Handmaids

Any bets on whether or not more conservatives derisively understand the title of this post, than progressives do?

I've been struggling with posting about this for several days.  I'm trying to reach out to the more pleasant in the world, and this simply isn't a pleasant topic.  I'm hoping that many of you by now know the nature of Montana's SB. 46, fathered by Senator Dan McGee (slaver - Laurel).  He seeks with this bill to put forth an amendment to the Montana Constitution such that pregnant Montana women become property of the state.  Article II, Section 10, The Right to Privacy currently reads:

The right of individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.

McGee would have Montana add the line:

The protection of unborn human life is a compelling state interest.

I would hope that for many who read this, this is not new news, and I beg your forgiveness for making you wade through the obvious again.  But we need to be clear, damned clear, on exactly what this means.  This amendment, if passed by the legislature and voted into the Constitution, would establish that the contents of a woman's uterus is a compelling state interest.  Montana Women For sums up what is at stake rather nicely:

This amendment would authorize governmental intrusion into every pregnancy and undermine private medical decisions made between a woman and her doctor. We should be very careful when considering amending this vital protection against intrusive and unwarranted government intervention in our state constitution.

I've no interest in putting this nicely, or being even remotely subtle.  This amendment would make women into state property.  One needn't wail or caterwaul about back-alley abortions, or birth control or protection  of special cases.  This is property law, plain and simple.  If you are pregnant, the state would own your womb.

I peruse the Rotunda Report every now and then just to keep up with the 'impotant' Montana wingnut thought, that which spews from legislative Republicans.  Dan McGee's defense of his bastard bill is precisely why. (And don't chortle over the word 'bastard'; if this is enacted, every child born here will be the bastard of the state.)  McGee opines:

Some issues are bigger than the courts and bigger than the legislature.  Such issues must be taken directly to the people of Montana.

Why?  That's a serious question McGee never answers.  His only argument amounts to this:  He and like minded haven't gotten their way, so we need to subvert the law until they do.  Don't get me wrong, I know full well that he is appealing to the populist sentiment that we all like babies and hate abortions.  And what he is requesting is that we all get to vote that we all like babies and hate abortion.  BUT, what he has proposed has nothing to do with what we like and adore and have good feels about.  What he has proposed is that we impose what we like on the rights and bodies of others. Their rights are superseded by our desire.  The amendment he proposes is such that a basic Montana right is voided because the majority really like  babies and don't like abortion.  That is not democracy anymore than slavery was.  A woman's right to privacy becomes a matter of "compelling state interest".  (That should be a warning flag to all liberals and progressives that your rhetoric about how much you detest abortion is not only counter-productive, but hateful towards the rights of women.)   Does the pregnant woman smoke?  Not any more.  Compelling State Interest.  Does the Pregnant woman ski?  A matter of law due to  Compelling State Interest.  Does this woman have a job, and what job does she have?  Compelling State Interest.  Does she need to wear a tracking device such that "we" know when she goes to a bar?  Compelling State Interest.

I know, "it would never get that far; we're only concerned that she not abort her baby."  BULL and SHIT.  The proposed amendment doesn't say a damned thing about abortion.  It states, quite clearly, that the contents of the uterus is a matter of Compelling State Interest.  There is no backing off from that.  If a husband sues his wife for behavior that might have challenged the development of the fetus in his opinion, he would be able to do so based on Compelling State Interest.  This is a slavery bill.  That is all it is.

The truly tragic irony comes from McGee himself.

remember, Courts can, and have been wrong.  In 1857, the US Supreme Court ruled that a black man was “chattel property”.  They have never overturned that decision. 

This proposed amendment would establish women as chattel property, a thing McGee himself says is wrong.  It grants to the state the right to control the contents of uteri, with no, notta, zip  concern for the vessel that surrounds that body part.  A pregnant woman's rights are forfeit, due to Compelling State Interest.   It's not a negligible right in discussion here.  It's the very right to privacy that all Montanans are guaranteed.  If this horror passes, Montana women would be chattel property, those who bear our State Interest in their bodies.

It doesn't look like this bill will gain traction enough to pass and come before the Montana voters.  But if it does, I'm telling you now that no single woman in the state should vote for it, and that McGee should be reviled as the slave master he wishes to be.

(Side note to my progressive brethren:  One of the big reasons we have a right to privacy in the Montana Constitution is because of the efforts of Bob Kelleher.  You might want to cut the crazy old coot a little slack ...)

Comments

[goof houlihan]

It's the basic human right. We own our own bodies, and are able to direct the labor of that body.

[DMerriman]

I think maybe it's time to start trying to pass laws that limit the right of religious nuts to inflict their theology on the rest of us.

[Mark T]

They run for office for this very purpose - on a dark night as they discuss their inner feelings with their maker, they get the notion that he sends them on a mission, and they bone up another issues, and run for office, but when they get to Helena, this is first on their list. It's a kind of mental derangement, like Bush saying that God wanted him to be president. Delusional, narcissistic, dishonest too.