As the Arkansas legislature continues moving toward a ban on most abortions, the sponsor of the state Senate version says he is willing to drop that part about the vaginal probe. From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:
An Arkansas senator proposing to ban most abortions in the state says he's changing his bill to prohibit the procedure only if a fetal heartbeat is detected using an abdominal ultrasound.
From the Fiddling Rapert tumblr
Senator Jason Rapert's original legislation, passed by his chamber last week, would put abortion off-limits for most women before they even knew they were pregnant. You would have needed an ultrasound by vaginal probe in order to determine which very few women were eligible to exercise their constitutional rights. “Can you imagine what kind of feeling that would cause when inserted into a woman?” Democratic Senator Stephanie Flowers asked him last week during the debate. “No,” Rapert said.
It turns out the state can still monitor a lot of pregnancies from the outside of your body, so Rapert's going that route instead. Meanwhile, as you can see from the image, the senator who had been locally famous for his fiddling has become now famous in a whole new way as Fiddling Rapert. (H/t Arkansas Times.)
In changing his approach, Rapert follows in the footsteps of Virginia Governor Bob "Ultrasound" McDonnell. Last year McDonnell made himself nationally famous for a bill that would have subjected women in his state to medically unnecessary, invasive ultrasounds, before backing off a bit.
See also: Commemorative Bob McDonnell Vaginal Ultrasound Probes!
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If I was a Republican politician whose last name sounded very similar to "Raper", I'd stay away from vaginal probes too.
Doesn't he need Dem. Weiner to succeed at that? Touché'?
Is this helping our "bi-partisan" hopes and dreams? What do you say we change our diapers and try that again.
Same tools of domination. No different than how rape is used in warfare. Humiliate, strip people of their honor and moral strength. It's not about love for others but about power over them- crushing their will to resist their dominance.
There day is over. It's a new dawn, and it's not the way it's going to work anymore. And so they rush for their guns because they fear it will be their turn to be dominated. These little boys don't understand that it being over doesn't mean their turn is over but that the game is over
Dominance is a stupid game. We are better than this.
Oops. I forgot about the Subject matter.
What do you call a growing life that has a human heartbeat, a human finger print, a human and fully functional nerve response to pain, ten toes and ten fingers?
Or, does that matter? Death penalty for all.
Hey Jim - just a question - how many have you adopted/fostered over the last few years?
Jim, what's the moral relevance of fingerprints? None.
Pain, sure. So you don't kill / pay someone to kill anything that can sense pain? And you support unrestricted access to Plan B and pre-pain abortions?
Here is the thing Jim.... Until you can actually breath in oxygen to make all of your organs function, you are not a living being quite yet! For god made adam but he wasnt working until he breathed into him the breath of life! The word "soul" in hebrew means “an animated, breathing, conscious, and living being.” Plus until you can carry around something in your stomach for 9 months like that, you have no room to speak about a womans decision on the matter. That is why imo no matter if I was wrong, you were wrong or any other man was wrong about abortion, we are not the ones having to carry that child around till birth.
Jim, what is the significance of the "human" modifier in terms like "human heartbeat" and "human fingerprint"? How do they differ from nonhuman heartbeats and inhuman fingerprints?
If your argument is that a fetus has sufficient characteristics to be protected as a human being, but then you need to inject the adjective human into those characteristics to give them weight, aren't you just begging the question and then answering it with circular reasoning?
The Catholic Church is being sued over the death of a mother and her twins. The legal defense is that they are only liable for the mother because the fetus did not breath before they died.
What to you expect from a state where most of the white people are first cousins?
BTW - does this guy look like the kind who ever spent a night in bed with a woman he didn't pay?
" the state can still monitor a lot of pregnancies from the outside of your body"
The same way WalMart can tell if you are leaving the store with an unpaid item. And the greeter says, "Are you pregnant, or stealing a watermelon?"
Did anyone decide to mention how often vaginal ultrasounds are a normal part of the abortion process, and now the left has actually made it more difficult not less?
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/02/transvaginal_ultrasounds_why_pro_choice_advocates_shouldn_t_call_them_rape_.html
Shooter, another DUD! Kerjunk!
I know you are an idiot and probably never question what a doctor decides to do to you, but the more intelligent among us do. We are involved in our own "treatment" and don't take harmful drugs without understanding the benefits and risks. If we decide a particular drug is too riskful for us or if we believe it has no benefit to us, we ask the doctor to prescribe an alternative or we choose not to take the drug. We don't let doctors do medically unnecessary procedures on us just because he has to pay for his shiny new MRI or CT/PET scanner. We don't let doctors operate on us for no medically valid reason, even though there are thousands of doctors out there who will operate on us for any reason, given the chance. You get where I'm going with this?
Well, in case you are to dense to understand, I'll make it simpler. We have a CHOICE as to what is done to our bodies. A woman who goes for an abortion does not! There is absolutely NO reason to subject a woman undergoing an abortion to a mandatory untrasound. It is medically unnecessary.
If their so normal, why the hard on to make them required? I'm not disputing that ultrasounds are routinely used as part of the procedure. Dating of pregnancy is important since only certain procedures can be used at certain times. I also respect that ultrasounds may not be used every time.
