After pretty much permanently occupying your uterus, legislators in Oklahoma are now moving into your most personal decision-making.
The Oklahoma House has approved a bill that makes it illegal for a pregnant person to terminate a pregnancy because the fetus may have Down syndrome or some other genetic abnormality. THIS IS REAL.
If you’re wondering if that has been paired with a bill to provide financial assistance and counseling for Oklahomans who are now forced to deliver severely brain damaged children–OF COURSE IT HASN’T! That’s your problem.
OK House Bill 1549, the so-called Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2017, not only prohibits any control of our reproductive lives. It also levies fines of up to $100,000 and strips the medical licenses from any doctors who performs the outlawed abortions.
The bill isn’t entirely unreasonable–much of it is FUCKING OUTRAGEOUS! It outlaws aborting a fetus that is expected to live only a few hours after birth!! A fetus with anencephaly, missing major portions of its brain or skull, would have to be brought to term in order to suffer a few hours before dying. Because that’s good for everybody, right?
AND! There are NO EXCEPTIONS FOR RAPE AND INCEST. When asked why, bill author George Faught said rape and incest are “An act of sin. We live in a sinful world. Men and women do horrible things, but God can bring beauty out of ashes.”
Representative Faught also said that people who terminate pregnancies involving birth defects are being “allowed to play God.” But he’s the one issuing decrees about what women must do in their most personal and most painful decisions. Rep. Faught is not only playing God, he’s playing God really, really shittily.
