Awesome pro-choice column from Dallas Morning News

[Glass Cowcatcher]

Happened upon this in the paper when I was reading in a cafe earlier and wanted to let out a big ye-ha!

Dear Texas resident with the effrontery to seek a legal abortion:

So, you got yourself pregnant.

Current federal law allows you to choose this particular option for your private medical situation.

The state of Texas, however, in furtherance of its goal of reducing the size and regulatory intrusiveness of government except in cases of your personal reproductive business, intends to make this process as difficult and degrading as possible.

Even the GOP-dominated Legislature has repeatedly resisted efforts by state Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, to strip-mine women for deeply personal information while they’re trying to cope with private crises.

Nonetheless, the State Health Services Council, citing a poorly rationalized desire for “trend analysis,†is now contemplating a workaround that would demand such information without legislative authorization.

Texas already requires you to report your birth year, race, marital status, home county, number of children and any previous pregnancy terminations in order to obtain an abortion.

It now wishes to also make you report your level of education, how you found out you were pregnant, whether you paid attention to the medically unnecessary but legislatively mandated sonogram and whether a bleeding-heart judge helped you weasel out of parental notification requirements.

It also wants your doctor to report any “complications†from the procedure, even though there is no specification in the law as to what constitutes a complication.

So what if this compromises your privacy.

And why do you care that, in some areas, enough information could be made public to disclose your identity to everybody you know?

You may technically still have rights, but the people running the state government have decided you no longer deserve them.

Therefore, in the spirit of respecting individual liberties and personal privacy involving everybody except you, the state of Texas may eventually want you to answer the following:

1. What makes you think you and your left-leaning, elitist, secular-humanist doctor know what’s right for you? Kind of full of yourselves, aren’t you?

2. Why did state-approved abstinence education available to all Texas public school students not work for you? Did you cut class or were you just not listening?

3. Please rate, on a scale ranging from “chagrin†to “abject humiliation,†the intensity of your shame.

3A. Which of the following methods would be most effective in maximizing the aforementioned shame? (Circle one).

a. Addition of costly, invasive, logically unwarranted medical procedures.

b. Ideologically biased “counseling†combined with mandatory delays.

c. Dissemination of your private medical information to your employer, your neighbors and that busybody couple who play bridge with your parents.

4. What is your occupation? Do you consider career more important than motherhood? Do you understand how bizarre and unnatural that is? Please list all men with families to support who, to your knowledge, are also qualified for your job.

5. Describe, to the best of your knowledge, your understanding of God’s individual plans for men and for women. Explain why you think it doesn’t apply to you (use back of paper if you need extra space).

6. According to your beliefs, what is the purpose of sex? (Circle a or b).

a. The glorious perpetuation of God’s most perfect creation, man.

b. Selfish entertainment for cheap, easy bar bimbos who exploit male vulnerability to temptation.

7. How did you happen to screw up on birth control in the first place? Can’t you count? Don’t they have drugstores in your neighborhood? Didn’t anybody ever tell you to take an aspirin — and hold it between your knees, har-har?

8. So what if you don’t want and can’t afford a baby? Can’t you: (circle all that apply)

a. Dump it off at your mother’s house.

b. Drop out of high school to take care of it.

c. Trust a jobless, drug-addled, ex-con boyfriend to baby sit.

d. Starve and neglect it until CPS puts it in foster care.

The state of Texas suggests you consider all these alternatives.

9. Have you received pastoral counseling? If the counselor has supported you in this decision, have you tried another pastor? Don’t you agree that people who hold elected office have special insight into God’s preferences and desires? Wouldn’t they know more than you about what God wants you to do?

10. Have you changed your mind yet?

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnis ... o-fast.ece

[BravaAmica]

That is awesome. Too bad the sarcasm will be lost on the assholes that need to hear these arguments.

[Minerva]

This is fucking brilliant. Unfortunately, none of the anti-choice folks I know would even catch the sarcasm, but it takes a special kind of stupid to be the anti-choice folks I know... To the general populace, however, it is amazing.

[Glass Cowcatcher]

Yeah, she wasn't treated too kindly in the comments, but it's brilliant. Number of sane people in Texas increases to 6.