Scott Walker Bravely Signs Anti-Abortion Law In Private On Friday Afternoon Of Long Holiday Weekend

Keeping up with the anti-abortion laws coming out of the state legislatures these days is a little like playing a demented game of Whack-A-Mole: no sooner does one pop up over here for you to club over the head than another one pops up over there, and you try to club that one too, and then another one pops up somewhere else, and now you are swinging your stupid little toy club like Thor on a meth binge and not getting anywhere. And instead of a cute furry toy mole, what keeps popping up are bills designed to take away a constitutional right to privacy granted all women forty years ago. Which, when we say it like that in the era of the NSA and Edward Snowden, sounds pretty ironic!

So let us turn to the latest state to pass a law stomping all over the ladies and their ladyparts. Wisconsin has contributed so much to our culture: the Wisconsin Idea, the La Follettes,  American Movie,  people wearing large wedges of plastic cheese on their heads. Our hipster ears were into Bon Iver before he was cool! But then Wisconsin had to go and elect lazy-eyed pus sac Scott Walker as governor and a legislature full of teabagger dope fiends, and they all immediately conspired to turn Wisconsin, with its great history of progressivism, into an Ayn Rand wet dream. Oh, and while they’re at it, maybe they will sneak in a few anti-abortion laws that are the right-wing fundies’ reasons for living:

The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the bill in mid-June. Walker, a Republican, could have chosen to sign it at any time since then but decided to do it on Friday in the middle of the long 4th of July holiday weekend.

Scott Walker, profile in courage! Way to have the power of your convictions, Scott.

Under the bill, any woman seeking an abortion would have to get an ultrasound. The technician would have to point out the fetus’ visible organs and external features to the woman. Abortion providers would have to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles to perform the procedures.

Republican supporters argue the ultrasound requirement is designed to help the woman bond with the fetus and convince her to save it.

Poor wimmenz, needing someone else's help to bond with their fetus. The ultrasound can at least be performed using the transducer of the woman’s choosing, so silver lining, ladies: at least you can choose to not have a nine-inch wand jammed up your hoo-haw if the procedure can be performed less invasively. And you thought conservatives don’t care about your privacy!

The bill would also mean that two of Wisconsin’s four abortion clinics would be forced to shut down. Which, among other things, will not help Scott Walker’s awesome record at job creation, his skills at which were supposed to be the reason to elect him in the first place. We’re quite sure if the Koch brothers thought they could make a buck running abortion clinics, this would not be happening.

The ACLU and Planned Parenthood immediately announced they will sue, so at least there is a good chance that a judge will put a hold on the law until a suit can work its way through the courts, as happened in Alabama recently. There will also be lawsuits in Texas, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Arkansas, all of which have passed or are in the process of passing restrictive anti-abortion laws. Congrats to Wisconsin, that once-great beacon of progressivism, on joining such illustrious company.

Being a Penis-American, we do not worry about protecting our uterus from unwanted intrusions by the right-to-lifers, so we guess we do not care about this after all.

[ Talking Points Memo - image courtesy of Gage Skidmore]