Georgia Abortion Bill Dies, Doctors who Opposed It Burglarized

benbradley

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Abortion bill skids to stop
http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-government/abortion-bill-skids-to-1399907.html
In a late-hour game of chicken, House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, on Tuesday rejected the Senate's weakening of House legislation that could set new limits on abortion, effectively stranding the bill.
Perhaps the more interesting story is this:

Doctors shaken by clinic burglaries
http://www.ajc.com/news/doctors-shaken-by-clinic-1399871.html
Several doctors who care for pregnant women in Atlanta worry they may have been targeted for burglaries because they expressed concerns about a bill in the General Assembly that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks.

Police say burglars bypassed other valuables and seemed to know what they were looking for when they swiped laptops from two obstetric/gynecology offices and from the Georgia OB/GYN Society, a professional organization for obstetricians and gynecologists.

...
 

muravyets

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So, tantrums and terroristic bullying. Typical.

I'm not entirely sure what happened in the Georgia legislature. Did the hardliners throw a fit and kick over the playing board? Or was this stalling of it some tricky way of getting out of having to back a horrible bill?

But the burglaries thing, yeah, that's very not good.
 

Snowstorm

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The burglaries alone are scary, but I have a concern of the information that was on those laptops. Would the burglars release any patients' private information to the public? That's the real scare.
 

RichardGarfinkle

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The burglaries alone are scary, but I have a concern of the information that was on those laptops. Would the burglars release any patients' private information to the public? That's the real scare.

Or use it for private harassment.
 

LOG

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Hmmmm, I would have hoped that they would have put a system in place so that all patient info is stored on a server, not on the laptops themselves, and accessing it should require user authentication. That's how my doctor's office stores their info.
Hopefully they at least have the laptops set to require login information as well.
 
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RichardGarfinkle

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Hmmmm, I would have hoped that they would have put a system in place so that all patient info is stored on a server, not on the laptops themselves, and accessing it should require user authentication. That's how my doctor's office stores their info.
Hopefully they at least have the laptops set to require login information as well.

I had to look into the various patient info systems available a while back. Some of the systems are meant to make it easy for doctors to get at patient info fast. Others focus more on patient privacy. How much data was put at risk really depends on the software.
 

crunchyblanket

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Ugh. Once again, all life is precious and beautiful - until it's born. Then it's okay to harrass and bully if they don't share your beliefs.

Give me strength.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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Too bad Georgia doesn't have the Stand Your Ground law. Those doctors could blow the anti-choice burglars to smithereens and not even get arrested, and have everyone ringing their hands* over damage to the shooters' reputations.:evil




*Not here at AW, but certainly on my Facebook feed.
 

onuilmar

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Unless, of course, it's a black doctor in a hoodie blowing away a white intruder wearing a balaclava. :)

Then the doctor would be arrested right away, just like the Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was arrested for breaking into his own house.
 
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GeorgeK

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Police say burglars bypassed other valuables and seemed to know what they were looking for when they swiped laptops from two obstetric/gynecology offices and from the Georgia OB/GYN Society, a professional organization for obstetricians and gynecologists.
The abortion thing may simply be a way to throw off the scent of the more likely reason to steal laptops from a doctor's office, namely for information on patients to use for identity theft.
 

benbradley

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Woops, the bill got revived at the last moment.Compromise reached on abortion bill
http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-government/compromise-reached-on-abortion-1401963.html
The original proposal would have cut by about six weeks the time women in Georgia may have an elective abortion. With the changes, it would now also include an exemption for "medically futile" pregnancies, giving doctors the option to perform an abortion when a fetus has congenital or chromosomal defects.

McKillip at a hastily called press conference Thursday evening said the compromise involves inserting a strict definition of what "medically futile" means.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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Woops, the bill got revived at the last moment.Compromise reached on abortion bill
http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-government/compromise-reached-on-abortion-1401963.html

Wait -- the bill had been nearly killed by unhappy Republicans because some of its nastier elements had been toned down. Rep. McKillip hated it because although it had kept the nasty time limit on abortions and no exceptions for rape or incest, it made exceptions for "medically futile" pregnancies. That last is what Rep. McKillip objected to so much and couldn't stomach.

But now they've "compromised?"

What kind of a compromise is this?

The story, which is reported utterly deadpan, reads like the compromise is between the excruciating and the merely horrible.

Oh my god, it says that if an abortion is done after 20 weeks, the fetus must be removed alive.

...

I note they have also "compromised" on a bill which cuts unemployment benefits. One wonders if it was a compromise between cutting the benefits of the unemployed and tying rocks to them and drowning them. (sarcasm alert)
 
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muravyets

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Wouldn't removing a 20-week fetus alive fulfill all of the most gory and gruesome horror tales the anti-choice movement have been making up about abortion for years? What, disappointed that none of their stories were true, they've decided to make them true by legislation? If abortion clinics are not actually causing the gruesome deaths of fetuses, then by golly, these legislators will make them do it?

ETA: In case I'm being obscure, I'm referring to the low odds of a 20-week-old fetus surviving induced labor or c-section or living very long if it does survive the procedure.

Is there a point at which the anti-choice argument becomes insane? Like any argument when it gets too extreme, has it tipped over into madness yet? Because it looks like it has.
 

Yorkist

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Incidentally, because this is the newest misogynist thread and there's no hub for talking about it all, I have decided to pull up my roots and move to a clearly blue state whenever my family's career/housing/etc. situation is ripe for it. I can't raise daughters here, and that's the end of it, alas. It's kind of a big step for me. Any ideas 'round these parts for blue states where there's no such thing as frostbite warnings during winter? Honestly I'd prefer snow shoveling to be a laughable concept as well. Are Hawaii and parts of California my only options?

