On Tuesday the North Carolina House narrowly overrode Democratic Governor Bev Perdue’s veto of a particularly harsh bill requiring ultrasounds and a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion can be performed. Women who are the victims of rape or incest would not be exempt from hearing a detailed description of the fetus. Rep. Ruth Samuelson, the Republican who sponsored the bill, ended the debate by declaring that making it more difficult to have an abortion actually shows respect to rape survivors — and she knows because she is one.
According to the Huffington Post,
The Abortion-Woman’s Right to Know Act, which Perdue vetoed in June, requires a doctor to give a woman an ultrasound prior to the abortion procedure and to describe her fetus in detail, including the size of its organs and limbs, whether she wants to hear it or not. If she refuses to view the ultrasound image or listen to the fetal heartbeat, the doctor must record that and keep her name on file for seven years.
Samuelson says that forcing doctors to talk about the fetus — even when their patients say they want them to stop — is simply a matter of presenting relevant information to the patient. She adds that the measures described in the bill don’t remove choice, which is true. It just makes it clear that the state doesn’t think women are capable of coming to a reasonable choice with their doctors on their own. No, they must be double- and triple-checked along the way, to make sure they’re really, really, really sure that this is what they want.
Samuelson also offensively suggests that she knows the ultrasound and waiting period wouldn’t be traumatizing for rape survivors, because obviously she can speak for all women who’ve gone through what she did. She says:
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