Maine Senate Majority Leader Rep. Garrett Mason authored a bill that would force insurance companies to pay for fertility treatments. Which sounds, for a Republican, almost sympathetic: you have a couple trying desperately to have a child, and finally reach the point where their only solution is medical treatment that would cost thousands of dollars that they just can't afford. And Maine wants to make their lives just a little bit better.
Except for one thing: it includes a morals clause. The original language of LD 943, An Act to Provide Access to Infertility Treatment, has the following provisions:
A. The covered individual must be married;And once again, the "small government Republicans" want to ensure that they can get the government to intervene in women's personal lives. Because everybody deserves the chance to have children, unless they're a slut. Because god knows that if they had an STD, they must have proven that they're unfit parents, right?
B. The covered individual's infertility may not be the result of a sexually transmitted disease
Now, Mason has said that he's open to removing the provisions. "I'm totally willing to do something that fits Maine better, and that is why we have the committee process."
Because in its original form, this bill would lose the first time it went before the Supreme Court, which should have been obvious to anyone with the brain power of an Eastern White Pine (the State Tree of Maine).
It's good to know that rape victims who received an STD from their attacker might have had a good chance of being declared "unfit parents" in Maine, thanks to this simpering, slack-jawed, puffy-faced used car salesman.
I'm a little curious whether, if a couple has a divorce midway through treatment for infertility, would they be on the hook for the entire bill? Or just for the portion of the infertility treatment that came after the divorce was finalized? And would there be a "statute of limitations" for divorce? How long would the new parents need to stay married before the state wouldn't arrest them?
This bill has, at least, one area where it isn't discriminatory. Maine has recognized same-sex marriage since 2012. So at least it would be easier for lesbian couples to get pregnant.
Some 3-legged Sasquatch are not funny. Some are downright depraved and sadistic, such as this Texas Republican Wants Women to Carry Deceased Fetuses to Full Term:
ReplyDelete“Last week in Texas, a Republican lawmaker proposed an amendment so outrageous, that even some of his own GOP colleagues were repulsed ...
Rep. Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler) put forward an amendment that would make it illegal to terminate a pregnancy after 20 weeks, even if a fetus “has a severe and irreversible abnormality,” effectively forcing families with wanted, but unsustainable pregnancies to carry to term at the behest of the state and against the advice of their doctors or their own wishes.
What would cause a lawmaker to want the government to inflict more emotional pain onto an already grieving family, in addition to adding a major health risk to the mother? Does he not realize a woman can easily die of sepsis by carrying a nonviable fetus?
Schaefer said that suffering is “part of the human condition, since sin entered the world.””
Let's face it, this demented, neurotic obsession with sex and procreation comes to us through religion -- not all religions but a few of them with Mesopotamian roots. The unworthiness of mankind, the inherited and inescapable "sins" and thought crimes and other mystical properties we are possessed of and can only ameliorate through suffering and obedience and ritual. The loathing of the body the loathing of enjoyment -- all these things are the residue of ancient fears of ancient people and we will never have the kind of civilization and civilized justice until we recognize this, until we stop giving and thinking we owe respect to people of madness.
ReplyDeleteWe let them teach our children, close the mouths of wisdom and enlightenment while they force these ancient evils on us.
And so many think Ayn Rand was nuts.
ReplyDeleteWhy single out Ayn Rand? The entire species is flawed and corrupt. This is what you get when you stuff an oversized brain into a chimpanzee: Another evolutionary dead end.
DeletePossibly because regardless of ones view of her political/economic views she was an opponent of much of the craziness brought to the world as a result of religion (mysticism) and Reagan conservatism.
DeleteThe oversized brain stuffed into a chimpanzee analogy does fit the human condition quite aptly. FreeThinke and the present republican party; both good examples.
Certainly she had something of value to say about many things -- so did Marx. the problem I have with schemes for improving the human condition is that they tend to see what humans do and how they act as the product of circumstance and reason. Change the circumstances and the institutions and systems and reasonable, honest humans will change their behavior. Now all we have to do is follow Diogenes the Cynic and find some of these mythological creatures called rational and honest men.
DeleteSpeaking of FERTILITY, or the lack thereof, I might as well bring this tidbit to the discussion table (see last post):
ReplyDeleteStudy finds steady decrease in sperm counts from 1938 to 1992
“[Professor Niels Skakkeback, a Danish scientist, and his team] reviewed 61 international studies involving 14,947 men between 1938 and 1992. They found that the average sperm count had fallen from 113 million per millilitre in 1940 to 66 million in 1990."
The word spoken to Dustin Hoffman in the movie, The Graduate -- the one that would secure his future -- is PLASTICS!
It is believed that estrogen-mimicking compounds in plastic account for lower sperms counts and rising levels of male infertility. Famine, pestilence and war alone may not bring on the Zombie Apocalypse, but plastics will. Everything wrapped in plastic these days – from food to shopping bags, to blister-wrapped gadgets, to drinking cups, to shipping peanuts -- will be your undoing.
When the male haploid count heads to zero, and those hapless humanoids start shooting blanks, cephalopods shall rise up and inherit the Earth.
I think that's, at the very best, conjecture based on the time honored post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. Perpetrators of such things are always selling something like "natural" or "organic" foods. Why out of an unknown universe of possible and possibly multiple causes do we land on plastic? Wild animals tend to have much higher sperm counts than domestic critters and the most motile human sperm studs produce far, far less than chimps. Wolves have much more productive cajones than dogs, loins than house cats.. Which is more likely to go extinct? It's been conjectured as well that, stress, diet, living conditions or indeed the genetic changes that are involved with domestication are a larger factor than anything else, but certainly there are many, many factors overlooked by obsessing about how bad the modern world is for our health..
ReplyDeleteWhat gives me further cause to suspect some motivated thinking here is the massive flood of statements and ideas linking every facet of modernity to some dire consequences most of which are without any evidence whatever. It's very profitable to convince the public that we're all sick, all full of unspecified toxins because we eat "processed" food or don't eat like some white coated wit says "cave men" ate or use Dr. Oz'x magic bean of the month or because of radios, electric light soy sauce, and of course plastic. We've become so used to any statement by lab coated hucksters being sold as a "study" we don't even know what a real study is and like all conspiracy theories, the fun of believing outweighs the fun of experimental verification.
And then, there's the old slippery slope. Something has declined over a period of time, therefore it will tend to zero. Human stature, during this allegedly unhealthy period has increased dramatically, as well as has longevity and health. Will we soon be 40 foot tall immortals?
So far, the soy eating Chinese are reproducing quite well despite countless centuries of eating estrogen containing tofu. I'm not worried and yes they're half a foot taller than their grandfathers. Has anyone bothered to check the sperm counts of the Asmat or the Combai or any people living far from "civilization?"
Shushhhh, Captain!
DeleteYou're not supposed to say such things in public with earshot of wingnuts. The only way to motivate those suckers is to let them think their 'below-the-belt' is at risk.
Well Obama is plotting to take those away too. God Guns and Gonads made America great and Obama is against it.
DeleteOh, and by the way, buy my new book showing how Danish pastry can be used for birth control. I have a lab coat to prove it.
ReplyDelete