Just seems off to be all about mandating something that is sooooooo routine anyway.
Shooter242
Did you read the whole article?
Because you seem to have missed this part.
“These laws are terrible because it is not the job of legislators to intervene in the doctor-patient relationship, or to demand that all patients be treated alike. The essence of good abortion care—indeed of good health care generally—is the recognition that one size does not fit all, and each patient must be treated as an individual.”
If I were part of that teapub mentality, I wouldn't be so eager for mental evaluations for gun ownership. It just might move into holding public office and most of the teapubs couldn't run for dog catcher after any mental evaluation. We should be so lucky.
Gee, I wonder why the GOTP has a public image problem? (Besides "blanks")
Of course, pregnancy is always the woman's fault (afterward). I'm surprised the consensus isn't birth the baby then kill "the whore".. This is so f#cked up!
Exactly why do WE have all of these cro-magnons in public office? I get that everyone doesn't believe in a "woman's choice" when it comes to pregnancy; but I also see that those same people who don't believe in "choice", do believe that food stamps, child nutrition, day care, and everything that goes into giving the woman a hand up once she has that child they would deny! So much for the hypocrisy about "life"! And before one more person says "adoption" - how many children in America are already on the adoption rolls, because once kids are past that cute/cuddly age of 2 or 3, they seem to be in the system for life!
Exactly why do WE have all of these cro-magnon/s in public office?
Because they are the only idiots that will accept money from the fringe lobbyists, who get the money from their evangelical congregations , so they can do the work of "God". These people actually believe that it's God's will that they behave like morons.
Is that in the "Book of Morons"....
VAGINA ENVY. I have scratched my head for years trying to figure out why certain men go nuts to champion this particular "cause". This "cause" that is so personal, so private and so not anybodies business but a woman's family and her doctor. I have concluded it must be a deep frustration that can only be described as VAGINA ENVY. Guys you have VAGINA ENVY!
I speak up for this for the same reason I speak up for gays, minorities, and immigrants, despite the fact that I am none of those things. It's the right thing to do.
Well Daniel, when just thirty-five percent of white dudes vote for the clearly more progressive candidate, it doesn't make me feel like I am in the majority.
If you are a progressive white male you better shut up because its not like you are going to get great positive strokes about your views even from women who look like your sister. Even after all the BS on women's issues, Romney got 56% of the white female vote. Get this- that is 3% higher than what McCain did- you remember him- the candidate who didn't run on the contraceptive issue. (new yorker article: What's up with white women?)
When I left the hippie universe in my 20s, in the "real world" I came up fast against a wall- the warped intermingling of courtship and politics. I don't know if you have ever noticed the same- it was like lady friends would get really turned on when I said even slightly stupid dickhead things. At the time, GOP views were more moderate and I could relate on some levels but at some point I got the distinct impression that for these people it was not just that they wanted California to be a red state- they lived and breathed in a red state of mind. They wanted me to enter into the looking glass into their world where I would be free to do all sorts of dickish things, and as part of the bargain, they would do the June Cleaver routine for me, complete with released repressed energy things behind the bedroom door.
I decided I'd rather be celibate than try to save one of these lunatics from themselves again. It's like they had a red state of mind cookie cutter outline they wanted me to step into, and if I didn't, the edges that didn't fit would keep getting chopped at.
So I hung out with gays, minorities, outcasts and immigrants instead.
Some associates thought was doing some sort of slumming thing but that wasn't it at all. It was because I could relate. I felt more at home. These people I hung out with weren't of my tribe, but they were my kind of people.
So I holed up in my blue dot world knowing it was a bit narcissistic to hang with people who didn't mirror appearances, but mirrored patterns of heart that seemed so much more humane. It wasn't like it happened through overt effort. The place that played the cool music- you would see the same people there. The shop with the quirky tchotchke stuff from the 50s- they were there. The place with perfect jambalaya. Why in a city of several million people would these little blue dot world people always show up in the same islands of sanity.
It occurred to me that the structure of these associations between disparate faculties- music, behavior, politics, entertainment, thought and emotion projected me into a separate order of the world, which naturally created this odd clumping where members of the separate order would find themselves inexplicably co-occuring as if by a hidden hand. On the street, we all were comingled, but really we were like oil and water- all citizens occupying the same geographical region but seeing and living in an entirely separate world.
I went nonlinear. Sorry.
Sadly, Rape rt also has some Democratic friends in the legislature, Democrat Butch Wilkins and numerous others that voted for these bills. Where are their brains? The new message of today to the ARGOP and those ARDems supporting these measures is "I know you Mis (my) Ogyny! Don't Pat (my) Riarchy!" Join us here to help stop these idiots! https://www.facebook.com/events/414236815328854/
Activists say: "I know you Mis (my) Ogyny, but don't Pat (my) Riarchy!". We should not forget that Rapert is leading many Democrats in Arkansas to vote for his bills. Join the fight to stop this here: https://www.facebook.com/events/414236815328854/
I wish these idiots knew what an intravaginal ultrasound felt like.
