Before I get to the usual links, let’s start with a video from earlier this week of Michael Ellis, the President of the Wisconsin Senate, totally flipping his lid as he tries to push through another of those forced-ultrasound bills in his chamber (and succeeds):

Okay, now for the usual article links:

Ohio abortion clinic closes its doors, foreshadowing state budget impact (Salon.com)
Ohio Republicans Introduce One of the Nation’s All-Time Worst Abortion Bills (nationofchange.com)

I opened with the video of Ellis for two reasons. First, there is definitely an element of humour to him blowing his top and making a complete ass out of himself. Unfortunately, what lies beneath this bill isn’t funny at all, especially when you consider that earlier today, Wisconsin Republicans defeated a Democratic amendment to the forced-ultrasound bill that merely would have required the ultrasound be performed using an over-the-abdomen device, instead of the trans-vaginal probe Republicans have insisted on. That’s right, Republicans in Wisconsin are now going to force any woman in Wisconsin who wants an abortion to have a doctor, in a completely unnecessary medical procedure, shove a probe into their vagina. Apart from using the doctor as an intermediary, how, exactly, is this different from rape?

Abortion has been in the news in Toledo a lot lately due to the closure of local clinics, and now it looks like Republicans in Columbus — despite Obama winning the state in last year’s presidential elections, they actually increased their majorities in the state houses — are going to do their damnedest to make Ohio the latest state where every single end-around is pulled to effectively end abortion in the state. Were it not for Governor Kasich being so wary of passing far-right legislation after he tried to follow Wisconsin in gutting union rights a couple of years ago and Ohio voters responded by handing him his lunch, I’d say that all this anti-abortion legislation they’re forcing is almost certain to pass. As it is, I’d still give it better than a 50% chance of being signed into law by Kasich, because even though his poll numbers are still recovering from the Issue 2 debacle, I don’t see any Democrat in Ohio who could effectively challenge him (unless Dennis Kucinich quits his Fox News gig to give Ohio politics one last shot).

It’s ironic that all of this is happening in the shadow of the immigration reform debate, since it’s been pointed out repeatedly that unless Republicans can start making inroads with Hispanic voters (and no, putting up Marco Rubio as a presidential candidate and saying, “Hey look, a Latino Republican!” doesn’t count), they may not win another national election for at least a generation. (There’s a big asterisk there, though; never doubt the Democratic Party’s ability to lose an election worse than the Republican Party.) There’s still a very large, and very vocal, contingent of the Republican Party that is insistent on the party doing everything it can to kill comprehensive immigration reform, even if it costs them elections. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Republicans have been acting so desperately, at all levels of government from local to national, to push all of this regressive legislation, from abortion to voting rights and everything in between, as quickly as possible. There is a definite sense of desperation in the Republican Party these days, and it’s not unjustified.

Like in so many other states, Republicans in Wisconsin used their gains in the 2010 elections to gerrymander state districts, so that in 2012 they got a majority of seats despite only earning a minority of the vote. Just like in Michigan, when voters repealed Governor Snyder’s reforms to the Emergency Manager law and state Republicans just re-signed the bill weeks after the election, Republicans are acting with total disregard to what voters actually want. This isn’t to say that there aren’t other important stories going on — I’m as worried as the next person over how United States involvement in Syria is escalating — but it is a blight on the American press that these stories have not garnered more national attention.

Despite cloaking themselves in the mantle of “small government,” Republicans have been all too keen to pass a slew of regulations to effectively make it impossible for abortion clinics to operate in several states, what are commonly known as trap laws. Imagine, for a moment, Democrats used this tactic. On this day, exactly six months since the Sandy Hook shooting, let’s imagine that Democrats had not responded by trying to ban assault rifles, or stop the sale of high-capacity clips, or require mandatory background checks for all gun sales, or even just stop people on the terrorist watch list from buying weapons. Let’s say that, instead, Democrats had simply proposed a $25,000 tax for every bullet bought by an American. Every gun and every type of bullet would still be legal; they’d just be prohibitively expensive for all but the richest of Americans. If Democrats had proposed that, there would have been armed rebellions in all fifty states in a matter of hours. When Republicans use similar tactics, though, the outage is muted at best, if not non-existent.

I do not use the word “rape” lightly when discussing what these forced vaginal probes are doing to women who want to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. There is what’s known as “coerced consent” when discussing rape or other forms of assault, which is where the survivor is coerced by their rapist to say that they are okay with being sexually assaulted when they really aren’t. Coerced consent is not consent at all, and when Republicans are making a woman who wants an abortion submit to having a medical device inserted into her vagina for any reason — let alone one that is medically unnecessary — that is coerced consent to being penetrated. If someone were to tell a woman “you must consent to let me stick this device in your vagina” for any reason — to “pay” late rent, to stop the person from abusing other people — that would be considered rape by any court in the country. These legally-mandated trans-vaginal probes are no different, and they need to be understood as a form of coerced consent.

It’s alarming that after a similar plan in Virginia backfired a couple of years ago, essentially costing the state’s Republican governor any shot he had of being a figure in the 2012 elections, Wisconsin would go through with this anyway. I can think of no answer as to why they would so arrogantly, so vociferously push this legislation on the people of Wisconsin, other than that they simply do not care. Whether because they feel secure in keeping their majorities in Madison, or they do not care of the suffering they are going to put so many Wisconsinites through, or (most likely) both, they just don’t care.

Take another look at Michael Ellis in that video above. Don’t feel bad if you laugh; I still laugh at it, and we all need to laugh more, especially with all the bad stuff going on around us these days. Just remember this, though: The face of that red-in-the-face, angry, rude, arrogant, braying jackass is not just one of the faces of the Republican Party in Wisconsin. Ellis is, in a lot of ways, the face of the whole Republican Party these days, using every means at their disposal to force their radical right-wing agenda on all of us, and they don’t give a damn who they hurt in the process. If you’re scared by the thought of people like that telling you what you can and can’t do with your body, you’re not alone. Now do something about it.