Dr. Mila Means is still trying to establish a Kansas abortion clinic to replace the resource lost after the political assassination of Dr. George Tiller. So they may have found the right person but the mountain of obstacles grows:

WICHITA, Kan. — Not long ago, Dr. Mila Means, the physician trying to open an abortion clinic in this city, received a letter advising her to check under her car each morning — “because maybe today is the day someone places an explosive under it,” the note said.

There was reason for concern: the last doctor to provide abortions here was shot to death because of his work. But rather than lower her profile, Dr. Means raised it by buying a car that nobody could miss: a bright-yellow Mini Cooper, emblazoned, appropriately enough, with lightning bolts.

“It’s partly an in-your-face response,” she explained. “You’re looking for me. I’m here.”

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I think it goes without saying that life for women in a Santorum presidency would be horrible. Talk about taking civilization back to the Middle Ages.

Santorum's inflexibility on abortion is well-known. When you believe that a multi-cell zygote should be a Constitutionally-protected person, then there is no circumstance--not rape, not incest, not the life of the mother--that would prohibit that little future person from being born.

However, Santorum's own personal circumstances show that life doesn't work in nice, neat little ways and that sometimes, tough choices have to be made.

After examining Karen [Santorum, in her 19th week of pregnancy], who was nearly incoherent with a 105-degree fever, a doctor at Magee led Santorum into the hallway outside her room and said that she had an intrauterine infection and some type of medical intervention was necessary. Unless the source of the infection, the fetus, was removed from Karen’s body, she would likely die.

At minimum, the doctor said, Karen had to be given antibiotics intravenously or she might go into septic shock and die.

The Santorums were at a crossroads.

Once they agreed to use antibiotics, they believed they were committing to delivery of the fetus, which they knew would most likely not survive outside the womb.

“The doctors said they were talking about a matter of hours or a day or two before risking sepsis and both of them might die,” Santorum said. “Obviously, if it was a choice of whether both Karen and the child are going to die or just the child is going to die, I mean it’s a pretty easy call.”

Now there's nothing at all pleasant about having to make that painful choice, nor do I want to sound like I'm gloating over the hypocrisy. I had an ectopic pregnancy and had to make the same choice: either both of us would die or I would have to terminate the pregnancy.

But the important point here is that the Santorums had that choice, and made the one that made sense to them, just as I had. Their doctors treated the actual viable human being in the equation without concern of being prosecuted for doing their job.

I look at my children now and I recognize that life is precious and each child is a little miracle unto themselves. Thankfully, my children were born into circumstances where they were not only wanted, but were given great advantages of being the children of educated, committed parents with sufficient income and facilities to care for them. And even with those advantages, even being born without disabilities or developmental delays, into a loving partnership, raising a child is exhausting, nerve-wracking and difficult work. How dare Rick Santorum tell someone who does not feel that they can handle that kind of lifelong commitment that they have no choice? How dare he say that doctors cannot operate in the best interest of their actual flesh and blood patient?

Yes, to Santorum, life is precious and sacrosanct. That is, until you get out of the womb. Then you're on your own.
Transcripts below the fold

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Tanya Somander at ThinkProgress brings us, from the floor of the Indiana House, the keen insights of Republican Rep. Eric Turner of Marion:

TURNER: With all do respect to Rep. Riecken, I understand what she’s trying to do. But as you know that when the federal health care bill was going through Congress there was a lot of discussion whether this would allow for abortion coverage and of course we were all told it would not. And the bill, my house bill 1210, would prevent that for any insurance company to provide abortion coverage under federal health care bill. This [amendment] would open that window and I would ask you to oppose this amendment.

I just want you to think about this, in my view, giant loophole that could be created where someone who could — now i want to be careful, I don’t want to disparage in any way someone who has gone through the experience of a rape or incest — but someone who is desirous of an abortion could simply say that they’ve been raped or there’s incest.

The best part of this video, though, is the rebuttal from Democratic Rep. Linda Lawson of Hammond:

LAWSON: I was a sex-crimes investigator for six years for the city of Hammond, Indiana. And I want to tell you what it looks like and what it sounds like when women are raped. Or six-year-olds are raped. Or 18-month-old babies are raped. Or 97-year-old women are raped. They don't make it up!

Then they have to go to court. They have to stand in a courtroom, and they have to face the person who did it to them. Women don't make this up! My goodness! This is the state of Indiana!

Obviously, Rep. Hammond did not get the memo that, under the current regime of our new Alien Overlords from Planet T-Par-T, all victims of crime are now considered suspicious characters at best and likely criminals. If there wasn't something wrong with them, God wouldn't let anything bad happen to them, right?

