The New Scarlet Letter

Wednesday, 02/14/07

Lawmaker wants Tenn. to issue death certificates for abortions
By ERIK SCHELZIG
Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Tennessee would collect death certificates for aborted fetuses under a bill introduced in the General Assembly.

Rep. Stacey Campfield said his bill would provide a way to track how many abortions are performed in Tennessee. The measure would also likely create public records on which women are having abortions.

"All these people who say they are pro-life -- at least we would see how many lives are being ended out there by abortions," said Campfield, R-Knoxville.

The measure would give abortion providers 10 days following an "induced termination of a pregnancy" to file a death certificate with the state Office of Vital Records.

"Hopefully we'll be able to get a little information out of this," Campfield said.
Campfield acknowledged his bill might have a hard time making it through the Democratic-controlled House. But the Republican-controlled Senate "will probably pass it," he said.

House Judiciary Chairman Rob Briley, D-Nashville, called Campfield's proposal "the most preposterous bill I've seen in eight years in the Legislature."

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Tennessee law already requires abortions to be reported to the Office of Vital Records, though the identities of women having abortions are not included in the reports. Death certificates require identifying information like Social Security numbers.

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The Evangelical Anti-Sex Jihad strikes again.

The idea that public records of women who receive abortions would exist for the same zealots who have assassinated doctors and blown up clinics to peruse is terrifying. It is blatantly obvious that this would eventually lead to public condemnation and possible violence against women who want control over their bodies.

Furthermore, this is also a subversive attempt at abortion suppression. The day a woman can no longer count on receiving treatment in a private facility which provides absolute confidentiality is the day that desperate women fearing a judgmental society either travel out of state, seek out unregulated facilities that provide possibly unsafe (but confidential) treatment; or don’t seek any at all.

The attempts of the ‘Pro-Life’ movement to frame the issue as the protection of unborn children are intentionally duplicitous. This is part of a broad campaign to attempt to force evangelical ideas of sexual chastity on to wider society. When Plan B (commonly referred to as the ‘morning after’ pill) came up for FDA approval for sale without prescription, it met with efforts within the Bush administration to keep it from happening, despite both FDA studies recommending this reclassification; and the fact that Plan B acts BEFORE CONCEPTION. Compounded by fundamentalist-driven attacks on sexual education programs, and the idiocy of Republican-implemented ‘pharmaceutical discretion’ laws in allowing pharmacists to deny filling prescriptions on the basis of their personal belief; it becomes increasingly clear that the right wing stance on abortion is nothing more than a segment of a wider cultural view in which the many must acquiesce to the moral belief structures of the few. This fundamentally undermines democracy.