State tries to intrude on abortion

That was quick. The day before a new Florida law requiring a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions took effect, a judge issued an injunction temporarily blocking the measure. A second judge renewed the injunction after the law was briefly in place when the state appealed.

The American Civil Liberties Union and others are fighting the law, saying it violates the state constitution and interferes with women’s privacy rights.

So here we go again, with yet another intrusive law of questionable legality setting the state on a costly path to defend it in court. It happened with Gov. Rick Scott’s push to drug-test welfare recipients and state workers (both efforts were deemed unconstitutional). It happened with the ongoing fight over the so-called Docs vs. Glocks law, which muzzles pediatricians from asking parents about guns in the home (a judge initially struck it down, but a federal appeals court has upheld the law, which seems stunning considering our whole freedom-of-speech thing).

And now we have the state’s latest attempt to create more hassles for women who choose to have an abortion. The waiting period would force women to wait an extra day and come back to a clinic a second time before terminating their pregnancies.

“It’s insulting — and appalling,” said former state Sen. Nan Rich of Weston, a Democrat who ran for governor last year and is running for a Broward Commission seat. “Do they really think the extra day is going to make a difference, that this is a decision women are making lightly?”

Funny, I don’t see our male-dominated Legislature imposing a one-day waiting period on Viagra. But that’s the way our society works: Men are free to get their sex-boosting drugs without delay, but the women who must deal with the messy aftermath of sex (and unintended pregnancy) are targeted for shame, scorn and stigma. I don’t think anybody relishes the prospect of having an abortion. And I completely understand those who oppose it on moral and religious grounds.

I just don’t think it’s anyone’s place — especially a man’s — to stand in the way of a woman’s right to choose.

Forty-two years after Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared abortion legal, Florida keeps chipping away at women’s reproductive rights.

Last year, Scott signed a law banning the procedure at any point (not just in the last trimester), if a doctor determined the fetus could live outside the womb. A few years ago, the Legislature passed a law requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before an abortion, although women can decline the doctor’s obligatory offer to view it.

Rich said legislators around the country “want to overturn Roe v. Wade, piece by piece, law by law.”

The waiting-period law might seem reasonable to some; after all, the state has a three-day waiting period on certain handgun purchases. But Rich is angered that legislators keep intruding in “a private matter that should be between a woman, her doctor, her family and her clergy.”

Here’s what gets me: Aren’t these anti-abortion folks the same people who usually scream loudest about keeping government out of our business? A woman’s body seems to be the exception to the rule.