Last week, a bill requiring a sonogram for every abortion caused quite a stir. It brought activists from both sides of this topic out of the woodwork and into the streets in droves, but the bill itself made no sense at all, since sonograms are already required in order for doctors to determine the age of the fetus, which they must do in order to determine if the fetus meets the existing legal requirements for an abortion to proceed.
OK, so we have a poorly written bill that does nothing for anyone… You would thing this would be a no-brainer to simply dump it and move on, right? Apparently someone decided to make this little circus into an even greater mess:
Listening to the local talk radio folks, you would think the latest closed door caucus at the statehouse was a major catastrophe, but what’s really going on here?
According to public opinion, there’s obviously a stench surrounding the backdoor quashing of the bill representing the most recent attempt to humanize the abortion process. Using a caucus to make policy decisions behind closed doors definitely did not help the situation any. Are our representatives so out of touch that they cannot see that acting in this way only raises the public temperature, so-to-speak?
Everyone wants to see their state officials making good choices and even more importantly, they want those choices to be transparent and honest, so this little caucus nonsense has rightly put them into a tailspin of sorts and the fallout could get quit ugly if there isn’t a change in the way our legislature conducts their business.
I for one, am not enamored of the caucus as a valid means of doing any kind of business because a caucus holds nobody accountable. Why the caucus? How did this dubious choice get made? Fear of public backlash? The realization that the bill being debated was written so poorly as to make no sense whatsoever, regardless of which side of the abortion debate you are on? This is just plain ridiculous! It stinks of cowardice and a very poorly executed attempt at sweeping the whole thing under a rug. How is that working for you now?
Drop the damned thing publicly in committee as the garbage that it is, take your lumps and move on. Whoever came up with this thing obviously needs to take it in the shorts and there is really no stopping that from happening. The concept behind the bill is admirable, but the execution of it shows sheer naiveté and this thing should have died in committee through the standard process long before it got to this point. Admonish the creator of this bill to go back to the drawing board and come up with something more intelligent; if you want to start an abortion fight, then do so with a bill that actually does something for crying out loud.
Hopefully the the person or persons who sponsored this bill will learn to take a little more time and thought into their next one, or the next election may just find them out on the street.
Just my view from the cheep seats.
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