CRIME SCENE: "unauthorized vaginal bleeding"

[kpete]

Wingnuts and Your Uterus
The Craziest Wingnut in America Wants to Criminalize Unauthorized Vaginal Bleeding
With the rise of the Tea Partiers, there's intense competition for the title of Craziest Wingnut Holding Public Office.

by BooMan
Thu Feb 24th, 2011 at 01:58:10 PM EST

...................

Most miscarriages happen so early in pregnancy that there is a good chance the woman will not know (or be certain) that they have occurred. But when the pregnancy is somewhat established before it is lost, women start having to ask questions like: What should I do if my practitioner tells me I've lost the pregnancy but I still haven't passed the tissue? and What is curettage like? And it might surprise to learn that curettage is a lot like having an abortion. It's not a pretty picture:

For suction curettage, the doctor will pass a hollow plastic tube through your cervix and suction out the tissue from your uterus. For a traditional D&C, she'll use a spoon-shaped instrument called a curette to gently scrape the tissue from the walls of your uterus. The whole thing may take about 15 to 20 minutes, though the tissue removal itself takes less than ten minutes.

Now, if you were overjoyed to be pregnant one minute and then having your uterus scraped with a spoon-shaped instrument the next, you might be feeling a little traumatized. You might be feeling depressed. You might be feeling all kinds of horrible things that you don't want to have to discuss with anyone, let alone a police officer who wants to make sure you haven't just engaged in unauthorized vaginal bleeding. Your husband probably feels the same way. The loss of pregnancy is one of the most difficult and trying things any two people can go through, and treating it as a crime scene is the clearest and cruelest violation of privacy that I can imagine.

But, here's the thing. According to Republican ideology, any non-menstrual bleeding should be treated as a potential crime scene. A potential murder has taken place, even if the mother doesn't know it. And why not call the cops? It seems totally consistent to me. If you want to protect the unborn, then you jolly well better protect them damn it.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2011/2/24/135810/560
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/484085/the_craziest_wingnut_in_america_wants_to_criminalize_unauthorized_vaginal_bleeding/#paragraph4

[bluestateguy]

1. A police investigation every time a miscarriage occurs

That's what has to happen if you are serious about making abortion against the law, and actually enforcing that law too.

[jmowreader]

58. Ceaucescu's Romania did this

The thing the Repukes seem not to understand is, their ideal society where every fertilized egg becomes cannon fodder in 18 years 9 months looks very much like the worst communist countries that ever existed.

Let's see here...

Cote d'Ivoire bans it for all but to save the mother's life, as do Iran, Iraq, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Brunei, Senegal, Gabon, Egypt, Yemen, Sri Lanka,

Laos has a total abortion ban.

El Salvador and Nicaragua both have total bans.

Tuvalu and the Maldives have total abortion bans

As do Chile and Uruguay

I wonder if any of those countries would be willing to take our teabaggers.

[krispos42]

65. Law & Order: Unauthorized Menstruation Unit

*dum-dum*

CSI:OB-GYN

Whooooooo were you? Do-do, do-do Whooooooo were you? Do-do, do-do"

[Warren DeMontague]

2. El Salvador's "Forensic Vagina Inspectors"- coming soon to a Red State near you. nt

[Taverner]

29. Did Duarte's thugs do that in the 80's?

Sounds like his kind of shit

[SoCalDem]

3. Pre legalization of abortion, LOTS of women had "female troubles"

Many of my mother's friends talked in hushed tones about their horrible D & C.. I remember asking my mother what a D & C was & she said it was just something that women needed from time to time when they had "female troubles"..I was about 7 or 8 at the time.

Funny how once things got legal, lots of "female troubles" stopped happening..:eyes:

[Foo Fighter]

47. They're still happening.

But only for the rich. The "average" woman has an abortion at an abortion clinic and has to walk past the screaming nutbags that want to deny her her rights to what should be a private medical procedure.

