Rep. Alan Dick Sends “Clarifying Statement” About Requiring Men’s Permission for Abortion
Rep. Alan Dick has issued a “clarifying statement” to The Mudflats in response to communications his office has received regarding the article Help, Help! There’s an Elephant in My Uterus! The statement, including an apology, was issued via the House Majority Secretary, and was intended to clarify comments Dick made during a HESS committee meeting on March 13.
In that meeting, Dick stated, as reported in the article (emphasis was Rep. Dick’s):
“If I thought that the man’s signature was required… required, in order for a woman to have an abortion, I’d have a little more peace about it…”
He also stated in the same meeting, regarding pregnant women:
“…I don’t think it’s really her pregnancy, because it’s their pregnancy and if anything that decision to have an abortion should be made … not only by the woman, but the man who is also involved.”
He has now issued the following statement (my emphasis added):
Clarifying Statement:
Last week in a committee hearing on funding of abortions, I made a less than artful comparison. I apologize for my comment. I’m pro-life and my position on abortion is public. Sometimes things that we say while discussing sensitive issues could be said better and when it comes to our attention that something we said has offended someone I believe the right thing to do is to acknowledge the mistake and apologize.
I have received several phone calls from women who were offended. I’ve listened to what they said. I realize how what I said could be taken to be hurtful – it was for the women who called – and I apologize. I was trying to make a point that if the law makes a man responsible (and rightly so) for a child he has fathered – it might also require that he be informed before a decision is made to terminate the life of his unborn child. I have reconsidered my thoughts in light of the comments from those who called and will be more careful in how I phrase my thoughts in the future.
It appears that Rep. Dick has revised his position from requiring that a man who has impregnated a woman seeking abortion give consent, to requiring that he be informed.
There was no clarification about what would happen if the impregnator was a woman’s rapist, or father, or abuser, or how paternity would be determined beforehand. No word about how it would be enforced, or what would legally happen to a woman or a doctor if it wasn’t. No word on how a signature would be validated, or what notarization or witnesses might be necessary to prove the signature was real. Nothing about what happens if a man and a woman disagree, or if a man refuses to acknowledge the notification, or if he can’t be contacted.
Alaskans recently passed a law via ballot proposition requiring that parents of anyone under the age of 18 seeking an abortion be notified. Rep. Dick is now saying that grown women, over the age of 18 should be required to inform the men that impregnate them. Are men the de facto parents who must be involved in an adult woman’s most private, personal and difficult decision? And would a 17-year old now be required to notify both her parents and her impregnator beforehand?
While fathering a child who is born brings with it certain legal obligations, as Rep. Dick notes, there is no legal obligation for a man who impregnates a woman with a pregnancy she chooses not to bring to term.
Regardless of the degree of sincerity of Rep. Dick’s apology for hurt feelings, or his promise to be more careful about how he phrases his thoughts in the future, the problem actually lies with lawmakers seeking to foster policy that disempowers women from making personal choices about their health, their own bodies, and their self-determination.
It’s not just about legislators being “pro-life.” It’s about people like Senator Fred Dyson who thinks that women need a forced ultrasound so they make a “measured decision” instead of an “emotional” one when contemplating abortion. It’s about Senators like Cathy Giessel, Charlie Huggins, John Coghill, and Donny Olson who have co-sponsored Alaska’s forced ultrasound bill right along with Dyson. It’s about limiting reproductive services for poor women. It’s about defunding Planned Parenthood. And it’s about an attitude that women need controlling, need counseling, need guidance, need to be told what to do, need permission, need approval. It’s about the belief that women aren’t capable and thoughtful and reasonable, and able to decide what is best for ourselves.
Until women understand what real and immediate threats there are to our privacy, our health, and our basic rights to self – and if we don’t speak out, act out, and vote appropriately, we will be legislated back to the 18th century.
Does this mean that if I have a moral objection to war the government can not use my tax dollars?
