When statist politicians start flapping their lips about the benefits of this or that wonderful new law, too often they like to claim exactly the opposite of what they mean. In this instance, a new law restricting the rights of pregnant women to make decisions privately with their medical professionals is touted as a measure to advise them of their reproductive rights.
Bobby Jindal, the ultra-conservative Republican governor of Louisiana, boasted recently about all the benefits to women the new bill he signed into law created which requires all women's health clinics in the state to post signage notifying patients of alternatives to abortion.
As far as I know, there is only one alternative to a pregnant woman having an abortion, and that is not having an abortion; it’s one or the other. So this new law is just another poorly disguised attempt by committed anti-abortion meddlers to try to talk vulnerable women out of exercising their first alternative, i.e. their right to seek an abortion.
"When officers arrest criminals today, they are read their rights," the governor explained with a straight face at the signing ceremony. "Now if we're giving criminals their basic rights and they have to be informed of those rights, it seems to me only common sense we would have to do the same thing for women before they make the choice about whether to get an abortion."
Thus, the sanctimonious anti-abortion Republican governor Jindal, who boasts that he supports a "culture of life," (whatever that means) is not the least bit afraid to admit publicly that he thinks women who seek abortions are the equivalent of criminals who need the state of Louisiana to tell them their reproductive “rights,” as if any woman on the planet doesn’t already know, and he’s going to use the force of law in his state to see that they are sufficiently informed.
You see, Jindal, and other anti-abortion-anti-liberty authorities claim that, with this law, they only want to prevent medical professionals from coercing women into having abortions. Right. It’s all those crafty doctors out there twisting their patient’s arms and “coercing” them into terminating their pregnancy’s by falsely advising them that they have no other choice.
If governor Jindal were truly concerned about women knowing their reproductive rights, he would start by observing and protecting their fundamental liberty right to seek an abortion, or not, as they choose with the private assistance of their own medical health care professional.
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