Abortion debate heats up
February 13, 2007 at 4:41 pm by Max Pizarro in NewsIt’s one of those crushing disappointments and irritations in life when you’re looking for objective information and instead you get stuck with a sermon.
It’s especially irksome when you’re in a moment of crisis.
Pro-life state legislators want to require doctors to offer women sonograms of their fetuses before proceeding with abortions. To that end, state Rep. James Mills, R-Gainesville, has taken the lead with what he’s calling “The Woman’s Right to Know Act.”
One of the bill’s most outspoken critics, Dionne Vann, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Georgia, says what the legislation does is needlessly badger pregnant women.
“This bill includes no exclusion for rape or incest victims or medical anomalies,” Vann says. “The premise of the bill was to give women as much information as possible, but it doesn’t do that.”
In his bill, Mills quotes the U.S. Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Danforth. The decision to abort “is an important and often a stressful one and it is desirable and imperative that it be made with full knowledge of its nature and its consequences.”
Requiring a doctor to offer to show an image of a fetus to a mother before she moves ahead with an abortion would ensure that the woman knows exactly what she’s doing, Mills reasons in his bill.
But Vann says pregnant women need different information than the moralizing sort offered by Mills’ bill.
“We would like to see a bill that provides a wide net for access to accurate information about reproduction and products available to women, especially for women who are less economically able to get services,” she says.
Mills’ legislation caused liberal lawmakers to appear on the front steps of the Statehouse Tuesday morning to join Vann and about 50 other protesters.
“You can count on my ‘no’ vote,” Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield, D-Atlanta, told a cheering crowd.
Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, likewise lambasted the Republican lawmakers.
“Stop wasting time on these all-day hearings trying to figure out how to deny women’s rights,” Orrock said.
And Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, who also took a turn at the microphone, pledged legislative support. “We don’t want to stand in front of you or behind you, but with you,” Fort told the crowd.
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