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.

Arizona abortion rules will change significantly when a handful of new regulations passed by the Legislature this year go into effect on Sept. 12. Arizona abortion-law challenge goes on:

Planned Parenthood of Arizona had asked the Maricopa County Superior Court to temporarily halt the laws until the court could rule on their legality. But the organization withdrew its request for that injunction last week after the Arizona Court of Appeals overturned an injunction in another Planned Parenthood case challenging a 2009 abortion law.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Richard Gama this week signed off on an agreement between Planned Parenthood and the state that allows most of the 2011 regulations to go into effect while the legal challenge continues.

The new regulations require clinics to have the same procedures for medication abortions as they now do for surgical abortions, including allowing only a physician to provide the abortion pills. Currently, nurse practitioners and physician's assistants can dispense the pills.

Clinics also must now offer to let a woman listen to the fetus and view an ultrasound prior to an abortion.

This week's agreement does delay implementation of a few of the 2011 regulations, including those that would require a doctor to be present for postoperative monitoring or require staff to monitor a patient's vital signs. Howard said that regulation didn't make sense in situations of medication abortion in which the woman takes two pills, the second at home.

Planned Parenthood of Arizona President and CEO Bryan Howard said Planned Parenthood will move forward with their legal challenges of both the 2009 and 2011 abortion laws.

"We continue to believe that both laws violate at least the privacy clause of the state Constitution," he said.

He said he is "almost certain" they also will appeal the Appeals Court decision to overturn the 2009 law injunction. If they appeal, Howard said, part of the law will remain halted until the Arizona Supreme Court decides whether it will hear the case and if the injunction should remain.

If Planned Parenthood does not appeal, the 2009 law also goes into effect Sept. 12.

I have said before that the 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale was supposed to be a work of futuristic science fiction, but it is turning out to be a "how to" handbook for the theocratic Christian Taliban. The Handmaid's Tale Plot Summary and Details:

In this dystopian fable, a librarian wife and mother becomes the childbearing pawn of a Christian theocracy. In the near future, as war rages across the fictional North American Republic of Gilead and pollution has rendered 99 percent of the female population sterile, Kate sees her husband killed and her daughter kidnapped while trying to escape across the border. Kate herself is transformed into a handmaid — a surrogate mother for one of the privileged but barren couples who run the country's fundamentalist regime. Although she resists being indoctrinated into the bizarre cult of the handmaids, which mixes Old Testament orthodoxy and misogynist cant with 12-step gospel and ritualized violence, Kate soon finds herself ensconced at the home of the Commander and his frosty wife, Serena Joy… Kate longs for her vanished earlier life; she soon learns that since many of the nation's powerful men are as sterile as their wives, she may have to risk the punishment for fornication — death by hanging — in order to sleep with another man who can provide her with the pregnancy that has become her sole raison d'être.

If people remain silent as women are systematically deprived of their constitutional liberties and rights and reduced to second class citizens who are property of the state, this dystopian fable can all too readily become a reality.