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North Dakota Senate Passes New Infantalizing Anti-Choice Legislation

Cara

As if there wasn’t enough anti-choice asshatery going on in North Dakota already, the state Senate has just approved a bill that will require special notices to be put up in abortion clinics:

The state Senate voted 45-1 to approve a bill that would require the notice to be posted at abortion clinics. The measure now goes to the House.

The state’s only abortion clinic is in Fargo.

The sign would read: “Notice: No one can force you to have an abortion. It is against the law for a spouse, a boyfriend, a parent, a friend, a medical care provider, or any other person to in any way force you to have an abortion.”

And you know what?  Women do indeed deserve to know that no one should or legally can force them into having an abortion.  Sincerely.  I think that any genuinely pro-choice person wishes to live in a world entirely without coerced and forced abortions, and where every decision regarding keeping or terminating a pregnancy is 100% freely chosen.

But this bill clearly isn’t about ensuring that women know their rights.  If it was, the legislature would also be requiring a notice to appear in the office of every doctor performing prenatal examinations, stating “No one can force you to give birth.”  Strangely enough, I don’t see that bill anywhere in sight.

And it’s for a few reasons.  Firstly, because such a sign would rightly be seen as patronizing.  Secondly, because having a sign in the office, rather than having the doctor speak with the patient where he or she can have conversations and read signals about whether or not this is what the woman really wants (something most abortion providers do in one way or another, anyway), probably wouldn’t prevent a single forced or coerced pregnancy decision.  And thirdly, the reason that we really won’t see this bill, because forcing women to give birth is exactly what anti-choicers want.

So what this is really about is propagating the dual myths that no woman would ever have an abortion of her own volition, and that abortion is the most commonly forced and coerced reproductive choice.

With the bill going to the same House which just passed legislation stating that a fertilized egg is a person, I don’t exactly have high confidence that this bill has any chance whatsoever of failing.  So patronizing and utterly useless pats on the head for women, here we come.

9 thoughts on North Dakota Senate Passes New Infantalizing Anti-Choice Legislation

  1. I agree that this should be posted.

    Right under the sign that says:

    No one has the right to prevent you from getting an abortion.

    It is your body and Your life. The choice is yours.

    No one. Not husband, parent, boyfriend, religious fanatic or conservative has the right to prevent you from having free and easily obtainable access to abortion at all stages.

  2. It also makes it seem as if these clinics are going around rounding up pregnant ow women and forcing them to submit to a procedure that they do not want.

  3. Is there anything to stop the abortion clinic from putting up the “No one can forcibly prevent you from having an abortion” notice right beside the other one?

    Also, it’s very weird, they do actually seem to believe their own “women are tricked into abortions” myth. I guess I’d always assumed that they only pretended to believe that, to make themselves seem less horrifically callous. Huh.

  4. A sign can never truly detail the number of things a husband, boyfriend, parent or spouse – though the difference in this case between a pregnant woman’s husband or spouse escapes me in states where gay marriage is not legal – cannot force a woman to do. A woman can’t be forced to read signs, or care what trivialities they contain, for example.

  5. I would love to see in all OBGYN offices a similar sign stating, “No one can force you to have a pregnancy. It is against the law for a spouse, a boyfriend, a parent, a friend, a medical care provider, or any other person to in any way force you to have a pregnancy.” Harassing a person into ANY medical procedure is NEVER OKAY, and it saddens me that we live in a society that still does not view abortion for what it is – a MEDICAL PROCEDURE – just like any other, and a woman’s RIGHT.

  6. Should we have signs up at Victoria’s Secret, too? “No one can force you to wear a thong.”

    At the hair salon: “No one can force you to be blonde.”

    At the shoe store: “No one can force you to wear high heels.”

    How about at church? “No one can force you to believe.”

  7. I suggest we start an underground railroad and get all women under the age of menopause out of that state.

  8. hmmmm interesting how our government has so much time to vote on such a silly piece of paper. I think the shows how far backwards we have gone now, not how far we have come concerning women and law making.

  9. You have the right to remain pregnant. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of public opinion. You have the right to have an responsible man present making decisions about your pregnancy. If you cannot afford an responsible man, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights?

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