Still NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS! Stop pushing your religious values on the rest of us!
Could someone explain to me why these people are only going after birth control and abortion, and not condoms and vasectomies as well? If they are really serious about "preserving life" the conversation seems to me to be a bit sexually lopsided.
I just feel that in all fairness any bill that would inhibit a woman's constitutional right to choose what happens to her own body in the interest of "preserving life" should also include language making it equally difficult to for a man to obtain a vasectomy and also make it unlawful for a man to ejaculate anywhere outside of the vagina.
The Republicans would go for it.
Now there's a ticket, Rapert and Weiner
let us go back to basics. If your beliefs say abortion is wrong then don't have one, nobody is forcing you too. However if like most of the country believe that abortion is ok, and you get pregnant and decide to terminate then the religious beliefs of somebody you have never met should have nothing to do with it.
It's ok to believe abortion is wrong, but it is not ok to force your beliefs on anybody else. as i said above you can not be forced to have an abortion. My beliefs do not infrige on you personal choice so stop infringing on my personal beliefs.
As a Sonographer who has performed many Obstetric Ultrasound examinations I would like to point out that in most cases a transvaginal Ultrasound is unnecessary in order to date a pregnancy. The pregnancy can be successfully performed through the abdomen in the first trimester as long as the patient has a full bladder. A transvaginal Ultrasound may be necessary in cases of maternal obesity, a very early pregnancy (less than 5 weeks) or on a patient who does not wish to maintain a full bladder. I wish to confirm that there is no reason to perform such examinations transvaginally as a routine. I conclude that anyone who insists that it is necessary whether they be medical staff or politician can only wish to punish women.
Mouses you are so right. We all have free will and if you believe in the catholic or evangelical teachings is fine for your life, but feel they have no right to say what is right for my life, Bottom line is it is my choice what ever I plan to do. I feel that when they take the firstbreath oi God's air they truely alive.
I just wonder how he explained the christianity of shoving that big old probe up women's Vagina's to his two daughters.
Maybe they should attach a rider that says: for every ultrasound probe given to a female, a male member of the congress must submit to an ultrasound probe of his anus, looking for any sign of intelligence.
You can send Jason Rapert an email by using the link below.
http://www.jasonrapertforsenate.com/contact
Where are these sex starved, twisted men coming from...is there a secret society for backward thinking, baboons? I would love to see how the pending legislation will be bent and made not applicable to his female relatives. Would love to have him probed, spindled and regulated!
I just want to remind everyone that forced transvaginal ultrasounds (aka State Rape) have already been the law here for over a year now. On top of that, the doctor or technician is *required* by the law to face the screen where the woman must look at it. (although the woman is still allowed to cover her own eyes - how generous of them!)
Not even the infamous Virginia law went that far. I can't understand why this has gotten so little coverage. I guess the general consensus is that we Texas women *ask for it* by living in such a wasteland.
As a nonchristian it offends me that my rights are slowly being taken away. Not all religions are against abortion. Also these people have no right mandate medical procedures, as a matter of fact, it should be illegal for a government to force a person to have a medical procedure that is not recommended by a doctor.
Yes, indeed. I believe that is where proponents of these idiotic laws fail in their logic. Ironically, many of these same people perpetuate the ludicrous idea of government "death panels", yet they are the very ones creating legislation that invites the state to force doctors to perform unwanted (and sometimes unneeded) medical procedures on their patients against their will.
But I guess they justify it in their minds because we're not talking about *male* patients here, just females. And immoral sluts at that.
In behalf of the Democrats who live here in Arkansas, I'd like to make a couple points if I may.
First of all, Arkansas by virtue is actually a Democratic majority state, but we have a major turnout problem. As seen in the past election, no money was spent in Arkansas, and although it was a blessing to us that our tv airtime wasn't bombarded with ads, we weren't courted for our 6 votes by either political party, as if we are a given for the GOP and I find that to be true only because of DNC negligence.
Arkansas Democrats are alive and well but we have no voice in power. Our Democratic Senator is always dependable to deliver the all important Republican vote so he is useless to our struggling cause here in Arkansas.
Our Governor is a Democrat, but now faces huge issues against a new all Republican legislative branch who has for the most part already sold out to the Koch Bros. (who by the way are in the process of becoming 40% owner in an Arkansas steel operation) and trying to play their 3 card monte game on our state which is anti-abortion, school privatization, and voter supression.
When we Arkansas Democrats have no voice, no funding, no organization ... we are as much victims of these extreme rightwing circus rides as anyone else. Arkansas Democrats are hardly financially equipped to fend off the Koch brothers without outside the state support.
That seems to go unrealized, ... unappreciated, ... thus making all Arkansans appear to be crazie rightwing dimwits on television and I think that makes it hurt just a little more.
- RBJ
Until men are able to give birth, they should have no say in the matter whatsoever. Women are not pushing for men to be castrated when they father a child and do not care for the child, nor are we saying that since our eggs are so valuable that men's sperm should be just as valuable and male masturbation should be murder on the grounds that one of those could have been a 'viable' child.