trent franks, abortion bans, and the fetal pain lie
Trent Franks, Abortion Bans, and the Fetal Pain Lie
by Jodi Jacobson
Wednesday, an all-male panel of House Judiciary Committee members, led by Rep. Trent Franks (R-GA), passed a 20-week abortion ban. The bill, HR 1797, passed out of the Judiciary Committee by a vote of 20 to 12. The vote count fell along party lines, with the exception of Congressman Pedro Pierluisi (D-PR), the only Democrat who voted in favor.Trent Franks' federal 20-week abortion ban is a dangerous piece of legislation, based on false and completely disproven assertions about "evidence" of fetal pain. Yet many media outlets are assisting in the perpetuation of lies.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has promised a floor vote on the bill next week.
This is a dangerous piece of legislation. It is based on false and completely disproven assertions about “evidence” of fetal pain; it makes legislators, rather than doctors, the arbiters of gestational age; and it would result in the trial and imprisonment of medical professionals who provide safe abortion care. Yet in what can only be called an irresponsible quest for what they call “balance,” many media outlets are assisting in the perpetuation of lies about a critical aspect of reproductive health care in support of policies that will deeply harm women and criminalize providers.
As currently written, Franks’ bill would create an absolute ban on abortions in the United States after 20 weeks post-fertilization, for any reason, under any circumstance, except the imminent risk of death of the pregnant person, which as the cases of Beatriz and Savita Halappanavar have shown is not exactly reassuring. Contrary to misreporting by the Washington Post and the Associated Press, it is not a “reaction” to the trial of Kermit Gosnell, but simply the newest iteration of a bill Franks has been pushing for years—and he is using the Gosnell case as an excuse to expand the bill from a focus “only” on the District of Columbia to a nationwide ban.
It is no secret that the GOP is out to ban all abortions in the United States, no matter the costs to women’s lives and health, nor the costs to families and society writ large. When they are not acting to ban abortions outright, legislatures controlled by the GOP and Tea Party are passing unnecessary and costly regulations intended to close clinics run by legitimate providers of safe abortion care, and creating hoops through which patients must jump to get safe abortion care intended to raise the costs of early abortion and to humiliate and shame women, plain and simple.
The GOP and anti-choice movement’s claims about “caring for women” are belied by the fact that passage of a bill that would create blanket restrictions on safe abortion care, would remove health-care decisions from the hands of doctors and the women who are their patients—and would guarantee that criminal actors such as Kermit Gosnell get plenty of business.
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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/13-8
= new reply since forum marked as read
but I am so very GLAD that I am beyond childbearing age.
No lousy fundy fanatic GOPER or Tea Party toad can force me to bear a child against my will. 
With that said, my FURY cannot be described at the horrid audacity of these woman-hating (pick your favorite expletive...insert here), Earth raping, sons of foul rotten spew.
I so very much wish that I knew what to do, so that women did not have to fight this unending battle to have control over our lives, bodies, destiny's...and so humanity would learn to fairly share this Earth with the other creatures who live here.
And, no, I don't believe human kind should kill ourselves off. If only we would choose the ways of peace, equality and justice for all, and ways of living that are economically just, and ecologically sustainable.
I know I am not a dreamer...it IS possible.
I think that one point that needs to be pointed out, is that this is NOT about the Right to Life vs. the Right to Choose. It is about the right to coerce: some people are being taught that they have a right to push their beliefs and religion on the lives and bodies of others, even though we believe differently than they do. Their whole premise is based on the idea that 'Dad loves us better'. What a puerile, ignorant, arrogant attitude that is!
More people need to see what is really happening: this is about gaining dictatorial control over the female (majority!) population, and the production of more cannon fodder for their wars, and more low-wage (slave) workers. 
but, I don't know how to make a post from another thread into a separate post. 
Help, please...suggestions?
but it has a lot of extra unnecessary stuff.
Oh, well, I'll just have to see how it goes.
Cheers, and thanks for the supportive post, and the encouragement. 
