Inappropriate and disgusting, if it becomes a requirement? Yes. Rape? No. There are lots of things that are inappropriate and disgusting, but that isn’t necessary or sufficient to call it rape.
My wife was on a board with a lot of pregnant women in the USA and they kept talking about how painful and horrible ultrasound was, which made her go er whut?
She was horrified on looking up the ultrasound probe, even I winced. Its like a very large hammerhead dildo, you really should see it. My wife said no way would she have that done, she’d just wait til transabdominal ultrasound worked.
This is all about chasing women away, it would be like requiring via law a man to have a rectal ultrasound before performing a vasectomy.
Exactly. The fact that it allows conservative legislators to exerts power over the lives of women is merely a very pleasant bonus.
:rolleyes:
As a figure of speech, no it’s not. It’s really dumb and really super insensitive. But, hey, what can you expect from the left?
Anyway, if you were to read HB462, the purpose is to determine the gestational age of the fetus prior to the abortion (it even says so right there in the bill), as over the years in Virginia there have been numerous cases of abortion doctors/whatever you want to call them misidentifying the fetus’ age (Example #1)(Example #2). As noted, whether or not you view the ultrasound is completely optional.
No, it’s to humiliate and abuse women. It’s both medially pointless and deliberately designed to be as unpleasant as possible. The only reason they are pushing for this is because the Federal government won’t let them beat women into submission with clubs like in Saudi Arabia.
A fetus isn’t a person; not legally, not morally, not factually.
Tormenting and humiliating women.
And that, children, is what we call “window dressing.” It’s also a nice example of false equivalence: conservatives try to force people to submit to medical procedures they don’t want in order to discourage abortions, but that’s not insensitive - the figure of speech used to describe it is insensitive. Yes.
Oh, well that changes everything! Requiring someone to undergo a medical procedure she doesn’t want is completely fine if she doesn’t have to look look at the scan, because, uh… small government freedom mumble mumble.
Why not let the doctor and patient decide if it is medically neccesary to perform an ultrasound to determine gestational age?
So every pro-life person in America is opposed to abortion just for the pleasure of tormenting and torturing women?
Even if one disagrees, one can at least try to understand the pro-life position rather than dismiss them all as misogynistic sadists.
In my opinion, most women who want an abortion will subject themselves to whatever it takes to get one. Ultra sound requirement will just be another hurtle in the path of a woman seeking to have an abortion in Virginia. I doubt that it will have a big impact on the numbers of abortions in that state even with the added shame and violation factor.
In my opinion it is not comparable to a physical rape, even if the idea comes from the desire to humiliate and beat down a woman who wishes to obtain an abortion, and even though it is invasive.
It will definitely make things more difficult, especially for poor women who may have to pay more for the whole ultra sound/ abortion package.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#By_gender.2C_party.2C_and_region
This poll of attitudes on abortion in the US is interesting. While equal percentages of men and women support the status quo and somewhat more restrictions on abortion 24% of women support not permitting abortion at all while 20% of men do.
Yes. Oppressing, tormenting and killing women is the point of the anti-abortion movement.
Regarding them as misogynistic sadists and so forth IS understanding them. Understanding people doesn’t mean you have to like or approve of them. I understand the old pro-segregationists and the pre-Civil War slavers; that doesn’t make them any less disgusting. The anti-abortion movement is a hate movement; it has very little concern with the so-special fetus and a great deal of concern with hurting women however it can..
I’m sorry, but this is an exceptionally stupid argument.
“They” are part of the federal government. In fact, “they” control the House of Representatives and for all but 4 of the last 18 years controlled both Houses of Congress and for most of the 21st Century controlled the Presidency.
Perhaps my memory is failing me, but I don’t remember any attempts at bringing forth bills allowing this.
Please provide the links to such bills.
For that matter please link me to any statement by a high-level Republican politician who has called for laws allowing men to beat women into submission with clubs.
For that matter, as odious as Saudi Arabia is, I’m not aware of any laws their allowing women to be “beaten into submission with clubs”.
Anyway, since you’re claiming the State Senate and State House of Representatives want to pass laws that would allow them to beat women into submission with clubs, please link me to statements in which high-level Virginia politicians have made such statements.
What are you talking about? In certain situations a fetus is definitely considered alive from a legal standpoint.
For example, in a number of states if a pregnant woman has a miscarriage after being injured by a drunk driver or beaten then the driver or the person responsible for the beating can be charged with manslaughter if the fetus is old enough.
Do you disagree with this and feel a drunk driver who injures a woman who’s eight months pregnant and causes a miscarriage should not be charged with manslaughter?
So then you believe that women who are pro-life are that way because they want to “oppress, torment and kill” other women?
You do realize that women are more likely to identify as pro-life than men correct?
So then you believe that women who are pro-life are “misogynistic sadists” who “hate women” and are into “hurting women”.