OTOH, a rich woman can check into a hospital and have a D&C. It's nice and private (as all medical issues should be) and they don't have to walk past the line of nutbags screaming at them (which nobody should EVER have to do). And once they have recovered from the procedure, they can go home and continue to rail against abortions and make donations to anti-choice groups. After all, they didn't have an abortion.

Note: D&C's can also be a necessary medical procedure. It might be needed in some cases after a successful pregnancy or it could be a procedure that's necessary even though the woman has never been pregnant. And I don't mean to imply that all rich women are anti-choice by any means. It's just that those that the M$M focuses on certainly are (i.e, Palin, Bachmann, etc.).

[Bosso 63]

4. So they want a bureaucrat to issue permits?

[vim876]

5. Wait...

So if you got a cut or tear in the skin there, and it bled, you'd be legally obliged to call the cops?

[vankuria]

36. So when the cops come

to investigate do they have to look up your va-jj in order to charge you with a crime?

[luv_mykatz]

6. Sigh. Like I keep on sayin'

this is not about the Right to Life versus the Right to Choose...it is about the fact that some people are taught that their religion is the One, Right, and Only Way, which gives them what they believe is the right to force their beliefs on the lives and bodies of others. They seem to especially desire to oppress and control women.

These same people are against birth control (witness the numerous instances of refusing to fill birth control prescriptions), they are often for both war and the death penalty (so much for the sanctity of human life), and they only care about fetuses. Once those fetuses are born, they have no qualms about condemning them to lives of poverty, injustice, and destruction of planet Earth's life support systems (aka the environment). These idiots never get it that a world of wall-to-wall people packed in like sardines in a can is not a kind or gentle place, and could cause the planet to cease being a viable habitat for human life.

These idiots are cruel beyond belief. :banghead:

[truebrit71]

8. I despise these people with a white-hot passion...

...go worship your invisible sky-friend and leave the rest of us alone...ESPECIALLY the women you sick freaks..

[drmeow]

22. Could not agree with you more

I am sometimes disturbed by the really, really, really vicious things I'd like to do to them or see happen to them.

[Taverner]

30. [phone]

[SammyWinstonJack]

66. +100000!

:applause:

[hamsterjill]

12. +1000

And welcome to DU.

[Foo Fighter]

48. Isn't it ironic that those that claim they are so dedicated to the sanctity of

human life when there's a fetus involved are the first to object to so much of one dime of their taxpayer dollars going to support the needs of that same fetus once it is born? And as for war, they say "bring it on." So much for being pro-life.

Cruel doesn't begin to describe these asshats.

Welcome to DU, luv_mykatz!

[upi402]

7. This crap alienates Libertarians and non-fanatical Christian Teabaggers

If it does go nowhere, it's good to pull the curtain back on the extremists in their ranks.

[krabigirl]

10. Yes. And it will go nowhere. It alienates all but the most extreme of fundies.

[musette_sf]

46. Wrong on the libertarians,

who think that female rights should be decided at the state level. See "Bizarrely Hypocritical" below:

[lapislzi]

9. We can tie up law enforcement for years

"Officer, come quick! It might be my period, but I can't be sure because it's three days early! Cuff me! Please!"

Imagine calling the cops every time you might reach for a mini-pad.

[Angry Dragon]

24. +1000

[Kceres]

11. I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks and the police who accompanied the ambulance were sort of jerks.

The day before I had started spotting and went to my OB for an ultrasound. The embryo's heart was not beating and they told me I was going to lose this one. This was a planned pregnancy. The OB sent me home to let nature take its course, there was likely a genetic abnormality. The next day I started bleeding so heavily that I had to sit on the toilet. I passed the embryo intact, fished it out with a soup ladle, put it in a baggie. When I called my OB to tell I was hemorrhaging, they told me to unlock the front door and lie as still as possible until the ambulance they were calling arrived. The police got there around the same time as the ambulance. I was kind of out of it by then and the couch I was lying on was soaked with blood. One of the cops, a man, looked at the baggie and asked me rather harshly, "where is the umbilical cord?" I had retained the placenta. One of the paramedics, also guys and very kind and professional, told the cop to get lost. When I got to the hospital a resident OB (who was also 12-weeks pregnant)looked at the embryo and cried. She then suctioned me out which hurt like hell even though I was somewhat anesthetized. I still don't understand why the cop asked me that about the umbilical cord. It was incredibly weird. For some reason it made me feel ashamed and guilty and I don't know why.

