Abortion is legal and it’s likely to stay that way, for a number of good reasons. The first and most obvious is that women are now recognized as being actual persons with rights, including the right to say what happens to and inside of their own bodies.

The idea that women are little more than a piece of rib out of Adam’s left side has lost considerable credence ever since the Creationists lost their case in the Scopes trial in 1925, but that doesn’t stop some Republican religious freaks from carrying on in their old, stupid, fanatical traditions.

Which is why Trent Franks of Arizona and others of his pointless ilk are trying to make it illegal to abort a fetus because of its gender.

Will someone explain to me why, if a woman can abort a pregnancy for no reason other than she doesn’t want to be pregnant, why then should it matter if she has a different reason? Why should the reason have a damn thing to do with it?

How do you enforce a law like this? Over the counter baby gender tests went on the market 3 years ago. Anyone can find out the sex of that tiny little zygote without seeing a doctor. Do you outlaw the tests? Then you open up the Black Market for smuggled tests and create new crime and criminals where there were none before, along with another brand new nightmare for law enforcement. Great idea, huh?

Do you force women to sign a sworn affadavit before they can get an abortion, that they aren’t getting it because they don’t want a boy child or a girl child? Swear that they haven’t purchased a gender ID kit or used one? Make liars out of women who did check the gender and don’t want that boy, or that girl, when it’s their right to choose whether they even bear a child at all or not?

Abortion is a religious issue. It always has been. The way our politicians natter on about “separation of church and state”, you would think they were actually serious, but they’re not. The Catholic politicians want to regulate birth control methods. The Christian evangelist types want to keep women from getting abortions and the Muslim politicians want to keep women from doing anything.

While we as Americans are perpetually fighting to keep our rights from being eroded, women in this country are still fighting to get the rights that men take for granted, and ownership of their own bodies is still being contested as if they were chattel in a slave market. It’s rediculous.

It’s things like this that take away from the viability of the GOP as a whole. I want to see Obama out and anyone but him in, and that means a Republican president. Anti-abortion laws are UNPOPULAR. The MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE DON’T WANT THEM. HELLO? The Republicans need to STOP looking like they think they own Christianity, especially in the snarly way they interpret the religion of Jesus and stomp all over respect for women’s choices.

UPDATE: The bill that would have made gender-selective abortion a Federal crime with 5 years imprisonment was defeated in the House, by a final vote of 246 in favor, 168 against. 30 more votes in favor would have seen it passed. Ladies, you squeaked by on this one. BOTH PARTIES nearly passed this mess. I forgot, even some Democrats have religion.