If men actually were forced into marriage against their will, it wouldn’t be a cute cake topper, because nobody would put a rape joke on top of their wedding cake. Funny thing is, I can think of a group of people who, for pretty much the entirety of human history, have been denied agency and as a result, sold or coerced into marriages as a way to solidify political gains, make money and secure property, and guess the f**k what, guys? That group isn’t “men.” It’s women. After all, the question “Who gives this woman in marriage?” isn’t rooted in tender father-daughter tradition. It’s a sales transaction.

And on a more light-hearted note, my recurring wedding nightmares led me to ask my now-married friends about their own wedding disasters:

Hoping to exorcise some pre-wedding demons, I asked my hitched friends: did you experience any wedding disasters? The best response? From my musically gifted friend Mikal: “Does being knocked up at your wedding count?” But seriously, folks. I wanted to know: when even the best planning goes awry, does it actually matter, or will we all look back later and laugh? The consensus seems to be: both.

Missed some Hitched? Here’s the whole archive at the Frisky.

Sarah Weddington, original defender of Roe v. Wade, speaks at Planned Parenthood lobby day in Spring 2011.

I don’t know, I guess all women’s health news should just be reclassified through the Mo’Fuckery And Bullshit Desk. Emily Ramshaw at the Texas Tribune reports that Texas has now officially banned Planned Parenthood from receiving federal women’s health funds because they’re an “affiliate of an abortion provider,” even though, and I can’t believe I’m saying this again except I can totally believe it, Planned Parenthood’s NECESSARY and VALUABLE and TOTALLY LEGAL abortion-providing operations are wholly fiscally and operationally separate from the Planned Parenthood that provides cancer screenings, well-woman exams and contraceptive services.

The rule, signed by Commissioner Tom Suehs on Thursday, takes effect March 14.

“Under federal law, states administer Medicaid and have the right to set the criteria for providers in the program. That is what Texas is doing,” said Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the agency. “We have a state law that our Attorney General says is constitutional, and it clearly bans abortion providers from taking part in the Women’s Health Program. We can’t violate a perfectly valid state law just to appease Washington. We hope CMS will reverse its position and allow the program to continue.”

Unless some last-minute agreement is brokered, the program, which receives $9 in federal funds for every $1 in state funds, will be either phased out or cut off by the end of March. At least 130,000 poor Texas women will lose access to cancer screenings, well-woman exams and contraception.

Ramshaw adds: “The stalemate appears unbreakable — Republican lawmakers have made clear they’d rather forgo the program and the federal money than allow Planned Parenthood to participate.” To be clear, this means: Republican lawmakers have made clear they’d rather make sure poor and uninsured women will not have access to one of the largest providers of necessary women’s health care than to, uh, do that.

[Ed. note

Dallas’ public radio station, KERA, recently ran a pledge drive, and I finally pledged. I’ve been a regular listener for a while now — in fact, I consider popping in a CD every once in a while, but I have a panic attack at the thought of what I might miss if not listening to NPR. It’s kind of nuts, considering I’ve started having panic attacks due to some of the things they regularly talk about on NPR (a running series seems to focus on people who’ve been unemployed FOR YEARS — my poor heart can’t take it). Alas, however, I’m probably doomed to panic attacks over some such thing for the rest of my life. I deal. And I gave to my local NPR station because I listen all the time. They finally guilted me into it.

And then they promptly shat all over my good graces.

I filled out the donation form using my name — Nan Kirkpatrick — as the primary contact. Actually, I was technically the only contact. And I gave them my personal checking account information. Sean (my husband) and I do have a joint checking account, but he was donating from his own funds. We’re modern like that. So, so far I’ve given them my name and my personal checking account information. Then I saw a small, not required space for “Name of Spouse.” I put “Sean Kirkpatrick.” Looking back, this was my big mistake. At the time, however, I thought nothing of it. I’m a good test taker, I guess — I don’t leave anything blank.

A couple of weeks went by, and I got my membership information in the mail. What I saw turned my blood to ice. The envelope was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Sean Kirkpatrick.

