The Bestest Anti-Choice Legislation Name EVAH

[CountDeMoney]

H.R.3541 -- Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011 (Introduced in House - IH)

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.+3541:

Republicans color the abortion debate
By Dana Milbank, Published: December 6

Rep. Trent Franks established his credentials as a civil rights leader last year when the Arizona Republican argued that, because of high abortion rates in black communities, African Americans were better off under slavery.

But the congressman doesn't just talk the talk. On Tuesday, he chaired a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on legislation he is introducing that would protect African American women from themselves — by making it harder for them to have abortions.
"In 1847, Frederick Douglass said, 'Right is of no sex, truth is of no color, God is the father of us all and all are brethren,' " Franks proclaimed as he announced what he calls the "Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011."

Drawing a line from the Civil War to the suffragist movement to defeating Hitler to the civil rights era, Franks determined that "there is one glaring exception" in the march toward equality. "Forty to 50 percent of all African American babies, virtually one in two, are killed before they are born," he said. "This is the greatest cause of death for the African Americans." Franks called the anti-abortion fight "the civil rights struggle that will define our generation."

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), who, unlike Franks, is African American and a veteran of the civil rights movement, took a different historical view. "I've studied Frederick Douglass more than you," said Con­yers. "I've never heard or read him say anything about prenatal nondiscrimination."

Orwellian naming aside, the House Republicans' civil rights gambit (which follows passage of a similar bill in Franks's Arizona and marks an attempt to get an abortion bill to the House floor before year's end) points to an interesting tactic among conservatives: They have taken on a new, and somewhat suspect, interest in the poor and in the non-white. To justify their social policies, they have stolen the language of victimization from the left. In other words, they are practicing the same identity politics they have long decried.

Newt Gingrich, now threatening Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination, tried a similar argument when he argued for the elimination of "truly stupid" child labor laws and suggested that students could replace the janitors in their schools. He further explained that he was trying to help children in poor neighborhoods who have "no habits of working."

Developer Donald Trump, who owns a Virginia country club that counts Gingrich as a member, announced this week that he would join with Gingrich to help "kids in very, very poor schools" — by extending his "Apprentice" TV reality show concept to all of 10 lucky kids. "We're going to be picking 10 young wonderful children, and we're going to make them apprenti," Trump said. "We're going to have a little fun with it."

This "fun" might sound less patronizing if these conservatives displayed a similar concern for the well-being of the poor and the non-white during debates over budget cuts. But, whatever the motives, lawmakers and conservative activists were not bashful when they held a pre-hearing news conference Tuesday, standing beside posters directed at Latinos and African Americans ("black children are an endangered species").

"It is horrific that in America today, babies are being killed based on their race and based on their sex," protested Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America. Other participants in the news conference suggested that Planned Parenthood is "excited to take money specifically earmarked to kill a black baby" and linked abortion-rights advocates to eugenics, euthanasia and the Holocaust.

These conservatives raise a good point about the troubling implications of abortion based on gender selection — although the problem exists mostly in places such as China, beyond the reach of the House Judiciary Committee. Harder to follow is the logic behind the argument that African American women are racially discriminating against their own unborn children.

"As John Quincy Adams so eloquently stated," Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) said, "how can we expect God to keep blessing America when we're treating brothers and sisters this way simply because of their race?"

"This morning, you can walk into a clinic and get an abortion if you find out your child is African American," said Patrick Mahoney, a conservative activist.

If you find out your child is African American? So a black woman would have an abortion because she discovers — surprise! — that her fetus is also black?

Before the audience had a chance to digest that, Mahoney began shouting about how abortion is "lynching" — frightening a child in the front row, who cried out and hugged his mother.

[Martinus]

I seriously think we should start burning down churches and hanging people who go to a church more than once a year. It's the only way to be rid of these idiots.

[Neil]

I seriously think we should start burning down churches and hanging people who go to a church more than once a year. It's the only way to be rid of these idiots.

