Yesterday sucked. Not only because as Simone pointed out during the Pro-Choice rally in Union Square, the sky was sporting the Ghostbusters apocalypse-impending charcoal cloud cover, but more so because of the reason we were standing there: The Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban on the misnomered partial birth (i.e. after 12 weeks)abortion.
In 2003 when those men pictured above, whom, may it obviously be pointed out will never give birth to anything but an enormous ass baby, were gleefully watching Bush sign the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, I threw up a little in my pants. I remember this picture being circulated through email when I was still in college as a blatant symbol of smirking suits coercively legislating their way into the vaginas of the country. I remember discussing it in Sociology. I remember thinking it was a fucking scary possibility, but still, in the back of my mind, it was more of an object of academic masturbation rather than a real prospect.
The fact that the ban doesn't make sense has been ignored by the Court entirely-- the decision makes it a federal felony for the fetus to be removed from a woman's body "in an intact condition", so doctors will be forced to perform a far more dangerous medical procedure on women with ectopic pregnancies or other inviable birth conditions: dismembering the fetus before it passes the cervix. Kennedy stated in his opinion that this act "expresses respect for the dignity of human life.” I don't believe that a fetus should be considered a person, but let's say I did, how does BLASTING the fetal body to bits before removing it lend more dignity to human life? The irrationality of such an argument makes it abundantly clear, if for some reason you were still unsure, that the ultimate goal of this Act is to erode women's rights in general.
And what a better way to start scraping off the protective paint than to essentially gut the health exception clause:
Justice Kennedy, in addressing the need for the health exception, said on Wednesday that it was acceptable for Congress not to include one because there was “medical uncertainty” over whether the banned procedure was ever necessary for the sake of a woman’s health. He said that pregnant women or their doctors could assert an individual need for a health exception by going to court to challenge the law as it applied to them.
If you are in possession of a vagina the law, for all intents and purposes, was just made more important than your health yesterday. Stay tuned for the Court ruling amending tax law: failure to pay taxes on time can be punished with a hand-delivered-by-your-state-representative case of vaginal herpes!
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