I still don’t understand why he thinks a legal adult female should be forced by law to inform the alleged father before having an abortion.When it comes to trauma/DV/,S.A informing the alleged father could put the pregnant woman at risk for her life from the violent partner.Fathering a child brings certain responsibilities, Rep. Dick states. What’s his point? There is no comparison between a male parent being legally required to pay child support and a woman’s decision to terminate the pregnancy.This is obviously a well thought out strategy (with a very strong male bias) to block access to reproductive rights for women. Plus I detect a slight inference on the part of Rep. Dick: if men have to pay child support (poor things) than they should have a say in whether a preg.goes to term or not.This proposed legislation is a superb example of Big Brother over reach.
How it used to be in Alberta, Canada in 1971
.
Prior to a major legal change in this year, therapeutic abortion was unmentionable in Canada. Some progressive hospitals had mechanisms whereby their medical committee might approve one under limited conditions, most did not. These same hospitals might have a full 8 bed ward used to care for women recovering (hopefully) from infected illegal (hired or self-induced) abortions. Yes, women died.
I worked with one of the first abortion referral services in Canada. TAs were declared to be legal provided they were approved by a committee in the hospital. Most hospitals didn’t know or want to know how to run a committee so they dragged their feet for a year or so after the law was changed. We sent a lot of women to Montana, California, Oregon or Washington State. Women with connections flew to Europe. We knew of four illegal abortionists working in the city- from competent to awful. We mutually swore that no matter how desperate our clients, we would not refer to these persons.
The problem was not money, it was time.
The first committees were set up this way:
A woman has to determine she is pregnant- old tests were not effective before 6 weeks of pregnancy, even if she was very self aware and checked immediately. If she decided to wait and see if her period came th following month, she had to leave the country.
She had to go to her GP for a referrral to one of the few gynaecologits willing to do the abortion. He sent her for a second opinion that this is being done for her health, not convenience. He also sent her for a psychiatrist’s opinion. The psychiatrist is supposed to judge that she is so vulnerable/unstable that she needs the operation- not that she is sane and normal. Some resented this and were very abusive- some only felt the woman :”needed” an abortion if she cried in front of them. This is three or four intenal exams (2 GPs and 2 Gynes) and one psychiatrist. The paperwork is all collected and submitted to the committee, which meets once a week.
(Hey, in previous years the woman had to appear before the committee.)
Then they try to get her into hospital in time and the hospital stay for a d&c was expected to take two days.
Try and get all that done before 12 weeks gestational. Medicale covered the doctor aps but not the operation.
Early on, regardless of her age, a woman had to have her husband sign a witnessed form. One woman had to drive hundred miles to the federel penitentiary to get her husband’s signature,even though she hadn’t seen the man for several years.
But then, Alberta is sort of Texas North. To “allow” a woman to have a tubal ligation, they used the “rule of 120”- her age times the number of living children she had was supposed to be 120.
So, y’know- I hope this current mess is finally waking women up- especially young women two generations later who take for granted that they will be treated like competent human beings with ordinary rights to medical care. We had to fight bloody hard for safe medical care and it can be lost very quickly.
And I think for insane men, religion is just an excuse.
The fundementalists have always been waiting- but women haven’t been paying attention. Still aren’t.
.
Rep ALAN DICK: I tried to inform the father of the impending abortion because he had lied to me when he said he was vasectomized. So I called his wife (the mother of his six kids) and left a message to call me back, pretending it was about work. He was more than happy to send me the fees for the procedure, since he didn’t want me calling his wife back with the real details.
I don’t think he wanted to be “required to be informed” about making a decision because he was “the man who is also involved.” He especially did not want his wife in on the decision. I mean, she would have been in on the decision if I had sued him for child support had I kept it.
Where did he get any rights in the first place? He lied to me about not only his marital status but his reproductive status.
No, sir, the entire burden was put on me. I owed him nothing. Your attempt to put government in my uterus adds insult to the injury he did 25 years ago. Think it through.
A woman contemplating abortion will probably consider discussing the situation with her partner, if they have that kind of relationship. Chances are, if she’s not able to discuss it with him, the government forcing itself into the process is not going to make it better, I promise you.
JUST A DICK HEAD
Hey, Dick — bottom liine, here’s what we’re all telling you: Since the law(s) ain’t broke, cease and desist immediately your inanely assinine attempts to ‘fix’ it.