If we start lynching anybody, it's going to be you.

[Razgovory]

That's why Marty is such an endearing person.  He's usually worse then who ever he is denouncing.

[Scipio]

That's why Marty is such an endearing person.  He's usually worse then who ever he is denouncing.

In the immortal words of (mistakenly attribtuted) Voltaire, I disapprove what Marty says, but I defend to the death his right to fuck off and die.

[Barrister]

I seriously think we should start burning down churches and hanging people who go to a church more than once a year. It's the only way to be rid of these idiots.

The word "church" does not appear anywhere in the article. 

[crazy canuck]

I seriously think we should start burning down churches and hanging people who go to a church more than once a year. It's the only way to be rid of these idiots.

Since everyone mentioned in the article likely attends a church more than once per year I am not sure which side you are taking on this issue.  I guess you missed the part of law school that taught about freedom of religion and expression. Or more likely such concepts are unknown in Poland and so you did not have the opportunity to learn them.

[Razgovory]

Actually, years ago I thought that a civil rights approach would be a fruitful one for the anti-abortion lobby.  You aren't going to convince many people with hellfire and brimstone rhetoric, but if you start arguing that government and private citizens shouldn't legislate who is and isn't a person and it's best to err on the side of caution in such matters, you might get more support.

[crazy canuck]

Actually, years ago I thought that a civil rights approach would be a fruitful one for the anti-abortion lobby.  You aren't going to convince many people with hellfire and brimstone rhetoric, but if you start arguing that government and private citizens shouldn't legislate who is and isn't a person and it's best to err on the side of caution in such matters, you might get more support.

Yeah, that is a pursuasive argument.  Maybe the most pursuasive.

[The Minsky Moment]

Actually, years ago I thought that a civil rights approach would be a fruitful one for the anti-abortion lobby.  You aren't going to convince many people with hellfire and brimstone rhetoric, but if you start arguing that government and private citizens shouldn't legislate who is and isn't a person and it's best to err on the side of caution in such matters, you might get more support.

Very difficult to take that line if what you are arguing for is coercive government action that imposes criminal sanction. 

[crazy canuck]

Actually, years ago I thought that a civil rights approach would be a fruitful one for the anti-abortion lobby.  You aren't going to convince many people with hellfire and brimstone rhetoric, but if you start arguing that government and private citizens shouldn't legislate who is and isn't a person and it's best to err on the side of caution in such matters, you might get more support.

Very difficult to take that line if what you are arguing for is coercive government action that imposes criminal sanction.

Why? 

[Ideologue]

Because you wind up in the same place, from a more "nuanced" port of origin.  Err on the side of caution all you want: you're still putting one person in jail for exercising control over their body against an unwelcome occupant.  Sometimes that they didn't even consensually assume the risk of letting in.

[Razgovory]

Because you wind up in the same place, from a more "nuanced" port of origin.  Err on the side of caution all you want: you're still putting one person in jail for exercising control over their body against an unwelcome occupant.  Sometimes that they didn't even consensually assume the risk of letting in.

So?  Control over the body isn't absolute.  You can't store illegal material in there, or sell yourself into slavery.

I wonder, can you try a doctor for trespassing or something similar because he did surgery on you which you did not explicitly consent to because you were unconscious?  Say you were in a car accident and had a gear shift stuck through your chest.  You fall into a coma immediately and the ambulance takes you to the emergency room.  The doctors do surgery and take out the gear stick.  Is the Doctor an "unwelcome occupant"?

[Ideologue]

No, and you're even obliged to pay for it under restitutionary law.

But that is rather not the same thing.

As for unwelcome occupants generally--in my home, unless they have a legal right to be standing in it, I most assuredly can kill them.  Why not in my body?  What if my body is in my home and I instruct the fetus to leave and it fails to comply?

[DGuller]

Can you actually legally kill a trespassing minor, anywhere in US?