Double Trouble

Yesterday, I wrote about the circus sideshow legislative session in Ohio at which a fetus embryo was scheduled to "testify" on an abortion bill.

This morning, I see that, in fact, TWO embryos (or one embryo and one fetus) are scheduled to "testify."

Two fetuses will be presented as witnesses before an Ohio legislative committee that is hearing a bill to outlaw abortions after the first heartbeat can be detected inside a woman's womb.

The fetuses will appear live and in color before the committee on a video screen projecting ultrasound images taken from their pregnant mothers' bodies. Janet Folger Porter, head of Faith2Action, an anti-abortion group, said the fetuses will be the youngest witnesses to ever testify when they come in front of the House Health and Aging Committee Wednesday morning.

"Lawmakers are going to be able to see as well as hear the babies' heartbeats," said Porter. "We think this is going to do a lot to keep other babies' heartbeats going in Ohio." She said two Ohio women -- one nine weeks and the other 11 weeks pregnant -- have agreed to be scanned with ultrasound machines for the hearing.

I know it's a losing battle to try to insert logic into this carnival of fuckery, but surely the fact that THE WOMEN "have agreed to be scanned," as opposed to the embryos, underlines exactly why this entire stunt is total bullshit.

Ohio already bans what critics of the procedure call partial birth abortions as well as requiring parental consent for minors in most cases and a 24-hour waiting period before abortions can be performed.

...The heartbeat bill is one of four bills restricting abortions in Ohio that will get hearings Wednesday before the House committee. The others would ban abortions after 20 weeks, make it more difficult for minors to get a judge's permission to get an abortion without parental consent and prohibit abortion coverage in health-care plans offered by the state under the new federal health-care law.

This slow erosion of the right guaranteed by Roe is exactly what I was talking about during the last presidential election, when I was being harangued about how I couldn't see that Obama would PROTECT ROE!!!!eleventy! It's not incidental that he appointed two Supreme Court justices who will presumably defend Roe, but it's also not incidental that Roe is being rendered an empty statute on the state level across the country, and he can't be arsed to even issue a press release about it.

That the fundamental rights of more than half the population are being assailed, that their bodily autonomy and agency is being subverted, and our ostensibly pro-choice president doesn't think that warrants a speech, doesn't think he needs to champion the rights of HALF THE POPULATION, and that his failure is not considered an absolute scandal by progressives, is exactly why we're in the situation we're in now.

Porter calls this bill (which is unlikely to be upheld by the courts, even if it passes the Ohio state legislature) "an arrow in the heart of Roe vs. Wade." They're going for the kill; the Democratic leadership, meanwhile, is making calculated political decisions: Why stand up for women, when they've got nowhere else to go?