Whoooooooooops!

[Content Note: Reproductive rights, including mandated transvaginal ultrasounds.]

Hey, remember when Representative Darrell Issa (R-Ealpieceofwork) held that superb all-male anti-contraception hearing? Ha ha that was GREAT, right? Well, Rep. Issa now admits it maybe wasn't the best idea he's ever had.

Last week there was a hearing that was spun, it was terribly spun. We all saw it. I won't call it my greatest success to get a point across on behalf of the American people.

Yeah, the media spin was definitely the biggest problem there—not the fact that women aren't considered experts in their own healthcare and reproductive choice.

On a related note, perhaps if the men who are leading the charge against reproductive freedom listened to women, they would know by now that: 1. Mandating transvaginal ultrasounds is rape, because a person with a uterus who cannot access a legal medical procedure without submitting hir body to a vaginal probe cannot be said to be meaningfully consenting, as consent requires a choice, and "consent" without a choice is not actually consent; it's coercion. 2. Mandated rape isn't a political "winner" with the ladies. Or anyone else with a uterus. Or anyone sans uterus but functional sense of decency.

And yet:

In Alabama, State Senator Clay Scofield, a Republican man, "is pushing SB 12 [which] would mandate the physician 'to perform an ultrasound, provide verbal explanation of the ultrasound, and display the images to the pregnant woman before performing an abortion.' The physician could also require the woman to submit to a transvaginal ultrasound—'in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced'—if she or he determines it necessary."

In Idaho, Senate Assistant Majority Leader Chuck Winder, a Republican man, is "sponsoring a bill to require women to have an ultrasound before receiving an abortion... The measure does not specifically mention transvaginal ultrasounds...but would leave it up to a doctor and the patient to decide which ultrasound would be best."

A mandatory ultrasound bill is also under consideration in Pennsylvania, and laws have been passed in Texas and Oklahoma.

In the year 2012, women et. al. in the United States are being told by their government that they must submit their bodies to state-sanctioned rape if they want to access a legal medical procedure, while being totally shut out of legislative sessions in which increasing control of their bodies is assumed by elected men and their "experts."

Post-feminist world etc.