On July 13, the Texas Senate passed an anti-abortion bill that promotes unforn fetuses over the rights of adult women.
The bill was passed in a vote of 19-11.
The law:
- Bans abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, four weeks earlier than the standard set by the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade.
- Requires all clinics to become ambulatory surgical centers, even if they do not provide surgical abortions.
- Requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals within 30 miles of the facility.
- Allows abortions only in surgical centers.
- Requires abortion providers to administer the abortion-inducing medication RU-486 in person, rather than allow women to take it at home.
Democrats countered that childbirth is more dangerous than abortion and there have been no serious problems with women taking abortion drugs at home. They introduced amendments to add exceptions for cases of rape and incest, and allow doctors more leeway in prescribing abortion-inducing drugs.
The right-wing Republican majority overruled these proposed changes–and sent the bill to rightist Republican Governor Rick Perry to sign into law.
On July 17, Planned Parenthood informed staffers that three of its facilities in Texas would be closing–a major goal of the legislation.
So what’s behind all this fetus fanaticism?
Several factors.
First, there is an energized constituency for politicians willing to wave this red flag. Almost every major Republican Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan has tapped into this voting bloc. And each has found plenty of votes to be gotten from it.
Second, many fetus fanatics are more than a little obsessed with sex. These are the same people who, in Victorian times, used “white meat” when ordering a chicken breast and “dark meat” when ordering a chicken thigh.
Third, many fetus fanatics are flat-out hypocrites. For example: Representative Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), an anti-abortion, “family values” doctor, had an affair with a patient and later pressured her to get an abortion.
Fourth, many fetus fanatics feel guilty about their own past sexual transgressions-–especially if these resulted in pregnancy. And they want to prevent others from living the same life they did.
Fifth, many fetus fanatics embrace contradictory goals. On one hand, most of them claim they want to “get government off the backs of the people.”
That usually means allowing corporations to pollute, sell dangerous products and treat their employees as slaves.
On the other hand, they want to insert the government into the vagina of every woman. That means empowering State and Federal authorities to prevent women from getting an abortion-–even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Sixth, many fetus fanatics simply dislike women. They fear and resent the women’s movement, which has given women the right to enter the workforce and compete directly with men.
And what they hate most is the legal right of a woman to avoid becoming pregnant via birth control-–or to abort the result of a male’s sperm if they do.
They see this as a personal rejection. Perhaps it reminds many of them of their own failures in romance/marriage.
The Right is made up overwhelmingly of white males. And many of these men would feel entirely at home with a Christianized version of the Taliban. They long for a world where women meekly cater to their every demand and believe only what their male masters approve for them to believe.
The trouble for these men is they don’t speak Arabic.
Seventh, many leaders of the fetus-fanatics movement are independently wealthy. This means that even if abortion could be outlawed for the vast majority, they could always bribe a willing doctor-–here or abroad-–to perform such an operation on their wife, daughter and/or mistress.
For them, there is always an escape clause.
Eighth, many fetus fanatics are not truly “pro-life.” They totally oppose abortion under most-–if not all–-circumstances. But they also fully support capital punishment, going to war for almost any reason, wholesale massacres of wildlife and despoiling of the environment, and even nuclear war.
And many of those who fanatically defend the right of a fetus to emerge from the womb just as fanatically oppose welfare for those mothers who can’t support that newborn.
Ninth, many fetus fanatics believe that since their religion teaches that abortion is wrong, they have a moral duty to enforce that belief on others.
This is especially true for evangelical Christians. These are the same people who condemn Muslims-–such as those in Saudi Arabia-–for segregating women, forbidding them to drive and forcing them to wear head scarfs or chadors-–loose, usually black robes.
But while they condemn Islamics for their general intolerance of others’ religious beliefs, they lust to impose their own upon those who belong to other churches. Or who belong to no church at all.
Tenth, many fetus fanatics are just as opposed to birth control as they are to abortion. Thus, when Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke asked Congress to require insurance companies to cover birth control, Rush Limbaugh branded her a “slut” and a “prostitute.”
BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION, CNN, CRIME, FACEBOOK, GEORGE ZIMMERMAN, JOURNALISM, MAFIA, MAFIA COMMISSION TRIAL, MARTIN LUTHER KING, O.J. SIMPSON, RACISM, RIOTING, RODNEY KING, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TRAYVON MARTIN, TWITTER
CNN BECOMES TNN: TRAYVON NEWS NETWORK
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on July 23, 2013 at 1:35 amSince June 10, CNN has carried one story above all others: The trial of self-appointed “neighborhood watchman” George Zimmerman for the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
On CNN, especially, the coverage of this trial has been overwhelming.
So much so that CNN–Cable News Network–could rightly be called TNN–Trayvon News Network.
There are several reasons for this, and they say as much–if not more–about the media as they do about the case itself.
First, there was a dead body in the story–the body of Travon Martin. There’s a well-known saying in the news business: “If it bleeds, it leads.” And nothing bleeds like the body of a dead teenager.
Second, the victim was not only dead, he was black.
Third, he died at the hands of a nominally-white man–George Zimmerman, the offspring of a German father and a Peruvian mother.
Although the vast majority of blacks in the United States are murdered by other blacks, it’s Politically Incorrect to say so. On the other hand, it’s perfectly OK to create the impression that whites pose the greatest danger to blacks.
George Zimmerman
Fourth, the trial was televised. There was absolutely no need for this. It didn’t threaten to overturn existing law–as did Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court struck down “separate but equal” public schools for blacks and whites.
This case proved the opening legal salvo in the history of the civil rights movement and ushered in a decade of activism and bloodshed as blacks sought to de-segregate the South.
Nor did the Zimmerman case even carry the weight of the 1985-6 Mafia Commission trial. There Federal prosecutors convicted the heads of the five most powerful Mafia “families” in the country and sent them to prison.
While individual Mafiosi had been sent to prison, this was the first time the top leadership of all major Mafia “families” had been virtually wiped out.
It signaled a turning point in the fight against organized crime, with Federal investigators and prosecutors finally learning how to use the 10-year-old Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act to their advantage.
Fifth, televising the trial meant the networks–especially CNN–didn’t have to do anything. They didn’t have to send reporters into the streets to dig up information. All that was necessary was to let the camera show what was happening in the courtroom.
Sixth, when each day’s televised proceedings came to an end, CNN and other networks could easily round up a series of “talking heads” to pontificate on the meaning of it all.
These people had no more idea than the average viewer of what impact–if any–that day’s events would have on the legal fate of George Zimmerman.
But it gave CNN a chance to use up airtime that could have otherwise gone on stories like the national debt, Detroit declaring bankruptcy and the Supreme Court rejecting an Arizona law requiring voters to prove their citizenship.
Seventh, the networks could count on a controversial outcome no matter what the verdict.
If Zimmerman were convicted, his white supporters would be outraged and his black detractors overjoyed. And if Zimmerman were acquitted–which is what actually happened–then the opposite reactions would occur.
Either way, there was certain to be angry demonstrators in the street. For the networks this would hopefully include a full replay of the race riots which shook the nation following the police beating of Rodney King in 1992 and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968.
Eighth, if rioting erupted, CNN and other networks would rush news cameras to the scenes of carnage and claim they were doing this “in the finest traditions of journalism” to keep the public fully informed.
In reality, they would be doing it to keep their ratings up.
If any of this seems familiar, it’s because–unfortunately–it is.
The 1995 O.J. Simpson trial set the standard for televised murder trials.
It came complete with a weak-kneed judge (Lance Ito), incompetent prosecutors (Christopher Darden and Marcia Clark), bizarre witnesses (Kato Kaelin) and grandstanding defense attorneys (Johnnie Cochran, F. Lee Bailey and Robert Kardashian).
The case seemed to go on forever. The primary jury was sworn in on November 2, 1994. Opening statements began on January 24, 1995, and the trial dragged on until a “Not Guilty” verdict came on October 3, 1995
For those who enjoy wallowing in sensationalism, the case offered everything:
Since then, television networks have repeatedly sought stories that promise to deliver the thrills–if not actual news value–of the Simpson case.
The George Zimmerman trial didn’t offer the ratings voltage of the Simpson one. But the networks did their best to make it happen.
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