Especially when it comes to accusing men. What were they thinking?

Because, of course, the bill that Turner was defending was his own HB 1210, which among other restrictions would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks, and require abortion providers to tell patients that abortion carries risks, including the possibility of breast cancer. And they obviously listened to Turner's logic, such as it were:

The House also voted 42-54 against an amendment by Rep. Gail Riecken, D-Riecken, which would have exempted from the bill women who became pregnant due to rape or incest, or women for whom a pregnancy threatens their life or could cause serious and irreversible physical harm.

Naturally, it passed the Indiana House shortly afterward. It's a lock to pass the Senate, too, and to be signed into law by Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels.

[H/t scarce]

I read an interview yesterday with one of the women who had an abortion at the horrible clinic that was shut down in Philadelphia. She said she'd tried to go to one of the well-known, respectable clinics -- but she was scared off by the protesters. She went to the criminally-negligent clinic because someone told her there wouldn't be any protesters.

Women who are under the stress of an unwanted pregnancy have enough trouble just getting past the logistics (money, insurance, state waiting periods, etc.). To add the emotional coercion and financial demand of forcing them to undergo a sonogram -- well, that's just plain mean. As I keep reminding people, abortion is still legal in America, and a woman's reason for choosing one is her own damned business. She shouldn't have to jump through these hoops to exercise her right to the procedure:

Gov. Rick Perry has fast-tracked legislation that requires physicians to show women a sonogram before they have an abortion.

Perry this weekend added the issue to his list of emergency items, giving lawmakers the ability to consider such bills in the first 30 days of the session.

“When you consider the magnitude of the decision to have an abortion, ensuring that the patient understands what’s truly at stake seems a small step to take,” Perry said in a statement.'<]/strong> “When someone has all the information, the right choice – the choice of life – becomes clear. Now our legislature can take fast action on this important bill because we all know when it comes to saving lives, every second counts.”

The list of emergency item this session has now grown to five. Other emergency items that Perry has set include establishing tougher eminent domain laws, abolishing sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants, requiring voters to present a photo identification at the polls and calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would require the federal government to have a balanced budget.

The state faces a budget shortfall of between $15 and $27 billion. Critics have questioned the governor's selection of such emergency items at a time when public education, higher education and health care are facing deep cuts.

This is sick and twisted but entirely predictable, because extremist conservatives already in the government are now being emboldened by the arrival of the Fox News Tea Party Brigade in the halls of power.

Abortion Law: Mother Denied Abortion, Then Had To Watch Baby Die

Nebraska’s new abortion law forced Danielle Deaver to live through ten excruciating days, waiting to give birth to a baby that she and her doctors knew would die minutes later, fighting for breath that would not come. And that’s what happened. The one-pound, ten-ounce girl, Elizabeth, was born December 8th. Deaver and husband Robb watched, held and comforted the baby as it gasped for air, hoping she was not suffering. She died 15 minutes later.

The sponsor of the controversial Nebraska statute, Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk, told the Des Moines Register that the law worked as it was intended in the Deavers’ case. "Even in these situations where the baby has a terminal condition or there's not much chance of surviving outside of the womb, my point has been and remains that is still a life," Flood said in an interview with the Iowa newspaper

.

Conservatives don't like the government intruding on their lives except when it intrudes on someone who doesn't share their religious beliefs. Ghouls.

Julie Schmit-Albin, who heads Nebraska Right to Life, told the AP in a Sunday interview that the tragic outcome was better than an abortion: "We acknowledge the tragedy that occurs with a poor prenatal diagnosis for the baby. But isn't it more humane for the baby to die in a loving manner with comfort care and in the arms of her parents than by the intentional painful death through abortion?"

Deaver believes that such a decision should belong to her and her husband. "It was very frustrating and added to our grief because the waiting compounded everything," she told the AP.

LGF writes:

Witness the inhumanity of the right wing anti-choice movement...And again, we see the fanatic’s absolute lack of empathy for the woman who was forced to bear a doomed child, and watch it die in agony. So heartless it boggles the mind.

That my friends is at the core of the Tea Party movement and don't let them tell you anything different. Julie Schmit-Albin and Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk remind me of Doctor Heiter of the cult classic The Human Centipede. If you've seen it you know what I mean. My heart goes out to Daniele Deaver.

A new bus-stop billboard put up by anti-choice activists near a NYC Planned Parenthood hits an all new low in taste:

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Credit: BestWeekEver

It takes a lot to do this, but I'm speechless.

