Friday, February 25, 2005

So Incredibly Illegal

This is just sooo incredibly illegal that I didn't even think it was worthy of bringing up: it's just so illegal. You just can't do it.

But that was when I lived in another country.

Why aren't they demanding the sexual health and histories of the men whose sperm instigated these pregnancies? Aren't promiscuous men equally suspect of being "sexual perverts" because they fucked around?

Oh, wait, I forgot: women are the sexual gatekeepers. Guys get a Get Out of Jail Free card.

This is fucking grotesque. It's a mockery of women, of the supposed "equality" of women, and it's a fucking smack in the face for every fucking woman who's fought to keep her body off the state chattle market.

Bull fucking shit. Bullshit. This isn't treating women like human beings. Watch yourself being put back into line, chiklits, one Kansas attorney general at a time.

I want a record of his sexual history, seeing as everybody's sexual history is now of the utmost importance to the State.

Fuck you, asshole.

9 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Anonymous said...

Argh! What is it lately with all of these people trying to make abortions illegal and get massive amounts of imformation on women who had abortions? This is ridiculous!

OK, so Mr. Bush is, unfortunately, in the White House. Again. He's setting a strong example that it's ok to walk all over peoples' rights, and apparently his example is enough to tell his followers that they can walk all over women's rights here.

This makes me very angry. 

Posted by Wendryn

Anonymous said...

OHhHHH!! This has me STEAMED. Unbelievable. (Or maybe it isn't.) 

Posted by Beverly

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU. Thank you for writing this, thank you for pointing out the blatant inequity of responsibility that comes with pregnancy of any kind in this country, and, most of all, thank you for your anger about it, for saying exactly what you felt, and, entirely coherently, exactly why. We need more women standing up and shouting "what the FUCK, dude?" and it made my day. 

Posted by Morphienne

Anonymous said...

I just can't *believe* more people aren't squawking about this on the news. They're framing it as "another abortion debate" instead of what it is: violating the privacy of individuals, violating their rights.

Somebody's gotta make them change the language they're using. This isn't "another abortion debate" - we're talking about right to privacy, about old men putting their hands on women's bodies, as usual. Time to owe up to what it really is.  

Posted by Kameron Hurley

Anonymous said...

I think they'll get shot down--someone tried something similar in Montana to try and solve an infanticide by getting records on women who had been pregnant and would have had a due date around the time that baby doe was born. And it wasn't allowed. The problem is that there are always some clinics that don't fight and just turn the stuff over without suing first. It's like confidentiality doesn't even matter to them. THAT burns me. I expect more from them, not from a moron like this guy. Has he ever heard of agency? What about rape/incest victims who don't want to press charges? If underage sex is truly illegal (with criminal sanctions) does that mean they will have to prove in court it wasn't consensual? In short, WTF mate? 

Posted by Ismone

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, tracks right along with arresting prostitutes but not the johns, castigation of "welfare mom's" with no mention of the men that helped create those children, the delving into the sexual history of most rape victims that choose to prosecute, and now, publicizing the sexual, physical and mental-health history of those choosing abortions. Women's bodies and sexual lives are apparently endlessly fascinating. And obviously threatening, otherwise, why do men spend so much time trying to control this aspect of or lives.
This leads me to wonder, yet again, how is it that men have managed to survive on this planet for so long?
If the Kansas AG doesn't believe in abortion, he can exercise his right not to have one. Other than that, he can fuck off and leave women, and their health decisions, alone. 

Posted by rederc

Anonymous said...

Luckily, you wont reproduce. 

Posted by john

Anonymous said...

The trouble here, I think, is that it's more complicated than just the issue you're addressing. It is possible that good things could come from having those records. The guy's stated reason for wanting the reports, in an article I read (not the one you linked to) was to look for criminal activity. He said something like, "If a thirteen year-old girl got pregnant, somebody committed statuatory rape. We need to go after that, or at least make an effort to see if there's anything worth going after." While you can certainly make the case that a fourteen year-old boy having sex is a major victory, while a fourteen year-old girl having sex is statuatory rape, in some counties, and that's a bad thing... the issue that this guy has on record for getting this information is, I would think, information that we could all agree on as a good thing.

Of course, if his "get these records to find the guys who committed these crimes" thing segues into "hey, and while we're at it, let's attack the women getting pregnant in the first place", that is, yeah, bad.

And the also-thorny issue of this guy using this information to attack doctors performing abortions that are considered illegal in that state... If doctors in that state aren't allowed to perform, say, third-trimester abortions unless carrying the child to term is going to affect the mother's health drastically and permanently (which is what I believe is the case here, if I'm remembering right), then this guy has an obligation to uphold the law. Feminists might (and hopefully WILL, JUSTIFIABLY) use this case as a hot-button issue to get that law overturned, but until we can get a case to the Supreme Court to get it ruled unconstitutional or get a ballot measure passed or something, this guy is doing what he is supposed to be doing. Him turning a blind eye would be like a deputy turning a blind eye to a husband hitting his wife because, well, sometimes the women are asking for it and need to be told who's in charge. When you get put into a position of political power, you're supposed to uphold the laws of the region, or work to get them changed. Ignoring the laws you don't like doesn't make the bad situation go away, and being angry at a guy trying to build cases against actions that are illegal in his state is a waste of good energy. I think we can target better than that.

Until we can prove that this guy built up a witch-hunt case, trying to prove that none of the late-term abortions really needed to happen when there was evidence that they were justified -- at which point we can say that he's moved past following the existing law and into perverting it for his own purposes. Right now, I agree that it's a law that needs to change, but I don't think this guy has done anything wrong yet. And when he does, that provides us with the chance to take the whole issue to court and get the law changed.

But right now it sucks for both sides. One side says that this is a blatant ploy to get ahold of abortion records and, in the long run, go after doctors who are performing legal abortions, and the other side says that the folks who don't want information released are protecting child-rapists. Neither side trusts the other, and nobody is going to come away from this with a better opinion of the other folks. 

Posted by Patrick

Anonymous said...

Hm... actually need to revise my original opinion. After reading other articles, the lawyer is only going after information on abortions, not information on pregnancies that were carried to term... which sort of makes his "I'm doing this so that we can find child abusers and statuatory rapists" thing seem full of holes.

Still a muddy issue, but he's lost my benefit of the doubt. 

Posted by Patrick