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A post from Double X writer Meredith Simons:
KJ, the Democrats may not have a poster child for health care reform, but they are getting a public enemy. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter got shouted down by anti-health care reform protesters at an embarrassing town hall meeting Sunday ... (Read more in Double X.)
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Hanna, I can't get too hot and bothered about the Choose Life license plates in Virginia either. There's a confusing legal fight over whether these plates like these violate the First Amendment right to free speech, which as Dahlia explained way back in 2003, comes down to this:
To understand the free speech issue, it's important to clarify whether specialty license plates represent government speech or private citizens' speech. Why? Because there is no question that the government may speak in a partisan manner without violating the Constitution. The First Amendment applies only to government efforts to restrict private speech; it doesn't apply back to the state itself. This is why the state is perfectly free to tell you to stay in school, or drive sober, without having to broadcast the opposing viewpoint. States may have preferences for all sorts of messages. But if, on the other hand, the government opens a forum for private speakers—if it creates a park or builds a street where you and I are free to talk—it cannot be in the business of censoring some viewpoints while permitting others. This is the core of the First Amendment.
Lesson: If you don't like the Choose Life message, come up with a pro-choice one of your own to propose to Gov. Kaine and the Virginia legislature. If they nix it, then maybe you have grounds to sue. There's something odd about a government-issued Choose Life plate, but then there's something odd about zipping around with OPNWDE on the back of your car too, as the guys on You Look Nice Today have pointed out.
About the Kansas ultrasound law: It sounds like this one merely requires abortion providers to give women the option of seeing an ultrasound before the procedure. If so, ok. Most clinics do ultrasounds before an abortion anyway, to make sure they know how many weeks along the pregnancy is. Ten other states, by my count, have laws like this one in Kansas, and as Will Saletan has argued in Slate, why should women be shielded from accurate scientific information, which is what an ultrasound is?
But there's another kind of ultrasound law that's quite different in my mind. Under this sort of statute, which is the law in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, the state requires women to review the results of an ultrasound even when the patients expressly say they do not want to. This is creepy and invasive paternalism. The Oklahoma statute went so far as to provide that a woman could avert her eyes from the image on the screen. A law that has to grant such permission doth protest too much. More here.
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Earlier this month, Abby wrote about a Texas bill that would require doctors to give ultrasounds before performing abortions, and now pro-choice Kansas Gov. (and potential Health and Human Services head) Kathleen Sebelius has signed a similar bill into law. According to the New York Times, "The measure, which the governor signed on Friday, requires abortion providers who use ultrasound or monitor fetal heartbeats to give their patients access to the images or sound at least 30 minutes before an abortion."
The Times also quotes Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri CEO Peter Brownlie, who says that the Overland Park location of Planned Parenthood "already allowed women to see ultrasound images, but that few accepted the offer." Somehow I am unmoved by this legislation. I think that most women who are confident in their reproductive choices will not want to see the ultrasound and that giving them the option won't deter them from their conviction. What do you think, Slate women? Is this really a defeat for pro-choicers?
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An interesting thing is happening over the nomination of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Pro-life groups are calling her "one of the most divisive elected officials in the United States," in the words of the Family Research Council. They complain about her "anti-woman" record: a term of art used by the right to attribute feminist motives to the pro-life movement. She does, in fact, have a classic pro-choice record, protecting clinics and resisting parental-notice and late-term abortion bills. In other times, she would be easy bait for conservatives, especially at a moment when the nation is looking to overhaul health care. Indeed, the right is yelling and waving its hands and so far ... nothing. Not a single protest yet from any Republican congressmen. This, and Dobson. Makes you wonder. Whither the movement?
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