rilee morgan, brilliantly put! That's PRECISELY how I feel about it (having also believed a fetus was human for a long time, and also having been anti-abortion for a long time).

Buffy, you may well be correct about the “intent�, as far as what is going on in the minds of many anti-choicers. I do believe that many of them believe they have pure motives.

But the problem is that “pure intent� might be the most dangerous aspect of anti-choice dogma, which is the reason it needs to be held up in the light. The Army of God believes its intentions are pure and that killing specific doctors is an admirable thing. Good intent? They sure think so.

Legislating with “good intent� can go wrong, our nation has a long history of flawed laws passed by people with good intent. Good intent (in your own mind) doesn’t get you off the hook for a bad law.

The problem with using "good intent" as a criterion is that everyone thinks they have good intent. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks to him or herself "Today I shall do my utmost to promote evil and misery, cause harm to others, and generally promote the dark side of the force." Everybody thinks that they're the good guys. So, really, who cares? They really, really, really believe that they're helping to save the lives of the innocent baybeez? So what? The effect is extraordinarily detrimental to women, no matter what their intentions are, and it reveals a host of sexist assumptions about how women make decisions and why.

There have to be some First Amendment issues here, don't there? The patient is being compelled to perform certain expressive acts ("looking at" an ultrasound) that have no relation to a medical procedure.

EG said:
Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks to him or herself "Today I shall do my utmost to promote evil and misery, cause harm to others, and generally promote the dark side of the force."

Absolutely hilarious, EG! And absolutely dead-on. The thing that always bewilders me in the "abortion debate" is how a woman's rights get subsumed under the unborn fetus' rights (or zygote's rights, whatever). To state that a cluster of cells has a greater claim than a fully-formed woman is not only absurd, it's perverted.

I live in SC and I am so angry about this that I can't even see straight. I will be making some angry phone calls to my senators, that's for damn sure.

A similar bill passed in Mississippi this week.

It was a multi-bill that requires the sonogram, a fetal heartbeat screening (I suppose if it's 22 weeks or more, that's not spelled out in the bill), plus tighter restrictions on minors seeking abortions (MUST have parental consent, or the judge's permission ... yes, that's an interesting one), and the trump card, should Roe be overturned, MS criminilizes anyone who performs an abortion with a fine and up to 10 years. It's absurd and ridiculous, but despite many efforts by a few groups in the area, it passed easily.

Interestingly, the woman who has the abortion has to sign a form that states she had a sonogram, further punishing women by formally recording their names and information. This measure is supposedly to "track" abortions in the state and the bill is very (intentionally) vague about how and where these records will be kept.

I am completely outraged and feel utterly powerless. I just moved to MS from Alabama, and am not impressed, in fact, I'm ashamed.

EG - To answer your question "Who cares" -everyone should. Because if no-one cares then everyone loses. What gets abortion doctors killed? Nut jobs on the right saying "Who cares that their intent is to help women. They are murderers so take them out." See the problem? It's easy to argue it from one side, but if you practice it, they practice it, we all practice it we end up here. Which is ridiculous and counterproductive. Again, the disagreement is not well defined. You can't say life begins at x and neither can they. So you both pick out of your butts what feels comfrotable for you and then act like the other side has ill intent for not having the same butt or picking system you do. Pretty stupid and infantile.

nausicaa, interesting point.

Also -- does this mean blind women are prohibited from having abortions? How can they testify that they've "seen" the ultrasound if they are physically unable to see anything??

You can't say life begins at x and neither can they.

If it's my body that's being use, then why can't I? If I personally believe that what's growing inside me is a clump of cells that I don't want there, then how does any anti-choicer have the right to force me to look at a sonogram to try and prove otherwise? Which is what they're doing. THey're trying to make women look at these pictures hoping against hope that something in their brain will go "I can't do this," and they won't have an abortion.

What they aren't doing is realizing that women who have abortions have done NOTHING but think about what's going on in their bodies and they're treating women like children who can't grasp the concept of what pregnancy means.

It's like shoving a dog's nose in shit after the dog has already realized what it did and then hitting him with a newspaper to further emphasize what a naughty, naughty dog it's been.

And then you photograph the shit and make the dog look at it one more time for good measure.

I don't doubt that the cluster of cells that an early-term pregnancy would, if properly nourished, mature into a human being. But if abortion is murder, it is very nearly always committed in self-defense. A fetus is a living thing, but it's a parasite in the physical and scientific sense until it's born, and puts tremendous strain on a woman's physical, emotional, and economic resources even after it is physically separate from her. Even if she is giving it up for adoption.

I doubt many (aside from a few fanatical anti-population-growth individuals) are in favor of abortion, but I really like what Vervain said in comparing surgical vs. spontaneous abortions. It's sometimes the best decision, and one the individual should have the right to make without suffering through regulations like this that have the effect of a public shaming for her private decision.