I was livid. Absolutely aghast. Completely at a loss for words. I’d taken the time to give those…those…assholes my hard earned money — money that I, NAN Kirkpatrick, put in a lot of effort to obtain — and I didn’t even receive recognition except as a “Mrs.” Heck, Sean received first-name recognition, and based on my knowledge of the world, my paycheck, personal bank account, and time do not belong to him. He didn’t have anything to do with the giving of that money. He was a not required blank. He was, in this instance, an afterthought.

He also seemed a little at a loss when I was ranting about the situation. I know. This is not something that on the surface seems like a big deal to dudes, and I cannot say that I blame them. They walk through life knowing that if they put their spouses name in the not required blank, the envelope will always come addressed to them…and some unnamed other. They know that if they give THEIR MONEY to an entity, the entity will not then treat them like a possession, a mere Mr. to someone else’s Mrs. And that reminds me…I always fill out forms as “Ms.” Those jerks couldn’t even get that part right.

Throughout history, women have been barred from financial independence. Actual laws kept women dependent on men for financial stability. I cherish my right to earn my own money and keep it where I please. And I don’t appreciate the societal standard trampling all over common sense — it should’ve been obvious that I was the one to be thanked based on my name being the primary contact alone — to keep from me what I am owed: KERA’s gratitude for my fucking money.

I sent them an email letting them know how I felt. I don’t remember the specifics, but I do remember that it ended with, “This is 2012. Get with the program.” They still haven’t responded. And I’m still livid whenever I think about it. I’m livid because it’s just a very obvious reminder that I am not even considered an equal partner in my own marriage by society, let alone as a complete and separate individual.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

As to why Virginia could be different than Texas, where the law is being contested in court but is already being enforced,  Grimes said, “In my experience as a Texas feminist, even progressive people just kind of expect that Texas is shitty and backwards and oh well, that’s just what happens there with those poor, ignorant Red Staters so what can you do? But now we’re seeing that Texas… isn’t just the ignorant, backwoods exception to the rule–it’s the inspiration for an increasingly well-organized push to take rights away from women nationwide.”

And Jacobson says, “There’s just this confluence of factors where people are beginning to wake up to what’s going on. Part of it is that people are aware that it’s not just a culture war — it’s a war on women, evidence, health, and science.”

By “Jacobson,” Carmon means Jodi Jacobson of RHRealityCheck.org, which has been doing bold and fantastic continuing coverage of these bills, and if you’re not already checking the site every morning, bookmark that shit.

But as more states inject mandatory ultrasound policies into their abortion laws, a group of scientists is attempting to influence the debate with new research showing that ultrasounds, while useful and informative, do not directly influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion, at least not in most cases. The research team has also found evidence of instances when anti-abortion pregnancy centers have misdiagnosed how far along a woman is in her pregnancy, potentially in an effort to delay or prevent an abortion.

BUT OH WELL Texas will keep requiring them anyway, because Judge Sam Sparks says his hands are tied by the anti-choice Fifth Circuit Court Of Appeals. Via the Washington Post:

A federal judge in Austin said Monday that he couldn’t block a Texas law requiring women to have a sonogram before having an abortion any longer because an appeals court had ordered it to take effect.

District Judge Sam Sparks earlier ruled parts of the law unconstitutional, but his latest ruling said he’s bound to follow the direction of the New Orleans-based appeals court, which said last month it believed the law to be constitutional.

Sparks wrote in his ruling that the law is still some bullshit. I’m paraphrasing, via the Austin-American Statesman:

Sparks wrote that he remained convinced that the law violates the U.S. Constitution by infringing on doctor’s free speech rights and by impairing the exercise of their medical judgment.

But Sparks added that his hands were tied by a higher-court decision, issued last month by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, that expressly found the sonogram requirement to be constitutionally sound and a reasonable regulation of medicine.

The word itself doesn’t have immediately positive connotations for me. You say “wife,” and what I imagine is a long-suffering Alice Kramden or permanently put-upon June Cleaver. A string of women in skirt-suits standing stoically next to their husbands during embarrassing adultery-related press conferences. I think of bland casseroles in the oven. I think of screaming kids in the yard. Picket fences and that kind of shit.

Read the rest here.

Susan’s been to four weddings in her life and she’s been in two of them. Neither were especially positive experiences — we’re talking bridal freak-outs, awkward confrontations, ugly dresses and everything every bride thinks her wedding is totally not going to be but sometimes is.

