Paul Ryan Would Only Let You Die At A Catholic Hospital, Because Of The Respect

Turns out that Rep. Paul Ryan has co-sponsored every extreme anti-abortion bill introduced during his tenure in the House, as noted by Kate Sheppard in Mother Jones.

A comparison of Ryan's record to Rep. Todd Akin's positions, meanwhile, left David Grant of the Christian Science Monitor concluding that they were very similar, with one exception. Grant asserts that Akin doesn't want there to be exceptions on an abortion ban even in cases of danger to the mother, while Ryan would allow that.

How generous.

Or not. Because as Mother Jones could tell you, Ryan supports dropping the requirement that hospitals unwilling to perform abortions in life-threatening circumstances provide transfers to a willing provider. Which means that if a woman experiencing a medical emergency that required treatment showed up at a Catholic hospital (and there are a lot of those, you've noticed,) needing treatment that posed a risk to her pregnancy, they could refuse either to treat, transfer or refer her to another facility.

So, under some conditions, Paul Ryan is an enthusiastic supporter of letting highly trained medical professionals stand idly by and watch women die. Because that's what the founders meant by freedom of religion.

It's okay to let women die if God tells you so.

The main difference between Ryan's and Akin's records, according to Timothy Homan and Steve Walsh of Bloomberg, is really that Akin has introduced legislation restricting women's health care access, while Ryan has voted for and/or co-sponsored all of it.

But let's be real about what would happen if Ryan's favored zygote/fetal personhood law is passed. You know, the one that was uncontroversially approved as part of the Republican Party's platform yesterday for sending on to the convention. This would happen:

A pregnant 16-year-old in the Dominican Republic took center stage in the abortion debate when she died last Friday of leukemia complications amid reports that doctors had delayed chemotherapy out of fear that it could terminate her pregnancy. The Dominican Republic has a strict anti-abortion law. ... Article 37 of the Dominican Republic's constitution prohibits abortion, claiming "the right to life is inviolable from conception until death."

The right to life being inviolable for a fetus, but not to a woman acting as its ... what, life support machine? When such laws are clearly meant to punish abortion, in country after country, the mother's right to life usually isn't worth much at all in comparison to her doctors' fear of prosecution.

Because it isn't a mystery to anyone that abortion restrictions are punitive judgements on women's independence and rights to make decisions for ourselves. They're laws that make pregnant women effective wards of the state and medical professionals.

Women's health care decisions: better leave them to Todd Akin & Paul Ryan. Strong, Christian men, who know when it's the right thing to do to let a woman suffer, or maybe die.