Prolonged Eye Contact

Virginia’s Antichoice Legislation, or Who Gets Media Coverage?

Today seems really bittersweet to me. On the one hand, I’m thrilled that Virginia has decided to back down on their invasive transvaginal ultrasound requirement before a pregnant person is allowed an abortion. But on the other hand, I think it’s a clear illustration of one of the core, fundamental problems with the mainstream prochoice movement and capital *F*eminists.

Virginia is actually trying to pass three antichoice bills into law. The transvaginal ultrasound, a personhood bill, and a bill denying pregnant people on Medicaid funding to get abortions when their fetus has zero chance of survival. They are actually trying to remove funding from the poorest, most vulnerable people in their state, and instead force them to go through the trauma of giving birth to a child that will live a matter of minutes or hours. Not only is that traumatic but it’s also incredibly costly, and Virginia lawmakers are willing to impose this trauma on these pregnant people because they can’t imagine making taxpayers “subsidize” something so “immoral.”

The only thing that’s immoral here is the GOP once again proving that the poor can be railroaded and made an example of in the fight against all pregnant people. And why does this always happen? Because very rarely do mainstream prochoicers make much noise over the plight of poor people. The media and feminist coverage of Virginia makes that very clear. It’s so much easier, and shocking to talk about “state sponsored object rape” of people getting early term abortions [but, you know, still allowed to get them], than it is to get the country to care that poor people are now being denied the right to get an abortion at all because of course these would all be later term abortions and I guarantee you they’re too expensive to pay for out-of-pocket.

This is my very jumbled way of saying that yes, I’m ecstatic that we managed to get Virginia to back down on this one bill (out of many), but as someone who is on Medicaid, as someone who has been dirt poor their entire life, I feel expendable to the lawmakers and to my prochoice allies when I see how little coverage or concern there was over this Medicaid bill.

Feb

2012

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