Feminism, Oklahoma-Style

Careful readers of DU may have noticed the disappearance of the Little Green Footballs headlines from our sidebar. I removed the link the other night after clicking on a particular headline that made quite obvious LGF’s pro-abortion advocacy. Maybe lots of you already knew this, but I didn’t. I have been aware for a while that LGF was drifting in a strange direction, and I’ve been meaning to review the decision to keep LGF or not.

Before I had a chance for much follow up, I noticed this LGF “headline” last Thursday, and got a bad feeling about it. “New Oklahoma Abortion Bill Challenged”. That was enough for me.

All the other issues with Charles Murray and LGF aside, I can't provide a forum for the pro-abortion cause in the blog's sidebar.

The article turns out to be hysterically pro-abortion, as apparently blogger Charles Murray is as well. (Maybe you already knew this, but I didn’t).

Here’s the article. I encourage people to read the bill for yourselves.

New Oklahoma Abortion Bill Challenged

US News Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 3:32:26 pm PDT

In an attempt to threaten and scare women out of having abortions, Republicans in Oklahoma (Sen. Todd Lamb, R-Edmond, and Rep. Dan Sullivan, R-Tulsa) have created a new law that blatantly violates the state and federal constitutions, and requires physicians to provide the state with detailed personal information about women who have abortions.

Among the personal information this law will force doctors to disclose:

Age
Marital status
Education level
Number of previous
pregnancies
Reason for the abortion
Method of abortion
Method of
payment
Cost of the abortion
Type of insurance
Whether ultrasound
was performed
Nature of mother’s relationship with father

Here’s the full text of the new law (PDF), which goes quite a bit farther than previous reporting requirements in states such as Kansas. The law will disclose each individual form, not just bulk statistics, and it requires reporting of complications during procedures. It’s clearly designed as a tool to provide the radical anti-abortion right with propaganda points, as well as a tool to frighten women — since the information in the form could be used to help identify them.

And it’s also the first time a state has made sex-selected abortions illegal.

This is such an unconscionable intrusion into personal liberties and women’s freedom of choice, it will almost certainly be struck down in the lawsuits now being filed by several groups.

Tulsa World also notes that in addition to the governmental snooping into the private lives of women and their families, “implementing the measure will cost $281,285 the first year and $256,285 each subsequent year.”

How can the sponsors of this bill call themselves “conservatives?” This is nothing less than the creation of a religiously motivated nanny state in Oklahoma.

###

Holding back the main point of the bill until the fourth paragraph is what’s known in journalism as “burying the lead.” When it’s not just an accident of bad writing, it’s intended to divert the reader’s attention from the real point of a story. In this case, the article falsely reports a new law passed by the “radical anti-abortion right” to scare women out of having abortions.

The truth is, the main purpose of the Oklahoma bill is to outlaw sex-selection abortions.

Imagine!! Those Okies are creating a “religiously motivated nanny state” where it's actually against the law for a mother to abort her baby just because the child is a female!!

How far will that set back the cause of women’s rights?

Unless, of course, we were to imagine women’s rights to include a woman’s right to be born.