Some of the people who profess to want to get government out of our lives are proposing at the state Capitol to get government inside a woman’s most private parts.
What we have here is yet another example of what I call big-government conservatism.
It manifests itself whenever right-wingers, who customarily express disdain for an activist and intrusive government, take a position that demonstrates that they, in fact, embrace an activist and intrusive government.
That is so long as government intrudes actively in a way they approve, even cheer. That’s usually an intolerant and unconstitutional way that imposes narrow religious views or oppresses women, or both.
The chief culprit, of course, is state Sen. Jason Rapert of the Conway-Bigelow region. He is an incurable showboat whom I have described as resembling stylistically the offspring of Jimmy Swaggart and Ricky Skaggs.
Rapert is the lead sponsor of Senate Bill 134, which says a woman seeking an early pregnancy abortion—fully permitted by law—must submit to some kind of unspecified doctor’s procedure.
The nature of the procedure would be determined by state Health Department rule. It would be an ultrasound, at least, or maybe even a transvaginal probe.
The purpose would be to determine whether a heartbeat can be detected in the fetus.
If a heartbeat is detected, a doctor performing an abortion would go to prison or pay a big fine, or both.
Thus the name: The Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act. It sounds better than the Arkansas Female Violation Act.
It is unconstitutional on its face, of course.
Roe v. Wade establishes a woman’s right to an abortion. Case law has evolved to the point of permitting abortions under that precedent to the point of viability, meaning that point at which a fetus could live outside the womb. That is 22 to 23 weeks.
In the Planned Parenthood v. Casey appeal from Pennsylvania, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that any arbitrary restriction beyond that—before viability—was not allowable under Roe v. Wade.
The current Supreme Court has four liberals likely to uphold that precedent; four conservatives likely to overturn it; and Anthony Kennedy, who, as it happens, wrote the prevailing plurality opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
That’s no matter to Rapert, who has rounded up 18 easy co-sponsors in this new transformed state Senate with its 21-14 Republican majority.
But the bill will go to the Senate Public Health Committee, which has four committee members who are sponsors of the bill and four who aren’t, as well as four Republicans and four Democrats. So that’s the fight that matters.
State Sens. Paul Bookout of Jonesboro and David Burnett of Osceola, both conservative Democrats, the latter a mildly infamous judge in the disgrace of justice commonly known as the West Memphis Three, will decide.
So it’s not looking good for the Constitution, or a woman’s rights and dignity.
Mike Beebe once was able to stop this kind of thing stealthily as a state senator. He would arrange to load up the relevant committees, Public Health or Judiciary, with people willing to sit on such matters.
He is not nearly so powerful as a governor having to deal with this kind of Legislature.
It’s now more small-d democratic, but less constitutional.
Arkansas women would surely escape this illegal physical invasion while the law was inevitably challenged in court and delayed by injunction.
But big-government conservatives like Jason Rapert would have performed for the cheering right-wing grandstand, which is what big-government conservatism is largely about.
John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.