Go Back to Health Class

Parents: Here’s the problem with telling your young children that the obviously pregnant woman on the bus has “a baby in her tummy.” They might grow up continuing to believe that. And worse, they might end up in elected office and be in a position to make policy.
Idaho state legislator Vito Barbieri is anti-abortion, and is trying to keep women in Idaho from getting drug-induced abortions after telemedicine care by their doctors. Telemedicine allows doctors to prescribe treatment and drugs from a remote locale, using such things as videoconferencing and electronic transfer of images. It’s an especially useful tool in rural areas, where people might have to travel long distances to see a doctor in person.
At a hearing to discuss a bill that would bar doctors from providing abortion-inducing drugs through telemedicine, a doctor explaining telemedicine noted that colonoscopy patients can swallow a small device to help doctors monitor the gastrointestinal tube. To which Barbieri responded: "Can this same procedure then be done in a pregnancy? Swallowing a camera and helping the doctor determine what the situation is?"

The doctor, explaining human reproduction to an adult elected official, responded that no, that would not work, as things swallowed do not end up in the vagina, which most people know is the entrance to the womb. To which Barbieri responded, “Fascinating. That makes sense.”
Barbieri explained later that he was just being “rhetorical” when he asked if the contents of a woman’s uterus could be accessed through the stomach or intestinal tract. And let’s hope that’s the case. But his remarks are part of a troubling pattern by legislators around the country who seem to have missed eighth grade health class, newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, parental chats and pretty much every opportunity to understand where babies come from and how they grow inside a female’s body.
Legislators in a number of states have displayed a startling lack of knowledge of reproduction and female anatomy, even as they seek to legislate reproduction and female anatomy. In 23 states, there are laws regarding ultrasounds for women seeking abortions – either to require that women get an ultrasound before undergoing the procedure or by requiring an abortion provider to show or offer to show the image to the patient. There’s a big problem with that, and not just because it deeply insults women by suggesting that they’re just too stupid to really understand what they are doing. At the stage of pregnancy for the overwhelming majority of abortions, said ultrasound is not the sappy TV commercial, jelly-on-the-belly exam anti-abortion lawmakers think makes any pregnancy seem romantic. In the early stages of pregnancy, the ultrasound is conducted by something called a “transvaginal probe,” which is indeed as creepy and invasive as it sounds.

North Dakota lawmakers, meanwhile, approved a law to ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy (the ban was overturned by a court). But at six weeks, many women don’t even know they’re pregnant, meaning a female would have to seek and obtain an abortion even before she knew she needed or wanted one. People who don’t menstruate might not have first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to be late – and at what point someone might suspect a pregnancy – but one would think lawmakers would do a little basic research on human biology before passing laws about it. For Barbieri, perhaps that could start with a refresher visit to an eighth-grade health class.