IIRC, haven’t you said that you believe in videotaping all your sexual encounters, even without the consent of the women you’re having sex with to make sure they don’t accuse you of rape.
Please explain why that doesn’t display more hostility and callousness towards women.
Thanks.
It is fun that “insensitivity” is the kind of thing we’re worried about, now that somebody has described the attempt to legislate this kind of invasion into people’s lives with slightly inaccurate terminology.
The answer, Qin, is that this is not rape, but it certainly fits the description of sexual assault from a victim-centric point of view. It isn’t rape because of the way sexual intercourse is usually defined. In Virginia, as far as I know, it’s only rape if it’s actual penetrative sex. There is this, though:
“Bona fide medical purpose” is obviously the bit there that a bad-faith argument will rely on, since it’s the legislature that defines these things, and it’s the legislature that’s requiring the procedure in question, and obviously the doctor isn’t going to go to jail for this. But if we can agree to leave that out of it, which I think we ought to be able to do since most of us seem in agreement that this is a terrible and unnecessary thing they’re doing, then from the perspective of the lady subject to this bill, it’s a textbook sexual assault, what’s happening to her. She is being forced, under threat (specifically the threat that the state is going to prevent her access to a constitutionally guaranteed right), to submit to a penetration by an object.
Is it exactly the same as all rape, if every sexual assault has to get a trauma score and we have to compare them all? No. Is it “appropriate” to call it a state-sponsored rape bill? I don’t know, no, I guess? It’s slightly inaccurate, at least. But, I mean, they’re calling it that because it’s outrageous and does basically amount to a bunch of sterilized sexual assaults to intimidate women out of getting abortions. And I don’t know that I really think there’s anything to celebrate about getting penetrated by an object instead of a penis, rather than that distinction just being a vagary of our legal system. So, you know. Maybe whether or not that was appropriate isn’t terribly important.
I agree the definition of “person” isn’t quite so absolute as Der Trihs is suggesting, but to be fair, you can’t get an abortion (at least not without a better reason than “you want one”) at that stage anyway.
Unfortunately for the validity of this argument, this represents an “opinion” to the effect that the fetus is an independent entity, the life of which is entitled to “protection.” You, as individual, are free to hold this opinion, and to back it up with your own attempts to dissuade women from choosing to terminate their pregnancies. The state, OTOH, does not have the luxury of legislating an opinion that it holds. If the state holds that the fetus is an individual human person, the state can’t stop at passing “talk-the-patient-out-of-the-procedure” legislation; it must forbid it [elective abortion] entirely. The state cannot do this, however, because (AIUI) Roe v. Wade has preemptively restrained the state from holding that the fetus is, without qualification, an individual human person.
The most the legislature gets to do to respond to the voices of constituents who as individuals do hold that opinion is insist upon “informed consent” for the procedures to be performed by holders of medical licenses within the state. It is right and proper that ALL medical procedures be subjected to a requirement for informed consent. That elective abortion has been singled out for an extra-onerous standard for determining informed consent to have been obtained (and a standard that is being constructed by politicians rather than by physicians, at that) is obnoxious and deserving of opprobrium.
Fetuses are not people; that’s been established.
It’s a well known practice, they have roaming morality police with clubs that assault women. Some Muslim extremists in Egypt recently tried to start the same thing and were beaten up by a mob of women, amusingly.
“Person” and “alive” aren’t the same thing.
Of course I oppose it. Such laws are simply designed as a wedge towards redefining a fetus as a legal person, so abortion and miscarriage can be redefined as murder.
Yes. Women oppressing women is hardly new, any more than men oppressing men is new.
And those women are generally (probably overwhelmingly) hypocrites. They don’t actually oppose abortion; they just oppose abortion for other women. If they need one, they’ll get it.
Only a person can be the victim of a homicide.
If you can be legally charged with manslaughter for causing the miscarriage of a woman who’s 8 months pregnant than that fetus is considered a person.
Sorry, but you were demonstrably wrong.
The Department for the prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue beat both men and women and they certainly don’t beat them into submission.
What they do is, to give a common example, if they see men or women with their arms uncovered, deliver a blow or two to demonstrate their displeasure and then fine them.
It’s barbaric but not nearly as extreme as you implied.
It’s horrible and disgusting, but not always sexual assault.
However, in some cases it could be sexual assault. If I was a doctor I would refuse to do this to any patient who did not make it clear they had truly consented, rather than just acting because of the threat. If, on the contrary, a woman tells the doctor they are only there because of the threat, and the doctor goes ahead anyway, it’s hard not to call that sexual assault with an object.
Der Trihs,
You ignored my other question asking for your source for your asinine suggestion that the people who pushed for the law wanted to beat women into submission with clubs.
Please provide them.
I’ll repost the question in case you missed.