Oh my god, it says that if an abortion is done after 20 weeks, the fetus must be removed alive.

I can't decide if this is an attempt to hurt women in order to discourage them from seeking abortions at all costs even when they're medically necessary (like, "yay, she has to watch her kid die with her own fucking eyes"), or failure to understand that pregnancies that are terminated due to genetic defects are done so out of mercy, and subsequent failure to empathize with those parents.
 

Yorkist

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Beware of California. It's not as blue as it looks. Choose your location wisely there.

And I really, really don't want to go to CA in the first place. I'd prefer, from what I know of them, Oregon or Vermont, 'cause they're not real crowded/expensive and have more options for small town living, but I think they'd be pretty effing cold, right?

All the blue I really care about is social blue, FWIW. I can't live in a place that hates women, gays, Latinos, etc. etc. anymore.
 

muravyets

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I lived in Vermont for six years. It's pretty effing cold. I was in Burlington, on the northerly end. They got Canada's weather, sucked down on mighty winds through the Champlain Valley. A couple of times, my snot froze.

But damn it's pretty. Except in about Feb/March. That's when you feel like killing the snow. But the rest of the year, the place is goddamn gorgeous.

And it's quite liberal. I guess. It's hard to tell. There are all sorts there, but for the most part it's pretty solidly liberal.

Not very diverse, though, ethnically. When I first moved there from NYC, my first impression was "Where are all the other people?" But that can be fixed.

ETA: Oh, I should mention, it's nigh on impossible to make a living there. FYI. Get those book deals.
 

Yorkist

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ETA: Oh, I should mention, it's nigh on impossible to make a living there. FYI. Get those book deals.

Compared to, say, Mississippi/Arkansas/Tennessee? Or compared to a big urban area? I'll take a low-paying government job to avoid crazy ass sprawl or overcrowding. If the COL doesn't match up to salaries, though - like if two professionals on government/small business payrolls can't make enough to afford a 3/2 in a decent neighborhood without stretching their budgets to impossible limits - I don't wanna go there. Thus, say, Colorado is out.

That quite sucks about the cold, though I've been moving steadily north over the years and have managed to acclimate alright. (It's not cold enough to have to worry about frostbite, right?) I've always had a long-distance love affair with Vermont and Maine. Long distance because I've never been north of D.C., heh.

And it's quite liberal. I guess. It's hard to tell. There are all sorts there, but for the most part it's pretty solidly liberal.

I don't mind diversity of opinion at all; I mean, I've been a liberal in a red state my whole life. I just want to live in a place where misogyny to this extent is so unthinkable for a large enough majority of the population that it has no chance of being codified into law.
 

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I grew up in New York and live in Chicago, but both fail the no snow shoveling requirement.

Ugh, yeah, no. I almost went to school in Chicago, until I did some research on Chicago winters. I've heard you guys have had frostbite warnings. And NYC is too crowded, too expensive, too too.

Ideally I want a blue version of the South, and I think the Pacific Northwest is as close as I'm going to get. Hopefully we can make it happen, and hopefully my parents and sister will consent to be dragged along with us. *crosses fingers*

I've been in Seattle and found it beautiful, but weather again can be weird.
Probably no weirder than where I'm from or where I live. *glares at flooding and frequent tornadoes*

Anyway, sorry to all for the thread derail. Georgia's legislature sucks. I have pregnant friends in Georgia right now and I'm trying to motivate them to be politically active, to at least write letters to their congresspeople, but alas, it ain't happening.
 

muravyets

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They get frostbite warnings in Vermont, too. I like winter. I didn't mind the Vermont cold at all, but I do feel like I should warn people about it.

As for making a living, I'd say it's on the Mississippi/Arkansas/Tennessee end of the spectrum, but I'd be only guessing as I don't know those states. I have a friend in Mississippi who hasn't been able to find work in a long time.

I have a feeling a lot Vermonters who are not realtors would not know what "a 3/2" is. But you can get a 34-acre horse farm for under $300K, or this for the same, or (wow) this for under $400K (19 rooms? must be haunted). (I enjoy checking out real estate listings for various states.)

Vermont is very, very rural. It is underpopulated and has few large employers. It's actually a good place to be self-employed, if your business is not completely dependent on a local customer base. But to be an employee there, good luck.

That said, the plusses include:

The state government leaves folks mostly alone, except for providing some fairly decent public services.

The environment and communities are generally clean and healthy.

Abortion laws are supportive of women's rights but community attitudes often are not. Abortion in Vermont is limited by both attitude and economics, so that picture is pretty bad though consistent with much of the rest of the country. At least the state's laws are good. They need to get the providers in line.

Wikipedia offers an amusing overview of politics and state laws of note in Vermont. Of special note, to me, is that Vermont is the first state to recognize same-sex marriage by a bill passed in the legislature and not by a judicial ruling; it is aggressive in controlling suburban sprawl; it has very strict laws regulating various aspects of the medical industry; it is the only US state with no balanced budget requirement, but it still balances its budget; it is one of two states that allow prison inmates to vote (the other being Maine); it is legal to carry a concealed firearm without any permit at all there (since, if I read that right, 1903); and public nudity is legal, but disrobing in public is not (go figure that one out).

By the way, in 2011, Vermont passed the nation's only single payer public health care system, which they hope to get up and running by 2014 (with a federal waiver under Obamacare).

And Vermont has provided the US House and Senate with three of its best members, in my opinion: Representative Peter Welch, Senator Patrick Leahy, and (one of my favorite people) Senator Bernie Sanders.

So if you don't mind being poor and cold, Vermont is a great state to live in.

This post was actually kind of fun to write. I suggest people should get into the habit of googling "<name of state> politics". You learn all kinds of things.