The point of the fetus being a parasite in a host is problematic for me. After a baby is born it is not a biologically autonomous being as in, if no one is there to feed it, provide necessary functions for it, it will die. Yes, I understand parasites and hosts in the technical sense are actually physically connected. However, I don't feel the "parasitic" nature of pregnancy is a feature of entitlement for terminating the fetus. Rather, I find the way the fetus develops is very in tune with the concept of life which the female body is naturally supporting (miscarriages as I see as a decision made by the body and to be respected). The way the food is passed through, the extra embryonic tissues that develop to help nourish and support the being--I don’t see this as some philosophical entity that the female body is sort of suspending "to have/not to have"--is not the question. And, I find this notion of “my body, leave it alone!� is more anti-body rhetoric than anything and promotes a disconnect/detachment from one of the natural processes that is a unique and powerful ability inherent in all females.
For instance, the following comment unnerves me:
“I'd say, fine, show me the little twerp so I can see what I won't have after you give me this abortion. Or "You can watch the ultrasound, I'm taking a nap."

I don't agree with abortion. I don't agree with abstinence-only education. I think there should be pregnancy clinics safe and affordable for women in various socioeconomic situations--that don't push religious agendas. I think men should have to pay half of all fees and costs associated with the reproductive health of a woman pregnant by their sperm (b/c I don't believe this is required of them for abortions and that's ridiculous). When a woman says “but you are taking away my right! My right to abortion doesn’t end your rights�—no it doesn’t but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a vested interest in the way our government protects the life of others. There are lots of things I fight for that, at the end of the day, probably don’t affect me directly. But that’s where I think feminism has lost me in the abortion debate. Sometimes it’s not about you—and I find our body’s reaction to a fertilized egg as the first indication.

"Of course it's a belief, just don't pretend your opinion is not also a belief. ... So people taking strong measures to protect the human in the equation makes sense and is nbot evil in intent form either side of the debatre. We can disagree without assigning stupidity, heartlessness, and illogic to the other opinion. It's the only way compromise can happen."

No, it's not the only way "compromise" can happen. The integrity of a woman's right to control of her reproductive rights can be compromised in a wide variety of ways. We are not looking for compromise; there is no compromise when it comes to acknowledging that women are intelligent human beings in possession of their own bodies and with rights to integrity and self-determination.

Our opinions are not mere "beliefs" to be pushed aside in a fluffy world of a high school philosophy debate where no one is wrong and everyone can feel happy and smart. When the opposition is ignorant and their views are rooted, fundamentally, in hatred of women, I don't think we can disagree without assigning ignorance, foolishness, or illogical thought patterns to opposition, though sometimes we may diplomatically decline to voice these judgments. People do not need to be aware of the roots of hatred to draw on it, or the implications of hatred to cause or intend them.

"And how exactly is abortion not premeditated? Again, I'm not trying to get in an I'm right/you're wrong conversation here. I'm simply pointing out that the underlying difference is when is it a human. At any point at which we all decide it is a human we fully protect it. All of us, every one."

I responded to this "is it human" bit last time you posted this argument, but maybe you didn't read it the first time? Others have also addressed this in their comments:

It doesn't matter if a fetus is a human being (not just human, but a human being, i.e., an entity); even if it is a human being, it does not have rights that entitle it to overtake the rights of other human beings. No human being has a right to parasitism, to destroy or occupy another human being's body against their will.

Don't forget that as women we are still and irrevocably human beings ourselves.

It doesn't matter if a fetus is a human being (not just human, but a human being, i.e., an entity); even if it is a human being, it does not have rights that entitle it to overtake the rights of other human beings. No human being has a right to parasitism, to destroy or occupy another human being's body against their will.

rilee, yup. MEN, of course, get protection just for their HOUSES, let alone their bodies (women do, too, but only incidentally since they figured out, huh, we can't deny women Constitutional rights anymore). The Third Amendment ensures that citizens can't be co-opted into having their homes inhabited by soldiers. Soldiers aren't even parasites; they're walking, talking people who provide incredibly valuable services to our society. And yet our Constitution says that our rights to autonomy and liberty are SO IMPORTANT that we cannot be forced to even SHARE a home with soldiers who, hell, under the right circumstances might die without shelter. If PROPERTY is important enough to kick another human being to the curb, then surely BODILY INTEGRITY'S gotta somewhere at least close?

Buffy-
That is actually NOT the disagreement. Most of us have taken the prerequisite high school biology courses and know that a single cell is life. I do not dispute that a clump of cells in a woman’s body (zygote, embryo, fetus) is life; it is living matter. But so is a wart, so is cancer, so are any number of growths on/in a person’s body. I, as a woman and a person, have the right to remove a wart or a cancer from my body without being forced to examine the minute details/compositions of these clumps of cells.

But this all gets thrown out the window when a woman becomes pregnant. It is insulting that others think they know better than my medical practitioners and I do when it comes time to make medical decisions about my body. And that is what abortion is – a medical decision. And, as with most medical decisions, the patient doesn’t proceed in a vacuum. The patient usually gives quite a bit of thought to the advantages and disadvantages of proceeding with the procedure. The person choosing to have the procedure is given written and/or verbal details about the procedure. The side effects/risks/possible outcomes are discussed.

What is so infuriating is that, with this specific procedure – abortion - a mentally capable patient is FORCED to submit to UNNECESSARY medical testing AGAINST HER WILL. An ultrasound is absolutely medically unnecessary is this instance. It is being used as either a punishment or to insinuate that a pregnant woman is mentally incompetent in regards to making medical decisions about her body.

Forcing medically unnecessary testing on a woman against her will is a gross abuse of power by people who think that if the woman just hears the heartbeat and can count the limbs, then she will be so overcome with her female emotions that she would never choose to proceed with the procedure. I know what is growing in my body. I am not an idiot.