Sorry this was so long. I never really talked about it before.

[JuniperLea]

15. What a chilling tale...

So sorry! I'm glad you shared, though. Much can be learned from your experience. :hug:

[CrawlingChaos]

18. What a horrible experience

I'm so sorry you had to go through that Kceres. It really pisses me off that police can blunder into a scene like that, behave extremely inappropriately (as they so often do) and leave you with an additional traumatic memory, on top of everything else. I hate that they can do this to someone at their most vulnerable moment. So wrong.

[Kceres]

19. Thanks for your thoughts. It was a looong time ago and I'm over it for the most part.

Happy ending in a way, as six weeks later I was pregnant with my second son. Can't imagine my life without him.

[Codeine]

20. What a horrible time you had.

:hug: People are insensitive assholes.

[Lucian]

27. You shouldn't feel ashamed or guilty over something you can't control.

I'm sorry you had to go through that. The cops were jerks.

[Capitalocracy]

31. That man who has no business being a police officer

is the one who should feel ashamed and guilty.

[AlbertCat]

32. What a story!

Men (like me) simply don't "get it". I mean we can IMAGINE... but that's not like having to go thru this kind of thing. (Perhaps the cop was freaked out so the admittedly weird question. I'm just giving him the benefit of the doubt) This is why you see so many male anti-abortionist. And I get the feeling the female anti-abortionists have a different motivation than the male ones.... even though they say it's the same.

[defendandprotect]

55. Men do "imagine" -- especially when more males are lost to spontaneous abortion ....

than females -- and this is true up to the age of two years old.

When males are disconnected from the other half of the species, their "imagining"

can get paranoid, imo.

Keep in mind, even aside from carrying the child within her body for 10 months --

plus breastfeeding, that females contribute the majority of the DNA -- 57% --

when you consider mitochondria. Males contribute 43%.

Nature favors women -- we are the majority population at 52% and 54% -- but we don't

really know how large a majority because males kill so many females.

I'd suspect it may be way more than 54%.

Evidently the female anti-abortionists -- whatever their original motivation -- often

change their minds when they have an unexpected pregnancy!


Also, religion makes little difference -- Catholic women have just as many abortions

as any other women -- and because the Catholic Church understands that they have lost

this battle on abortion and on birth control, in fact, they are anxious to keep our

government from including reproductive care in any health care plan -- even when paid

for by the individual!

[catrose]

39. I'm so sorry

I collapsed in the Atlanta airport on a business trip and before midnight (but not much before) I found out that I had been pregnant and lost the baby. I had the most painful exam of my life--screamed and screamed, and I'm a Southern stoic. D&C the next morning, sent to the airport to fly home in a wheel chair. Infection from the dear hospital set in, sick for 12 weeks, collapsed in the orchestra pit while playing the opera Don Giovanni. The trombone section wasn't doing anything until the 3rd act, so they carried me out to the security office, where someone tried to call an ambulance, but I wouldn't let them because my insurance was maxed out--in those days, insurance companies could say they were paying $300 tops for pregnancy-related matters. So I rode home in a cab and the driver carried me into the house (and then my instrument).

In one of life's funny things, a few days later my aunt flew in to take care of me and got the same cab driver to take her to my house.

In one of life's infuriating things, when my husband took me to the doctor the day after the opera climax, the doctor exclaimed that I shouldn't have been working. But he'd signed the notes for all my jobs that I was fit to return to work. Jerk.

