An update on the anti-abortion ordinance being considered in Bakersfield, California. It's not just Texas which is fighting this battle, there are dozens of local efforts to restrict the right to reproductive health care.
Last month's action:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The ordinance, if passed, would clumsily define human life as starting at fertilizaton and allow any "aggrieved" person to sue anyone performing an abortion (or following do-not-resuscitate instructions in a hospital, or utilizing in-vitro fertilization) for specified damages. It could also be twisted so as to justify restricting certain forms of birth control.
A quiet Bakersfield City Council meeting for August was convened last night after a long, long, long invocation citing several verses of the Bible and justifying the "In God We Trust" inscription on the chamber wall (another fight for another day.)
The crowd was comparatively sparse given that it was an interim meeting at which nothing substantial was to be decided. Follow me below the orange zygote...
The main new development was that the principal proponent of the measure, a "local" preacher (he doesn't actually live in the city although he's registered to vote here) was up to speak during the public comment section of the meeting.
The preacher wasted about a fifth of his time bemoaning the fact that he hadn't made the cut to speak during last month's meeting, a good omen.
His primary argument cited a recent visit by prominent loony Alan Keyes. Keyes, he said, bemoaned the rise of "irrationality" in public life and cited the "right to abortion" as an example. (SCOTUS may or may not agree with him.)
The preacher, Tim Palmquist, closed by submitting on paper a memorandum he didn't have time to read aloud assuring the City Council that the city couldn't be successfully sued if it passed the anti-abortion ordinance.
(I believe appropriate civil-rights advocates have already assured the city otherwise, in detail.)
He was followed by several local women pointing out that the dangers of pregnancy fall entirely upon women yet the City was considering taking away their rights in the matter, usurping jurisdiction over a medical question.
One impassioned speaker detailed the exasperation of realizing that 40 years after Roe v. Wade and 90 years after women received the right to vote, the city was even considering such an affront to women's rights and autonomy. She herself was born just a few years after women's suffrage was passed.
Another pro-ordinance speaker (also male) claimed that the country was founded on "Christian morality" yet claimed to support the ordinance on secular grounds, saying that "human rights end where another [person]'s begin."
One of his arguments was about how unfair a woman's right to abortion was to men, who aren't permitted to veto a woman's abortion decision.
(One interpretation of the proposed ordinance would allow a rapist to sue for damages should his victim choose an abortion.)
All in all this meeting was largely a rehash of prior arguments for and against (and most of the pro-ordinance speakers, by couching their arguments in strongly religious language, may have hurt their cause in any future court battle.) The real action may come next month at the September council meeting. Or possibly the proposed ordinance will simply die in embarassed silence.
We'll be there in pink, either way.