New Mexico Lawmaker Clarifies Her Bill Will Prosecute Doctors Who Perform Abortions For Rape Victims
9:03 pm - 01/28/2013As the Democratic Party of New Mexico pointed out in an official statement about HB 206, the revised bill still represents a dangerous step toward criminalizing abortion. “The bill still makes it a crime to ‘facilitate’ an abortion for a woman who wants one,” Scott Forrester, the director of the group, explained. “That means doctors, nurses, or anyone else who works at a health care clinic where this is one of the services provided would still be guilty of a felony.”
Targeting abortion providers is simply an indirect method of limiting women’s reproductive access, and it has been a successful tactic for anti-choice lawmakers across the country. Abortion opponents often subject abortion clinics and providers to burdensome regulations that aren’t placed on other medical professionals — and doctors who break those rules are typically faced with harsh consequences, like losing their medical licenses.
Brown isn’t the first GOP lawmaker to go as far as to suggest that doctors who perform abortions should be subject to criminal charges. But singling out the doctors who work in this field is having serious consequences. Partly due to the obstacles placed in front of the medical professionals who perform abortions, as well as rising levels of anti-abortion harassment, the country currently has a shortage of abortion doctors — particularly in states that are especially hostile to abortion rights, like New Mexico.
She keeps digging herself deeper, doesn't she?
I feel like this should NOT even be in question.
Is this the new alternative to testing rape kits (thousands of which remain untouched in the state?)
Fuck everyone.
Down.
How, precisely, are they going to prosecute this shit anyway? Based on a rape case they can't tell is rape without the evidence that got destroyed? Or are they just trying to make rape victims choose between being forced to have a baby and being forced to let their rape go unreported?
Seriously, are they not even making a distinction between rape victims who want an abortion and rape victims whose rapists are making them get an abortion? How is the clinic supposed to tell whether a patient is a rape victim or not, especially if this regulation tells rape victims they've got to lie about it in order to get an abortion?
Are the police going to be sending all licensed clinics the photographs and personal information of all recent rape victims so they know who can't get an abortion? (hello, privacy violation!) Or are they going to just make the clinics gamble with each abortion they perform that this particular patient isn't a rape victim that the state will then charge them all with felonies over?
And does this legislation care at any level what the victim wants? Or is the state going to be prosecuting abortion providers for giving a rape victim a desperately-wanted abortion over the objections of said rape victim?
IT'S NOBODY'S GODDAMN BUSINESS BUT MY OWN IF I CHOOSE TO ABORT BECAUSE I GOT RAPED. A BABY IS NOT LEGITIMATE EVIDENCE OF A RAPE. BUT OFC MY OWN WORD DOESN'T COUNT FOR SHIT AND FUCKING LOOK AT ALL THE RAPISTS THAT ACTUALLY GET CONVICTED AND THROWN IN JAIL.
/breathes
/please pray/hope/whatever that this bill doesn't pass and also that I never get raped
/PLEASE NEW MEXICO PLEASE DON'T DO THIS I WANT TO STAY LIKING LIVING HERE
Seriously, when someone's word that they're raped is believable enough to deny them abortion based on it but not believable enough to for a conviction, something is fucking wrong.
I hope this bill never passes, it would be so wrong!
fuck the GOP and this lady can go straight to hell. Do no pass go, do not collect $200.
Please go on about how this is going to lower rape in the state of NM? If anything, any man seeking to forcibly get a woman pregnant will rejoice at this, because once the baby is here then he can sue for visitation rights and continue to abuse the woman. Wow. It's like it was written by a panel of rapists or something, I can't even.
but srsly abortion providers have it so rough...its times like these that i want to become one.
Of course, none of this really matters since they're clearly just doing this out of malice toward women and not out of any actual desire to catch rapists.