...just lie back and welcome our Talibangelic overlords
Or, "The Handmaid's Tale was not intended as a blueprint, motherfuckers."

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Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant "by means other than sexual intercourse."

According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother through assisted reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation, and egg donation, must first file for a "petition for parentage" in their local county probate court.

Only women who are married will be considered for the "gestational certificate" that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the pregnancy. Further, the "gestational certificate" will only be given to married couples that successfully complete the same screening process currently required by law of adoptive parents.

"Petition for parentage"? "Gestational certificate"? What the fucking fuck?

You can read a PDF of the preliminary draft here.

So, let's see, the religious right's plan is as follows: 1) Repeal Roe v. Wade. 2) Ban emergency contraception. 3) Allow pharmacists to arbitrarily deny women their birth control prescriptions. 4) Deny equal marriage rights to same-sex couples. 5) Codify the right to reproduce only for married couples, and only those who pass a test -- because people who can't conceive without assistance are automatically suspect. 6) Make criminals of unmarried women and their physicians who dare to use reproductive technologies without state sanction, so that they are damned for trying to have children as well as for trying to avoid having children.

Eventually, those damned uppity womenfolk will realize that they don't own their own bodies. Just gotta beat those thoughts out of 'em. It's all for the children, you know. Won't anybody please think of the children?

Honestly, I don't think this is really all that different from some the eugenics ideas advocated by Margaret Sanger and such, ideas that pro-lifers claim to abhor. It's all about governmental permission to reproduce -- they're just coming at it from a different angle.

I don't think I know anyone in Indiana, but if anyone reading this does, make sure they know about this bill and get them to tell their state legislators to kill it. I doubt this would hold up under judicial review, but any success at getting even that far will only embolden the religious right in other states even more. Really, how much more evidence do we need to see that our own homegrown Taliban is engaged in a war on women? We're sending our soldiers to die in Iraq and Afghanistan ostensibly in the name of freedom, and all the while a substantial number of our fellow citizens are working on establishing religious tyranny at home.