There; does that ‘clarify’ for you any confusion you might have over how people of sanity and sense are reacting to your presumptive intrusions into their lves? I surely do hope so, because you are becoming a right royal pain in the adz. beth.
Mr Dick, My body, My choice full stop. Face it buddy, the only thing you can do is make the choice a dangerous one for my sisters and me. You are entitled to your opinion and that is all. You are NOT entitled to govern my body. No one is asking you to have an abortion. Those of us who choose not to procreate will NOT be forced by you or anyone else to carry a baby, to say nothing of raising a child that we don’t want. And that should not mean that you should legislate how, when or with whom I am allowed to express intimacy either. Get away from me and stay away. It isn’t your business.
I suppose I should be used to this by now, but I still find myself seething whenever I read these kinds of things. The same party that says “Government isn’t the solution–it’s the problem,” and insists it wants to shrink government and its influence on The Little Guy or Gal, does its level best to insert that same regulatory behemoth into the most intimate, private relationships we have.
What happens between a woman and her doctor has to be between the woman and the doctor. Requiring a doctor to perform unnecessary tests, withhold information or read a speech written by a group of rich white middle aged men who don’t know anything about obstetrics and gynecology (and don’t want to) is wrong. In fact, it’s beyond wrong. It’s an abomination. It’s the vilest of violations.
We need to respect the individual right for a woman to decide what’s best in that situation. The GOP folks are always talking about the evils of the “Nanny State” and here they are,trying to legislate women into behaving in their version of a responsible manner. You can’t do that. You just have to trust people to do what’s right on their own. And most of them do.
I would think that women and men who are in a healthy relationship would talk about whether a pregnancy should be continued or not without government intervention. The only thing Rep Davis’s clarification clarifies is that he clearly thinks women aren’t mature enough to make independent decisions about their bodies.
AK Magpie,
I testified at the hearing. We almost didn’t even have to speak because Beth Kertula (she’s on the committee) registered an objection to the way the bill was presented. Seems Keller didn’t follow proper protocol. She withdrew her objection so that all the people who were signed up to testify could be heard for the record and says she plans to formally object to the bill today – Friday.
Well, gee. As long a he feels more comfortable with what’s going on in my life…
It doesn’t seem to me that he’s changed his mind. He’s just going to be more “careful” in how he expresses his crazy ideas. That’s pure PR. I still think that male legislators need to stop trying to legislate women’s health issues. And they’re not concerned about morality either; it’s all about control.
The fetus is physically part of the man, and thus should be partially his, as a born child would be (depending on legal custody status, of course, which applies to both genders). Housing this thing which is part your DNA, and part his, in your body does not logically make it yours. If having something inside of you signifies ownership, would I be able to swallow gold jewelry and claim it? The phrase “wants control of women’s uteruses” offends me very much, because it make woman look very much as if they would like to sidestep the law. The government does have the power to pass a law that controls a seemingly personal decision of yours. Whyy do you think they can’t? They already control that you have to feed your children, and clothe them, and as Rep. Dick stated that each parental party may have to be paying to support the child.
They control if you are required to wear clothes in public, when and where you are able to shoot humans and animals. They even control parts of your body, such as what plants you ingest or where you urinate. Why do you feel like the uterus is only yours? There are moral, political grounds you could take with this discussion. I hope that you realize the disservice you do to your cause by saying these things that you can’t have thought out very thoroughly.
And on the subject of “What if the father is the woman’s parent, abuser or rapist?”… Those three relationships to have had with the woman are all three illegal. And the government should absolutely be notified so the father may be imprisoned.
You have got to be kidding me. Look, if you want a man to own your body, go right ahead, but most women are glad to see the days gone where we were considered someone’s property. A woman does not “steal” sperm, it was donated, if you would like to continue your analogy of stealing jewelry and swallowing it.
There is no law that women are sidestepping. Woman have long had the legal right to choose whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy, and the law gives her the final say and requires no man’s permission. As to rape, incest and abuse–sure in a perfect world, the offender is caught and jailed, but you must open your eyes to reality. They are rarely caught, prosecution is even rarer if they are caught, and if they are convicted, the penalties are ridiculously low and they’re out in a matter of months or a few years to harm again. In many instances, the victims life may be in further danger by disclosing, and no restraining order will stop a bullet.
