Yesterday, South Dakota became the first state to force women to schedule counseling sessions at Christian-run pregnancy centers before they can schedule an abortion. The state has essentially deputized unqualified, anti-abortion volunteers with dubious medical training to pressure women into bringing their pregnancies to term. But that’s not all!
From the New York Times:
The legislation, which passed easily in a state Legislature where Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 3 to 1, also establishes the nation’s longest waiting period — three days — after an initial visit with an abortion provider before the procedure can be done. It makes exceptions for medical emergencies, but not for rape or incest.
I could point out how offensive it is to force women—especially non-Christian women and rape victims—to sit through sanctimonious lectures and trumped up lies about abortion before making a private, personal medical decision.
- Courtesy of the Alpha Center
- Leslee Unruh in all her Glory.
But this argument doesn’t work. People like Leslee Unruh, the founder of a South Dakota pregnancy center called Alpha Center, don’t care about women’s right to medical privacy. This is a war over values. Logic doesn’t apply. “What are [pro-choicers] so afraid of?” Ms. Unruh rhetorically gloats in the NYTimes article. “That women might change their minds?”
And since it seems that the only way to get laws passed in South Dakota is to be batshit crazy, I have an alternate proposal to reduce abortions in SD: Mandate that every heterosexual couple engaging in sexual intercourse stare at this picture of Leslee Unruh for five minutes just prior to coitus.
Take a hard look at this headshot of Unruh. Notice how the tint of her skin perfectly compliments her red leather jacket. Check out the weird vein pulsing in her right cheek. The strange light emanating from her beautifully batshit eyes. The delicate hint of her arguably forked tongue.
This headshot of Unruh was provided by the Alpha Center. Undoubtedly they thought it a flattering one—who knows, maybe this is a hot look for conservative Christians. But all I see is a 300-pound demon stuffed into a lady suit, tunneling its demon gaze straight into my uterus in search of treasure. And I’m sure I’m not alone here. This is the face women will be staring at, in person, if their birth control fails them or if they are raped. This is the face of a woman (?) gleefully inserting herself and her values into the private lives of strangers. Staring at this picture for five minutes would make any healthy heterosexual couple’s sex drive wither and die.
And fewer heterosexual couples engaging in sex means fewer unplanned pregnancies means fewer abortions. Which means South Dakota wins, right? (Except for rape and incest victims. They’re still SOL.)
This is not a wish, but I can’t help wondering what her reaction would be if she were godforbid raped by a relative and found herself pregnant? Would she fly to the nearest state where abortions are legal and not subject to santimonious ignorance and get one on the sly? Or would she trumpet her own victimhood and “virtue” in not terminating the pregnancy and then do everything in her power to make the child miserable for the rest of its life? That light emanating from her eyes is the brilliance of hypocrisy engendered by deliberate religion-based ignorance and magnified by smug arrogance.
…not since Ru Paul’s Drag U has a drag queen tried so hard to control what a woman does with her body.
Holy photoshopping, Batman.
I wonder how many unwanted babies she’s adopted?
I have an uncontrollable bias against people whose tongues stick out between their teeth when they smile.
Leaving aside the assorted other evils of this law, it’s pretty clearly establishment of religion, isn’t it?
While we’re waiting for this to get knocked down, I think it’s time to encourage everyone with a brain to get the hell out of South Dakota. Some states are tipping in the balance, leaning one way or the other depending on how the wind blows, and a couple of liberals moving there could make a difference. SD isn’t one of them; they’re hopeless, and they deserve to be abandoned to economic and social ruin. Maybe we could put a wall up.
“Maybe we could put a wall up.” ….or a big dome, like Chernobyl…cause they could climb over a wall.
Also, I believe it’s in the Constitution that one does not have to submit to counseling by a woman wearing red pleather.
I’m pretty sure if she volunteered to fight fires inside the Japanese nuclear reactors, it would be a good thing for humanity.
It’s a shame that lying piece-of-shit Leslee Unruh shares a surname with the late shit-kicking, ass-kicking Democratic politician, Jesse Unruh, responsible for California’s groundbreaking 1959 Unruh Civil Rights Act.
Jesse Unruh said of lobbyists: “If you can’t eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women and then vote against them, you have no business being up here.”
Why DO Liberals fear giving women comprehensive information about abortion before they make the decision to end their childs life?
I imagine that face could easily cure priapism, premature ejaculation, incontinence and whole host of other maladies!
ps- The cracks about the woman’s appeareance are very mature. When you got nothing else be an asshole, right Cienna?
Some brilliant (and suicidal) politician should propose that pregnant women be required to sit and listen to a lecture about overpopulation, vaginal shredding, stretchmarks, baby weight, mood swings, children from hell, etc. before they’re permitted to receive prenatal care.
What are you afraid of? Women changing their minds?
10
maybe so-
try it for a week and let us know if it works for you…
@ fnarf, pretty sure that’s the line where her lipstick ends and her natural lip color begins, for what it’s worth. gross.
you are of course right about the establishment of religion. that gives me hope that it will be unenforceable. thank you for pointing it out.
Ah, my home state.
@5 Several of us already have. Thank you for welcoming us into your wonderful blue state.
It’s worth noting that there’s only ONE clinic that provides abortions in the entire state of South Dakota. It’s on the far eastern side of the state, and it only provides abortion services once a week when a doc flies in from Minneapolis. In reality, there’s already a built-in waiting period. So now, you’ll meet with a crazypants “counselor” and then wait more until the next time the doctor is in the one clinic and can see you for an appointment. Everyone I knew in high school who got an abortion did so on a weekend road trip to Minneapolis, five hours away. Fuck. I’m so glad I don’t live there anymore.