I wanted to have a sweet, fun, low-pressure wedding for my sake, and for Patrick’s sake, but also for Susan’s sake. And I was really scared that no matter what I did, she was going to hate it, and be mad at me, and we’d never get past the fact that I had a wedding and asked her to be my maid of honor. I didn’t want one relationship to fall apart just because another one was throwing a big party for itself.

Read the rest at The Frisky.

What is the Eddie Brill thing? It’s this thing where everybody is all, OMG, Can you believe this middle-aged white guy who booked EXACTLY ONE female comic on David Letterman for the entirety of 2011 said this sexist thing IN THE NEW YORK TIMES!?

The thing he said: ““There are a lot less female comics who are authentic,” Mr. Brill said. “I see a lot of female comics who to please an audience will act like men.”

Mirth Magazine probably has one of the best takes on the situation, written by EIC Larry Getlen, who is a dude saying salient things about the patriarchal bullshit that goes on in the world of stand-up comedy, such like:

Ouch. OK – there’s a whirlwind of wrong here, since the quote seems to lay down a clear separation of what’s OK or expected for men to do compared with what’s OK or expected for women. When Lisa Lampanelli spews out a dirty sex joke, is she “acting like a man?” Or is it when Tina Fey has the audacity to run a show? I’m pretty sure the latter is not what Brill meant, but the truth is, I have no idea what he meant. I do know that, short of a woman coming on stage with a full handlebar mustache and scratching her imaginary balls, statements like that are probably best avoided, especially by 53-year-old men.

But what Getlen moves on to, and what the really interesting question here is: what does authenticity mean for female comics and the people who watch and employ them? Brill gives us one perspective, a not-uncommon one: women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t, because acting “like a man” is inappropriate or unfunny, but so is menstruation or “Mom” material because oh my god ladies, get over being a lady already gross!

Getlen points out that authenticity is kind of a new thing, comedically speaking:

That being the case, it should be noted that true, revealing authenticity in the comedy world is a relatively new – and rapidly evolving – phenomenon. For decades, comedy was vaudeville and schtick, like Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers. No disrespect to these comedy gods – if you’re a comedy fan unfamiliar with the work of Groucho and Harpo, then your education on the subject is sorely lacking – but authenticity to one’s true self was never the point. While the Marx Brothers material contained brilliant physical comedy, satire, and wit, it told us little about who these men really were – especially since, as any biography of the brothers reveals, Groucho was actually the shy, awkward one of the group.

While some made minor strides in self-expression – Phyllis Diller broke ground on this in her own way – the real breakthrough didn’t come until the massive changes and turmoil of the hippie-dippie sixties, which led George Carlin and Richard Pryor to shed their suits, grow their hair, and truly talk about their lives in ways beyond what any who came before them – even their predecessor and influence, Lenny Bruce – had done.

So there’s that. There’s the question of why authenticity, why now, and why does this dude (and a lot of people) think that being male is intrinsically more authentic? The answer is, well, because maleness is the default state of just about everything when it comes to comedy.

Basic example: when a comic is introduced to the stage and he’s male, you’ll rarely hear him introduced as “Male Comic Duder McPenis,” or even “Latin Comic Duder McPenis.” However, when a comic is introduced to the stage and she’s female, she’s “Female Comic Lady McGiner.” There are a lot of variations on this — “Are y’all ready for a female comic?” and “How about a lady comic this time?” but they’re pretty fucking common, especially in the comedy little leagues.

To be a woman in comedy is to be marked as different from the first instance of participation. Because the default comic body is male, women begin by being less “authentic” by default, since they’re not male. So I’m not surprised Brill sees women comics as being “less authentic,” since in terms of the male-default paradigm, they are actually inauthentic, inasmuch as the only way to be a “real” comedian, as defined by a sexist industry (albeit one that is swiftly and pleasantly changing for the better), is to be male.

Which brings us to the next point, which is that dudes like Brill are so, so out of touch that it’s almost not funny because you feel bad for them. I mean, I’m sure there will always be a world in which middle-aged white dudes want to tell Topic, Premise, Punchline fart jokes about their stupid fat wives to other middle aged dudes, and dudes, just go dude on with your bad selves! Dude away. And folks who want to defend Brill and tell people who are smart enough to suspect that a guy who books ONE female comic in an entire year of comic bookings might have a lady problem that we are just silly idiots who don’t understand what’s funny in the world, you guys do that thing. There is a world of bottom-tier comedy clubs, increasingly irrelevant late night programs and Work It fans out there waiting for you, and you are welcome to it.

