Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) tried to bury his signature of a state forced ultrasound law on this holiday Friday.
The Republican governor claimed state mandated ultrasounds would “improve a woman’s ability to make an informed choice that will protect her physical and mental health.” His claim is in direct opposition to actual medical experts, but Republicans seem to think their ignorance of the female body, medicine and general science gives them the right to be in charge of those areas.
Like a real coward, Walker buried the news of the signing in a press release among a list of 17 other bills. The governor tried to spin this as beneficial to women’s health, “Senate Bill 206 – relates to requirements to perform abortions, requiring an ultrasound before informed consent for an abortion, and providing a penalty. This bill improves a woman’s ability to make an informed choice that will protect her physical and mental health now and in the future. Women have a choice as to the ultrasound they receive. Pregnancies that are the result of a sexual assault or incest are excluded from this legislation. Senate Bill 206 passed the Senate on a vote of 17 – 15 and the Assembly on a vote of 56 – 39. Senate Bill 206 is Act 37.”
In press release, Planned Parenthood said that the Wisconsin law will not stand. They wrote, “Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, represented by the Wisconsin firm Cullen Weston Pines & Bach and attorneys for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, announced today it will file suit in federal court to block the law as soon as Governor Walker signs the legislation into law. If the law is not blocked, abortion would only be available to women in Madison and Milwaukee, forcing women in many parts of the state to travel, in many instances, at least an extra 200 miles roundtrip away from home to access safe and legal abortion — a trip existing Wisconsin law already forces them to make twice.”
Planned Parenthood also noted the restrictions hidden in the law and medical experts objections to it, “The Wisconsin legislation signed today imposes a requirement that abortion providers obtain hospital admitting privileges, a requirement opposed by medical experts including the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Wisconsin’s bill was opposed by the Wisconsin Medical Society, the Wisconsin Hospital Association, the Wisconsin Public Health Association, the Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians, the Wisconsin Association of Local Health Departments and Boards, and the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health.”
“Requiring doctors who provide abortions to have staff privileges at a nearby hospital won’t make women safer and, in fact, could jeopardize their health by depriving women in Wisconsin access to safe, high-quality health care,” Anne Davis, M.D., MPH., an obstetrician-gynecologist who is the consulting medical director at Physicians for Reproductive Health, explained for Planned Parenthood.
Republicans in Arkansas, Alabama, and North Dakota have all passed bills like this. The five most restrictive abortion laws in the country as of July 1st were in the states of Louisiana, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, and Texas, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Republican red state governors are in a race with each other to see who can pass the most restrictive abortion laws possible. If you stand back and watch the march of Republican governors who are willing to stab science and women in the back in order to appease their base, what do you see? You see the 2016 Republican Presidential/national ambition hopefuls lining up.
Forced ultrasounds are not going to “improve” a woman’s physical or mental health. Walker is obviously trying to infer that women have mental health problems from having abortions, and this is yet another inaccurate Republican claim made possible by the fact that Republican men are not forced to care for babies they can’t afford/didn’t want/etc and so can’t imagine the damaging mental health impact of state-forced pregnancy.
Vaginal ultrasounds are painful and expensive. They are also completely unnecessary. Republicans are using them in hopes of punishing women seeking abortions. Obviously Republicans fear that women can just as easily turn away from a fetus as grown Republican men can turn away from starving actual born children.
If anyone is need of a state mandated medical test to assist their mental health, it is cowardly Governor Walker and the cowardly Republican men using the power of the state to force unnecessary and painful medical procedures upon women as punishment for their Constitutional freedom to have control over their body. This is what it takes to run for President on the Republican ticket. Somebody has some serious control issues.
If there’s nothing wrong with this law and it’s not “divisive”, why did Walker try to bury it in a holiday news dump? Why isn’t he proudly proclaiming his improvement to women’s health?
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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