"Anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living"

"It is always the moralists who do the most harm. Abortion is the logical outcome of civilization; only the jungle gives birth and moulders away as nature decrees. Man plans."  ~Max Frisch

In today's Arizona Republic, there is a little column that I wanted to share. It sums up the anti-abortion faction in my rapidly regressing state. It's an email from a state representative, in reply to a constituent who voiced her opposition to a new bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks (no matter what that pesky Supreme Court says, dagnabit).

Personally, I'd like to make a law that mandates a woman watch an abortion being performed prior to having a 'surgical procedure.' 

Personally, I'd like to remind you that as a woman, I am a adult human being, and you have no business mandating that I watch any kind of procedure.

If it's not a life, it shouldn't matter. If it doesn't harm a woman, then she shouldn't care. 

Because apparently I am too stupid to know what an abortion really is, and I need to frightened and/or shamed into reconsidering. Notice how the Almighty Legislator thinks she should dictate what should matter to me, or what I should care about. Only someone who believes pregnant women are less than human could twist their brains around this kind of reasoning.

And don't we want more transparency and education in the medical profession anyway? We demand it everywhere else. 

This would only hold water if everyone were compelled to watch any sort of surgery their doctors were recommending, from removing an ingrown toenail to having a heart transplant, before undergoing the surgery themselves. I don't see that happening, do you? To suggest such a thing would be ridiculous. Everyone knows what a heart transplant is, just as everyone knows what an abortion is--it's terminating a pregnancy. If I didn't want to be pregnant anymore, I wouldn't be asking for it, and I don't need you treating me like a halfwit, incapable of knowing what I really want.

Until the dead child can tell me that she/he does not feel any pain--I have no intentions of clearing the conscience of the living--I will be voting YES.

So apparently this legislator will only accept talking to the dead as legitimate evidence, not modern-day scientific research. Yet women will share the pain they feel, and she ignores them.

Not to mention the fact that I don't see anyone rushing to mandate that men contemplating vasectomies first watch the procedure before they are allowed to have it. Why, those little swimmers must be alive! Look how they wriggle, even though they don't have any brains or conscious awareness! We need to shame or frighten men into not having a legal procedure that will restrict these little peoples' chances to be born!

The Founding Fathers wisely wrote a "no religious test" clause into the Constitution. However, I wish they had included a "Humanitarian Clause." That is, no one who denies full autonomous rights to half the population should ever be allowed to hold public office.