This is absolutely out of control.
But it was a brilliant strategy, Planned Parenthood and friends had. Get as many people as possible to repeat the word “transvaginal” in news and commentary and accomplish two things: defeat legislation at hand and make your opposition look like a freakshow.
That’s what’s just playing out with an ultrasound bill in Virginia.
From a Washington Post piece Monday:
Molly Vick of Richmond said it was her first time to take part in a protest, but the issue was too infuriating and compelling. On her lavender shirt, she wore a sticker that said “Say No to State-Mandated Rape.” Just beneath the beltline of her blue jeans was a strip of yellow tape that read “Private Property: Keep Out.”
Infuriating? What’s infuriating is we can’t have an honest debate about anything that might happen to involve women, because it might threaten the abortion-industry.
Media coverage of just about all things that have anything to do with women have taken on new frenzied proportions in recent days. George Orwell would be impressed.
Even Saturday Night Live got into the frenzy.
Go ahead and read the bill. The word “transvaginal” never appears in it.
The bill doesn’t require a particular kind of ultrasound, but a “standard medical practice in the community.” So doctors on site are are expected to make the calls, not the governor or the House of Delegates or the legendary exorcist Rick Santorum! Planned Parenthood clinics already do ultrasounds. It helps with the pricing of abortions, among other things.
And, frankly, even if the bill did mandate such a thing: It’s would not be state-sponsored rape, as it’s being characterized. It’s standard medical care. All things in the obgyn world tend to be invasive. Is that rape, too? Weren’t we just told how essential some of those tests are?
Can we just drop the nonsense already?
I guess not. Not when those who resort to the most shameless rhetoric tend to win. The governor seems to have just thrown lawmakers in Richmond who voted on the bill in good faith under the bus, because the opposition’s megaphone was louder.
The only way this whole Virginia “transvaginal” incident makes any sense to me is that the critics of the bill don’t want anyone to be reminded what exactly is done in an abortion clinic. They didn’t go into a frenzy because of ultrasounds themselves, transvaginal or otherwise — because they’re already being done routinely throughout the state (see Planned Parenthood in Richmond, and Falls Church, for example) for the sake of efficient abortions and pricing. Everyone from protesters in Richmond to TV writers are upset because informed consent here means — and should always mean, shouldn’t it? — that women will be offered the chance to look at the ultrasound. And that’s a threat to the abortion industry. Just ask Abby Johnson, who broke free of her denials about what her business as a Planned Parenthood director was all about when she participated in a brutal ultrasound guided abortion. While these critics of the bill talk about women’s health, they don’t really have the interests of either patient in mind.