Found on 6th Ave. and Watts Street, merely 3 blocks away from a Soho Planned Parenthood Clinic, the ad portrays an adorable African-American toddler with the text “The Most Dangerous Place For An African-American Child Is In The Womb.”

Their website, which I visited for the purposes of this post, claims that our generation is being wiped out due to abortions. Um, newsflash? Our Earth isn’t even going to have the resources to feed our population by the year 2050, and that’s assuming the aliens from Independence Day don’t get here first. If these people really cared about stopping abortions and lowering our population crisis, they should stop worrying about women’s bodies and start a campaign encouraging castration.

There is so much wrong with the thinking behind this ad campaign that even trying to formulate a tempered response is giving me a migraine.

I really wish that these anti-choice people gave even the littlest bit of energy to caring about the conditions in which most African Americans live and trying to fix that than they do to such horrifically racist and ugly ads.

My closet is full of clothes. I hate throwing stuff away. I have clothes in various sizes in my closet. I have new clothes and old clothes. However unlike Joan Crawford, I do indeed have wire hangers in my closet. But despite despite having a couple of minidresses that are pre Roe v Wade, I agree with Joan Crawford " No more wire hangers". Wire hangers are cheap and easy to get. Let's not have them substitute for access to safe and affordable abortions.

If the crazy, but wily, Republican right gets their way, access for perhaps 90% or more of all women, will end with the passage of the trio of these three bill....The Pence bill which cuts off funding for Planned Parenthood's women's wellness programs from birth control to pap smears, the Smith bill which codifies Hyde, eliminate abortion coverage in private and employer insurance and the Pitts bill, aka the "Let Women Die" bill which eliminates it in under the new health care act. Both Smith and Pitts have hidden land mines, well, actually, they are hiding in plain sight. It's why they won't eliminate the Let Women Die provision. Because that gives them the right to have private parties go to court to get an injunction, from a friendly anti choice judge, to stop federal funds to health care entities that provide abortion. Essentially it gives anti choice zealots an veto over abortion. More on that in my next post.

Here's the MoveOn youtube with our favorite hospital administrator, Lisa Edelstein of the show House.

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We've witnessed some pretty insane things coming out of South Dakota for a long time now including the creepy Bill Napoli and his ' Virgin Rant" of 2006 on the only acceptable scenario to allow for an abortion:

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

South Dakota is now taking it a step farther in their attempts to outlaw abortion. This one might top the list.

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon. The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.
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UPDATE: Jensen spoke to Mother Jones on Tuesday morning, after this story was published. He says that he disagrees with this interpretation of the bill. "This simply is to bring consistency to South Dakota statute as it relates to justifiable homicide," said Jensen in an interview, repeating an argument he made in the committee hearing on the bill last week. "If you look at the code, these codes are dealing with illegal acts. Now, abortion is a legal act. So this has got nothing to do with abortion."

Greg Sargent interviewed Jensen and he used an insane analogy to defend his bill:

When I asked Jensen what the purpose of the law was, if its target isn't abortion providers, he provided the following example:

"Say an ex-boyfriend who happens to be father of a baby doesn't want to pay child support for the next 18 years, and he beats on his ex-girfriend's abdomen in trying to abort her baby. If she did kill him, it would be justified. She is resisting an effort to murder her unborn child."

I wonder how many of these cases have landed in SD's court system? I'd like to call this the South Dakota-Scott Roeder bill since Roeder, who murdered Dr. Tiller in Kansas, used a very similar argument as his defense his horrific violent act.

He had to kill so others could live. That's the argument defense attorneys are set to make Dec. 22 for Scott Roeder, the anti-abortion activist accused of shooting abortion doctor George Tiller. This is an about face in strategy from their previous statement back in November when Roeder seemingly confessed to the Associated Press that he murdered the prominent and controversial abortion doctor "because of the necessity defense," saying that he was defending "preborn children."

Can you image how many Randall Terry Lunatic Zombies would descend upon our nation if justifiable homicide became lawful in this way? PFAW is condemning this bill too.

Amazing that the party allegedly for less government intrusion in our lives finds no problem spearheading this kind of heinous legislation:

Oklahoma just passed the country's strictest law on pre-abortion ultrasounds, along with another law that basically allows doctors to lie to pregnant women.

According to James McKiley Jr. of the Times, the Oklahoma legislature voted today to overturn vetoes of both laws. The first, a similar form of which was struck down by Oklahoma courts last year, requires "a doctor or technician to set up the monitor where the woman can see it and describe the heart, limbs and organs of the fetus. No exceptions are made for rape and incest victims." This is already invasive — Dionne Scott of the Center for Reproductive Rights calls it "the most extreme ultrasound requirement in the country."

