A hard challenge to anti-abortion extremists
As the battle over abortion rights rages on, pro-choice lawmakers in red states get creative to trip up conservatives
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With that out of the way, tonight we’re looking at the latest in the abortion rights battles being waged in multiple states and the hard work being done to keep far-right creeps out of people’s medical decisions.
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Kansas state Rep. Stephanie Sawyer Clayton did not anticipate the erection-related amendment that she introduced to an anti-abortion bill to cause such a stir or rankle so many of her colleagues, but she doesn’t seem particularly distraught about it.
“It was sort of fool around and find out — stupid bills get stupid amendments,” Sawyer Clayton, a Democrat from the Kansas City suburbs, told Progress Report on Friday.
The GOP bill that she sought to amend mandates that medical professionals ask abortion-seeking patients a series of unnecessary and invasive questions about why they want to terminate a pregnancy. If Republicans were set on quizzing women about whether they’d been raped or perhaps felt they already had too many children, both of which are options in the survey, Sawyer Clayton felt it was only fair that the bill also push men seeking treatment for erectile dysfunction to explain why they needed a helping hand.
“The point that I was trying to prove is that erectile dysfunction meds and products are legal health care, and so is abortion, so those questions are ridiculous,” the state representative says. “No one should be asked these questions. But fine, if you want to ask women these questions, let's ask men that.”
Sawyer Clayton’s amendment proposed asking men whether they wanted medication to help conceive a child, better pleasure their partners, or combat any loss of confidence, stress, embarrassment, or shame that may have been caused by their inability to get an erection.
Republicans quickly objected, insisting that because the purpose of the questionnaire bill is to collect information for semi-annual state reports on abortion care, surveying men would be unnecessary. Speaking on the House floor, Sawyer Clayton disagreed with that limp line of logic.
“I do think erectile dysfunction is a scourge on the state of Kansas,” she said on Wednesday. “I think it causes issues when it comes to our very important birth rate.”
Underlying the snark is Sawyer Clayton’s belief that a law targeting one segment of the population for extra scrutiny is fundamentally discriminatory.
Some Republicans are still fuming three days after the exchange with their former colleague — Sawyer Clayton was a moderate Republican until 2018, when she switched parties to become a Democrat in response to the GOP’s sharp lurch to the right.
GOP anger was compounded by similar amendments proposed by other Democratic lawmakers. One proposal, filed by state Rep. Melissa Oropeza, would have created a survey for vasectomy recipients with questions almost identical to those asked of abortion patients.
Feeling that she’d made her point, Sawyer Clayton withdrew her amendment after the uproar, while Oropeza’s proposal was snipped for not germane to the topic at hand; just how GOP legislators think babies are made is unclear. The Republican-dominated House ultimately passed the bill with only minor tweaks, sending it on to the Senate for consideration later this month.
There are currently eight states — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah — that have similar laws on the books, according to the AP.
Kansas allows abortion up to 22 weeks of pregnancy and beyond that if the mother’s life is at risk. It was the first state to hold a referendum on reproductive freedom after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, 2022. In spite of deceptive wording meant to confuse voters, Kansans overwhelmingly rejected the proposed “value them both” constitutional amendment, which would have enabled the legislature to ban abortion.
Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, won re-election that fall in part due to her support for abortion rights. Since then, the state GOP has shifted its focus to chipping away at access to reproductive care with an assortment of smaller bills, using its legislative supermajority to override Kelly’s veto on multiple occasions.
Sawyer Clayton says she anticipates some backlash to the Republicans’ piecemeal pursuit of curbing abortion rights, though the state’s geography and relative conservatism on other issues may limit the repercussions to lawmakers. That gives anti-choice groups the advantage when it comes to lobbying members of the legislature, including on new bills that would increase funding for “pregnancy crisis centers” and declare that life begins at conception.
“One way they exercise that power is by running some dumb anti-abortion bill in order to create a climate of fear among legislators,” she says. “Because if you vote no, and you're in a swing district or in a conservative district, then they'll send out postcards saying that you're a baby killer.”
A New Paradigm
Just how effective those mailers will be going forward remains to be seen; Sawyer Clayton suggests that the “value them both” amendment would have passed had it been on the ballot in 2020, but it went down in flames, 59-41%, after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
Democrats are counting on that dynamic to continue in 2024, especially in swingier states where they made inroads in the last election. With a Democrat in the governor’s mansion, Republicans clinging to one seat majorities in both chambers of the legislature, and a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, Arizona is at the top of that list.
Under the influence of party chair Kelli Ward and failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a MAGA acolyte who is now running for Senate, the state GOP has moved sharply to the right, eliminating any possibility of some sort of grand bargain that could defuse the issue ahead of the November election. Instead, legislative leaders have only exacerbated the problem they face, in part by acting like miserable old fossils who have been withering in the desert since the Goldwater era.
The most recent offense came from Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli when he shot down Gov. Katie Hobbs’ demand that lawmakers pass a law guaranteeing women the right to contraception.
“Like I said, Bayer Company invented aspirin. Put it between your knees,” Borrelli told the Arizona Mirror, the implication being that women should not have sex if they don’t want to risk getting pregnant. Borrelli added that the GOP majority had no plans to ban contraception this year, but made no promises about the future.
Then again, they may not get a chance to meddle in people’s personal medical decisions beyond this year, with pro-choice groups on pace to qualify constitutional amendment guaranteeing reproductive freedom on the November ballot.
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I love « erection-related » issues. So true; Freud would agree.
Borrelli is obviously caught in a political framework from 60 years ago. What a raging misogynist!