Shame in any language is shame

I disagree that the sonogram bill in Texas is about women's health and completely agree with this blog. As blogger Mean Rachel highlights in her blog The Texas Shame Act, there is an uproar over a Doonesbury comic strip that is notorious for making light of political hot topics and ideas such as Vietnam and both Gulf Wars.

This time, the comic strip has shined its light on Texas' law on mandatory sonograms before abortions as a technique to shame women out of getting an abortion by showing them the heartbeat of their unborn child. Somehow the talk on wars and soldiers were not as big of an issue as the abortion commentary has become for many in Texas. Mean Rachel and others are trying to bring this law into the public eye, but before the voters of Texas could see something that opposes government policy, the comic strip was moved into other sections of newspapers or pulled altogether. In highlighting this controversial topic, the blogger is trying to inform women of the issue that many politicians have tried to hide, the issue that this law is in fact not for their "health benefit."

How does showing the patient wanting to get an abortion, their baby’s heartbeat, have anything to do with health risks! If it’s health risks that people like Carol Everett, CEO of anti-abortion non-profit the Heidi Group want to show patients, then make a damn chart with the health risks of abortions and since we Texans like to teach children to use critical thinking i.e. creationism and evolution, then on that same chart let us also put the health risks for pregnancy as well.

Instead the people that run this state, “Republications,” understand that in passing the sonogram law they are trying to get more support from conservative Republicans (who are normally against abortion), with no thought for women's health in their mind. Kudos goes to people like the writers of Doonesbury and Mean Rachel for getting out there to shake down this unlawful act of trying to control the way we live. As I have seen on cars around Austin, “you can control my uterus when you pry it from my cold dead body.”