Monday night, Rachel Maddow was back on her crusade for abortion rights highlighting the “sexual assault” of 100 abortion patients subjected to a state mandated pelvic exam and three-day wait period before their abortions. Maddow has been highlighting this apparent humanitarian crisis on her show since the mandate went into effect 3 weeks ago. It was repealed Monday, but not without casualties:
After 21 days of being forced by the state to subject their patients to what these doctors considered to be a state-sanctioned, state-mandated sexual assault, the physicians at that clinic finally decided, you know, we're not going to do this anymore.
In the age of the #MeToo movement, claiming that Planned Parenthood is being forced to “sexually assault” it’s patients is a bizarre claim. Especially considering this medical procedure is not at all sexual in nature and is really only a minor inconvenience to a woman considering ending the life of her. Then again, the whole point of abortion is convenience.
Thankfully for Missouri women: “The doctors are standing up to the state government saying we're done, we know you're making our license contingent on this as a clinic and you want to shut us down but we're not going to make our patients go through this unnecessary, uncomfortable, inhumane thing just because you say so.” Planned Parenthood of course would never do anything “inhumane.”
But the victims of abortion are not even a thought in Maddow’s brain, the real inhumanity and source for liberal outrage were the 100 women who had to suffer through the “unnecessary” pelvic exams. These poor women and their 100 unborn children were forced to go through an inconvenient exam forced to: “…take off their clothes, let a doctor insert an instrument inside their body because of a policy the state now reversed.”
This was apparently so traumatic that as Maddow states: “Planned Parenthood is calling for the state health director of Missouri, Randall Williams, to be fired, over what happened to those hundred-plus women on his orders, which he now says was a mistake.”
Completely unacknowledged are the 100 children that were aborted three short days after this “sexual assault” of an exam.
Here is the transcript:
The Rachel Maddow Show
06/25/19
11:05:00 AM ET
RACHEL MADDOW: Since we first started covering this story, it's been interesting to see the outcry over this policy. This anger over what the state was making these doctors do to their patients. Anger, expression of outrage and objection coming not from just the doctors having to perform these procedures but from the patients, themselves, from medical professionals across the country. But then eventually, it broke. After 21 days of being forced by the state to subject their patients to what these doctors considered to be a state-sanctioned, state-mandated sexual assault, the physicians at that clinic finally decided, you know, we're not going to do this anymore. They said, you know, we've done this for three weeks, we are no longer going to give our patients a medically unnecessary vaginal exam three days before their abortion. We're no longer doing this. We had the medical director of the clinic here on the show that night to explain how he and his colleagues came to that decision and what they thought the state might do in response.
Well, that was Wednesday of last week. The doctors standing up to the state government saying we're done, we know you're making our license contingent on this as a clinic and you want to shut us down but we're not going to make our patients go through this unnecessary, uncomfortable, inhumane thing just because you say so. How will the state respond? Nobody knew. On Friday, something unexpected happened which is that the state basically said, well, okay then. They basically said, all right. On Friday, the Republican-led state health department in Missouri took back its new rule that all women in Missouri must get a second unnecessary pelvic exam before they're allowed to have an abortion three days in advance. They reversed course. They changed their mind. The health director in Missouri, a man named Randall Williams, he, himself, is a doctor. He is actually an ob-gyn. Oh. He is the one who decided that women had to get this second pelvic exam in the first place. On Friday he talked to reporters about why he changed his mind.
He said: "In looking at what they're doing and the fact that they think it causes a burden for patients to do the pelvic exam twice, as a clinician who practiced for 30 years, I'm sensitive to that. He's sensitive to that. It took state health director Randall Williams more than three weeks to develop a sensitivity to that. To doctors practically shouting themselves hoarse about how the new vaginal probe mandate might be hurting their patients. But after three weeks of medically unnecessary pelvic exams and lots of publicity about them, Randall Williams and the health departments they did come around. He decided to tap into his 30 years as a trained medical professional and listen to those doctors at the clinic. Planned Parenthood says because of that pelvic exam rule, because it took the state three weeks to change their mind about it, more than 100 women were forced through that. More than 100 women forced by the state to have an internal exam they didn't need. More than 100 women had to take off their clothes, let a doctor insert an instrument inside their body because of a policy the state now reversed. They've now taken it back. More than 100 women forced to undergo those vaginal exams because of what the state now admits was kind of an oops moment. We're sensitive to it now. Planned Parenthood is calling for the state health director of Missouri, Randall Williams, to be fired, over what happened to those hundred-plus women on his orders, which he now says was a mistake. The state says, broadly pictured, it's all over now. If you are a woman trying to get an abortion in Missouri today, you don't need to get a second medically unnecessary pelvic exam anymore before you're allowed to have your abortion. But the state says they're cool with just the one now. That said, the state is still trying to end all access to legal abortion in Missouri and we've got an update on that tonight as well. Stay with us.
