Snowed In

The Oklahoma Legislature has passed a set of laws which are now up for review by the Governor, who will choose whether to veto it. Among other things, the legislation requires women who want an abortion to submit to an ultrasound, which in the first trimester is likely to require a vaginal probe. Put more plainly, a woman who wants an abortion soon after they get pregnant will have to allow a doctor to insert one of these into her vagina, to get close to her cervix:

Which means that women who seek an abortion after being raped will be required by law to be penetrated by a doctor with a medical device.

Whether you believe abortion is right or wrong, abortion legislation terrorizes victims of sexual violence. Parental notification laws can effectively force children to have to notify their rapist that they are seeking an abortion. Laws criminalizing certain abortion procedures put womens’ health at risk. Laws requiring additional procedures like this one force women to undergo traumatic and unnecessary medical procedures. Laws mandating waiting periods or extra mandatory procedures serve to prevent poor women from seeking and getting abortions.

A woman who is raped should be allowed to walk into an abortion clinic and get an abortion anonymously, safely, quietly, affordably, and without further violence to her person. I believe that is the minimum of respect we as a community should pay.

If you want to fight what you believe are “frivolous” abortions, that’s fine. I won’t be fighting with you, but I applaud your conviction, and your desire to act on your beliefs.

But criminalization is not the answer. The side effects are too awful.

Update: I want to say that I’m only aware of this news because of the hard work being done by the folks at feministing and the dozens of other feminist bloggers I’ve read and women I’ve talked to who’ve been generous enough to put their words out there in a place where I can hear them. I’m just trying to pass the message along.

Update 2: To be honest, what sparked me to add that update was reading about a recent incident where Amanda Marcotte, a relatively high profile white blogger, wrote an article that, while not lifting text, lifted en masse the intellectual work of Brownfemipower, a black chicana? blogger. There’s some dishonesty I think in spouting off these ideas as if they came out of my head “knocked-kneed, fully formed, and upright” (to use a phrase I stole from my friend Tracy). Just last week my friend Lauren called me out for rattling off Audre Lorde quotes like I was a black lesbian.

So, I’ll add this to the list of sexist, racist things that I do that I’m trying to work on.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 1:13 pm and is filed under pi, sexism, law, rape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.