Anti-Abortion Republican Demonstrates That Medical Procedures Sound Gross When Described In Great Detail
And yet, that does not mean that it should be legal to harass people outside abortion clinics!
Let me tell you one thing about counseling — it is a consensual activity. When a person goes to counseling, they do it of their own accord, on purpose, usually with an appointment. If you, a random person off the street, walk up to another random person on the street and begin “counseling” them and refusing to let them go where they are trying to go, that is harassment.
This probably feels very obvious to you, a person who is not a fucking lunatic. It would probably never occur to you, or me, to walk up to someone on the street and question them about their childhood trauma, their relationship with their mother, current relationship dilemmas, or the meaning of the dream they had last night.
But there are a whole lot of people out there who believe it is their right, their First Amendment Right, to “counsel” people they do not know, without their permission. They are anti-abortion activists and they are very mad about the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances (FACE) Act, a law preventing them from doing this … and a whole lot more.
The FACE Act, to refresh your memory, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994 in response to not just the general harassment of people outside abortion clinics, but the bombings of clinics and other acts of anti-abortion domestic terrorism. You know, because normal people feel like women should be able to go to the doctor for a medical procedure without a bunch of assholes getting in their face about it, and that doctors and nurses and clinic staff should be able to go to work without fear (or being murdered).
It makes it a federal crime when people:
(1) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services;
(2) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship; or
(3) intentionally damages or destroys the property of a facility, or attempts to do so, because such facility provides reproductive health services, or intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship,
Those who violate the law are, as first time offenders, subject to being sent to prison for “not more than a year.” Second time offenders are fined and possibly sent to prison for “not more than three years.”
On Tuesday, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government held a hearing about the FACE Act ridiculously titled “From Tool to Weapon: The FACE Act and the Dangers of Federalizing Criminal Law,” in which they tried to make a case that the FACE Act is bad and, I guess, that anti-abortion activists should be allowed to harass people and try to prevent them from having a medical procedure.
Speaking at the hearing were Chris Ferrara of the Thomas More Society, Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation, Eva Edl, an anti-abortion rights activist who was convicted of violating the FACE Act after physically obstructing people from entering an abortion clinic in Michigan, and, for the defense of the Act, a senior scholar in residence at American University, Professor Jessica Waters.
Severino’s testimony tried to make a case that criminal federal laws are bad, in general, by citing several statutes that might sound silly to people — for instance, how there are federal laws regarding how bacon is to be packaged, so that people are not misled about the bacon they are purchasing. Ferrara tried to compare anti-abortion-rights activists to Martin Luther King Jr. and make a case that the FACE Act was unfairly punishing people for things that weren’t that bad by putting the word “merely” in front of the various ways they harassed people trying to go to their work or get a medical procedure. Or by describing someone blockading someone from helping someone get a medical procedure as “allegedly pressing one’s body into an escort momentarily.”
Edl was sent to a Yugoslavian labor camp as a child, along with many other people in the country of German descent, in the aftermath of World War II. Her story that she tells is that she wished that people had thrown themselves in front of the trains taking her and her family to the camps in order to prevent them from doing so, and that this is what she sees herself as doing as an anti-abortion-rights activist. That is all well and good, but people are legally allowed to get abortions (in most states, and throughout the United States for much of her life) whether she likes it or not and she is not, in fact, allowed to prevent them from doing so.
Edl also tried to explain that what she is doing is not threatening people trying to get abortions or work in clinics, but that she is “counseling mothers.” Again, as previously mentioned, counseling is meant to be a consensual activity. Harassing people you don’t know about how you don’t like the medical procedure they are having doesn’t make you a counselor anymore than walking up to a random stranger and cutting off their ponytail and throwing bleach at them makes you a hairstylist.
Waters was the only person there to defend the law, and despite the fact that she was clearly there to be harassed by creepy Republican representatives pretending not to know how laws work, did a very good job of explaining why the FACE Act is good and necessary.
Because the Right loves whatever they think is an “own,” the part of the hearing that is going viral is a clip of Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas questioning Waters about “what her favorite abortion method is” and then describing the various procedures in an unappealing manner (and mispronouncing most of them).
Are abortion procedures, described out loud, appealing sounding? No, they are not. You know what’s also not appealing sounding? Literally any medical procedure ever. Do you know how many times people have stopped me from explaining the process of a PRP facial to them? A lot! Almost no one wants to hear about how I got my blood microneedled and injected into my face, or about how I am planning to get salmon sperm microneedled into my face. Why? Because it sounds super gross. Same thing when I’ve explained how my sister broke both of her ankles doing a Herkie as a cheerleader in high school. Similarly, no one wants to hear a weirdly and explicitly detailed explanation of the process of using a menstrual cup or delivering a newborn cow or what ballerina feet look like. No one wants to watch a confusing musical commercial about people mailing their poop for colon cancer detection purposes. Quite frankly, I do not want to know anything about the digestion process and prefer to not even think too hard about having internal organs. Chewing is really gross to think about! All of this is why there is a whole entire saying about not wanting to know how the sausage is made.
Waters handled herself well and just kept saying that she supported women being allowed to get whichever method is right for them at the time, because obviously “What’s your favorite abortion method?” is a ridiculous question that would only be asked by someone who did not know what they were talking about.
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That being said, none of that has a damn thing to do with the FACE Act. The fact that a medical procedure sounds gross when described out loud does not negate the fact that yes, it does need to be illegal for lunatics to harass people for simply attempting to have a legal medical procedure. Especially considering the fact that these groups are known to be violent, to bomb clinics, and to assassinate doctors. The FACE Act was not enacted to make these people sad or to hurt their feelings, it was enacted to protect people from them and to attempt to prevent them from hurting people.
I assure you, if there were people regularly standing outside medspas, trying to counsel people about the dangers of too much filler and regularly killing plastic surgeons, the MAGA crowd would be scrambling to find a legal remedy. And frankly, I would support them doing so, because people should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want to their own bodies without having to worry that they will be harassed or killed for doing so.
It’s not that hard.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Read a minute by minute description of labor and delivery into the record. "This should not be forced on anyone."
"Anti-Abortion Republican Demonstrates That Medical Procedures Sound Gross When Described In Great Detail"
Just like the Epstein Files.