[Content Note: Legislative encroachments on reproductive rights; invasive medical requirements; rape culture.]
Andrea Grimes reports that the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled Texas can enforce its forced trans-vaginal sonogram law while the heinous legislation is challenged in court.
I'll just refer you to the post I wrote when the same shit started in Oklahoma (where a similar law is being challenged, but which the state has been disallowed from enforcing in the meantime), and I'll reiterate here the basis of my unyielding objection: Compelling a person to undergo an unnecessary vaginal probe to acquire a legal medical procedure is fucking rape.
And that was true even before the US Justice Department revised its definition of rape to make it patently obvious that this is, indeed, rape—at least if the concept of consent is to have any real meaning at all.
A woman or trans man who cannot access a legal medical procedure without submitting hir body to a vaginal probe cannot be said to be meaningfully consenting. Consent requires a choice.
Consent requires a choice, because consent without a choice is not consent; it's coercion.
[H/T to @scatx.]
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