I realized this listening to Tina Fey’s Bossypants over Christmas–I admit, it’s a crime against womanity that it took me so long to get around to it–that while sexism continues to run rampant in the comedy industry, it’s really on the way out. For a few reasons, but totally not ONLY these reasons: (1) women AND men in comedy are increasingly willing to name sexism when they see it, (2) more women are lifting up other women into positions of comedic power once they get there themselves–see Fey, Tina–(3) generally speaking, women are more welcome in public spaces like comedy clubs and can get there more easily because they’re doin’ it for themselves and family structures are becoming generally more fluid and gender-equal, (4) authenticity really is a thing, now, which means that people are clamoring to hear a variety of voices and experiences and it turns out that actually people are capable of thinking many different kinds of things are important and interesting, not just dudes wanting to hear dude things and ladies wanting to sew or whatever the fuck.

Which, to be clear, does not mean that sexism in comedy is solved. I tweeted like one thing about this whole issue and learned very quickly that there are a bunch of folks who think it’s totally cool and not weird and super awesome that a flagship CBS program booked ONE female comedian all year and it’s probably just because ladies aren’t trying hard enough/aren’t funny/whatever. Those people are out there and not a few of them are in positions of power. But they deserve pity, not ire.

The good option, I really think, is to just continue balling it up if you are a lady comic, and to lift up other lady comics, and super importantly, to not be afraid to call something sexist if you think it is. I don’t know why people are so reticent to do this, because we all get up on stage and talk about fucking and drinking and hating our kids, so why it’s weird to be like “Hey, I think expecting less from female comics, or booking not many female comics, or treating them like eye candy instead of talent, is shitty,” I don’t know. People who think you’re an asshole, or stupid, or just a little whiny girlpants, for expecting to be treated like a comedian, rather than a “female comedian,” probably aren’t going to be working in the industry long-term, since successful people doing truly awesome and innovative things that are changing the comedy landscape realize that this outlook is fucking stupid.

HOWEVER: If you (and by YOU I don’t mean “ladies,” I mean “EVERYBODY”) don’t name and change sexism (or racism, or ableism, or whatever) when you see it, we won’t keep moving forward. So do that. And also be hilarious.

Nearly two years ago, I found myself standing one of the trendiest streets in Austin, Texas, literally about to lose my lunch. I stood incredulous, gawking at some of the most heinous Orientalist imagery I’d ever seen, desperately trying to swallow the anger that was rising up from my belly, traveling through my esophagus, and leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

In front of me sat a new pan-Asian fod trailer on posh W. 5^th Steet, an exciting sight in an otherwise homogenized and somewhat flavorless part of downtown Austin. The trailer was decorated with psychedelic-colored paint, evocative of the “Keep Austin Weird” ethos that permeates this town.

On the side of the trailer facing 5^th a buffoonish, bald Asian man in all pink clothing was beckoning to passersby, holding up a steaming hot bowl of noodles, with the words “ME SO HUNGRY!” (in mock-Asian-character typeface) emblazoned above his head. On the other side of the trailer, a scantily clad Asian woman wearing a cheongsam (or traditional Chinese dress) and chopsticks in her hair sat in a sexually suggestive pose, biting her index finger and winking. She echoed her separated male counterpart: ME SO HUNGRY (sans exclamation point)

After gawking for some time, I eventually left the deserted trailer (which wasn’t open for business at the time), trying in vain to do what a lot of people do when confronted with something so blatantly offensive it seems unreal: put it out of my mind.

Later, I would tell everyone I knew about the trailer. I would sit around with my Asian American friends and our allies and scorn it. We would talk of defacing the images with spray paint in the middle of the night, of distributing multicultural, counter-cultural and feminist literature to customers during regular business hours, of staging a mass protest, none of which, for whatever reason, ended up happening.

What I did do was write emails to the Me So Hungry trailer, pleading with them to be sensitive and change their name and redecorate their trailer, none of which were ever answered. And I started a blog. And I never stopped being angry, not even when they moved to the hipster-run East Side, hidden in the darkness behind Cheer Up Charlie’s, a bar where few people would be apt to shake their fists.

