From a Washington Post story on the Oklahoma Legislature banning abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy: “During the (Oklahoma) Senate debate on the wider abortion ban, state Sen. Warren Hamilton (R) questioned why the bill should include an exception for ectopic pregnancies, a life-threatening condition in which the fetus grows outside the uterus. ‘I wonder how we square that with the idea of justice for all,” said Hamilton, who also opposed the measure’s exceptions for rape and incest.’“
What outrageous arrogance and ignorance! Sen. Hamilton claims the right to make laws regarding the allowable medical response to an abnormal pregnancy without even a cursory understanding of the condition. Ectopic pregnancies are not viable — cannot continue to develop — with exception of extremely rare and highly dangerous exceptions such as an abdominal pregnancy. A pregnancy that is located outside of the uterus — ectopic — represents a serious risk to the mother’s health through internal bleeding. And yet, apparently no one in the Oklahoma Senate during the discussion of a bill that would make abortion illegal in almost all instances even knew why that exception was there. They were willing to legislate without the faintest idea of the medical realities that exist in such a case, that would require a medical provider to move rapidly to protect the mother with no hope of preserving the fetus by any means. The mother appears to be an afterthought, if even that, in the discussion.
I have utter distain for a law and politicians that place no value on the life and suffering of the mother, a fully formed human, and that display a complete lack of knowledge about the medical conditions they are legislating. Politicians are making laws restricting medical practice from the vacuum of their willful ignorance and prejudice, and women will die as a result.
— Bonnie Bishop Stark
Anchorage
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