@9, It’s not fear. It’s anger. Anger about the dissemination of misinformation, and about being insulted by those that don’t believe that this decision is taken seriously by the women who make it. It’s anger at being forced to have volunteers judge you for not having their same values. It’s anger about being forced to wait before getting the tests needed from a medical professional in order to proceed on a decision that has already been made.
@15: A fellow SD evacuee, huh? High-five, what a shithole!
Whereabouts, East-river or West?
Hmmm, one also could posit;
Why do conservatives so often offer false information based only upon superstistion and the tired stereotypes that furthther “slut” shaming, in leiu of very real and accepted social realities?
@17 East river, home of the World’s Only Corn Palace and other tourist traps.
16
It’s worse than we thought-
you are already far down the path to the Dark Side;
1-Fear leads to anger.
2-Anger leads to hate.
3-Hate leads to suffering…..
hmmm- step two…
do you feel the hate welling up within you yet?
the next thing you know
you’ll be wanting to kill your own babies…..
@12 not to mention the fact that during childbirth you will uncontrollably poop in front of total strangers.
18
Ah yes-
those very real and accepted social realities.
Like Slavery was?
Your very real and accepted social realities clash with very real biological realities.
Killing your baby isn’t very nice.
Not very nice at all…..
@9: I don’t believe ANYONE here opposes comprehensive information. If I need an education, please tell me all the reasons for and against me keeping a kid, but keep your religion-based bias out of it, please.
(And if I don’t need it, don’t shove it down my throat)
Silly fundies! I thought you wanted us to take things like Hell on faith, not because we can see the one you are establishing here on Earth.
http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin…
You know, stories like this make me want to take a vacation in the dakotas, borrow some pee from a pregnant friend and visit a few of these centers to fuck with them. Wouldnt it be fun to be ‘counseled’ by one of these wingnuts and counsel right back at them?
@19: Hey, my wife’s from Mitchell. I’m from Huron, and we got out in ’06, right around the second (?) election in a row that they tried to flat-out ban abortion.
Bailo, who said men can’t be raped..? Tell you what- if someone ever gets desperate enough to rape you, I’ll support your right to abort your butt baby.
@9, by “information”, you mean “total bullshit”. Information is something you get from medical professionals, not well-meaning nutcase busybodies.
26
do you often borrow pee?
are you insecure about your ability to produce
acceptable pee?
your pee is really fine- really- relax….
@28: Even the Pope would support that abortion.
Modern Social realities, like being poor or a
woman today, what has that has to do w/ slavery is essentially that you would probably support it by forcing women to live in a a sort of subservience to their “oh so prescious baaaybies”..
Ok then go w/ that, ya tool.
What can you expect from a state with both a “corn palace” and Wall Drug? Hey, Rube!
@28, I disagree. In the instance of John Bailo’s Butt Baby, the life of the baby must be preserved, even if — hell, especially if — the mo-, uh, father’s life is at risk. I recommend asphyxiation.
I also support Butt baby rights until birth but after that… No ways screw them, they need to start paying their fair share. Jeez.
So, would this law allow for, say, Muslim or Buddhist or Wiccan or Unitarian counceling centers? ’cause if not, that would seem to be a clear violation of the Establishment of Religion clause in the 1st Amendment. Or are the lawmakers just betting on the unlikelihood of any of those actually setting up a counceling center in SD?
Which means South Dakota wins, right
I can’t me to think of any scenario in which this statement could possibly be true.
@fnarf: I think it’s time to encourage everyone with a brain to get the hell out of South Dakota.
No need, that has obviously already happened.
I love the bit about the options for support for women and babies in SD. There’s very little to be had outside of what the feds mandate.
When I lived there, I always hoped that one of the reservations would open a Planned Parenthood clinic. Maybe this would be the impetus for such a thing.
@fnarf: I think it’s time to encourage everyone with a brain to get the hell out of South Dakota.
They were never there in the first place. SD has a population of 810,000 people. That’s the entire state: basically the size of Seattle+Tacoma.
And yet they get two senators.
Time to take their Mt Rushmore away.
@20, way ahead of you sweetie. I’ll even pack my own wire hangers if I ever move to South Dakota.
@30: Get your sex ed from Ms Unruh did ya? Not know how a pregnancy test works do ya? Go to bed. The grownups are talking.
Incidentally, this is my current crackpot idea for fixing this country: a constitutional amendment establishing a population floor (by census) of 3,000,000 people before you get to be a state with two senators. Fall below the line? You get merged into the adjacent neighbor with the smallest population until a state is formed that’s large enough. I call this the “Your pissant state must have more people than metro Philadelphia before we let you jokers have a veto on national policy” plan.
My testicles just strangled each other with their vasa deferentia. OH GOD MAH BALLS.
Can we protest these fake clinics like they protest real womans medical centers?
@44: If only we had a legislature where there were two different sections, and one of the sections could be set up in such a way where the number of representatives each state got was based on population. We could call it the House of…Agents? Delagates? House of something, that’s for sure!
Reptilian shape shifter!!
So I couldn’t get the original article to load, but in theory, what would happen if I were to head on down to South Dakota and open a pro-choice Christian pregnancy counselling clinic?
Ohhh, so of course immediately after I post @49, the article loads. I understand now and agree with the general “that is completely shitty” sentiment. It kind of makes me want to become a doctor and move to South Dakota to provide abortions. Oh right, I’d probably want to kill myself a few days in because I’m stuck in such an awful place. Never mind.
I couldn’t agree more that the new South Dakota law is horrible, and Leslee Unruh’s comments are sickening.
But, @Cienna Madrid and commenters: I have a proposal. What if, from now on, when we criticized a woman’s political stand, we didn’t automatically follow that up by sneering at her lack of sex appeal? (I keep hoping this is the last time I’ll have to make this comment on Slog.)