Now, two years after I wrote my first blog post on the subject, Me So Hungry’s business seems to be booming due to all those drunk, hungry hipsters. They’ve upgraded their website and included a pandering picture of their ethnically diverse team, but it still features the sickening slogan “We feed you long time!” What’s worse, some people are even defending the brand on Yelp, giving the standard response: the owner, Christina Alfonso, is a hapa Asian woman and therefore not a bigot, so all you Asian people should shut up about the subject.

But I won’t shut up. Instead, I’ll enlighten people who just don’t understand why my damn Dragon Lady panties are in a bunch.

As everyone should know by now, “me so horny” and “me love you long time” originated from the 1987 movie Full Metal Jacket by Stanley Kubrick—a movie that has been roundly critiqued by many notable feminists. (In her book, Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War, Susan Jeffords argues that the film “reinstates a clarified rejection of the feminine and restitution of the masculine.”) In the film, the Da Nang hooker, played by British actress Papillion Soo Soo, who is of French and Chinese descent (hello, racebending!) utters the offensive phrases, triggering mass hard-ons.

Following the success of the movie, rap group 2 Live Crew came out with “Me So Horny,” a little misogynistic ditty inspired by the line in the film.  And ever since then, Asian women everywhere haven’t been able to shake the stereotype.

Recently, several non-Asian pop singers, like Mariah Carey, Fergie and Nelly Furtado, have decided to co-opt the phrase “me love you long time” and rebrand it as a term of empowerment. But so far only one top-selling artist of Asian heritage has attempted to reclaim the terms, and it’s not surprising that she is in my opinion the most successful at it. See the lyrics of M.I.A’s “$10 Dollar”.

I’m all for reappropriation. But it’s a tricky thing. We, as Asian American women, are only on the verge of it. We are just now—some two decades after the Kubrick’s film came out—starting to exercise our empowerment in a mainstream sense and we know we’ve got a long road ahead. And, as there usually is with issues of reappropriation, there is a risk of being misunderstood, of giving license to our oppressors to continue oppressing us with the same racist, sexist, patriarchal rhetoric that’s been used before—which is exactly what is happening with Alfonso’s Me So Hungry brand.

My beef with the food trailer is that it adds nothing to the conversation. It’s not saying anything new and doesn’t do enough to be ironically racist/sexist or empower anyone. Instead, it puts up some tired-ass ching chong imagery and reiterates a piece of pop culture that the majority of people are ignorant about and insensitive to. This ignorance and insensitivity gives rise to Yelp reviews that emphatically deny the trailer is racist and sexist and insist that it’s simply “cute” and “fun” and makes people happy. (I’ve also seen some objectifying comments about the “hot” women of color working at the food trailer.)

No, I don’t think it’s “cute,” and it doesn’t make me happy. But I’m not allowed to say that. Me So Hungry and its customers try to silence a person like me, a woman of color who isn’t allowed to debate with another woman of color who thinks what she’s doing is totally cool.

Me So Hungry, hear me out: In the words of Jen Wang and Diana Nguyen of the blog Disgrasian, “you are a disgrace to the race.” I would only like to add that you are a disgrace to women business owners and the state of Texas too.

Rick Perry signs the forced trans-vaginal ultrasound bill into law last year.

The Texas Observer ran a piece late yesterday about the 5th Circuit’s decision to go ahead and allow Texas’ forced trans-vaginal ultrasound law to be enforced while its constitutionality is challenged in court, and it contains some pretty interesting (but hardly shocking) information about Judge Edith Jones, who wrote the court’s decision. (Full and enthusiastic disclosure: the Observer piece is by my fiancé, Patrick Michels.)

It would seem that this is not Judge Edith Jones’ first rodeo with Judge Sam Sparks, whose decision she overturned to put the ultrasound law into action during its court battle. Judge Sparks is the U.S. District Court judge who originally ruled in favor of an injunction against the ultrasound law. His decision was both colorful and pointed. He wrote, in part:

It is ironic that many of the same people who zealously defend the state’s righteous duty to become intimately involved in a woman’s decision to get an abortion are also positively scandalized at the government’s gross overreaching in the area of health care.

