Quote:
Apparently in some states, it's illegal to obtain or perform female sterilisation without a husband's consent. No marriage, no tubes tied. Estranged or violent husband, still no tubes tied. The amount of owner/chattel baggage still present in a law such as that is dizzying.


Ahhh, one of my favorite rant subjects. Incidentally, those laws tend to works both ways, as I know of more than one woman who had to sign a consent form for hubby's snip. Those laws apply to abortion in many states, and I believe prescription contraceptives in a handful. The army (unsure of other branches of the service) makes married couples attend basic reproduction courses before doing these surgeries. If my sister didn't work in medicine and tell me stories of people with multiple kids and no idea how they got there, I'd find it funny rather than sad.

The worse end of that is dealing with doctors who think of themselves as the lifestyle and morality police. My own doctor ceased doing them after the third suit from someone who changed their mind and wanted more kids. So she referred me out to other doctors. Where I got such lovely gems as being asked to go see a psychiatrist (which I doubt they would have done if I said I wanted 8 kids), "you're too young/unmarried and unable to decide that you dont want kids" (age 28), and my personal favorite "what kind of a woman doesn't want baaaayyyyybeeeeeeessssss" (yes, in that annoying sing-songy rhyming way, may that man have a horrible accident with his scrotum and a wood chipper). And this is in New York City. No consent laws, and home of "the liberal jew media that's destroying America"

It's been getting steadily worse too, and these assholes are all getting more and more protection from the law. We've got a new law snuck in with the last federal spending bill that makes it legal to let a woman die from pregnancy complications if the provider (loosely worded enough that it can be interpreted to include medical insurance billers) is against abortion. Pro life indeed. Old law says they weren't required to perform an abortion, new one proctects their right to not refer. We've got pharmacists not filling birth control prescriptions (protected in some states, federal protection being discussed) based on their morals, which of course trump that of the patient. Even if the birth control pills are prescribed for something other than contraceptive use. We've also got several states who require, by law, that patients seeking an abortion be told things that are not medically accurate and have been disproven, all with a definite anti-choice slant. And the hits just keep on comin! It seems to get worse every day.

Then again, we've got a president who twice appointed Dr David Hager , a man who enjoyed anally raping his wife and didn't believe in birth control for unmarried women and prescribed prayer as a cure for menstrual cramps, to the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs. We also get to see Laura Bush go abroad and talk about womens rights while they're being curtailed at home. We've got a great underlying concept in this country of women being here as cnts for breeding, fscking, and keeping house first and foremost, and how dare the biatches want anything else out of life.
_________________________
Heather

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." -Susan B Anthony