Gosh, is there anything that could be more awful about Wisconsin's new abortion bill? How about a provision giving men the right to sue doctors for "emotional and psychological distress" when their precious genetic material is cruelly aborted after 20 weeks? Yep, that's pretty sucky. Wouldn't it be enough just to give the guy a copy of the mandatory ultrasound, since those pictures are such joyous occasions?

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Tell us more about this stupid thing, HuffPo!

Wisconsin Assembly Bill 237 would ban abortions after 20 weeks "postfertilization," which doctors would measure as 22 weeks of pregnancy since pregnancies are usually measured from the woman's last menstrual period. If the bill becomes law, doctors who perform an abortion after this time could be charged with a felony and fined up to $10,000, or face up to three and a half years in prison.

In addition to those penalties, the bill would allow the father to sue the doctor for damages, "including damages for personal injury and emotional and psychological distress," if the doctor performs or attempts to perform an abortion after the 20-week limit. The man does not need to be married to the woman or even in a relationship with her to sue her doctor, as long as the pregnancy is not a result of sexual assault or incest. The bill also says the woman can sue.

Well, isn't that just the niftiest thing! Looks like the "pro-lifers" are making a bid to reach out to the Men's Rights dweebs, because when you're out to regulate women and their sin-parts, you need all the support you can get. Presumably, the "emotional distress" would result from the trauma of a woman and a doctor conspiring together to let her control her body, and also the man's sympathetic pangs for the poor little fetus feeling pain, which is a popular but disproven motivation for abortion bans after 20 weeks. Gov. Scott Walker has already said he plans to sign the bill; maybe this time he won't try to keep the womenfolk from fussing too much like he did a couple years back, when he signed a whole different bunch of restrictions on choice at the start of a holiday weekend.

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HuffPo also learned that, according to the Guttmacher Institute, "6 of the 11 states that currently ban abortion at 20 weeks postfertilization ... have similar language tucked into their respective laws that allow the parents to sue a doctor who performs an abortion after that point." In Kansas, only the husband of the woman having the abortion can sue, which seems way more Old Testamenty somehow.

On the upside, 20-week abortion bans haven't been doing so well in court:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Idaho's law last week, ruling it "unconstitutional because it categorically bans some abortions before viability."

You almost get the feeling that red states are just trying to pile on as many ridiculous restrictions as they can invent, just to see which ones will pass judicial review somewhere. Nahh, that's crazy thinking.

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Opponents of Wisconsin's abortion ban note that fewer than 1 percent of abortions occur after 20 weeks, but when they do, it's often because the fetus has severe medical problems that had previously been undetected. Well, the murderous sluts should have thought of that before getting pregnant with a Bad Fetus, shouldn't they? Maybe they can find someone to sue, too -- how about the guy who got them pregnant?

[HuffPo]