Michels reports that Sparks, feisty benchman that he is, has also famously “invited lawyers to a “kindergarten party” to learn the basics of our American court system,” after which none other than Judge Edith Jones “took him to task, in a letter addressed to Sparks and circulated far and wide.” So you know, stay classy everybody.

But, writes Michels, “Jones comes to this case with some predispositions of her own.” Jones has been called an “eternal bridesmaid,” for the fact that for decades she’s popped up as a conservative favorite for a Supreme Court nomination, but always ends up being too right-wing for serious consideration.

Jones was on a 2004 panel that dismissed Roe v. Wade‘s now-named plaintiff Norma McCorvey, who in her later years decided abortion shouldn’t be legal after all. Though her case was dismissed, it wasn’t because Jones didn’t pretty much agree with her. From the Texas Observer:

Jones conceded that McCorvey’s suit wasn’t a live issue anymore, but wrote she hoped the Supreme Court would take up Roe again soon:

“In sum, if courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe … they might conclude that the woman’s ‘choice’ is far more risky and less beneficial… That the Court’s constitutional decision-making leaves our nation in a position of willful blindness to evolving knowledge should trouble any dispassionate observer.”

In the appellate court’s opinion today, Jones follows the same logic that drove Perry, Patrick, and the law’s House author, Rep. Sid Miller: A woman going in for an abortion doesn’t really know what she wants. During the session, Patrick said the bill “empowers” women.

In case you missed it, Jones wrote that if courts would reconsider Roe v. Wade, “they might conclude that the woman’s ‘choice’ is far more risky and less beneficial.” Based, of course, on science that doesn’t exist and nowhere proves or suggests that abortion is at all unusually detrimental to a woman’s mental or physical health. In the decision filed yesterday, Jones writes:

The provision of sonograms and the fetal heartbeat are routine measures in pregnancy medicine today. They are viewed as “medically necessary” for the mother and fetus. Only if one assumes the conclusion of Appellees’ argument, that pregnancy is a condition to be terminated, can one assume that such information about the fetus is medically irrelevant.

About which Michels rightly points out: “Read another way, Jones is suggesting that what those meddling New Yorkers at the Center for Reproductive Rights really want is just to end all the pregnancies.”

To which I would like to add some things. First, I’d like to point out that for abortion-seeking pregnant women, pregnancy is in fact a condition to be terminated. That’s the fucking point, and abortion-seeking women know what they’re doing. I love this thing where anti-choice people seem to want to believe that large abortioneer organizations are forcing happy pregnant women to abort by sneaking them into clinics where they thought they were just like, gonna get a pat on the back and a lollipop, and if it wasn’t for things like the forced trans-vaginal ultrasound law, the women of America would be aborting every single pregnancy possible at the evil whim of Planned Parenthood.

Second: and I just can’t say this loud enough, IT IS FUCKING DANGEROUS TO BE A PREGNANT WOMAN IN THE UNITED STATES. The maternal mortality rate in the United States is absolutely atrocious. From the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals:

With 99% of maternal deaths occurring in developing countries, it is too often assumed that maternal mortality is not a problem in wealthier countries. Yet, statistics released in September of 2010 by the United Nations place the United States 50th in the world for maternal mortality — with maternal mortality ratios higher than almost all European countries, as well as several countries in Asia and the Middle East.

From CNN, reporting on Amnesty International’s research in May 2010:

Deaths from pregnancy and childbirth in the United States have doubled in the past 20 years, a development that a human rights group called “scandalous and disgraceful” Friday.

In addition, the rights group said, about 1.7 million women a year, one-third of pregnant women in the United States, suffer from pregnancy-related complications. Most of the deaths and complications occur among minorities and women living in poverty, it noted.

So please, anti-choice people, give me a fucking break with your bullshit about how abortion is dangerous to a woman’s health. Carrying a child to term is far, far more dangerous. Why? Because women–especially socioeconomically disadvantaged ones, who disproportionately tend to be women of color–do not have access to the reproductive health care they need. And who restricts their access to the care they need? Republicans, who are all about making substantial funding cuts to programs like WIC, which helps poor women access prenatal care and resources for their existing children.

Fact: the forced trans-vaginal ultrasound law was not created with women’s health and safety in mind, and it was not created by people who have women’s health and safety in mind.