Gary Trudeau hits it out of the park

[Black Aeronaut]

Wow. Didn't even know Trudeau was still alive. Last time he was relevant and funny was back in the 70s.

Oh, ouch!

The local paper's opinion section had a piece that adds something interesting to this...

[...]sonograms are already done before every abortion.
Agents of Planned Parenthood testified in the Texas Legislature that a
pre-abortion sonogram is already the standard of care for a number of
medical and health reasons.

If this is accurate (and it seems like it ought to be reasonably
verifiable), then a lot of the argument seems to just sort of spiral
into itself and collapse, because there's no additional indignity there
as a result of the law - just a requirement that the pictures be shown
to the person receiving the abortion. Which still feels like an
assumption of idiocy, but it still seems relatively non-threatening.

Given the established time and economic issues waiting periods can cause
(think they came up in a discussion here before?), *that* part of the
law is a real problem, and if you're going that far there's no reason to
keep any of it...

Well, it's not just the waiting periods.  It's also the fact that the doctors are now required, by law, to describe the fetus in detail and also perform that vaginal probe sonogram - it's just plain excessive.
Next thing you know it, certain members of the Republican party will be pushing for vaginal probe sonograms on all women of child-bearing age every census year so they'll know exactly how many women are pregnant and exactly how old the fetuses are.  I'm pretty sure they can come up with a compelling reason for needing that sort of data.  You can't tell me someone won't try it because the Republican party as of late has been pulling all kinds of crap.  Especially after Obama was elected.
What I really, REALLY hate is that these people are making Texas and Texans in general look bad.  Really, the issue in my state is that the Republican party, sometime around the 2004 elections, pulled a fast one in redrawing the voting district boundaries so predominantly Republican populations get more votes in the state senate than the predominantly Democratic or Independent districts.  It is something that's has been fought over in the courts here for a long time and, unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's gonna change anytime soon.  The Republican Party has grabbed the power here, and they are not letting go.