Republican candidates for Ohio governor, Jim Petro and Kenneth Blackwell, have come out firmly against a woman's right to choose. Women do not need Petro and Blackwell involved in their life changing decisions, but apparently, they both want to be there. Here are some excerpts from the Columbus Dispatch:
...Long an opponent of abortion rights, Blackwell would preclude abortion even if the life of a mother is at stake. In his 2002 re-election campaign, Blackwell took a position to permit an abortion if it were necessary to save a mother’s life.
Petro, who in 2000 switched from favoring abortion rights to opposing them except in cases of rape or incest or when the life of a mother is threatened, now would oppose it in all circumstances except to save a mother’s life. When he ran for attorney general in 2002, Petro retained the three exceptions....
....Blackwell acknowledged this week that he had changed his position, contending that medical advancements have rendered making a choice between a mother’s or a baby’s life extremely rare.
"Medical science proved that doctors don’t make that decision," Blackwell said in an interview Wednesday. Doctors "don’t make decisions, ‘Do we take the mother’s life or do we take the baby’s life?’ The fact is, they make decisions on how to save both lives......"
Blackwell is wrong and he has no medical evidence to support his opinion. There are some rare instances when a woman's pregnancy could endanger her own life. This might include a woman getting pregnant when she has been diagnosed with cancer or women who have had severe complications with previous pregnancies, and have been told not to get pregnant again.
What if your daughter was brutally raped? Your sister? An abortion in a clean, safe, medical center might save her emotional well-being, and her life. Blackwell and Petro are so removed from a typical person's life, they have no business telling us how to live. No one likes abortion, but it must remain safe, legal, and available for women who need it.
I am highly insulted that these men are telling women what they can/cannot do with their bodies. What if I asked personal questions of Petro and Blackwell: Have they taken Viagara, or Cialis? If they have, how often? Have either of them had vasectomies? Have the vasectomies been successful? I think both men would squirm a bit if I asked them those highly personal questions. However, they can't see that they are doing the same thing to women. Democrats must emphasize that Republicans are taking away our rights and our privacy.
Another story in today's Dispatch is about some extreme right wing Kansas Attorney General who wants to investigate the records of abortion clinics. We live in an electronic age. It is possible that this Kansas Atty. Gen'l is fishing for information that could ultimately result in the release of names of abortion patients by "accident" and those names would end up on the internet.
The Kansas Supreme Court yesterday temporarily stopped the state attorney general from looking at records from two abortion clinics, saying such a review could violate patient privacy.
The court ordered a lowercourt judge to make sure that Attorney General Phill Kline has the right to see the documents in his investigation of potential violations of state restrictions on abortion and suspected rapes of children.
If Judge Richard Anderson determines Kline does have that right, the attorney general still must ensure that the patients’ privacy is protected, the court said.
In 2004, Anderson issued subpoenas at Kline’s request for the records of a clinic in Wichita operated by Dr. George Tiller and one in Overland Park, a Kansas City suburb, operated by Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. The records involve 90 women and girls.
The Supreme Court said the subpoenas could infringe on the patients’ rights to maintain privacy about personal and sexual matters, to receive confidential health care and to obtain a lawful abortion without an undue governmental burden....
What the hell is the matter with Kansas--they promote intelligent design in their schools and now they are trying to get personal medical records of abortion clinics?????? Is there something in the water???
