Example of a transvaginal ultrasound procedureAt the Wisconsin Right to Life Legislative Conference this week, the state’s top Republican lawmakersassured attendees that they will do everything in their power to enact a forced ultrasound bill, which would mandate an invasive transvaginal probefor some women seeking first-trimester abortions. “This bill is a priority,” Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) said. “It is long overdue.”

At the same conference, the executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life, Barbara Lyons, claimed that the “Woman’s Right to Know her Unborn Child Act” doesn’t actually intend to mandate a transvaginal ultrasound.

Yeah, sure it doesn't. It doesn't intend to mandate it, but I'm sure it mandates it regardless of intent because Republicans really, truly believe they're the party of small government and forcible penetration of a woman's vagina with a plastic probe.

For the children, of course.

Starting with the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade this week, we got the welcome news that for the first time, the majority of Americans want abortion to be legal in all or most cases. As you can imagine, the sex-hating religious extremists are working to spin those results. And of course they continue to place every possible legal obstacle between women and an affordable, safe, legal abortion. (Hell, they even oppose contraception, which would seem to be the logical solution to their abortion qualms!)

But eventually that tide will change, just as is now happening with gay marriage. The most significant long-term news is this new study in the American Journal of Public Health, whose lead author was Tracy Weitz, associate professor and director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at UCSF.

This is significant because the shrinking number of abortion clinics (and more importantly, the declining number of physicians willing to perform abortions) has made the legal right to have an abortion an empty promise in many states. And many doctors now graduate medical school without ever learning how to perform an abortion.

The public health solution? The six-year study says that abortions performed by midwives, nurses and nurse practitioners are just as safe as those performed by doctors. We now know for a fact that there's no medical basis for requiring higher-paid doctors to provide first-term abortions, and that means eventually the policy will shift:

Currently in the United States, a patchwork of state regulations determines who can provide abortions, with several states specifically prohibiting non-physician clinicians from performing the procedure.

The new study was designed to evaluate the safety of early aspiration abortions when performed by nurse practitioners, physician assistants and certified nurse midwives trained in the procedure. The study was conducted under a legal waiver from the Health Workforce Pilot Projects Program, a division of the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. California law requires a legal clarification about who can perform aspiration abortions.

The researchers report in their study that the results show the pool of abortion providers could be safely expanded beyond physicians to include other trained health care professionals. They found that:

• Nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives and physician assistants can provide early abortion care that is clinically as safe as physicians;

• Outpatient abortion is very safe, whether it is provided by physicians or by nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives or physician assistants.

Nationally, 92 percent of abortions take place in the first trimester but studies find that black, uninsured and low-income women continue to have less access to this care, according to the researchers.

In California, 13 percent of women using state Medicaid insurance obtain abortions after the first trimester. Because the average cost of a second trimester abortion is substantially higher than a first trimester procedure and abortion complications increase as the pregnancy advances, shifting the population distribution of abortions to earlier gestations may result in safer, less costly care, according to the research team.

“Increasing the types of health care professionals who can provide early aspiration abortion care is one way to reduce this health care disparity,’’ said lead author Tracy Weitz. “Policy makers can now feel confident that expanding access to care in this way is evidence-based and will promote women’s health.’’

Currently, non-physicians are allowed to perform aspiration abortions in four states: Montana, Oregon, New Hampshire and Vermont. In other states, non-physician clinicians are permitted to perform medication but not aspiration abortions. In recent years, in an effort to limit abortion availability, several states have put laws on the books to prohibit non-physician clinicians from performing abortions.

In the study, 40 nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives and physician assistants from four Planned Parenthood affiliates and from Kaiser Permanente of Northern California were trained to perform aspiration abortions. They were compared to a group of nearly 100 physicians, who had a mean of 14 years of experience providing abortions.

Altogether, 5,675 abortions were performed in the study by nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives and physician assistants, compared to 5,812 abortions by physicians. The abortions were performed between August 2007 and August 2011 at 22 clinical facilities in California.

And skilled abortion doctors can be reserved for the higher-risk second- and third-term abortions. It won't happen overnight (the Republicans still control too many state legislatures for that), but this is an important piece of science that will eventually make it easier and safer for women to have abortions.

