Mississippi Kills Roe v. Wade -- Just listen to Bubba

I predict that this Bubba will have to be born in a female body next time around -- and will be married off to a Bubba just like the one he is now, who will keep her oft-pregnant and oft-beaten in the kitchen.  How else could a hard-hearted ignoramus learn what it is like to walk in someone else's shoes but by his (her) own experience?

A BUBBA FOR ALL SEASONS
By Laura Harrison McBride

First, the man goes by the name Bubba. One might stop there. But one would miss the chance to expose the essential misogyny in what passes for public servants in Mississippi. And to expose and decry yet another Republican juggernaut against slightly more than 50 percent of humanity.

Second, one would miss the chance to expose elitism at its most naked, cruel and despicable. Bubba's elitism was in full view when he gave his assessment of a recent Mississippi anti-abortion law that effectively disenfranchises lower income women from pregnancy termination. Describing those who rallied against the law, Bubba said of his opponents, "They're like, 'Well, the poor pitiful women that can't afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger'."

Bubba, by the way, is Republican state Rep. Bubba Carpenter.

And in truth, of course, Bubba has no pity for those women, or ostensibly for any women. I would pity his poor wife, but pity is wasted on such as they. She chose him; she'll have to stew in those juices. Unfortunately, so will the women of Mississippi.

EMT: Short for empty?
It might be actually a good thing that this particular ethics-free human shifted from his original profession, EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) to politics. Who would want to be 'saved' by an EMT (a synonym for paramedic, although there may be slightly different standards for certification between the two) who didn't realize it would be all but physically impossible for a woman to perform a pregnancy termination on herself with a coat hanger? Only the most limber--circus acrobats and such--might achieve such a thing. Otherwise, of course, the coat hanger procedures will need to be accomplished by others. Who would the others be? Not doctors; no mentally sound doctor would skirt the law and risk his or her license in violation of state law, with or without coat hanger, or even curette. So the coat hanger abortions would need to be done by a helpful friend willing to take another woman's life in her hands without benefit of education, and risk herself--her mentality and even her freedom--if things do not go well.

Bubba must have been a heck of an EMT.

De facto closure
To be fair, Bubba's pet bill doesn't close the only abortion clinic in Mississippi; it simply gives it until July 1 to ensure that its physicians are both board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology and have privileges at the local hospital. It is inconceivable that Bubba and Co. are not aware of the time frames involved in board certification, not to mention expense.

Still, at first glance, this sounds not too bad in its intent. One would like competent physicians, after all. But here's the crux of it: While a woman wielding a coat hanger inside another woman's womb is a bad idea, a qualified physician can certainly manage an early term termination without undue difficulty. (Early term terminations are all that's available in Mississippi, anyway.)

Unlike EMT Bubba, any person graduating from a US medical college would have a pretty good idea where the parts of a woman's body were, and how they worked. Requiring the standards Bubba endorses is about similar to requiring junior high school algebra teachers to have presented papers providing the definitive answer to Brocard's problem, a number theory dilemma identified in 1876 and still lacking resolution, despite the fact that countless graduate students in mathematics will surely have attempted it; think genius Prof. Charlie Eppes on the TV show Numbers. Nope, you don't need that to teach algebra to pre-teens, anymore than you need double board-certified physicians to do what is not much more, early term, than a menstrual extraction done with instruments rather than suction.

A what?

How to wave off the stork, pre-Roe v. Wade style
Menstrual extraction , which simply removes the uterine lining about to slough off anyway in a menstruating woman via a suction syringe, was all the rage in the Northeast for a while. I knew a few people who engaged in it, especially those with horrendously long and/or painful menses. This was after Roe v. Wade, so it wasn't nominally needed any longer, especially in liberal Connecticut where I lived at the time, for pregnancy termination, a mission it can also accomplish in early days. Still, there were probably a lot of "oops" dealt with before anyone knew the stork was circling.

It is doubtful Bubba or that gormless shill who governs the most ignorant state in the union (by several measures) know about menstrual extraction. It is quite safe and can be accomplished by a woman and a friend with very blunt equipment. Apparently, it is so safe, it isn't even regarded as practicing medicine without a license for one woman to help another in this way. One of the founders of the ME movement was found not guilty of practicing medicine without a license many years ago when she inserted yogurt into the vagina of another woman to cure yeast.

That procedure can be done by one's self, as it does not go past the vagina which is easily accessible, and it does cure yeast. But Big Pharma doesn't get to sell all those nasty chemicals, which is probably the real reason the ME founder was hauled into court. Apparently, and thankfully, the court finding served to protect the self-help groups from further useless legal incursions. After all, what they are doing, since no surgery is involved, is little more than cleaning a minor wound, something no one would be taken to court for in most jurisdictions...except perhaps in fascist states like Mississippi, Arizona, or any state beholden to Big Pharma and, in this case to a lesser degree perhaps, to the AMA. (Note: It is rare that I give quarter to the AMA at any time, but in this case, they are almost as much under siege by imbeciles as are women.)

The women's self-help groups, then, would continue to offer the same glimmer of hope they offered before Roe v. Wade. I suspect there are not many such groups in Mississippi, though. The women's self-help information train probably refused to cross the mighty Mississippi for fear of being derailed by beefy Bubba and his Marauding Mississippians.

Perhaps it will trundle westward, though, now that the Bubba contingent has effectively killed Roe v. Wade in Mississippi, and returned women to the untender mercies of a male-dominated parliament of fools.