Delusions of grandeur. These fascist legislators need a reality check. They were not elected to be grand inquisitors. America’s founding fathers, would claim these law makers wrapped in their mystical biblical tales, interpreted by charlatan allegorists are traitors.
The assault and injury of rape, is largely mental not physical. These Republican criminals that steal our citizenship by claiming for-profit corporations have person-hood, want control over women’s uterus and their lives. How is this any different than raping them? Perhaps it is much worse!
They can’t regulate business, finance, banking, the energy industry, environmental stewardship, yet they want total control over the uterus. They refuse universal health care, equal education, healthy foods, a livable wage. As soon as you’re born, you are on you own. Once born, you could be assassinated, indefinitely detained, tortured. If only there were uterus lobbyists, that could grease the power hungry palms of the politicians.
The sanctity of mitosis, holy sperm, holy egg. Meanwhile 60% of every tax payer dollar goes into the war machine to kill other people for their resources and we invest nothing to pass on a healthy planet to our children.
We need to keep in mind that it wasn’t until 1972, when the US Senate figured women have equal rights compared to men. So there are many in our society that are still warped and delusional.
In the end, the Republicans are simply clowns, because there is no means to uphold their insane desire to have dominions over women and the uterus. Most married men have evolved over the past 40 yrs to understand even in marriage they don’t got ownership rights of the wife or her uterus. What happens to the sanctity of marriage when Republican politicians get complete control over women? And who besides a Republican authoritarian loon wants to be married to Stepford wife?
Someone got himself a new etch-a-sketch … or is that a shovel? Good luck to Dickie and The Gang. You are gonna need it!
Sounds like we need every woman of voting age registered and to the polls in November. I know a lot of us men ready to join you ladies in voting out these …
so i guess men should inform their life partners if they get a vasectomy. or if they want Viagra. or if they want to be circumcised.
you know, i live in Oman. it’s just next to Saudi Arabia. here, abortion is illegal, except in the case of rape or incest. The Pill is OTC. what does this mean? The Ibadhi Muslim Sultanate of Oman is more liberal than many born-again Christians
There were only about 20 people speaking about this bill today, and it was about evenly split pro and con. Please make your objection to this bill known to your legislators as well as the House HESS committee members.
I am still angry about his stance. Mr. Dick, Keep your vote, your legislation, your opinion and your public and private statements out of our uteruses. Just STFU. You have no say.
Take our country back! The gop taliban parties call to vote always goes.
But lets look ahead to what a President man with a name like a kat (mittens) will look like.
Voting fees. White men free. White women $50.00
Non-whites $200. But same price for non white women. It’s a bargain!
Health care. Only for the wealthy. All others we will harvest your organs when the wealthy need them.
Pure water, clean air, functioning environment, open spaces, safe cities. Do not worry the rich will be ok.
Labor Unions, minimum wage, weekend’s middle class…Don’t make me laugh….
Homosexual? You will be stoned to death.
Abortion Prayed to end it. Go to Mexico for one? Stoned to death with rocks used on queers.
There is no bottom. There is no limit to what ignorant people can do.
Ahhhhh amerika.
http://icegals.blogspot.com
Those knitted uteruses– I wonder if we can surreptitiously get women with those standing behind the Republican Reactionary candidates at speeches, and then get them to hold them up when the camera’s on them?
I think they should be required to wear them as lapel pins.
Well, they are certainly more interested in uteruses than in the country – no need to wear an American flag. They have forgotten (and don’t understand) what that flag represents. But then they don’t understand anything about the uterus either.
I suppose what comes next is that the mother will be required to get the baby daddy’s permission to work during pregnancy and after, because some will be morally offended if she doesn’t stay home to take care of the coming child and then the infant. And then her clothing choices will have to be OK’d because someone could be offended at those choices.