All this adventure needed was a suspicious cop. That really would have been over the top, and I'm sorry you had to have one.

Memo to the men who need it: Losing a child/baby/embryo/fetus is not fun under any conditions. No one does it cavalierly.

[Foo Fighter]

52. I'm really sorry you had to go through that.

As if the miscarriage wasn't horrible enough, you later had to possibly put your health in jeopardy because of the cost of health care. That's something that should never happen to a citizen of what's supposedly the richest country in the world. Gees, I'm really glad you made it through that.

"Losing a child/baby/embryo/fetus is not fun under any conditions. No one does it cavalierly." That can't be repeated enough but unfortunately, the nutbags don't see it that way.

[catrose]

61. Thanks

It was a long time ago, obviously, but seeing this story brought it back.

And I didn't mention the employer harassment by my day job, who had the corporate nurse call me to find out if I was malingering. The male (of course) managers couldn't understand what the problem was. Not that the guy who had to take 6 weeks off for knee surgery got any flak at all.

Oh, gee. I didn't mean to get started. On the upside, if there was ever a doubt about my political leanings, that experience sealed me forever to the Democrats.

[Foo Fighter]

49. How horrible.

I'm sorry the cop was such an asshat to you. Good gawd, you had been through a traumatic experience, both physically and emotionally, and then you have to endure that bastard accusing you like you were trying to hide something. Good on the paramedics for blowing him off.

I'm really sorry for what you had to go through but I'm happy to see that a few posts down, you later had a son. Congrats!

[Solly Mack]

13. There's not a strong enough word for what I feel for those fuckers.

[JuniperLea]

14. My bleeding is my business...

So much for LESS GOVERNMENT!!!

Hypocrites!!!

[Tsiyu]

16. I'm curious as to Boortz's take on this Franklin crap

Anyone in Atlanta: since Neil Boortz is broadcast from Atlanta, and he used to be a staunch pro-choice talk host, despite his conservative wacko-ness, have you heard what his take on this bill is?

I've also seen a few guys on DU minimize the implications of this proposed legislation: "It's not gonna happen so meh" but the reality is, this is what we women face - men who want Big Government in our private lives in the worst possible way.

Today it's women, tomorrow?

EVERYONE should be concerned....

[lark]

23. "Handmaidens Tale" time

I think it's really some of their goals - totally control women's lives and the only thing they get to do is have babies with the rich corporate douches. American Taliban??

[BobbyBoring]

17. WE WANT GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR LIVES

But all the hell up in yers lady

These fucks should all eat a fatal dose of rat poison.

[Codeine]

21. My GF went to Planned Parenthood for a D&C related to a miscarriage.

Assholes out front with their sick fucking pictures of bloody babies were shouting at her and praying for her, and all she wanted was to have her lady-parts taken care of so she could get healthy. Dickheads and hateful, meddling busybodies.

When I heard her experience related later it actually made me want to hurt those people, badly. Same jerks are still there, and we see them every time we go to the Souplantation for lunch. I get a boiling rage if I forget to keep my eyes averted. :mad:

[Quantess]

25. I would like very much

to rip out a bloody tampon and throw it right in his face. If he wants to sniff our panties so much, he deserves to be pelleted with "vaginal bleeding".

[Ken Burch]

26. "Law And Order: Special Bleeding Unit"

Sorry.

[blackspade]

28. The Talibornagain strike again!

People who propose this shit....SUCK!

[AlbertCat]

33. People who propose this shit....SUCK!

People who propose this shit.... are provincial know nothings who don't want to know anything. (Y'know... religious.) and are unqualified for government positions.

[Quantess]

35. People who propose this shit....are SICK!

(Yes, I agree they suck.)
He REALLY wants to inspect the bloody sauce emerging from my vagina? I would like to oblige him. Come closer, you sick fuck. I would be proud to yank out a saturated, super-sized tampon on a heavy flow day, and smack it right on his face.

