Missouri Republicans Want People To Donate To Crisis Pregnancy Centers Instead Of Paying Taxes
Also too: Wyoming will now force abortion patients to have transvaginal ultrasounds.
Back in November, Missouri residents voted to legalize abortion in their state, and since then, Republican legislators in the state have been going balls to the wall trying to undo that.
Their latest scheme? They want to allow people to donate to crisis pregnancy centers in lieu of paying any taxes. You know, so that instead of having money for education or health care for living children, or for literally anything else in the state, these crisis pregnancy centers can pay themselves obscene amounts of money to convince pregnant people that they will go to hell if they have an abortion.
The proposal would establish a 100 percent tax credit (capped at $50,000) on donations to CPCs, which would mean that, theoretically, almost every household in the state would be able to donate everything they owe in taxes to them and defund the government entirely. Isn’t that nice?
There is already a 70 percent tax credit on donations to CPCs — a provision of the state’s trigger law that went into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned. That itself was an increase from a previous 50 percent tax credit to these organizations.
If that doesn’t do enough to break your brains, Republican Chris Warwick, the House sponsor of the bill, literally said that he wanted to empower taxpayers to be able to decide for themselves where their tax dollars go, without the state “trying to verify what programs work.”
Yes. He wants people to be able to direct their tax money to programs that may not even “work,” and considers that to be a positive. Warwick also opposes requiring the CPCs to explain how they spend all of that money, because that’s just “too much bureaucracy” for his taste.
It sounds like a joke. Like, it literally sounds like a thing we would make up that someone said, as a joke. But it’s not! He literally wants people to be able to direct all of their tax money to these Crisis Pregnancy Centers with literally no oversight on how it would be used. Talk about fiscal responsibility!
Wyoming’s Republican Governor Tried Not To Be A Complete Dick, Was Immediately Overruled
On Monday, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon — a Republican — vetoed legislation meant to force those having medication abortions to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound, on the grounds that it created the “prospect of an unnecessary, intimate and invasive procedure which subjects women to an uncomfortable and potentially traumatic experience.”
To the dismay of many Republicans, abortion is still legal in the state and efforts to ban it have been blocked by the courts at every turn.
“If this Act were to become law,” Gov. Gordon wrote in a letter explaining the veto, “it creates the prospect of an unnecessary, intimate, and invasive procedure (transvaginal ultrasound) which subjects women to an uncomfortable and potentially traumatic experience in what may already be a very overwhelming situation. I question whether this invasive ultrasound is absolutely necessary, fully informative, or can even be considered a reasonable requirement for this procedure regardless of the circumstances resulting in the pregnancy.”
“Of particular concern,” he continued, “this Act does not account for the specific populations who may be more vulnerable to psychological effects related to the procedure. Intimate obstetric and gynecological examinations can be highly problematic for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, or victims whose pregnancy is caused by rape or incest, or a woman and her family who is forced to choose her health over that of the unborn.”
How weirdly reasonable for a Republican governor of Wyoming! A little too reasonable, however, for the Legislature. Both the state House (45-16) and the Senate (22-9) voted to override the veto and implement the law — which, while it would not punish abortion patients, would mean that doctors who didn’t force them to undergo the procedure could be fined up to $9,000 and face up to six months in prison.
“He’s very concerned about the psychological effects of this procedure,” Sen. Darin Smith (R-Cheyenne) said of the governor, “but what about the psychological effects of having an abortion, for the rest of your life?”
If Sen. Smith was so very concerned about this, he could have looked it up and found that, five years later, over 95 percent of those who had abortions did not regret their decisions at all — and 84 percent say they felt great about it.
Of course, it’s understandable that Darin Smith feels that he would be traumatized by having had an abortion for the rest of his life and is projecting this feeling onto others — which is exactly why neither I, nor anyone else who supports abortion rights, would force him to get one against his will, as he wishes to do with the transvaginal ultrasounds. I also cannot imagine that any of us would force him to have anything shoved up his ass against his will, in order to have an unrelated medical procedure done, because that is a fucked up thing to do.
After the bill was signed into law by a surely dismayed Gov. Gordon, the last full-service clinic in the state announced they would stop providing abortions.
Of Course Trump Can’t Wait For Women To Drop Dead In Idaho Emergency Rooms
On Wednesday, the Trump administration dropped a lawsuit, originally filed by the Biden administration, against the state of Idaho, arguing that the state’s abortion ban violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, which requires emergency rooms to provide emergency care for all pregnant patients — including abortion if that is what is needed to save their lives.
Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador, in an apparent imitation of a Scooby Doo villain, is “grateful that meddlesome DOJ litigation on this issue will no longer be an obstacle to Idaho enforcing its laws.”
The motion filed by the Justice Department asked that the case be dismissed and for Idaho to be allowed to return to enforcing its law, even if that means that people will die. That, however, was swiftly blocked by a judge after doctors said it would force them to airlift patients in serious emergency health situations to hospitals in other states.
St. Luke’s, the state’s largest hospital system, also has its own lawsuit in play, and on Tuesday a judge granted them a temporary restraining order that will preserve access to emergency abortions in hospitals.
ALSO!
An Arizona court permanently blocked a 15-week abortion ban from taking effect on Wednesday, several months after Arizonans voted to amend the state constitution to include the right to abortion up to 24 weeks. [The Guardian]
The Russian Orthodox Church has begun an especially creepy anti-abortion campaign, telling women not to abort their babies so that they can grow up to die in war instead!
The above image, which features a picture of a womb-bound three month old baby with a full head of hair next to a picture of a kindergartener in an army uniform and reads “Protect me today, I can protect you tomorrow. Abortion is murder,” was posted on the VKontakte (Russian social media site) page of a church in Severodvinsk. That church is one of many that are collecting signatures to pass a regional law that would make it illegal to “encourage” women to have abortions. [The Barents Observer]
Spain may soon follow France in enshrining abortion rights in their constitution. [Infosalus]
Say Anything star and ridiculously pretty human person Ione Skye revealed in her recent memoir that she aborted Anthony Kiedis’s baby when she was 17, which seems like it was probably a good idea given that she was a 17-year-old girl and he was a 25-year-old heroin addict with anger management issues. They had started dating when she was 16 and he was 24, which really does not seem like a thing anyone should have been okay with. [People Magazine]
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE
I remember standing in line to vote and listening to women say it was alright to vote for Trump because we were protecting abortion rights. I live in Missouri.
That's when I decided to by the big bottle of gin.
"They had started dating when she was 16 and he was 24,"
I feel like the term dating should have some quote marks around it when you're talking about a full-grown adult and a child.
I hard side-eye people, particularly men, in their twenties "dating" teenagers, primarily because 1. a majority of teenage pregnancies are caused by men in their twenties, and 2. the men I've met who dated teenagers in their twenties were invariably fuckup losers who can't find anyone their own age to date.