Kyle City Limits
by BRENDA STEWART
So, once again, my beloved Texas lands in the national spotlight and becomes the punch line of late night talk show jokes across the country. If it’s not our State Board of Education wanting to use the Bible as a reference manual in science and history classrooms, it’s our governor’s defiance and absolute disregard for the air we breathe and the environmental agencies in place to protect us.
Now, along with our national trophy for first place in teen pregnancy rates as well as the number one spot for repeat pregnancies for these same teens, we have catapulted ourselves into first place for enacting the most stringent anti-abortion laws on the books.
With a vote of 94 to 41, our legislature, a group ironically made up almost entirely of men (shame on you women who voted this in), rammed the “sonogram bill” (HB15) through and then, with nauseating glee, Rick Perry promises to sign it into law with Rep. Sid Miller and Sen. Dan Patrick doing a victory jig in his shadow.
Baffling, however, are these tea partiers and tighty righties who got plunked down into office last November after running on the hysteria of getting government out of our lives. They now have the gall to support legislation that foists the government directly into our wombs? The intrusion is insulting enough but the reasoning behind it is unfathomable. With staggering arrogance, these men have deemed Texas women not quite bright enough to procure adequate medical information and make informed decisions concerning their own bodies.
This bill forces every woman considering an abortion to not only get a sonogram and then listen to the physician describe any visible body parts, your legislators have also dictated that two separate appointments be scheduled 24 hours apart. Evidently they do this for inconvenience sake and because they feel that women need legislated “reflection time” such as I once gave my toddlers because, back then, they didn’t have the sense god gave geese.
Will they now come in and legislate the information I receive when I undergo a mammogram or MRI, the results of which could be just as significant and devastating as the results of any sonogram? Will I have my breast removed? Will I undergo radiation therapy? Will I request a blow by blow audio and visual explanation of my breast and its contents? Maybe. But it’s solely my decision and the amount of information I seek and the conversation I have with my physician is an entirely private matter.
But for now, I can tell you that the only malady I am suffering is an acute case of Perry-intitus, an abnormally obnoxious recurring virus that makes you wring your hands and gnash your teeth and howl with incredulousness. Will someone please put him out of my misery?