[blackspade]

43. Nice visual....

:applause:

[Quantess]

51. Thanks and/or Sorry. But in any case, I meant it!

Seriously though, anyone who is that interested in inspecting the blood sauce (because it is normally not 100% blood in either menstruation or miscarriage) deserves everything they asked for, and more.

[blackspade]

67. I was amused...

By the image of the Fred Phelpes of the world freaking out!

[xxqqqzme]

34. I'm surprised he doesn't

want women to be registered as 'active' bleeders. It would make record keeping so much easier.

[Blue_In_AK]

37. I had this procedure performed for miscarriage twice,

and it was no picnic at all, especially the second time when I was awake with just a local anesthetic. I would have been furious if the government had gotten involved. It was traumatic enough as it was.

[Thav]

38. All this protecting the unborn...

and they STILL don't give a flying fuck about the child after it's born.

[undeterred]

40. Why are there no penis police?

I mean, if we're going to criminalize the vagina, doesn't it make sense to police the penis as well? :shrug:

[AlbertCat]

41. Why are there no penis police?

There are.... if you're gay.

[demwing]

60. OMG - 1st we'll have Vaginal Bleeding Inquisitions, then Unexpected Erection Inspections

gettin all up in our junk with disease!

[Marnie]

42. The only way to determine if bleeding from the vagina is

non menstrual is to check all bleeding from the vagina. That means every period and every spotting.
Periods are not predictable to the minute and for many women not to the day or week or maybe on a given month there is ovulation and no bleeding or no ovulation at all.

So exactly how are Republicans going to have this operate with out driving health care costs through the roof and interfering extensively in women's lives?

Even if they can figure out how to identify every spontaneous abortion and collect the "evidence" there still is the issue of the ability to determine what would be classified as behaviour that makes spontaneous abortion illegal and writing laws specific enough to no be laughable, plus the the need for scientific "proof" of the status of the abortion and the expense involved in that.

If they really carry through with this it will be a huge expense and hugely time consuming to law enforcement and will tie the courts up with cases that hinge of competing medical experts. It will also require prosecutors and courts and law enforcement personnel who have the expertise to deal with the issue.

[mainer]

62. Is there some way we can make this applicable only to GOP women?

Try doing this to a Texas gal. Good luck.

[WinkyDink]

44. This person needs some unauthorized aorta bleeding.

[AnneD]

45. My solution...

When you have a heavier than normal period, take all the pads to the police station for investigation. Just the yuck factor alone should shut these bozo's up. What a fresh steaming pile of crap.

I took a genetics course once and what amazed me the most was that (for technical reasons) only one embryo in four was fully viable. In fact, I am amazed we have as few birth defects as we do.

[KT2000]

54. Great idea.

Why not all pads dropped off at the police station. Who know what else those nuts will come up with - we may as well prepare. maybe they will criminalize yeast infections too.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

50. "...civil government should return to its biblically and constitutionally defined role."

http://www1.legis.ga.gov/legis/2009_10/house/bios/franklinBobby/franklinBobby.htm

This sick fuck has been in office since 1997.

[AnneD]

56. Sounds like...

Sharia law to me.

[OnionPatch]

53. Once a conservative told me I was crazy when

I asked him if we were going to have mandatory vaginal inspections for every miscarriage if abortion was illegal. Seems I wasn't so far off base, after all.

[Initech]

57. WTF is wrong with these fucking assholes?

[demwing]

59. No one expects

THE VAGINAL INQUISITION!

[mainer]

63. Send Bobby Franklin all your used menstrual pads, ladies

He needs to get on this right now. Let him sniff out which ones are normal periods and which ones are abortions.

[Bunny]

64. We could turn it into a show and pitch it to the Discovery ID channel.

They have all true crime shows, and I think with a little bit of tweaking we could get on their slate. What should we call it? The Menstrual Files? How about Zygotecide: Life on the Streets? Or maybe Law and Order: ZVU (Zygote Victim Unit)?

You'd soon see this familiar sight, draped across the vaginas of American women everywhere: