There OUGHTN'T to be a Law
I was very disturbed when I heard a report on NPR about this Kansas law. Kansas' idjit attorney general, Phil Kline, reminds me of Tom Coburn, the idjit US Senator from Oklahoma who is not, in any other respect, OK.
Coburn is staunchly anti-gay, unabashedly anti-choice, decidedly anti-woman, a proponent of abstinence-only education, opposed to the use and distribution of condoms, capable of singlehandedly making the decision to perform a permanent sterilization on a young woman without first obtaining her written consent (he'd "told a nurse" to do it ::groan::), apparently disinterested and otherwise occupied during the Samuel Alito hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee and seemingly threatened by the "rampant lesbianism" in Oklahoma's high schools. According to Coburn, one local school was so rife with lesbians they would "only let one girl go to the bathroom. Seems she was quite content but her female classmates were a little inattentive in the afternoon, following their two-Diet Coke lunches. Where were all these girls back when I was in high school? (Okay, I'm throwing this last one in just because it's funny.)
Tom Coburn's ideological and psychological twin apparently resides in Kansas. Please, Lord...let a tornado sweep me away before I ever have to live or practice there! ("I don't think we're in a Blue State anymore, Sadie!") Phil kline and his ilk in the Sunflower State have decided that Kansas teens are required by law to abstain and anyone who is a mandated reporter must inform the state if any kind of nookie-nookie is suspected! So, imagine this law has spread until Pennsylvania is infected. A 15 year-old comes into my ER scared witless that she's pregnant or has contracted an STD. I, as a mandated reporter, must involve the Pennsylvania Department of Children and Youth Services. Once news of this circulates in the local high school, how likely do you think a teenaged girl is going to be to seek medical care if she suspects she might be pregnant. But then, we're only talking about the poor, aren't we? Just as in the days before Roe v. Wade, those with enough money will get done what they need to get done. The rest of us are just SOL again.
On my trip 'out west' last summer, Kansas seemed the least hospitable of all the places I visited. Of course, I was only thinking in terms of the weather and Fred Phelps, but tornadoes and Phelps may be only the tip of the iceberg.
Coburn is staunchly anti-gay, unabashedly anti-choice, decidedly anti-woman, a proponent of abstinence-only education, opposed to the use and distribution of condoms, capable of singlehandedly making the decision to perform a permanent sterilization on a young woman without first obtaining her written consent (he'd "told a nurse" to do it ::groan::), apparently disinterested and otherwise occupied during the Samuel Alito hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee and seemingly threatened by the "rampant lesbianism" in Oklahoma's high schools. According to Coburn, one local school was so rife with lesbians they would "only let one girl go to the bathroom. Seems she was quite content but her female classmates were a little inattentive in the afternoon, following their two-Diet Coke lunches. Where were all these girls back when I was in high school? (Okay, I'm throwing this last one in just because it's funny.)
Tom Coburn's ideological and psychological twin apparently resides in Kansas. Please, Lord...let a tornado sweep me away before I ever have to live or practice there! ("I don't think we're in a Blue State anymore, Sadie!") Phil kline and his ilk in the Sunflower State have decided that Kansas teens are required by law to abstain and anyone who is a mandated reporter must inform the state if any kind of nookie-nookie is suspected! So, imagine this law has spread until Pennsylvania is infected. A 15 year-old comes into my ER scared witless that she's pregnant or has contracted an STD. I, as a mandated reporter, must involve the Pennsylvania Department of Children and Youth Services. Once news of this circulates in the local high school, how likely do you think a teenaged girl is going to be to seek medical care if she suspects she might be pregnant. But then, we're only talking about the poor, aren't we? Just as in the days before Roe v. Wade, those with enough money will get done what they need to get done. The rest of us are just SOL again.
On my trip 'out west' last summer, Kansas seemed the least hospitable of all the places I visited. Of course, I was only thinking in terms of the weather and Fred Phelps, but tornadoes and Phelps may be only the tip of the iceberg.
posted by Cheryl at
3/16/2006 05:04:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home