Monday, March 19, 2012

What would the REPRIMAND/Inequality law actually do?

The REPRIMAND/Inequality law (REsponsible Pairing of Restrictive & Invasive MANDated Inequality) would require that all restrictive or invasive laws which disproportionally affect only one segment of the population must be paired with equivalent restrictions against the rest of the citizenry.  What would this mean for the GOP's current crusade on abortion and contraception?  It means everyone would feel the affects, and we all know that most people keep quiet about restrictive laws that only affect others, until they feel the effects personally.

Gestational Abortion Limits:  Forty states currently limit abortions after a certain point in pregnancy.  Heartbeat Laws like the one recently approved by the Missouri House of Representatives limit abortions to before the fetus has a detectable heartbeat.  Ohio is considering a similar measure.  This is significantly earlier than the consensus among the other states, and disproportionally affects pregnant women living in Missouri and Ohio, forcing them to break the law or cross state lines to receive a legal procedure.  Suitable equivalents for all others might include mandatory waiting periods or time limits on how long menopausal women can receive hormone replacement therapy, or how long men with erectile dysfunction (ED) can take Viagra, Cialis, etc.  Or since abortion deals directly with pregnancy, the state would have to set limits on how many times a couple can try alternative methods of fertilization, like Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) or In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF).

Insurance Coverage for Contraceptives:  If an employer is allowed to refuse coverage for women's contraceptives then they must refuse coverage for equivalent drugs or medical treatment for all their other patients.  Again, this might include hormone-replacement therapy in menopausal women, ED drugs for men who can't "perform,"  or fertility testing and treatment.  After all, if it is God's will to naturally procreate then using medical science to make babies when nature stops working is...against God's will!

Preferential Firing of Women on Contraceptives: If an employer can and does fire a women for using contraceptives, then that employer must fire post-menopausal women (who do not need the treatment) and men under equivalent circumstances.  Perhaps men at these businesses should be forced to show all their pharmacy receipts and can be terminated for buying condoms.

Personhood: These laws require that a fetus (or embryo or blastocyst) have the same rights and protections as any other person, often as early as the moment of conception.  Under these laws, abortion can be treated as intentional murder and is effectively rendered illegal.  Pregnant women are no longer able to access their legal right to have abortions at all.  It is hard to think of a law that unilaterally restricts a person's access to a legal activity, and demands that an equal prohibition to the rest of the residents of those states.  Since the state is so concerned about the health and welfare of the baby before it is born, perhaps the state should be required to provide lifetime, comprehensive health insurance to each baby born in that state.

Mandatory Transvaginal Sonogram: Laws like those in Texas and Virginia that require a women seeking an abortion to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound are being forced by the state to submit to a medically unnecessary internal probe.  States must require similar internal probes for men, such as mandatory rectal probes for men seeking treatment for issues related to low testosterone (this is the basis for the original REPRIMAND law).

1 comment:

  1. Abortion is a sin, think of it this way, would you be able to kill a living person? Then how can you terminate a living being inside you?. Still it depends on different people what they are actually facing.

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