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Why don’t we have a better condom?

Rep. Pat McElraft would like you to buy her nonsense

More on the North Carolina bill

Rachel Maddow on the North Carolina bill

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, Slate’s L.V. Anderson will be on to explain the search for a better condom. North Carolina is passing some self-contradictory abortion regulation, and anti-choicers force us to have a discussion about whether “abortion reversal” is a real thing. It’s not.

Mad Men is back on AMC and on its final run to the series finale in a mere seven episodes. The show returned with an episode titled “Severance,” and it showed that the show is just as good as it ever was at showing the 1960s era sexism that inspired second-wave feminism.

• Mad Men *

I saw some people decry this scene as over the top, but I disagree. I still see dude bros making the same kind of jokes premised on the idea that it’s hilarious that women have bodies even now in the twenty-first century.

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So the North Carolina legislature is attacking abortion access again, with a major omnibus bill that is clearly intended to make abortion much harder to get, and to shame and punish women during their abortion process. And, as is typical with abortion laws these days, the excuse is that they are doing this to protect women, doing that anti-choice thing where they paint women as dumb bunnies who are being exploited by evil abortionists and who need just need a little government-mandated guidance, perhaps a bit of force, to see that they really want their babies. Or, in lieu of that, be so hassled that the clock runs out and they don’t have a chance to abort. But yeah, the legislators love talking a big game about doing this to protect women. Huffington Post interviewed state representative Pat McElraft about this bill, and her excuse was all feigned concern about the poor women, who are basically just tall children who can get pregnant and need oh so much protection.

• North Carolina 1 *

Remember, as a general rule, these kinds of numbers antis cite tend to be pulled out of the air, so don’t trust them. The obvious reason for this waiting period is to make it a major hassle to get an abortion and also the hope is they can run out the clock, but whatever, the official excuse is they’re trying to help women. The bill would also require that abortions be performed only by an obstetrician or gynecologist. This is dumb, of course, because vacuum aspiration abortion is a simple outpatient procedure that any doctor can do if they want. More to the point, many abortions are just handing someone a pill, but to hear anti-choicers talk, handing someone a pill and asking them to swallow it is a fraught task that only the most elite and highly trained doctors can do. McElraft again.

• North Carolina 2 *

So concern. So wow. But here’s a funny thing about this supposed deep concern about women’s health and safety. If you really wanted abortion to be a safe medical procedure, you would want people who are offering it to get the best medical training available, right? Well, guess what? This same bill, the one that is supposedly about making abortion so safe and secure, guess what else it does?

• North Carolina 3 *

That’s right. They are going to ban the University of North Carolina medical school from providing abortion training. You know, the very training that makes abortion safe for women? You know what you don’t do if you’re worried about something being safe? You don’t ban people from learning to do it safely. This is like saying that you want driving to be safer, so you’re going to ban people from taking driving classes. And this isn’t just any medical school, either. As Rachel Maddow explained, they’re targeting one of the best OB-GYN schools in the country.

• North Carolina 4 *

She goes on to explain some of the implications.

• North Carolina 5 *

When asked about how doctors would learn how to do this, McElraft said, “There are opportunities for doctors to learn this,” suggesting they can figure it out by watching women miscarry or learning on the fly. Yes, the very same woman who was so recently worried that abortion is dangerous and complicated, which it is not, that she wants to restrict it to OB-GYNs, now thinks it’s so easy you don’t even need someone else to show you how to do it, but can MacGyver it on your own. I swear, I don’t know how people like her can keep going to church and telling themselves they’re good, moral people when they lie so shamelessly like this.

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Interview

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Arizona’s legislature, clearly worried that they’re falling behind in the race to be the most ridiculous on the issue of reproductive rights, passed a bill into law that would require, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, doctors to tell women getting medical abortions that they can get the procedure reversed. I’ve written about this for Rewire [here], but now the rest of the media is catching up a little and so I can play some clips of those reactions, which are almost comical in the attempts to be fair-minded to the increasingly ludicrous medical fantasies of the Christian right. CBC in Canada described the basic idea.

• reversal 1 *

To be clear, these are also the same people who think that if you get an abortion, you’re doomed to suffer from breast cancer, suicide, drug addiction and whatever other random supernatural punishment they’re wishing on you this week. And they also think contraception causes abortion and embryos call out for mommy with their unformed mouths. Not really what you’d call the most scientifically sound group of folks here. NPR interviewed Dr. Stephen Chasen about this, and he’s a bit exasperated, as you would be, by all this.

• reversal 2 *

So what they’re calling abortion reversal is actually just… not completing your abortion. But there’s a lot of shots and anti-choice theater, because if there’s one thing anti-choicers are good at, it’s creating self-aggrandizing drama. Never have so many just needed to get a life. But I digress. Dr. Chasen isn’t too worried that this is dangerous per se, or at least no more so than taking one pill and then just not taking the other, which probably works equally as well. But he is worried, for good reason, that messing with women’s minds like this is just a bad idea.

• reversal 3 *

In other words, they’re forcing doctors to give you contradictory information. When you go to a clinic, they tell you that you really need to be sure because there’s no going back once this has started. But now they’re required by law, to turn around and say the opposite, that it can be reversed. This is a clear violation of medical ethics and, as Dr. Chasen says, it could create confusion in a woman who is unsure. But some women are, in fact, unsure. The irony here is that by supposedly trying to save these pregnancies, antis may actually cause some to be lost, as women who are on the fence take the pill, figuring they can decide later. Luckily, that won’t happen much, if at all, since most women are sure they want to abort when they come to the clinic. But those who are uncertain will be harder to talk out of their abortions now. Not that anti-choicers care, though. This isn’t and never was about “saving” babies, but about punishing women who have sex. So while this new requirement won’t save any embryos and may even kill a few more than otherwise would have died, it doesn’t matter to them. The main thing is confusing and upsetting women, to punish them for being in this situation in the first place.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, funny how God always wants what some sexist douchebag wants edition. Recently, there was an incident at a Florida church where a 9-year-old fired a gun in the bathroom. When news cameras showed up at the church, they discovered a sign extolling the virtues of male leadership. Here’s how the pastor responded.

• Lytell *

He claims he’s not saying men are better than women, but obviously, that’s exactly what he’s saying here.