The second law, however, is even more disturbing. Basically, it protects doctors from being sued if they decide not to tell patients that their fetus has birth defects. Writes McKinley, "The intent of the bill is to prevent parents from later suing doctors who withhold information to try to influence them against having an abortion."

Just take a minute to digest that. In Oklahoma, it's now legal to keep health information from patients in order to make their reproductive decisions for them. Of course, the doctors who perform prenatal tests won't be raising the children born to the prospective parents they treat. And yet those doctors can have a say — through subterfuge — in whether those parents choose to give birth or not. Now that this has passed, it's tempting to wonder what information Oklahoma doctors will get to lie about next. Perhaps they could tell teen girls that condoms spread AIDS. Or maybe just convince women that they're not actually pregnant until it's too late for an abortion. The possibilities are endless!

All in the deluded notion that somehow they are saving innocent potential babies, they are forcing actual living, breathing American citizens to submit without choice an invasive procedure before she can exercise her legal right to determine what she wants to do with her body. And no exception for rape or incest. It's victimizing those women all over again.

The Center for Reproductive Rights promises a fight.

“It is extremely disappointing that the Oklahoma legislature insists on passing a law that is so clearly unconstitutional and so detrimental to women in the state,” said Stephanie Toti, staff attorney in the U.S. Legal Program of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “The state has already spent the last two years defending this abortion restriction and several others—without success. Another round in the courts won’t change our strong constitutional claims against the law, it will only waste more of Oklahoma taxpayers’ time and money.”

The Center argues that the ultrasound requirement profoundly intrudes upon a patient’s privacy and is the most extreme ultrasound law in the country. The law forces a woman to hear information that she may not want to hear and that may not be relevant to her medical care. It also dangerously discounts her abilities to make healthy decisions about her own life by forcing her to hear information when she's objected. In addition, the statute interferes with the doctor-patient relationship—potentially damaging it—by compelling doctors to deliver unwanted speech.

If you are as outraged by this as I am, you can donate to CRR to help them fight.

If you're a woman in Oklahoma who wants an abortion for any reason, including rape and incest, steel yourself. The Oklahoma state legislature, following in the footsteps of its Utah and Kansas brethren, has just mandated vaginal probes before any abortion procedure can be done by any doctor in Oklahoma. When the governor inks these little gems into law, women can take their rightful place as second-class citizens with second-class rights.

One of the laws headed to the governor would require doctors to use a vaginal probe in cases where it would provide a clearer picture of the fetus than a regular ultrasound. Doctors have said this is usually the case early in pregnancies, when most abortions are done.

There's only one reason to get a "clearer picture". They want to heap a coal bin of guilt on any woman who dares to seek an abortion. If the probe doesn't keep her away, the 38-question cross-examination of her motives, background, race, education, and number of previous pregnancies might. If the probe and the questionnaire don't do the trick, the mandatory signs with mandatory font sizes with mandatory anti-abortion reminders might. And if all of those don't do the trick, maybe the cost of the procedure, which would likely double with the mandatory transvaginal ultrasound tacked on might, because they also voted to ban abortion coverage under state insurance exchanges under the new health care law.

Did I mention there were no exceptions for rape and incest? Imagine your daughter going through something like that. In typical religious right hypocrisy, these laws are intended to reflect "society's" belief that all children should be born even when 20% of them will be born into poverty and want, where society will abandon them to their own devices. The right is terrific at protecting fetuses. Children? Not so much.

The ultimate irony to hearing the teabaggers whine about government-run health care? Watching their state legislators create government-run health care. But only for women, of course. The men are secure in their right to Viagra.

UPDATED 4/23/10: Via NewsOK:

Gov. Brad Henry on Friday vetoed House Bill 2780, the ultrasound measure, and House Bill 2656, which would have banned lawsuits that claim a baby was better off aborted.

But it's not over till it's over...

An attempt will be made to override the governor’s vetoes of two anti-abortion measures, including one that would have required women to hear a description of an ultrasound examination before an abortion could be performed, House Speaker Chris Benge said Friday.

An override may not be all that difficult:

It will require more lawmakers to override this year’s vetoes. A two-thirds majority was needed in each chamber to override the 2008 veto. Because both HB 2780 and HB 2656 contained clauses that would have made them take effect immediately upon the governor’s signature, it will take a three-fourths majority in each chamber to override either veto.

Both bills passed the Oklahoma house with a 90% margin. But to override the governor's veto in the Senate, 36 votes are needed. Both measures passed the senate on a 35-11 vote. They'll have to pick up one more vote to override. Who knows whether they will or not.