Chipping Away at Roe

[Content Note: War on agency.]

In Louisiana (via Kristin):

Legislation that will further limit access to abortion in Louisiana and would likely close three of the state's five abortion clinics overwhelmingly passed the state Senate with a vote of 34-3 Wednesday.

Due to the addition of technical amendments, the bill will head back the state House of Representatives for another vote before going to the governor's desk. The lower chamber voted overwhelmingly to pass the legislation -- which is more or less the same now -- the last time they saw it. So the bill is expected to face little to no opposition as it crosses the finish line in the Legislature.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has backed the proposed abortion restrictions since the beginning of this year's legislative session in Louisiana. It is expected that he will sign the measure quickly into law.

...Sponsored by Rep. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, the legislation would require physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility where the procedures take place. It also imposes the same restrictions -- such as a requirement for a 24-hour waiting period -- on abortion-inducing medication as apply to surgical abortions.

And in Missouri:

Missouri's Republican-controlled Legislature gave final approval Wednesday to legislation requiring a woman to wait three days after first seeing a doctor before having an abortion. Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon has not said whether he will sign or veto it.

The measure would triple Missouri's current 24-hour waiting period and put the state in line with Utah and South Dakota as the only states to mandate a 72-hour time frame. Missouri currently has only one clinic performing elective abortions.

...Under both current law and the new legislation, Missouri's abortion waiting period doesn't apply in instances deemed by a doctor to be a medical emergency. But women do have to wait in cases of rape and incest.

Supporters argue that women need more time to digest information received by a doctor. In addition to the waiting period, Missouri's current abortion law requires doctors to provide women with a variety of written information about the procedure, and they must be given the opportunity to hear the fetus' heartbeat on an ultrasound.

I don't even know what to say anymore. I am angry. I am sad. I am contemptuous. I am overwhelmed with a cacophony of emotion at the prospect of women and others who need abortions being denied access to this legal medical procedure, because of people with no legitimate claim to our bodies and no non-religious justification and no willingness to understand the basic truths about abortion and the people who seek them.

I am angry that our ostensibly pro-choice president will not address, firmly and routinely and without apology, this all-out assault on our autonomy and agency.

I am angry how few men are engaged in this fight.

I am angry that this campaign of violence against women and others is allowed to go unchecked. I am angry that fetuses are valued more highly than the people who carry them. I am angry that women are not trusted to make the best decisions for our lives and our bodies. I am angry that I am just supposed to accept as reasonable men (and women) who sit in a government building making decisions about my body without my consent, though it is a crime for a person to use physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.

I am angry that my body is not mine, that my mind is not mine. That legislators can claim to know what is best for my body and can claim to know my mind better than I do. That is dehumanizing, infantilizing, a theft of my dignity.

I am angry that I feel so helpless to stop the onslaught.