Texas liberals shamefully protest Perry's measures to safeguard women's health

The backbrace? The rules are the rules. You can't get assistance. The weak play was the point of order on the germaneness of comparing the sonogram bill to this bill.

 

It absolutely was. The sonogram bill was absolutely on the topic. To claim that it wasn't was a weak-ass play by the reps who were grasping at anything to stop her. With a mere 90 minutes left, she would have made it easily to midnight. As a matter of fact, during all of the debate and games of the last 90 minutes, she never sat, never leaned on her desk, never moved.

 

I agree. Those who claim, "Well, the Republicans were doing what was allowed in the rules!!" are ignoring a salient fact. The State Senate used to be defined by a sense of comity. The members of the different parties were very often friends, close friends when outside of the Senate Chamber, and dealt with each other with courtsey and respect within it. That has now been destroyed. Not by Democrats, but by the Republican Party. The "nit-picking" we saw last night merely reflected that reality. What I find ironic is that someday, the Republicans will be the minority party again, and they will most assuredly reap what they have sown over the last several years. When that happens, they will whine and they will cry at the "injustice" of it all, and expect all that they have done while in power to have been forgotten. Good luck with that.

 

How's your butt this morning? sore?

Abortions will never go away

 

What this did nationally was remind people outside of Texas that there are people in Texas who are not raving Gohmert/Cruz/Perry wingnuts. Since W ran the country into the ground (and since Molly Ivins died), that caricature of Texas has been building. Now, it has been pierced and I think you will see more folks interested in helping out the Battleground Texas project to move Texas towards a blue state. At one point, there was an average of 5,776 tweets per minute about the filibuster, #standwithwendy had over 400,000 hashtag references, and the YouTube channel carrying the filibuster topped 180,000. Wendy's Twitter followers went from 6,000 to 48,000. The whole story is also getting major national coverage in traditional media. Not to mention people tuning in saw a group made up of women, blacks, and hispanics opposing a bunch of white guys.

The GOP screwed up by giving Dems both a face to rally around and a little thing called hope. Even if the bill is eventually passed, the Repubs are the losers here. They won't see it though, and will continue to overreach.

 

no, but Republicans would love for that to happen, which makes the bull disingenuous.

 

#1 has been tried in numerous states and consistently has been overturned by the courts. That part is purely political and has zero chance of going into effect.

2. Simple answer is "yes", it's a blatant attempt to shut down abortion clinics. It's also been done in other states (Kansas, North Dakota, if I remember correctly) and it's sole purpose is an end-around run to ban abortion. All the medical associations have said these things are unnecessary. And, basic economics tells us that if there's demand for a product, there will be a supply. All this does is really make poor people go the illegal route of abortion - which is far more dangerous than the current clinics.

 

Abortions have been occurring for thousands of years and probably will continue for the foreseeable future, regardless of legality. That's quite the era.

 

Could you expand on this? So there is no legal length defined anywhere in the country?

 

I can't find the article offhand where I saw that, but my understanding was that it was related to Roe v. Wade being the ultimate authority. Though this article seems to suggest differently:

http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/sb5-abortion-restrictions/

It seems to say that 20-weeks is in effect in a few places, and was ruled unconstitutional or under injunction in others.

 

Relevant:

http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/Home.aspx

 

the only era where there have been significant criminal penalities associated with abortion for women (which should be noted is not part of the common law or even ecclesiastical law tradition) started at the same era Prohibition and eugenics were gearing up.

So, it'd be nice for you to elaborate on what you differentiate as the Abortion era, and which isn't, so we can look back on exactly when we are supposed to be looked kindly upon---you know, the dirty 1800s or so?

 

Abortion was legal in 20 states prior to Roe v Wade. Was that not part of the abortion era?

 

and post-legal framework of the 1800s, which directly led to the abortion laws that Roe v. Wade invalidated?

If you want to say that history will look kindly on a certain era, at least specify it. I am sorry you think of the legal advances of that era as so negative, but own up to the time period we will all shine our hearts around. You can't say that people will not look kindly on the abortion period or somesuch based on criminal statutes if said criminal statutes were only relatively recently enacted as a glaring exception to the rule of law on this matter.

Well, you can, just say that "history will look back kindly at the 1800s-1973, when abortion was more stringently criminalized, in contravention of the tradition of law on this matter, and in conjuction with laws that I, bigtexxx, think have a negative connotation, but hey, whatever. Let's all cry over that time period.".

 

Of course it is. I'm quite familiar with Planned Parenthood, starting in the late '60's, when friends went there to obtain birth control pills, and I went with them because they were friends of mine, and asked me to. The overwhelming number of women going to their facilities go there not for abortions, but for women's health issues completely unrelated to abortions, and for birth control of one kind or another. Heck, I took girlfriends there myself after becoming familiar with what Planned Parenthood did, and after learning that they weren't on the Pill, and asking them if they had an interest in them. Abortions are a very small part of what they do, but a critical service, never the less. This was a blatantly obvious attempt at closing their clinics, which have provided this service for decades successfully without needing these restrictions.

Some of you need to wake up and smell the coffee. If you oppose abortion, fine. That is certainly your right, and I respect that, but don't pretend that this bill was anything other than both an assault on women's rights, and an assault on Planned Parenthood and its clinics for women's health services, of which, again, abortion services are a very small part of what they do. To suggest otherwise, with all due respect, makes you all look more than a little foolish.

 

This actually isn't true. It isn't the MAIN thing they do by percentage, but it's not a small thing either. The oft-cited "3%" of services statistic is a flat out misleading one. In order to get abortion down to 3%, Planned Parenthood broke procedures out and presented it in a way that made it look like they treated more patients than they actually did for different procedures.

 

are we talking about the quickening law? age of viability? treatment of abortion as murder?

Saying abortion is legal now is like saying a house is made of rooms---without going into what the rooms are.

Abortion is legal under certain circumstances. Between the 1800s and 1973, more stringent criminal penalties were associated with abortion than in any other time in history. So, in reality, you are saying we will look back in shame on any non 1800 period interpretation of abortion law?

Texxx, put your big boy pants on. Can you give me three points as to why criminally punishing women and abortion providers is a good idea? How long of a jail sentence should be established for abortion? Is abortion murder?

Thanks.