Sir, your positions morally offend me. I am affronted and disgusted on the deepest spiritual and religious levels and I’m a practicing Christian. I do not think that my money should be spent to support you in any way and hereby require you to submit not only your federal and state tax returns, but an itemized household budget, exact to the penny, which you will be paid to have audited by a AAA rated auditor yearly. I also require you to have a board of trustees appointed by those whom you have morally offended to approve every single specific expenditure, investment, or any other financial action prior to its being executed. This means, if you go out to dinner, that you will have to take them with you to the restaurant to pre-approve you selections and the tip. Such trustees will be paid $500 per hour or 50% of your total income, whichever is more.
And I’m done looking under rocks to see where these guys come from. There IS no “under” in the Republican’s two dimensional world.
Agree. And again it’s the bloody neanderthal MEN thinking they have a perfect right to legislate all women out of any position of self determination.
Maybe if we all have forced hysterectomies, we wouldn’t be to hysterical and could make rational decisions. What a weenie.
More women these days are getting college degrees than men. Logically, that says that women as a group are actually smarter than men and have longer attention spans, are able to digest more difficult material and look at problems from many angles. That means women make more informed decisions automatically and don’t need the assistance of –a a group–low information, short attention span, and more prone to physical violence bunch of men.
I think that a good addendum to the law would be to require all men to reveal, on their first date, their use of viagra, rogaine, etc. which increase s*x appeal so that women can be on the look out for these idiots they might be required to inform.
Does anyone have information about what happened at the legislative feedback meeting about this legislation that was scheduled for 3 pm in Anchorage?
http://gavelalaska.org/media/?media_id=HHSS120322A
starting around minute 15
Thanks. I didn’t know about the archives.
https://www.facebook.com/events/275404699202916/
4/28 noon at 9th and I St. 🙂
another repub trying to stuff the genie (women’s health care) back into the bottle and take the repubs over the cliff (vote obama 2012). don’t think this is gonna fly.
Haven’t you heard? It’s all the Democrats’ fault for making this such an issue.
It’s about time the Alaskan medical community step up and purge this nonsense.
Mr. Dick, I am offended. I am offended that as an Alaskan Rep. you are pushing for legislation that you are so clueless about.
Sir, I have worked for over 17 years in women’s health care and I am disgusted that you think It is your job to pry into a women’s most personal decisions. It is none of your business! You can keep what you think is the moral high ground in your own family but do not push you values or beliefs onto mine.
You have no idea what you talk about and that offends me.
pups- has anyone heard about a women’s march the end of april?
“I was trying to make a point that if the law makes a man responsible (and rightly so) for a child he has fathered…”
Let ME clarify something. The law makes a man responsible for a minimum amount of monetary support, and creates a ceiling as to how much of his income is subject to calculating support. (Civil Rule 90.3) If he chooses not to pay, there may be consequences, but they rarely include criminal charges. If the mother has custody of the child and fails to provide basic food and clothing – minimum support – she is subject to criminal charges of neglect. Her responsibility to risk health dangers of birth, and to take responsibility for raising the child and liability for the child’s actions far outweighs the fact that the father has to write a check each month.
Even with this ‘clarification’, as far as I am concerned, Rep Dick is still living up to his name.
I’m not sure how it works, but isn’t the father only “responsible” for children once their born? Until that time, I believe the woman is on her own. Is he required to provide funds for her pre-natal care? If not, I say it’s all up to her. Her body, her responsibility, her choice.
Hmm, you actually might be onto something. A spouse ordered to pay child support should be charged with neglect if they do not pay. This goes both ways of course, I know some men with custody and the wife is paying, although this is not the norm. I also think that in most, if not all cases, the father should be subject to prenatal expenses. Even in cases of rape and incest. In those situations, the women should also have complete control and decision making authority in deciding on whether to abort or not.
Regarding rep Dick’s comment. I’m a little bothered about a blanket assessment that the father does not need to be informed. Most comments above are looking at a pregnancy of a single woman, or the cases of rape or incest. But in a marriage, I have trouble with the possibility that as the husband, I would be completely in the dark regarding the knowledge or decision. Not sure if using the law is the right way to force notification in this situation, maybe it just means the marriage isn’t based on what I would have thought it was if the woman has to hide or lie about it to her husband. but even in a poor marriage, I think I should at least be notified? Still sorting out the different scenarios, please don’t attack me for it, just looking for other thoughts on this.
