American Civil Liberties Union

It seems that Michigan politicians are hell-bent on making the cliché “when the country catches a cold, Michigan gets pneumonia” a reality.

For proof, look no further than the more than 50 pages that make up a three-bill package: HB 5711, HB 5712, HB 5713. This legislative behemoth is on a fast track in our State House of Representatives, and will make safe abortion services virtually inaccessible to Michigan women.

This Memorial Day, we can show the women serving in the military how grateful we are for their brave service by giving them the same opportunities to serve, and the same recognition of their service, as men. This month, the Army and the Marine Corps began to implement changes to the so-called combat exclusion rule, an outdated policy that bars women from being assigned to ground combat units, irrespective of their talents and abilities. Under modifications to the combat exclusion rule announced by the Department of Defense (DoD) earlier this year, women will now be permitted to serve in certain previously male-only positions at the battalion level and in positions that are located with, and support, combat units.

Yesterday, a video leaked of Mississippi Representative Lester "Bubba" Carpenter (pictured above) gloating that he and his anti-choice cronies had passed a bill that could effectively put an end to safe, legal abortion in the state of Mississippi. The money quote:

It's going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to — Roe vs. Wade. So we've done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They're like, 'Well, the poor pitiful women that can't afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger. That's what we've learned over and over and over.'

But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere."

And now everybody's reaching for their smelling salts because, oh my, a politician trying to outlaw abortion doesn't care if women die. You know what I say? Finally. Finally, someone willing to speak the truth. Finally, someone is willing to drop the bullshit about health, safety, and a "culture of life" and admit that he'd rather women die than abortion remain legal.

The Kansas House passed an unwieldy 70-page bill, chock full of troubling provisions aimed at depriving a woman from receiving accurate information about her pregnancy, preventing her from accessing medical care and punishing health professionals who treat her. We need to make sure the Senate doesn't do the same.

Here are just a few examples of what this bill would do:

• It would provide legal protection to a doctor who discovers that a baby will be born with a devastating condition and deliberately withholds that information from his patient because he doesn't want her to seek an abortion. That means a doctor could decide to lie about the results of a woman's prenatal test so that she won't have information that she needs to make the best decision for her circumstances.
• The bill attempts to scare women by forcing doctors to tell patients about a supposed link between abortion and breast cancer — a risk that the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and other medical experts roundly reject .
• This bill would also require public hospitals to turn away a woman who desperately needs an abortion to prevent serious harm to her health. The extremists pushing this bill would have a hospital tell a very sick woman that she should come back when her pregnancy is about to kill her, even if that risks her future fertility or causes organ failure.
• And there's a provision that targets workers at women's health centers that provide abortion care. The bill could prohibit those workers from volunteering at their kids' school. We've seen a lot of bizarre provisions about women's health care, but this is one of the strangest. Imagine the nurse who helps care for women at the local clinic. When she wants to accompany her son on a class field trip will she be told to stay home unless she quits her job?