Genius-Doctor Indiana Republicans Approve Religion-Based Ultrasounds, How Nice Of Them

You've heard of RU-486, right? It's that pill women can take that induces an abortion without anyone having to perform surgery. It's way safer than surgical abortion (and pregnancy), and it doesn't require any fancy surgical rooms to administer. It's a good way to make abortions available in places where surgical ones, for whatever reason, are impractical.

This, logically, makes Republicans very mad. The ones in Indiana are so mad, in fact, that if you try to get this legal, FDA-approved medication, they will put a stick in your hoo-ha!

The Evansville Courier Press   tells us what the Indiana Senate just passed:

Women seeking abortion-inducing drugs would have to get ultrasounds first and the clinics that prescribe them would have to follow a new set of regulations under a measure approved by the Senate on Tuesday.

Ah, the old make-em-get-an-ultrasound routine: For when a woman is just too stupid to have made an informed decision without a plastic wand inserted into her. It's a great way to scare people off when they are trying to do something you don't want them to do. Wait 10 years; Republicans will be saying anyone who wants to raise taxes should get a transvaginal ultrasound. People who propose gun control too, so watch yourself, Reasonable People.

Also, regulations? What kind of regulations?

It would also require clinics that prescribe the abortion-inducing drug RU-486 to meet the same standards as surgical clinics, even though it would not impose that same requirement on private physicians.

Hmm, arbitrarily picking one particular kind of medical clinic to be held to ridiculously high (and entirely unnecessary) standards, for no apparent reason? Good job, Indiana, you're well on your way to becoming Virginia .

Is there anywhere in particular that would be hurt by these new rules?

That portion of the measure would directly affect Planned Parenthood’s clinic in Lafayette, Ind. That clinic prescribes patients the drug, but does not offer surgical abortions.

“This bill is directly targeted to Planned Parenthood in Lafayette, Ind. That’s all it’s about, is getting at Planned Parenthood in Lafayette, Ind.,” Becker said. “When you do this, you’re not doing anything that will improve the health and safety of low-income women in the state of Indiana. All you’re doing is forcing them to go other ways -- in particular, to the Internet -- to get this same particular drug that you’re talking about regulating.”

Ah, so there is a perfectly functioning Planned Parenthood that will just happen to be forced to either renovate the whole place or shut down?What a coincidence.

So first, this bill would mandate that anyone who wants to get a medical abortionmusthave an ultrasound, which, in the first 12 weeks or so, can only be done invasively. And second, it would force clinics — but no other offices that could prescribe the pill — to be held to surgery-level standards even though they are not providing surgeries or anything.

There must be a good reason. There MUST! And the reasons are probably so good that everyone is getting up to defend it, right?

The only senator to speak in the bill’s favor was its author, Sen. Travis Holdman, R-Markle.

“I am not active in a Right to Life organization. I introduced this bill because my own religious conviction and my respect for life and the health of women,” Holdman said.

Ok. Ok. So. The Indiana State Senate approved — for the whole state — new medical regulations mandating potential transvaginal ultrasounds for every woman who goes to a clinic for a pill, because of the "religious convictions" of TRAVIS FROM MARKLE. It's ok though, because he ALSO has "respect for life," in that special, respectful way in which he forces people to have medical procedures they don't want. Excellent! Maybe the House will even agree, and pass it too! Health of women!

Who is this Travis from Markle? Is he a doctor, at least, who knows something about something? No. Is he a minister, who can at least explain to us the scholarly roots of his desire to make women insanely uncomfortable for no good reason? NO!

He helps run two banks .

So Travis Two-Banks from Markle has decided, you see, that his privately held religious beliefs don't jive with all these women claiming to have a constitutionally protected right to abortions, and because he's just important enough to have made it to the state legislature, he and his friends are going to try to wreck it. They can't outlaw it, see, because of the Supreme Court saying that is unconstitutional40 years ago, but theycanmake it as awful and unpleasant as possible.

It's like Jesus said: If you have 100 sheep, and you lose one, you should leave the 99 to go find it. And if you can't find it, you give all the other sheep unnecessary medical procedures in their private parts.

[ ThinkProgress ]