The WAR on WOMEN is REAL! Here's the Proof-Part 2- Alabama through Indiana.

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By Colodomom

Fri Mar 23, 2012 4:01 PM

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This article lists some of the new anti-women legislation in the states Alabama through Indiana, alphabetically. There are 7 articles on my column listing this legislation in 41 of the 50 states, alphabetically.

Alabama

http://e-lobbyist.com/gaits/view/365237

SB 12 -Proposed in February 2012

Abortion, physician required to perform ultrasound prior to performing abortion and display the images to the pregnant woman, medical emergency excepted, civil and criminal penalties, Right to Know and See Act

Sponsor: Alabama Senator Clay Scofield (R)

http://www.legislature.state.al.us/senate/senators/senatebios/sd009.html

Alaska

https://news.change.org/stories/alaska-restricts-abortion-rights-with-parental-notification-law

Congratulations Alaska: You’re now the 35th state to further limit the reproductive rights of young women by forcing doctors to violate a teen’s right to privacy.

In August 2010, Alaska voters passed Ballot Measure 2, which requires medical personnel to personally notify the parents/guardians of girls under age 18 who are seeking abortions, subsequently forcing patients to wait 48 hours before they can receive the procedure. The law allows teens from abusive homes to circumvent this state-mandated tattling by appearing before a judge and receiving a court order, or obtaining a notarized statement from a law enforcement officer or qualified family member testifying to personal knowledge of abuse.

While it may seem reasonable on the surface, this measure is dangerous for a number of reasons. Instead of protecting vulnerable, victimized teenagers, it forces them to single-handedly navigate a complex and often unsympathetic legal system, and/or risks subjecting them to further violence from parents angry about their teen’s pregnancy. Furthermore, the mandated 48 hour waiting period adds an additional set of logistical obstacles: not every teenage girl has a Planned Parenthood around the corner, nor do they all have the time, money, resources, or ability to coordinate long distance travel and overnight accommodations. And when it comes to abortion, timing is crucial, and earlier is definitely better in terms of ease, safety, and cost. All of these barriers increase the likelihood that medical services will be dangerously delayed, or that desperate teens might seek an unsafe back-alley or self-induced abortion.

Parental notification laws are one of many that legislate the pervasive paternalistic belief that women just don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Ballot Measure 2 doesn’t even trust victims of abuse when they say they’re in danger – you have to prove it to a judge. And this isn’t Alaska’s only “You Don't Know What You're Doing, Young Lady” law: as of 2004, women seeking an abortion are subjected to state mandated “counseling” designed to discourage them from terminating their pregnancy.

The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization, was the biggest financial supporter of the measure. But some individuals were contributing large amounts almost right up until Election Day, Wilson said. Mike Pauley, an Eagle River resident, gave $20,000, according to the group's most recent report to the Alaska Public Offices Commission.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Approved_Alaska_2010_parental_notification_measure_under_legal_fire#cite_note-0

Arizona

In Arizona, the House of Representatives passed House Bill 2443 sponsored by Republican Rep. Steve Montenegro, on February 21, 2011. The bill, if passed into law, would criminalize abortions being performed because of the race or sex of the fetus. Montenegro claims that “there are targeted communities that the abortion industry targets.” If made law, HB 2443 would require that “women seeking abortions in Arizona will have to sign a statement declaring that race or sex was not the reason they sought the procedure.”

Arizona Representative Steve Montenegro (R)

http://www.azleg.gov/MembersPage.asp?Member_ID=41&Legislature=49&Session_ID=87

And the controversy over a woman’s right to obtain birth control from her health insurance continues. Except this time it’s not Rush Limbaugh or any other man making the ridiculous statement of the day–it’s a woman. That’s right, Arizona Republican, Debbie Lesko says that employers should have the right to pry into our sexual lives and ask exactly why we use birth control. What’s worse, employers could potentially fire a woman using birth control for non-medical reasons.

http://blisstree.com/live/more-contraceptive-controversy-arizona-bill-would-allow-employers-to-fire-women-using-birth-control-145/

Arizona Representative Debbie Lesko (R)

http://debbielesko.com/

Arkansas

There's a most interesting local angle. One of the hottest state legislative races this year will pit Democratic Rep. Linda Tyler of Conway against Republican Sen. Jason Rapert, who's moved away from Bigelow to make a run for Senate in a redrawn district. Tyler was chair of the House Public Health Committee when it turned back, by often narrow margins, radical anti-abortion legislation. Rapert was the sponsor of a radical anti-abortion bill that passed the Senate but died in her committee.

