The Christian Taliban: Reducing women to second class citizens who are property of the state, one law at a time
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Last Thursday, Planned Parenthood, the state's largest abortion provider, announced a sweeping cutback of abortion services in Arizona, saying it will no longer offer the procedure in communities outside metro Phoenix and Tucson. Planned Parenthood to end abortions at 7 Arizona sites:
Planned Parenthood eliminated the services after an Arizona appellate court last week upheld a 2009 state law that placed new restrictions on abortions in the state, including authorizing only physicians to perform surgical abortions.
Previously, nurse practitioners and midwives could perform the procedure. A shortage of doctors in the state trained or willing to perform abortions has forced Planned Parenthood to reduce the number of locations where it can offer the service.
The impact, its officials say, will be felt statewide, but women living in rural communities, including Flagstaff, Prescott Valley and Yuma, will be hit the hardest.
The newly upheld law also:
■ Requires women to have an in-person "informed consent" consultation at least 24 hours in advance with the physician who will be performing the procedure. Under previous rules, qualified staff members were able to provide women with the information over the phone.
■ Requires that minors get a notarized statement of parental consent before getting an abortion. Parental consent was previously required, but the statement didn't have to be notarized.
■ Allows pharmacists and other health-care professionals to refuse to provide emergency contraception for religious or moral reasons.
Cathi Herrod, president for the Center for Arizona Policy, a socially conservative organization that helped author the 2009 law, said the new requirements are about safety and raising "the standard of care" for women.
This is, of course, a lie. Cathi Herrod and the anti-abortion jihadists of the Christian Taliban are all about stripping women of their constitutional liberties and right of privacy to receive confidential medical advice and care from a physician of their choice, and to reduce women to second class citizens who are in effect property of the state. The state will decide what medical advice and care a woman may receive, if any, abrogating a woman's constitutional right to privacy and substituting the dictates of the state for the sound medical advice and care of a qualified physician of their choice.
No man is equally deprived of his constitutional liberties and right of privacy to receive medical advice and care from a qualified physician of his choice. This is a clear violation of equal protection of the law.
So-called "small government" conservatives are actually all-intrusive "big brother" police state authoritarians when it comes to the most private and personal aspects of our lives: sex, sexuality, and child birth.
Planned Parenthood correctly pointed out that "medical professionals who perform abortions often face harassment and threats and that the state's shortage of physicians was exacerbated by the Legislature in the 1970s barring the University of Arizona from teaching the procedure at its College of Medicine." A shortage of doctors in the state trained or willing to perform abortions forced the reduction in services.
The anti-abortion jihadists of the Christian Taliban have been been at war with women for decades, systematically chipping away at their constitutional rights and access to legal and safe medical care, one law at a time. It is the "slippery slope" to authoritarianism.
Planned Parenthood said [last] Thursday that it decided to implement the service reductions immediately because it feared the appellate court's ruling was "expansive" enough to also impact other pending litigation over additional abortion restrictions passed by state lawmakers earlier this year.
Those include a new requirement that would prohibit nurse practitioners from providing the abortion pill and rules that allow only physicians to perform many other services typically done by nurse practitioners before a medical abortion, including pelvic exams.
About half of the abortions in the state are abortion by pill, and Planned Parenthood routinely relies on nurse practitioners to perform the service.
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