Sick, macabre ghouls
by digby
You know, I've seen some disgusting conservative misogyny in my day, but this is a new low:
A speech from a Georgia Republican state representative surfaced last week in which he compared women seeking abortions of stillborn fetuses to cows and pigs.
State Rep. Terry England was speaking in favor of HB 954, which makes it illegal to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks even if the woman is known to be carrying a stillborn fetus or the baby is otherwise not expected to live to term.
He then recalled his time working on a farm:
“Life gives us many experiences…I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive. Delivering pigs, dead or alive. It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.”
Here's the thing. Yes, it's disgusting that this cretinous throwback compared women to pigs and cows. Butwhat's shocking me down to the soles of my feet about this one is that a political body is actually trying to pass legislation forcing women to carry a dead fetus to term. What can possibly be the excuse for something that grotesque? It's sick.
This provision was associated with one of those "fetal pain" bills. Now, I may not be a medical doctor or a GOP expert in livestock, but I'm fairly sure that dead fetuses don't feel any pain. These people's desire to force women to endure childbirth is so extreme that they even want to force them to go though labor to deliver dead babies.
Here's a post from Mark Hoofnagle, an MD and PhD in physiology from the University of Virginia on the risks to women from this gruesome bill:
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend dilation and extraction or induction of labor once the diagnosis of stillbirth has been made. The risks of carrying a non-viable fetus are the higher complication rate of delivery versus dilation and extraction, as well as a very high risk to the mother of complications like disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) if the amniotic sac is ruptured and she is exposed to the dying tissue. For stillbirth or nonviable pregnancies, dilation and extraction is far safer and more effective with 24% of patients undergoing labor experiencing complications compared to 3% for D&E.
Oh, well. What's a 24% risk of complications? The almost-human livestock knew what they were getting into when they failed to put an aspirin between their legs didn't they?
These macabre freaks (and I'm looking at you Santorum) have developed a new religion of fetus worship and it's verging on psychotic. Invading the relationship between a doctor and a family who are informed that their fetus will not live outside the womb and insisting they carry it to term is immoral. Forcing a woman who is carrying a dead body inside of her to go through childbirth, despite all the physical and emotional risks that entails, should be criminal.
I have a strong feeling that these people would like to bring back the day when maternal; death was common. (Of course babies died too, so perhaps they'll make an exception for medical intervention in that case.)
This whole discussion makes it clearer and clearer that not much has changed since St Augustine:
"I don't see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes the purpose of procreation. If woman was not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be?"
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