Blogs Comment On Oklahoma Ultrasound Law, Presidential Election, South Dakota Ballot Initiative

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Sexual Health / STDs
Article Date: 22 Oct 2008 - 7:00 PDT

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The following is a summary of selected women's health-related blog entries.

~ "Averting Their Eyes From Assault on Women's Health," Carole Joffe, RH Reality Check: An Oklahoma law (SB 1878) that makes ultrasounds mandatory for women seeking abortions is an example of how "[u]ltrasounds have become one of the key weapons of antiabortion legislators," Joffe writes in a RH Reality Check blog. Joffe writes that "one of the core principles" of abortion care is that "one-size-fits-all policies" like the Oklahoma law "just don't make sense, given the different needs and backgrounds of abortion patients." The "intent" of the Oklahoma law is "not common sense ... or common decency" but "to harass patients and make operations difficult, if not impossible, for the provider community," she concludes (Joffe, RH Reality Check, 10/20).

~ "McCain Works Against Access to Contraception, Does He Consider it Murder?" Michele Swenson, Huffington Post Blogs: Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and the media "have failed to follow-up on" McCain's "opposition to abortion by questioning his equal opposition to contraception," Swenson writes in a Huffington Post blog. She adds that contraception is "the primary means to reduce the rate of abortion" and that Republicans' "adamant opposition to contraception is testament to their larger extreme agenda." Swenson writes that during the final presidential debate, Obama "evaded the obvious follow-up questions" on McCain's comments on abortion, "instead listing as alternatives to abortion only adoption and sex education." Swenson asks, "What about birth control as a means to reduce the need for abortion, not to mention supporting women's right to control their reproductive lives and family size?" (Swenson, Huffington Post Blogs, 10/16).

~ "Women's Health Exception in South Dakota Ban Not Enough to Protect Women," Suzanne Poppema, RH Reality Check: Nowhere is the issue of women's health "more relevant" than in South Dakota, where a proposed abortion ban is on the ballot, Poppema writes in a blog entry. The proposal, Initiated Measure 11, would ban all abortions, with exceptions for rape, incest, to save a woman's life or to avert a "substantial and irreversible" maternal health risk of impairment to "a major bodily organ or system." Poppema writes that "'substantial and irreversible harm' is hardly a black-and-white issue," adding that if "medical experts cannot agree on the precise risk to a woman's health, they may opt not to act at all rather than risk criminal penalties." A recently leaked internal legal memo on how the ban would affect a South Dakota health system shows that the "end result is that, if passed, this law would tie doctors' hands and force them to watch as their patients' conditions worsen," she adds (Poppema, RH Reality Check, 10/21).

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