I had an acquaintance once who didn’t notify her husband. Believe me. She had reason not to tell him and reason to abort the child. She was in the middle of getting ready to leave this highly mentally, verbally, and physically abusive man. Because of the beatings, she was afraid of damage to any child. She also didn’t want any ties to him once she left. No legal reason for him to be involved with her as she had reason to fear for her life. She was able to leave him in secret and disappear. I don’t know what happened to her, but I hope her husband never found her.
I think in her case, not only did she feel a child would be a danger to her future well being because of the legal ties, but that it would be cruel and negligent on her part to subject a child to that man.
Cortez-
In the context of the hearing about HB363, Mr Dick’s remarks were decidedly out of bounds.
It proposes to disallow any public monies being spent on abortions.
As the only real legal exceptions to that are medically-necessary for safety of a woman or for rape /incest victims it is a narrow group of women we’re talking about- POOR sick women and poor harmed women.
In general women who have health issues which mean pregnancy termination is a sad but necessary course have shared that with their partners or people who can help support them .
Mr Dick’s remarks in the same hearing about shopping for doctors and all put his notions of “medically necessary” in a nasty light and make a joke out of his concern for men being informed or whatever his story is today.
In the larger set of issues surrounding abortion in general- not on the public dime abortion debate- the issue of demanding a woman do this and that ignores the larger reality that most women tell their partners and often those partners are included, at the woman’s invitation, in the decision making.
Requiring that women include partners whether by informing or “permission” in this decision making process, across the board, opens a huge set of issues for women at risk as Baker’s Dozen’s friend is an example of.
The gains in public understanding and remedies for domestic violence, rape, incest, and all manner of quiet epidemics woman have lived with forever are very, very important and are on the verge of being lost . This is an enormously important part of where the gains have been made- the line in the sand that a woman’s body belongs to her, not to a partner, not to a possible-child , even loving, trusted partners and much wanted pregnancies gone awry.
SB191 is a different kettle o crap than the House bill and starts out ”
“(b) Consent to an abortion is informed and voluntary… ”
http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/get_bill_text.asp?hsid=SB0191A&session=27
Legal definitions of informed consent are supposed to be about being informed about procedure well enough that a person can make a reasoned decision to accept or decline a medical procedure .
This proposed bill skews that basic notion by insisting the individual submit, under threat of being denied a medical procedure, to an invasive and medically unnecessary transvaginal probe in the name of making a “voluntary” decision.
This is outrageous. It makes a mockery of any valid notion of “informed”, “voluntary” and “consent”.
i am voluntarily informing those Senators they will never have my consent to such crap and if this idiocy passes , I consent to volunteer to assist and aid all attempts to inform my neighbors of what this is and get these yahoos out of office.
Go Get ‘im, AKM.
Ditto. Also, too.
There’s a movement started for knitters and crocheters to knit/crochet a uterus or VJJ for each male rep in congress – with the thought if they get their own uterus, they’ll stay out of ours. Can you imagine a politicians office filled with these:
http://www.governmentfreevjj.com/
Reminds me of joking around with my sister about teaching my nieces about reproduction. We were a little tipsy, and I got the idea of changing the words to “I’m a Little Teapot.”
I’m a little uterus,
short and stout.
Here is my ovary,
here is my other ovary.
Etc.
=)
It would get the point across. Something has to be done and this physical showing just might be enough!
Of course of voting them out would be better yet:-)
I suggest instead, that all women get rolling pins. Because if we all get our own, we’ll refuse theirs.
Or maybe toothpicks.
Alan Dick, Alaska’s ultimate bush pilot! Getting into women’s vaginas the old fashioned way!
Another man who thinks he has the right to control women. This really chaps my hide when another person thinks that I no longer have the ability, the smarts, the RIGHT to make decisions for myself! My mother may have been able to get away with it, but a man who I don’t know and don’t care to know, thinks he can make decisions for me – no way.
It is time for women to stand united and follow this: http://www.webpronews.com/coming-in-april-no-sex-for-anyone-2012-03. Unfortunately, this will not work for the majority of women in these men-dominated homes where they have already lost their rights.