Rapert sponsored mandatory ultrasound legislation that could be interpreted to be every bit as punitive as the Virginia legislation that set off a recent firestorm and ultimately was amended before passage. The Virginia bill would have required — against a woman's will — insertion of a wand into a woman's vagina, the only means of detecting a fetal heartbeat in the very early stages of pregnancy. Here's the original Virginia bill. And here's Rapert's bill. And here's the key passage in Rapert's:

20-16-1304. Testing for heartbeat.

(a) A person authorized to perform abortions under Arkansas law shall not perform an abortion on a pregnant woman before the person tests the pregnant woman to determine whether the fetus the pregnant woman is carrying possesses a detectible heartbeat.

(b) A person authorized to perform abortions under Arkansas law shall perform a detection of a heartbeat of an unborn human individual according to standard medical practice, including the use of medical devices as determined by standard medical practice.

(c)(1) The State Board of Health may adopt rules based on standard medical practice for testing for the fetal heartbeat of an unborn human individual.

The Virginia legislation didn't specify use of transvaginal ultrasound either. But proponents acknowledged in debate that the invasive transvaginal probe must be used early in pregnancy. The original Virginia bill said, just as Rapert's bill did: "The ultrasound image shall be made pursuant to standard medical practice in the community ..."

http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/03/11/rapert-bill-similar-to-virginias-on-invasive-ultrasound

Arkansas Senator Jason Rapert (R)

http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/2011/2011R/Pages/MemberProfile.aspx?member=Rapert

A bill to restrict insurance coverage of abortion in Arkansas failed in a state senate committee because anti-choicers felt that adding exceptions for rape and incest meant the bill didn't go "far enough."

The original bill, Senate Bill 113 introduced by state Senator Cecile Bledsoe, was intended to bar plans in health insurance exchanges from covering abortions, except "to save the life of the mother," reports Kelly MacNeill of KUAR.org.

The bill, writes MacNeill, is based on something that already confuses lots of people: the federal health care overhaul. "Under it, each state will form health insurance exchanges – big pools of insurance plans that more people could access. Senate Bill 113 would bar plans in that exchange from covering abortions, except to save the life of the woman."

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 27 percent of children in Arkansas live in families at 100 percent below the federal poverty line. Forty-eight percent of black children in Arkansas live in poor families and 44 percent of Hispanic children live in poor families, as opposed to 18 percent of white children. Thirty-one percent of children under age six in Arkansas live in poverty.

In 2007, Arkansas ranked fourth in the nation in the number of domestic violence cases ending in the murder of a woman by an intimate partner. Resources for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault of all kinds and by all perpetrators are severely strained by lack of financial resources to meet current needs.

In short, if you are a woman in Arkansas living in poverty or from paycheck to paycheck and are raped and impregnanted against your will--by your husband, intimate partner, stranger, uncle, father--you are, as they say, SOL. To put it another way, anti-choicers in Arkansas are apparently perfectly comfortable with forced pregnancy and with washing their hands of violence against women, especially violence against low-income women and women of color.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/02/04/rape

Arkansas Senator Cecile Bledsoe (R)

http://www.votesmart.org/candidate/biography/16239

And here’s a nice little quote from an Arkansas judge:

"Woman is subordinate to man. "
Justice James Leon Holmes, Appointed to Arkansas federal court, July 6, 2004

James Leon Holmes is an Article III federal judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Holmes currently serves as the Chief Judge of the court. He was nominated by George W. Bush in 2003.

http://www.now.org/issues/judicial/holmes.html

Colorado

In early 2011, Rep. Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs, introduced a bi-partisan bill which included similar language to House Bill 1130 with the following language added: ”The bill does not confer the status of ‘person’ upon a human embryo, fetus, or unborn child at any stage of development prior to live birth.“ Thereafter, Rep. Waller was attacked by a pro-life group (Colorado Right to Life) accusing him of giving up the “battle with the liberal, Godless, left-wing abortion industry.” Rep. Waller ended up killing his own bill. In the 2012 session, a new bill was sponsored by Rep. Janak Joshi, R-Colorado Springs, without the aforementioned language.

Colorado Representative Janak Joshi (R)

http://coloradohousegop.com/2011/06/janak-joshi-hd-14/

http://lezgetreal.com/2012/03/colorado-makes-it-murder-to-abort-a-fetus/

Last Friday, the Colorado state senate advanced legislation requiring hospitals with religious objections to procedures such as abortions “to tell patients that any service not provided because of religious beliefs or moral convictions can be obtained from another hospital.” The measure passed second reading, despite “vigorous objections from Senate Republicans, who called the notification bill a thinly veiled attempt to stigmatize religious hospitals.”