Tom Smith is a Tea Party (i.e., GOP) candidate running for the US Senate against Bob Casey. Listen to this ridiculous bit of inanity about how rape and pregnancy out of wedlock are just the same. Via ThinkProgress Health, the transcript:

MARK SCOLFORO, ASSOCIATED PRESS: How would you tell a daughter or a granddaughter who, God forbid, would be the victim of a rape, to keep the child against her own will? Do you have a way to explain that?

SMITH: I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to.. she chose they way I thought. No don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape.

SCOLFORO: Similar how?

SMITH: Uh, having a baby out of wedlock.

SCOLFORO: That’s similar to rape?

SMITH: No, no, no, but… put yourself in a father’s situation, yes. It is similar. But, back to the original, I’m pro-life, period.

When the reporter came back around to get him to clarify for the record what he actually meant by that, he said this:

Smith: (Pause.) A life is a life, and it needs protected. Who’s going to protect it? We have to. I mean that’s, I believe life begins at conception. I’m not going to argue about the method of conception. It’s a life, and I’m pro-life. It’s that simple.

If only it were that simple. It's just not that simple. What if, for example, the rapist decided he wanted visitation rights? Or worse yet, custody rights? It happens. It happens more often than anyone might imagine. Or what if that rape victim carried the pregnancy to term in order to put the baby up for adoption, only to discover that she had to notify the rapist of his parental rights and force him to relinquish them? That happens too.

"Another survivor, a 14-year-old girl, decided to give up her baby for adoption. She was required by law to give notice of the adoption to the rapist, an adult man. While she was permitted by a court to give up her rights to the child, the rapist retained his and then sought child support payments from her," the lawyer writes. "Another survivor, who gave birth to twins after a date rape, raised them peacefully with her intimate partner until they were five years old, at which time the rapist learned of their existence and filed a lawsuit to establish his paternity and gain visitation rights, and attempted to use the mother's sexual orientation against her in the legal proceedings."

It's not simple. It's re-victimizing the victim. In each of the cases I described, the women involved had a choice as to how they wanted to handle their pregnancy. They chose to carry the babies to term, only to discover that doing so gave their rapist an opportunity to re-victimize them over and over and over again. What these crazy Republicans want to do is to force women into an untenable position with regard to choice over their own bodies, their futures, while protecting all of the rights of the men who caused them to have to confront these issues in the first place.

Yes, custody and parental rights issues arise in the case of pregnancy outside of marriage, too, and again, women currently have options as to how they handle those pregnancies. At least, they do in most states but not all, where getting an abortion -- a legal procedure -- is so impossibly difficult they're more or less forced to carry the child to term. But at least in those cases, they are not also forced into contact and litigation with someone who caused that pregnancy by forcing himself on her. They are not victims of violence and cruelty, and as Mr. Smith pointed out in his own situation, she CHOSE what she wanted to do.

What bothers me most about his truth-telling in that interview is this one line:

But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to.. she chose they way I thought.

What was it he didn't have to do? He didn't have to beat her within an inch of her life? He didn't have to lock her up until it was too late for an abortion? He didn't have to force her to marry the father? He didn't have to...what?

If that daughter's pregnancy had been the product of a rape, would he have blamed her for it? Would he have told that daughter her blouse was too low-cut, or her shorts were too short, or that she asked for it? Would that discussion have taken place before or after he locked her up to keep her from seeking an abortion?

This is the Republican Party. Tom Smith is not the exception, nor is Todd Akin. They're the rule.

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[H/t Heather]

What is it about Mike Huckabee that brings out the worst in his religious-right interview subjects? Mebbe it's the likelihood that Huckabee himself holds all these views while managing to project an image of avuncular amiability that belies his underlying nastiness.

After all, as Ellen at Newshounds observes, there was Huckabee last weekend, hosting Tony Perkins of the Family Research Center, invidiously trying to blame the Southern Poverty Law Center for the shooting at his offices, just as he had been doing all week:

Last Saturday, Huckabee began by citing the "huge pile of money" held by the SPLC. He didn't mention the FRC's assets which are listed as $12,516,000. He noted that the SPLC spends "a lot of time" accusing family values organizations of being hate groups and that Perkins was "bold" in speaking out about the "atmosphere" which contributed to the shooting. In response to Huckabee's question about the reason for the classification, Perkins insulted the SPLC's lack of "integrity" and accused them of "making money off of the spreading of hostility." (on Fox, oh, the irony!) The chyron stated, as Fox Fact, that the "FRC Promotes Faith, Freedom, and Family." Perkins claimed that they are being attacked for the policy on marriage and their "religious position on homosexuality." (Right, gays are going to hell, badda boom) He then made his patented claim that this is fostering a hostile environment. After citing the Chick-fil-A sandwich bags that the shooter possessed, he dismissed the connections between the food chain and the FRC. And while he didn't have the details, he accused the media of constantly mentioning the FRC, in their Chick fil-A coverage, as a hate group and that, according to Perkins, gave the shooter "a license to shoot."

