it's not the band i hate...

like virginia woolf once said...

...everyone needs a room of one's own. That said, I'm going to be double-posting on this blog and Jen's from now on. Here is what I said over there:


Kansas is taking up the charge on violating doctor patient confidentiality and women’s privacy rights, apparently hoping to succeed where John Ashcroft failed. The Kansas attorney general is requesting the medical records of 90 women who had late-term abortions.

Playing the “won’t somebody please think of the children!” card, Attorney General Phill Kline is claiming that he needs these private medical records to determine if any of the abortion seekers were young women under the age of sixteen and he has a "duty to investigate and prosecute child rape and other crimes in order to protect Kansas children." Of course, that doesn’t explain this:

The clinics said Kline demanded their complete, unedited medical records for women and girls who sought abortions at least 22 weeks into their pregnancies in 2003. Court papers did not identify the clinics.

The records sought include the patient's name, medical history, details of her sex life, birth control practices and psychological profile.

Whoa, whoa, whoa…details of her sex life? A psychological profile? I thought the point was to find statutory rapists? If so, why are adult women’s records being sought, and why are we asking for the details of a teenager’s sex life. In Kansas, anyone under the age of sixteen cannot consent to sex, so why do we need to know if she was on the pill, or if she initiated sex? Isn’t this just another means by the anti-choicers to demean and humiliate women who take control of their own reproduction and health?

It’s a new twist on the Kobe defense—if we can’t get these uppity women to consent to an invasion of their bodies and lives, then we’ll just have to do the patriarchal two-step: call them harlots and whores, and let society punish them for us.

posted by annamaria @ 8:35 AM