The GOP described the requirement as “religious persecution” that would force some hospitals into a “special little ghetto.” Sens. Kevin Lundberg (R) and Ted Harvey (R) even compared the measure to “Communist Vietnam” and Nazi Germany:

HARVEY: I went to Vietnam a couple of years ago, it’s a Communist country, and they tell everybody they have religious freedom… Is that what where’s saying here in the land of the free and the home of the brave? That you have to affirm that you are a religious hospital here? To have the freedom to be able to provide the services that you think that you should or to have the freedom not to provide the services that go against your religious beliefs. This is religious bigotry, doesn’t matter how you look at it and that is the way the Communist Vietnam government is.

LUNDBERG: Here we have a bill that discriminates. That forces hospitals to put a little patch on them that says, ‘excuse me, but I have religious values and principles and scruples therefore you should consider me to be in this special little ghetto….How about we amend this bill to just put a big star, a big sign. To say this is the building we designated. Would that be appropriate? No. Neither is this bill.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/27/432686/colorado-gop-compare-hospital-disclosure-bill-to-nazi-germany-communist-vietnam/?mobile=nc

Colorado Senator Ted Harvey (R)

http://www.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/Senate/members/Sen30.htm

Colorado Senator Kevin Lundberg (R)

http://www.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/Senate/members/Sen15.htm

Florida

In Florida Republicans passed House Bill 501 redistributes funds from “Choose Life” license plates to the Ocala-based Choose Life, Inc, which the Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates says will “result in more funds being given to ‘crisis pregnancy centers,’ anti-abortion organizations that falsely market themselves as professional health facilities.”

http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=45312&SessionId=66

Florida Representative Dennis K. Baxley (R)

http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/details.aspx?MemberId=4200

Florida Representative Ben Albritton (R)

http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/sections/representatives/details.aspx?MemberId=4508&SessionId=66

Georgia

http://www.politicususa.com/the-dirty-thirty-march-2012-edition/

The “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” (SB 209) sponsored by Sen. Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville, would close all abortion clinics in the state and require abortions to be performed in hospitals. This bill was tabled by the rules committee on March 11, 2011.

Sponsor: Barry Loudermilk (R-Cassville)

http://www.senate.ga.gov/senators/en-US/member.aspx?Member=156

Georgia State Representative Bobby Franklin introduced a bill that would not only make abortion illegal but would make miscarriages illegal.

State Representative Bobby Franklin (R) was found dead on 26 July 2011

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2011/07/26/state-rep-bobby-franklin-found-dead/?cxntlid=brkng_nws_bnr

Idaho

Idaho Anti-Abortion Bill Could Send Women Seeking Abortions To Crisis Pregnancy Centers | Like lawmakers across the U.S., Idaho legislators are considering a bill requiring women to receive an ultrasound before having an abortion, which could add up to $200 to the cost of the procedure for women. But one requirement in the legislation is for the state to post a list of clinics that provide free ultrasounds. It’s expected that most of the organizations listed will be crisis pregnancy centers, known for deceptive tactics to try to stop women from having abortions. But the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Chuck Winder (R), has no issue with codifying the deceitful tactics because the point of the ultrasound bill is “to convince a woman not to go through with abortions.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/chuck-winder-rape-abortions_n_1366994.html

The sponsor of an Idaho mandatory ultrasound bill, state Sen. Chuck Winder, made some highly controversial comments Monday during his closing arguments, suggesting women might falsely use rape as an excuse to obtain an abortion.

Just before the Idaho's Senate passed the bill, which requires woman to have an ultrasound prior to obtaining an abortion, opponents of the bill pointed out that it makes no exception for rape victims, incest victims or women in medical emergencies.

Winder, a Republican from Boise, responded to those concerns by raising the question of whether women understand when they have been raped.

“Rape and incest was used as a reason to oppose this," Winder said on the Senate floor. "I would hope that when a woman goes in to a physician with a rape issue, that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was this pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage or was it truly caused by a rape. I assume that's part of the counseling that goes on.”

Idaho Senator Chuck Winder (R)

http://www.votesmart.org/candidate/103855/chuck-winder

Illinois

In Illinois Rep. Darlene Senger, R-Naperville in March 2011 submitted a bill – anti-abortion legislation mind, which would require clinics that perform more than 50 abortions a year to meet the same regulatory requirements as other medical outpatient surgery clinics – to the House Agriculture and Conservation Committee. Why, you ask? Because the agriculture committee is dominated by conservative downstate Democrats and Republicans. And guess what? They passed it: unanimously.

Illinois Representative Darlene Senger (R)

http://www.ilga.gov/house/rep.asp?MemberID=1544

Indiana

Indiana (House Bill 1210) wants to force doctors to lie to women about abortion causing breast cancer despite medical evidence to the contrary in order to discourage women from having abortions.

http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2011/HB/HB1210.2.html

Lead Sponsor: Indiana Rep. Eric Turner (R)

http://www.indianaharness.com/Legislature/Public%20Policy%20Committee/Eric%20Turner.pdf

The websites for the photos above: