THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

When they found the climate in Virginia no longer welcoming to their brand of institutional rape, the Pure Pussy Protection League brought it up to Pennsylvania where they have a reliable douchebag teabagger governor and enough douchebag teabaggers in the legislature to get any shit passed. And boy do they have a piece of shit they want to pass.

Even as the transvaginal ultrasound bill in Virginia was causing national outrage, Pennsylvania conservatives were quietly pushing a even more restrictive abortion bill. The legislation is designed with so many difficult and differing restrictions that long-time abortion policy analyst Elizabeth Nash at the Guttmacher Institute told Raw Story, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

In addition to mandating the much-maligned transvaginal ultrasound requirements since rejected by the state of Virginia, Pennsylvania legislators proposed strongly encouraging women to view and listen to the ultrasounds, forcing technicians to give the women personalized copies of the results and mandating how long before any abortion the ultrasound much be preformed — and that’s just for starters.

That last requirement has already been passed and struck down in Louisiana, partially over concerns of patients’ privacy and potential risks for women in abusive relationships, Nash said.

“This bill definitely suffers the legislators-playing-doctor problem. … There are a number of requirements in this bill that are medically unnecessary,” Nash said, pointing out that so many requirements packed into the 22-page bill could make it logistically difficult for abortion providers to comply with them. “This bill is something that would be unacceptable to most women seeking an abortion.”

Additionally, Nash points out that the length of the legislation hides bizarre and unprecedented requirements, such as asking women who gets an ultrasound more than 14 days before her abortion to view a state-approved video on fetal gestation. The bill, unlike many other ultrasound requirements, does offer exceptions for victims of rape and incest; the bill does not require victims to have reported the incidents to the authorities.

I'm guessing that teabaggers consider this a small government measure because a woman's uterus is usually smaller than your average basketball court. I could be wrong.