Echidne of the Snakes notices a large omission in Oklahoma’s new slut-shaming abortion-tracking law.
Oklahoma has a new law which requires all abortions to be listed on a public website. ... The required information astonishingly contains nothing about the man who caused the pregnancy, but is probably sufficient for finding the identity of any woman in a smallish town. And that is its real purpose.
Not sure I’m any more crazy about Echidne’s “man who caused the pregnancy” phrasing but the point remains: when it comes to pregnancy it takes two.
But the point that it takes two makes the passive-aggressiveness of the law even more obnoxious. Holding only women responsible and/or blaming them for abortion, or pregnancy, or (ultimately) not being able to “keep her legs together,” isn’t just about letting men off the hook. It’s about assuming men are incapable of managing their own sexuality.
That proponents of the legislation claim the “real” intent (and thus the question about whether there was an ultrasound) is to track, discourage, or otherwise manage selective abortion for boys or girls it still leaves men out of the equation. If so then one marvels that they omit tracking the father. Because, seriously, you think that’s not influenced by both parties in a pregnancy?
No. Of course abortion for gender selection will usually be a mutual rather than unilateral decision. And, interestingly, more likely to be a mutual decision because, think about it, it usually implies not unplanned but over planned pregnancy, and that usually implies non-random, generally high-communication partnerships. I.e. intentional pregnancy in marriage.
To neglect to seek information about men in such situations (as if that really was their intention) is to be even more incoherent than most anti-choice initiatives tend to be.
#%O*%!#_%(#!
Submitted by 3235 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-10-10 14:48.
I didn't think any medical procedure could be made public? Doesn't this violate HIPPA?
Submitted by 3235 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-10-10 15:46.
So... abortion just got added to the list of sex crimes?
The logical purpose of that sort of thing is to protect the public by pointing out which people have done previous bad acts which they are very likely to do again. It's debatable whether this is really a very good way of doing that. But even if you think that it is, and consider abortion to be a "bad act", and plan to protect future fetuses by informing men who to *not* have sex with... most women who do have an abortion will never have a second one, and most "serial aborters" probably have other issues which it would be more useful to inform the public about than the fact that they have abortions.
Which tells me that either there is no logic here, and this is a purely emotional thing (with entirely irrational results) or else the logic is to put both doctors and potential patients in such a legal and ethical bind that legal abortion becomes an almost impossible affair - an end run around Roe vs Wade.
Submitted by 3235 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-10-10 18:27.
This seems extremely sketchy as far as HIPAA compliance. HIPAA requires that any public disclosure of patient information not be individually identifiable, and it would be possible for a woman in a low-population county to prove that she was the only person with that particular age/status/etc data.
Also, "we can't really ban abortion but we'll make it as unpleasant as we can" laws always bother me. If you believe it's murder, how can you just kinda discourage murder--if you believe it's not murder, leave it the hell alone. It doesn't seem the sort of issue you'd go halfway on if you had honestly held viewpoints on either site.
Submitted by 3235 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-10-11 17:00.
I've heard about this BS law and do think it will get challenged...it's too open to misuse and even it's stated purpose is doubtful, though I agree that it seems like the real purpose is slut-shaming of women who "find themselves pregnant" by some mysterious action, maybe by the stork?!? Yeesh...
And being from a very small town, I can say with much certainty that that kind of information can and will be used to identify the individuals. This poor "study design" would NOT be passed by a university/hospital Institutional Review Board (IRB) for that reason alone (does not sufficiently protect patient privacy/identity). When the true purpose of a research protocol is to collect data to quantify/measure a "problem", it doesn't get published to a website. Most often it has to be nonidentifying/aggregated and any identifying info has to be kept under several layers of security with a individual (usually the study's Principal Investigator) who is held responsible for that info staying confidential.
In other words, this law claiming to be for "research purposes" is bogus. And disrespectful to women.