Forced Pregnancy

Here in the state where our legislators are working with the NRA to put a gun in every home, bar and school, this land where individual rights are supposedly sacred (literally, as in "God-given"), the battle continues to be fierce over controlling those among us least able to fight back.

While our governor is hard at work cutting health benefits for the poor and making sure that a woman of limited means can't buy a birthday cake with her food stamps, we have a whole slew of bills in both houses of the legislature which aim to make sure that if we get pregnant, we are forced to carry that pregnancy to term.

Lee Bright, Senator from Spartanburg, has been called sanctimonious and "not that bright."  Which is a deadly combination for women, children and the poor in general.  And he has set his mind on sending Lindsey Graham the dreaded "challenge from the right."

Graham, bless his heart, has determined he will out-crazy Bright, and particularly in the area of arming every one of our citizens.  To protect them from our government.  Which he represents.

Senator Graham has filled the void left by the moronic Jim DeMint this year, with a memorable quote on gun rights always at the ready.  You just can't out right-wingnut someone who argues against banning high capacity magazines this way:

"Would I be a reasonable American to want my family to have the 15-round magazine in a semi-automatic weapon, to make sure, if there's two intruders, she doesn't run out of bullets?" he asked. "Am I an unreasonable person for saying that in that situation, the 15-round magazine makes sense?"

So God apparently told Senator Bright to stay away from gun rights and take on that other enemy of the people of South Carolina -- women.

He has right out of the starting gate sponsored the Personhood Act (S 83), and just in case we didn't get it, the Life Begins at Conception Act (S 87), along with a lot of other batshit paranoid bills involving Sharia law (S 81) and funding of prisoners wanting sexual reassignment therapy (S 80).

But then he was quiet.  Too quiet.

Because this week he was back at it with three new forced pregnancy bills:

S 618 seeks to insure that if you work for the state of South Carolina, your health insurance will not cover abortions.  So only state employees of means -- for instance someone like Lee Bright -- would be able to afford to pay for a family member to terminate a pregnancy.  Assuming you work in a lesser capacity for the state of South Carolina, and don't have the financial wherewithal of Senator Bright, you not only will not be able to afford an abortion, but you likely won't be able to afford the baby you have been forced to have.

If not having insurance coverage doesn't work, there are two other bills brought to you by Senator Bright:

S 623 is lovingly called the Human Heartbeat Protection Act (sigh), and its companion forced pregnancy bill is S 626, the incredibly named Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.  What they really do is prohibit abortions at 12-weeks and 20-weeks.

Make no mistake.  Lee Bright is not much different than the Taliban who have radicalized the concept of Shariah law to control Muslim women.  He seeks the power and notoriety of fellow wackos Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham.  One would hope that on the national stage he would become as neutralized as Todd Akin after his "legitimate rape" pronouncement.

But meanwhile, we have to deal with him here, in South Carolina, as he attempts to make his name by decimating the rights of women.

I believe the very first thing we should do is more appropriately name this fight.  By calling it abortion, we have allowed ourselves to be focused on the fetus, and whatever aspect of "life" the religious radicals want to speculate upon.

What we really have here is forced pregnancy.  What is being legislated is the right of the lawmaker to control a woman's body, and her trained medical doctor's treatment of her.

We don't have here anything like a concern for infants and children, and surely no concern for the welfare of a pregnant woman.  These laws come from ignorance and seek to coerce.  Whether a woman is being forced to wear a veil so as not to enflame the desires of men who cannot be expected to control themselves, or to carry to term a pregnancy that is not of her choice, the purpose is the same.

We need to loudly oppose these bills, and Senator Lee Bright.  We need to tell our legislators to stop forced pregnancy legislation.  We need to inform the people of South Carolina that this is going on, else we become the next state to fall victim to these most un-Christianlike religious freaks.  Our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, our friends and neighbors, are at the edge of the precipice, where their bodies and their lives will be under the control of the State.

If you asked Lee Bright, what he stands for is freedom from state control.  But what he means is the freedom to control.