KEITH OLBERMANN: As the Republican war on women's rights marches on, all eyes have turned to Virginia, where that new bill mandated that — for a woman to be able receive an abortion — she would first have to undergo a procedure that some equated to "state-sanctioned rape."
In our fourth story — Governor McDonnell today announced a deal to remove the mandated procedure, called a trans-vaginal ultrasound. Although the law doesn’t mandate the procedure now, it does require information about the gestational age, which can only be obtained early on via a trans-vaginal ultrasound.
Amid silent protesters standing outside the Capitol, the petition against the bill had more than 33,000 signatures on it.
Late yesterday, a vote on the bill in the House was delayed as the governor called the legislatures together to amend the language. This afternoon, McDonnell released a statement announcing triumphantly that a deal had been reached:
"I am asking the General Assembly to state in this legislation that only a trans-abdominal or external ultrasound will be required to satisfy the requirements to determine gestational age. Should a doctor determine that any other form of ultrasound may be necessary to provide the necessary images and information, that will be an issue for the doctor and the patient. The government will have no role in that medical decision."
The bill — with the new amendment — quickly introduced on the House floor, passed 65-32.
While the amendment removed the wording "mandating the trans-vaginal ultrasound," the need for the procedure remains, because — in the early stages of pregnancy — external, or trans-abdominal, ultrasound usually is not able to retrieve accurate images of the fetus. Since images and information about a fetus are still required to receive an abortion, women would still need to find a way to pursue — produce the necessary images or, in other words, undergo a trans-vaginal ultrasound or wait until the fetus is large enough to be seen by the external ultrasound.
So, the bill does not exactly mandate the procedure but the woman is still compelled to undergo it.
This crazy-ass bill with the new amendment will come up for a vote in this crazy-ass Senate on Friday.
Joining me now, staff writer for Salon.com, Irin Carmon. Great thanks for coming in.
IRIN CARMON: Thanks, Keith.
OLBERMANN: From what you can tell, is this, in fact — this whole dance, about allowing Governor McDonnell to say, "I took the mean 'tv' word out of this equation, but there's still — the process is still necessitated by what they're setting up there?
CARMON: Honestly, I mean, to begin with, this is a procedure that is not medically necessary.
OLBERMANN: Right.
CARMON: Even if you're doing it through the abdominal wall, even if you're not doing a trans-vaginal ultrasound. The total intention of this is just to humiliate women who are seeking an abortion and try to get them to change their minds.
OLBERMANN: Intimidate them.
CARMON: Intimate them, bully them. But the thing is, this word "trans-vaginal" really caused a lot of trouble for Republicans. I mean, a lot of similar bills have been passed in other states and yet, that word never caught on.
Now, this doesn't really make sense, as you pointed out. If they do, in fact, have to produce the images then it's hard to fulfill it. The bottom line is that it's already trying to get the doctor to do something that is beyond what the doctor would normally have as their discretion. Some clinics do have, already, elective ultrasounds.
OLBERMANN: Right.
CARMON: The point is, it's trying to shove their way between the doctor and the woman and make this as difficult as possible.
OLBERMANN: Well, but it's worse than that because, in the new language, the governor is saying, "We're not going to mandate this, but the doctor will have to mandate this." So, the complete responsibility is shunted away from the state, even though the state is demanding it. I mean, it's a perfect — it is a definition of Catch-22. "You don't need to have this exam. We can't make the doctor do it, but you have to have the results of the exam."
CARMON: Right. Well, I think this is — currently, it doesn't really make sense. It's not clear what's going to happen once the version in the Senate gets debated over.
The point is that McDonnell has had to be on defense. This is a man who already passed legislation in Virginia — already signed legislation — that was intended to shut down abortion clinics that performed abortions in the first trimester. I mean — and nobody noticed. All of the sudden, now, he has to back down on this, and that alone is a victory. We'll see what happens in the Senate.
OLBERMANN: You can't — I mean, I was going to ask you, if there was a victory contained in all this, or at least a positive, because — for years, obviously — Republican legislatures have been doing things like this.
CARMON: Right.
OLBERMANN: Is it all because of a word or is it because there was a tipping point reached here, where people just sat back and went, "This is crazy."
CARMON: Look at the last few weeks. We've had this — we had the Susan G. Koman debacle. We have had the contraceptive mandate, the all-male panel, legislating — or trying to legislate — whether they can take away birth control access to women.
All of this is adding up and people are starting to realize, "You know, the original language of these kinds of ultrasound bills, this informed consent — as if it a woman doesn't understand that what's growing inside of her is a fetus that could turn into a child." So the idea is, people are suddenly realizing, this is not about informed consent. This is not about babies. This is about controlling women, and that's really what ties together the past few weeks.
OLBERMANN: Is there a sense, particularly starting with Koman, and as that — at that the hearing — the Issa hearing that you referenced, is there a sense that, up until this point, women who were in favor of women's rights believed that there were compromises and nuances and that the right was going for restrictions or complications or things that any woman with her mind made up wouldn't — it wouldn't matter to them anyway, to a realization suddenly, in the last month, that it is an attempt to push things back to zero, push things back to 1925?
CARMON: I mean, I think when you're going for — against cancer screenings for low-income women, when you're going against birth control access, suddenly you start to realize this is a concerted plan and that these incremental things that they're doing — they're trying to turn back the clock for women, and also that when — that finally, Republicans are being really honest about how they feel about women.
I mean, just in the debate about this bill, the kinds of things that Republican legislatures and Republican commentators, like Dana Loesch, said about the rationale behind this bill was — you know, "You've already been penetrated once, what's your problem?"
OLBERMANN: Yeah.
CARMON: The point is, all of these moments are moments of truth, where you realize what their actual intentions are, which are not about saving babies. They're really about punishing women.
OLBERMANN: Right, and particularly the idea "if you've already been penetrated once, what's your problem?" is one step away from saying — is one step away from defending rape.
CARMON: Absolutely, and you had John Stewart yesterday just showing that these are the exact same people that found TSA searches to be rape. These are the exact same people who like to say that taxes are rape. They like to use rape all the time, except when evolves actual vaginal penetration.
OLBERMANN: When it's actual rape.
CARMON: Right.
OLBERMANN: Irin Carmon of Salon.com. Thanks for coming in. Nice to have you here.
CARMON: Thank you so much.
