Last night, Wisconsin made modest yet meaningful strides toward a culture of life as the State Assembly passed a bill to prohibit so-called “webcam abortions.” The legislation, which has already passed the house and is expected to receive pro-life Governor Scott Walker’s signature, forbids doctors from prescribing abortion-inducing drugs without physically examining the patient and requires them to be with the patient when she receives the drugs, as well as requires doctors to ask women if they’re being coerced into aborting their child.
Most state Democrats voted nay, with Madison Representative Mar Pocan complaining that lawmakers “don’t trust the people of Wisconsin to make a decision with their doctor about their own health care.” And Jessica Pieklo of Care2.com is incensed:
In neighboring states like Iowa and Minnesota, patients living in rural areas are able to have mifepristone prescribed via online video conference. This would not be an option for women living in rural Wisconsin.
Finally, the bill requires a woman return to an abortion clinic for a follow-up visit 12 to 18 days after being given the drug. Women who take mifepristone already have a follow-up visit, but most see their primary care physician for that follow-up. This bill forces women to have that follow-up visit at an abortion clinic, putting yet another unnecessary burden on the backs of women trying to access health care services.
Unnecessary? Not quite. Pro-Life Wisconsin explains:
“When a woman is facing an unplanned pregnancy, the reckless use of a toxic abortion drug is the last thing she needs,” said Matt Sande, legislative director for Pro-Life Wisconsin. “The average woman loses four times the amount of blood in a drug-induced medical abortion as compared to a standard surgical abortion. Several deaths have been attributed to mifepristone and therefore its prescription and use ought to be highly restricted, if not banned.”
[…]
The Food and Drug Administration released public documents to Concerned Women of America listing over 600 adverse effects of women taking mifepristone. These included 220 cases of hemorrhage that were either life-threatening or extremely serious, 71 of which required blood transfusions. Women taking mifepristone typically bleed for one to two weeks, with 10% bleeding for more than one month.
Further, it’s extremely telling that seeing a doctor in person before killing your child is now too much to ask of the abortion crowd. First the secular-progressive conception of “fairness” demanded that women be allowed to abort their babies. Then it demanded that abortion be allowed at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason. Then it demanded that abortion be given tax-funded assistance. Then it demanded that we forbid parents from having any say in their daughters’ abortions. Then it demanded that third parties be forced to offer abortive drugs. Now it demands that abortion be treated more like a Netflix subscription than a medical procedure. What’s next, publicly funded abortionist house calls?
Though shocking at first glance, this is really nothing more than the abortion mentality carried to its logical conclusion. Pro-aborts can’t be content to leave abortion as an individual “right” contingent on a handful of modest regulations and requiring some basic effort on the part of the patient because abortion was never an individual right. The very heart of abortionism’s logic is the proposition that some human beings have absolute dominion over others. Therefore, abortionism contains no natural philosophical or moral boundaries to temper its expansion.
It’s not about rights. Or health. Or freedom. Or equality. Greed is abortionism’s sole defining principle, and thankfully, Wisconsin is beginning to say “enough.”
