'Pro-Lifers' Save Women From Specter Of Open Health Clinics

Well, here is some good news to get your week started. If you are the sort of person who thinks the problem with America is too many women's health clinics, that is, and you'd much rather women have to seek out sketchy doctors to perform unsafe abortions, like that Kermit Gosnell fellow in Philadelphia, in which case, please stop reading and immediately go fuck yourself.

More than 50 abortion clinics across the country have closed or stopped offering the procedure since a heavy wave of legislative attacks on providers began in 2010, according to The Huffington Post's nationwide survey of state health departments, abortion clinics and local abortion-focused advocacy groups. [...]

Compounding the problem, 26 states require women to wait at least 24 hours between their consultation sessions and abortion procedures, making it twice as difficult for rural and low-income women to access abortion care.

Isn't that special? Despite a recent report that abortion is already extremely regulated and quite safe, thank you very much, "pro-lifers" have managed to pass hundreds of TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws throughout the country to force these safe and regulated clinics to shut down because (trigger warning: SARCASM) they care OH SO MUCH about women's health and safety. Like in Texas, where Gov. Rick "I'm so pro-life I've executed 261 people" Perry kept calling the legislature back to work until it passed a law to close almost all of the state's abortion clinics for failing to meet really stupid nothing-to-do-with-women's-safety requirements. Really stupid nothing-to-do-with-women's-safety requirements are all the rage in state legislatures. Our favorite -- and by favorite, we mean, makes us super stabby -- is that one bill in Kansas that required janitors' closets to be at least 50 square feet. What does the size of a janitor's closet have to do with making abortion safer? Hmm ... it is on the tip of our tongue ... Oh yes, NOTHING. But then (wink wink) that isn't really the point, is it?

Abortion is already pretty gosh-darned inaccessible in most of the country -- only about 13 percent of counties even have an abortion provider -- but you know how those "pro-lifers" are, stopping at nothing to protect the unborn. Unless, of course, the unborn need health care. In that case, according to Texas state Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, the same dimwit who authored the "shut 'em all down" bill, screw 'em because -- and no, we are not making this up -- "they're not born yet."

These laws are written and passed by people who are very confused about, you know, science and ladyparts and stuff. Like Texas state Sen. Bob Dueull, who is a "doctor" fer Chrissake, and yet thinks pregnancy only occurs after "accurate intercourse." Or Alabama state Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin,who argued that abortion is major surgery and should be regulated as such because -- and no, we are not making this up -- a baby is "the largest organ in a body."

You know, morons.

And of course, if they can't pass legislation to shut down clinics, there's always the option of shooting clinic workers , according to maybe -but-it's-rude-to-ask-gun-toting "pro-lifer" Mark S. Gietzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life. Nothing says life like killing people, huh? Heck, a few years ago, legislators in South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa even flirted with proposals to legalize murder in the name of "life," just like Jesus said except that we're pretty sure he didn't.

[ HuffPo ]