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Via KMEG-TV,, here's the noted Congressman From the Planet Moron, Republican Steve King, weighing in on the controversy swirling around his friend and fellow paleo-conservative on abortion, Todd Akin:

King supports the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." It would ban Federal funding of abortions except in cases of forcible rape. Right now, Medicaid also covers abortions for victims of statutory rape or incest - for example, a 12 year old who gets pregnant.

Congressman King says he's not aware of any young victims like that.

"Well I just haven't heard of that being a circumstance that's been brought to me in any personal way, and I'd be open to discussion about that subject matter," he said.

Evan McMorris-Santoro at TPM observes:

A Democratic source flagged King’s praise of Akin in the KMEG interview to TPM. But potentially more controversial for King is his suggestion that pregnancies from statutory rape or incest don’t exist or happen rarely. A 1996 review by the Guttmacher Institute found “at least half of all babies born to minor women are fathered by adult men.”

Let's dig that Republican hole a little deeper, shall we?

Of course, none of this is exactly a surprise for anyone who's been paying attention to Republican wisdom on Women's Parts. Nor is it a surprise coming from a guy who likes to compare immigrants to cattle and dogs, and who recently defended dog fighting. Dehumanization is becoming a Republican specialty, and Steve King is their ace.

Every once in a while a righteous cause rises to the surface of our political consciousness at the very moment the right politician is ready to lead it. It doesn't happen very often, but it's happening right now. That cause is the fight against the national right wing assault on women, and the leader is Darcy Burner, running for congress in the newly drawn WA-01.

A week ago, at the Netroots Nation, Darcy gave a rousing Keynote speech to several thousand attendees. She presented them with a plan for progressive power and asked that women, in particular, empower themselves and inspire those around them to do the same. She reminded the crowd that 1/3 of all adult women will have an abortion in their lifetimes.

Then she asked all the women in the audience who'd had abortions to stand. And they did. One by one at first, and finally all at once, women throughout that huge crowd stood up. That's not an easy thing to do in this culture, even among friends. The right has made it a dishonorable, solitary act, borne in silence, subject to fear and social stigma.

So Darcy took the next step: she asked all of those who supported those women to stand up. Everyone in the room came to their feet. There was no sustained applause and no celebration, just a simple public acknowledgement of solidarity and sincere support for the women in all of our lives who have made this choice. I've never seen anything like that.

To me is the essence of leadership --- a candidate for office taking a stand on one of the most contentious issues of our time, reminding the people of what they have in common, empowering those who need to be empowered and asking for solidarity from their friends and neighbors. That's what Darcy does. That's why we need her fighting for us in Congress.

Naturally, she is being vilified for it, which I'm sure she expected from the retrograde right wing. But I doubt that she expected it from her so-called progressive primary opponents who are staging a whisper campaign in the district as well, alleging that she led "cheers" for abortion and portraying her as an extremist for illustrating that abortion is not a disgraceful choice made by a small number of irresponsible women but rather a common, everyday part of the lives of our mothers, daughters, friends and wives. The local press is eating it up.

Darcy is a leader on many issues, from the war in Afghanistan to economic fairness. But on this, she has done something that no other Democrat has done --- she has attempted to redefine the battle lines on women's reproductive rights. And until the Democratic Party follows her lead, women's rights will continue to be whittled away in bits and pieces all over the country until one day we will find that more than 50 million of our people will have been denied the right to decide their own futures, take care of their families and otherwise be full and equal citizens.

Please donate what you can to her campaign.

If we let them destroy her, it will send a message to all other progressive politicians that they must not challenge the prevailing, cowardly orthodoxy on abortion rights.

Please welcome Darcy Burner to Blue America.

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]

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.