Thanks, AKM, for standing up and keeping this dialogue open to all.
Is it possible that Rep. Dick is secretly aligned with the mullahs in the Taliban whose opinion he apparently favors? Do we know his middle name? Perhaps it is really Alan Abdullah Dick.
Yes, snark, but with passion.
Where is his apology for calling women’s doctors liars, requiring a panel of drs, and equating rape to objecting to abortion?
The girls today don’t realize what women went through to get the rights that are now being taken away. It just makes me sick to read about these people who want to control every aspect of our lives. Angry. Angry. Angry.
i am with you stefani. i, too, am angry at the callous way mr. dick and others think about these issues.
it defies credulity.
Like I said on his facebook page (which I was quickly banned from)- if it’s not my pregnancy, why did I get the bill??
Basically, he is saying he is sorry he was caught saying what he meant.
Lee and Lisa are a lot alike that way.
Excuse me, Lee. Alan Dick and Lisa are a lot alike that way.
Amen and hallelujah, AKM!
As renee99503 @58 noted on the
https://themudflats.net/2012/03/20/help-help-theres-an-elephant-in-my-uterus/#comments
post Mr Dick also said:
March 21, 2012 at 3:33 PMI just listened to the whole audio of the “Dick” hearing from 03/13/12. Here’s another quote from Rep. Dick:
“We talk about a woman who is a victim of rape, and yet uh, that’s physical rape and yet there are some people in this room and maybe in the audience that feel ethically violated by having to participate in our state funding abortions that violate our conscience. In the case of rape a woman is physically violated. In this case there is other people who are ethically and morally violated by what is ‘going on, so I would like to say that if we are going to have a doctor say, `ok I think this is medically necessary’, I’ve been to doctors before who are very quick to say, well I need another doctors opinion. They didn’t want to get involved in being the only one involved in making a decision. So I think if there was at least 2 or 3 doctors all concurring that this was very very necessary for the life of the woman and/or the child, then I could live with that, but to just have one doctor say I think its necessary that hangs us all out in a place we don’t want to be.”
(roughly 32 minutes in)
So, Mr Dick also thinks doctor shopping or panels is/are a good idea to make sure there is no non-medically necessary abortion going on? hmmm?
After you require the man to be notified or give consent or whatever the story is today?
Because , should we forget here, this nasty HB363 is about not allowing state funds to be used for abortions. The only kind of abortions in question with current already-on-the-books law are those deemed medically necessary and/ or related to rape/incest.
So- Mr Dick, we’ll be having a sick or traumatized woman running through a panel of docs to make YOU feel better, getting consent or whatever the story is today from the man involved, before she is deemed eligible for abortion services ? Mm, hmmm.
Need to go read all the text of SB191 to find out if she must then with all her lil “ok” slips put up with the re-traumatization inherent in the sonagram game but have to say , I really think you are full of it sir.
If for no other reason than having listened to you talk about how this could all be solved if people would pick-click-and-give to someone who would provide abortion services from an NGO charity…and then boy, oh, boy the state and you all would be off the hook over the public money for abortion worry.
Pfft.
He still doesn’t get it. Men like him like to have control over women. His statement proves this fact!
The Republicans in the US are starting to sound and act a lot like the Mullahs of Iran.
With all the economic and social problems today, just WTF is this obsession with women and the decisions they make about themselves in a free and liberal society?
If Republicans have a problem with the US being considered a Liberal Society, take a good look at Religious / Conservative Societies like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
I fear this is where the US Conservatives are headed. How soon before women in the US have to cover there heads, wear dresses that cover there ankles and speak only when spoken too.
Talibangelical
Unfortunatly they will never see the light. Time to vote these nut jobs out of office.
the republi-CONS are the equivalent of the american taliban….all about “do as we say…”…usually “not what we do” though
He’s obviously terrified of women.
Well said – maybe he should be. Not in a violent way, but politically.
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This is a bit historical, so Rep Alan Dick, I think this might be an important read for you:
http://www.themindisaterriblething.com/2012/02/choices-of-man.html