Michigan’s Restrictive New Abortion Law

The GOP does as Rachel Maddow mocks: Jobs, jobs, jobs, by which I mean abortion.

Seriously, isn’t there some principle in law that says if something is declared a right, it is illegal to enact laws/regulations that do nothing but make exercising said right more difficult? If there isn’t, there should be. This is just a poll tax by another name.

#2 Science: as always with legal questions, the answer is “It depends.” Roe v. Wade certainly doesn’t legalize abortion on demand until time of birth. The State can require that surgical abortions be performed by licensed medical practicioners. They can’t limit clinic sizes to one square foot. Everything in between is determined by a series of people in matching black mu-mus.

Time for MH to step in and defend his hero, Rick Snyder.

The Michigan Republicans seem to be even more extreme than the Wisconsin Republicans. I only hope that both groups can be voted out of office.

It’s strange to think (and sad too) that it only took one bad election to give these people this much power.

“First, it requires that any facility that performs more than 10 abortions a month be a freestanding building with full surgical facilities…”

Could this lead to “circuit riders” — teams of abortion providers that rotate from building to building through the month?

The other alternative would be to purchase and staff many separate facilities, in each of which only the legal number of monthly abortions would be performed.

Gee, maybe this is a jobs bill.

(These suggestions are made with tongue in cheek.)

@ eric #7

That was my thought exactly … does this even pass the “rational basis” test?

@13 – yes, I too can make a good educated guess at the unstated reasons why abortion opponents would want that free-standing building requirement in the law. That is not really the issue. The issue is what stated reason can they possibly use in court for requiring these facilities have four unshared walls.

Well, all it took to make NJ’s governor a “compassionate conservative (fuck him, btw) was a “biblical” deluge of the easten part of the state. Perhaps a blizzard that closes every airport and road and causes a couple of thousand of old people to freeze to dea–, um, wait, they’d prolly PRAY for that to happen.

Fuck Snyder, he’s a lying fuckweasel, but what else should one expect of the GOP at this point?

Sure, but it passes the irrational basis test with flying colors*.

* Red, white and blue. Obviously.

Ed writes:

Rick Snyder came into office promising to be a new kind of Republican governor, focused on budget and economic issues and not on social hot button issues like abortion and gay rights.

During the 2010 MI gubernatorial campaign, Rick Snyder was very clear on his being an opponent of abortion rights. In fact his campaign prioritized his being anti-abortion rights while in southwest Michigan. Here’s an example of a column he wrote during the ’10 campaign for MLive.com which is a key southwestern Michigan publisher*: http://www.mlive.com/opinion/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/06/guest_commentary_rick_snyder_s.html .

Having said that, Ed is correct that Snyder did pose as someone who was not interested in taking up the banner of the bigoted, Christianist, corporatist fascist right. He repeatedly vetoed their bills and proposed and pass an increase in taxes on some fixed-income retirees.

So the challenge non-conservatives had to contend with when considering whether to vote for him in 2010 was whether he’d stand-up to the filibuster-proof majority of Republicans who dominate the two Michigan state legislatures (in spite our not being a red state). It is my perspective he did a fantastic job, demonstrating even more character than Barack Obama, until the 2012 lameduck legislative sessions began which resulted an incredible amount of Christianist/Tea-Party friendly legislation passing and hitting the Gov. Snyder’s desk. Mr. Snyder did veto some of those bills, including an atrocious anti-abortion bill, but as Ed reveals here, he also signed some as well.

It’ll be interesting to see how this impacts Mr. Snyder’s future. From my perspective Mr. Snyder’s performance through Oct-12 demonstrated he and his approach to governance could provide a path for the GOP to regain some credibility. In fact Ms. Maddow did a wonderful job a couple of days after the last election arguing why we need a competent GOP where Mr. Snyder’s performance would have been a perfect illustration of Maddow’s point such governance was possible. However, since the election Gov. Snyder hasn’t merely let down non-conservatives, he’s horrified them; similar to how constitutionalists perceive President Obama’s performance on 4th and 5th Amendment issues.

*MLive’s parent, Booth Newspapers, is located in Grand Rapids where they publish the Grand Rapids Press; however they also publish papers in MI cities/towns outside southwestern Michigan as well.

Re @21

That should be Michael Heath @ #21

Mr. Heath, Mr. Snyder has turned out to be the nightmare I fully expected he would be. While I’m angry about almost everything he’s done while in office (with the single exception of the bridge issue), I am enraged about everything he’s done in the past two months. I particularly dislike his support for the Right to Work for the Same Wages as a Chinese Peasant bill. I did not think any governor could do more damage to Michigan than John Engler, but Mr. Engler begins to look like an amateur. Mr. Snyder will almost certainly succeed in the complete dismantling of public education in this state, a project Mr. Engler was passionate in pursuing but failed to accomplish.

Mr. Snyder announced that businesses (unnamed, of course) are already showing interest in moving to Michigan. Meanwhile, here in southwestern Michigan, where I reside, we are heavily dependent on tourism, as is most of the northern part of our state. Mr. Snyder left the job of signing the the rest of the Tea Party’s holiday ejaculate this week to his lieutenant, because Mr. Snyder is on vacation — “out of state.” Lovely to have the governor of the most beautiful state in the union leave when he wants to enjoy himself — it gives just the right message to would-be visitors, don’t you think?

Re teele @ #24

Lovely to have the governor of the most beautiful state in the union leave when he wants to enjoy himself — it gives just the right message to would-be visitors, don’t you think?

Although I agree with Mr. teele that Governor Snyder is pond scum, I have to say that this is a bit of a cheap shot. With all due respect, winter weather in Michigan ain’t winter weather in Florida or Southern California and one can’t really blame the governor to taking a break. As someone who grew up in Los Angeles and went to graduate school in Upstate New York, I can speak with some authority in this regard.