I swear I’m going to start another blog with that title. Anyway, I know how to make the idiotic Virginia probe law fair. It’s simple, require the father of the child get the same probe. It would work like this.
Doc Hudson: It’s your choice, son, eighteen years of child support or an hour with Bessie.
Father: Who’s Bessie?
Doc Hudson: [Goes to a curtain and opens it, revealing something that looks like a sterile chain saw.] This’eres Bessie, the finest anal probing machine ever built.
Father: [Gulps and begins to sweat and shake.] Okay…
Doc Hudson: Bend over. [Cranks Bessie several times to get her started. He yells over the noise.] Helps if you scream!
Father: [Looks back just before Bessie hits home. He yells over the noise.] What? I can’t hear you over the… YEEAAAAGH!
Doc Hudson: That’s it son! Let it all out.
Now the real life answer to this is a court challenge. I do not believe that a group of people who are most definitely NOT doctors can, by law, design and implement a required medical procedure. I believe that power rests with the state medical boards in most states. In this case it will fall to some brave doctor out there to say, “No, I will not perform a procedure that does not carry board approval. Aside from the procedure being unnecessary and of dubious value, performing an experimental procedure without board approval would jeopardize my license to practice medicine.”
The problem here, in case you’re one of the nut jobs who think this is a great idea, is not just for women who want abortions. If the precedent is set that the state legislature can override the board created to protect us from charlatans, that protection vanishes for ALL of us in a poof of pen ink. What if some state legislator decides trepanning should be required for patients who have chronic migraines? If this law is allowed to stand, then any law like it would be able to stand as well.
E.W.
And for cases where the father can’t be found, everyone who penned and/or signed the bill should have to ride Bessie in his place.