Under The Radar

I've noticed for quite some time that while the media's attention is focused on Iraq, Tsunamis and other distractions, that the legislators in the US start putting forth some of the more noxious legislation that they want to push through.

If you dig around a little bit (usually on the "back of the news"), you start to find nasty little bits of legislation that quietly take away civil rights or criminalize behaviour for no better reason than the legislator didn't happen to "like" something.

A case in point is a nasty little law in Texas that requires parental consent before a clinic can give birth control advice to a minor, and parental "notification" is required if a minor requests an abortion. Per se, this doesn't sound too bad until you think on it a bit. First of all, even as a teenager, your relationship with your doctor is _privileged_. This legislation not only breaks that privacy, it means that discussion of sexual issues with your physician becomes taboo while the patient is a teen. The motives of the law are valid - to a point. In a perfect world, teenagers would get decent sexual information from their parents. Sadly, because of the quasi-puritan part of the world we live in, most parents are desperately uncomfortable talking about sexuality at all - much less with their own children.

Teenagers, as a rule, don't listen to their parents very well - if at all. On top of that, teenagers are naturally exploring themselves as they mature into adults - that includes sexual activity. Like it or not - it happens - as is evidenced by the fact that women in their teens get pregnant every year. (And no, that's not a failing of "lapsed morals" - it's perfectly natural human behaviour) So, between a sex-ed program in Texas that only teaches Abstinence, and a law that guarantees that teenagers won't talk to their doctors about contraception and STDs, we have a lovely recipe for a bloom in both the teenage pregnancy rates, and the number of people dying of some pretty nasty diseases - like AIDS.

I'm not sure that sex education belongs as a mandatory part of the public school curriculum per se, but I do have problems with legislation that renders it effectively useless.

However, much of that is old news. Ever since G. W. Bush got into the White House various conservative political forces have been looking to him to take actions that would dismantle the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on abortion. The other day, I received the following two links in my e-mail - to little pieces of legislation introduced in the Virginia legislature at the end of 2004:

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?051+sum+HB1677
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?051+sum+HB1524

These two pieces of legislation are a rather insidious assault on the rights of a mother. The first case places an obligation on the mother, or her attending physician, to report the death of a fetus within 12 hours.

When a fetal death occurs without medical attendance, it shall be the woman's responsibility to report the death to the law-enforcement agency in the jurisdiction of which the delivery occurs within 12 hours after the delivery. A violation of this section shall be punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.

This is problematic for a few reasons that I can see. First of all, it subjects the unfortunate mother to a criminal investigation over the loss of an unborn child. Miscarriages are perfectly natural, and happen. Should the mother be held criminally responsible if this happens? I don't think so. Second, in the case of an abortion, that's a medical procedure. By mandating a report of it to law enforcement officials, not only is patient privacy being violated, the unusual step has been taken of effectively rendering each occurance as the possible subject of criminal investigation - for no good reason.

The second piece of legislation requires a physician to administer anaesthesia to the fetus prior to performing an abortion. The wording here is rather interesting:

A. For the purpose of this section a fetus is a member of the species homo sapiens from fertilization until birth and the term "reasonably clinical judgment" means a medical judgment that would be made by a reasonably prudent physician, knowledgeable about the case and the treatment possibilities with respect to the medical condition involved.

Once of the key goals of the anti-abortion movement has been to get the unborn child declared a 'person'. Here, the law proposed is making the statement "fetus is a member of the species homo sapiens" This is very dangerous wording. First of all, it makes an assertion that essentially strips a woman's rights away the moment she becomes pregnant. If you assert that an unborn child is independent of its mother, you effectively turn the woman into an object - a vessel whose purpose is solely to provide the unborn with a safe place to grow until it is viable on its own.

Now, I don't want to go into all of the nasty little implications here - that's another discussion for another day. What is of interest here is the line of behaviour. The legislation is small, and somewhat below the public radar. It's subtle, but if enough legislation of this nature is written, it creates a body of law upon which more significant actions can be taken. Such as granting a fetus the same civil rights as the rest of us (and in doing so, seriously attacking the rights of women).

There's an insidiousness about this approach, and one that bothers me. It seems not to be rooted in any noble cause per se, but rather is an outright assault on the citizens of a nation, and their freedoms. It criminalizes human behaviour, largely along some pseudo-moral lines. Basically, it appears that conservative legislators are writing legislation that criminalizes people on the basis of the legislator's personal morality.

A clear sense of right and wrong is a wonderful thing - but a blind adherence to it, with no understanding of the realities of human behaviour (such as is the case in Texas) simply creates a situation where things will get worse, not better. To argue that such undesirable behaviours are due to a lapse in morals is false logic at best. To criminalize someone for failing to report a miscarriage is a double assault on their rights. First you strip away their privacy at a traumatic time; and second, you declare them criminally responsible if they don't comply.

What's next? Legislated attendance at Church? (Freedom of Religion - but you must be religious?)