Lawmakers’ dishonesty on abortion

I understand those who have a moral or religious objection to abortion. I just don’t understand how, in our state, they continually mix morality with dishonesty.

There is a bill in the Legislature (SB 1394) that is designed to further harass women seeking abortions.

That’s it. It’s a way to make women more uncomfortable. Make their doctors uncomfortable. Add another hurdle to the process. Annoy them. Irritate them. Rattle their cages.

It’s the work of the anti-abortion Center for Arizona Policy and its shills in the Legislature. The head of the center, Cathi Herrod, told The Arizona Republic’s Dustin Gardiner that the intention of the bill is to collect better data to “help improve women’s health.”

She added, “Better data means better service.” Come on. People like Herrod don’t want “better service” for women seeking abortions. They want no service. Just admit it. Herrod’s center funnels a lot of money to like-minded legislators, and each year there are new bills to make abortion services more difficult. Last year, it was a new law that will add more pain to grieving couples who, for medical reasons, must terminate a pregnancy and who have nothing to do with the abortion battle.

It would be nice, just once, if Herrod and politicians like Republican Sen. Nancy Barto, who sponsored SB 1394, said something straightforward like: “Hey, we’ll put up as many unnecessary roadblocks as possible between women and this procedure, because when it becomes too much of a hassle for them to go through it, we win.” Just be honest.

The moral high ground turns to quicksand when built on double talk.

How does SB 1394 intimidate women? It requires doctors to ask patients why they want to end the pregnancy.

It confronts women seeking services with an uncomfortable set of questions and requires them to pick one. Things like: Was the woman raped? Is she against having children? Did she or her husband have an affair?

It’s creepy. It’s cruel. It’s unnecessary. There’s an option for the women not to answer, primarily because there is no medical reason to ask such questions in the first place. Why a person opts to have a medical procedure —

any procedure — is between the patient and the doctor. They state has no reason to know such things.

This bill is not an attempt to “help improve women’s health.”

Jodi Liggett, vice president of external affairs for Planned Parenthood Arizona, said of SB 1394, “If you want less abortion, there is a kinder and more productive way to go about this, and that would be to provide meaningful access to birth control for anybody who needs it.”

Kinder. More productive. And, for once, honest.