For eleven-and-one-half years Rick Perry has been the Governor of Texas. As the Lt. Governor under George Bush, he took over as Governor when Bush was elected President. Thus when he ran for Governor in 2002, and 2010 he was the incumbent Republican. Texas is one of the "most Republican states in the United States," with Republicans controlling all statewide offices, both houses of the state legislature, and Republicans have a majority in the Texas congressional delegation.
A. Perry Does Not Work Full Time
Section 658.002 of the Texas Constitution requires that all salaried employees of the state "shall work not less than 40 hours a week." Rick Perry is a salaried employee and makes an annual gross salary of $150,000.00. Thus the Texas Constitution expressly required Rick Perry to work no less than 40 hours per week. However it is undisputed that Rick Perry is not, and has not, worked full time for the State of Texas for more than one year. As documented by Perry's own calendar, during the year after he was re-elected in 2010, he has worked less than half-time, from the period of Nov. 1, 2010, through Oct. 21, 2011. In particular Perry's own calendar revealed:
1. Of the 355 days Governor Perry was employed by the State he only worked a total of 164 days for "State Scheduled Business". Thus, for 191 days out of 355 days, Governor Perry had no "State Scheduled Business." That means he worked less than 50% of the days in the 12 months before November 1, 2011, or just 46% of the days.
2. Perry did not declare his candidacy until August 13th, 2011, and even before that he failed to work 144 days out of approximately 9 ½ months, or 285 days. That means that he worked less than half time as Governor of Texas, even before he declared himself a candidate for President.
3. Of the days that he did perform some type of state business, he failed to work a significant number of hours during a normal work day. Examples were provided.
Additional records have been received from the Governor's office. They cover the last four months, from the period of November 1, 2011 through February 29, 2012. These records show that during this period he did not do ANY state business for 96 of those 121 days. Of the 25 days that he reports some "state business" he rarely worked a full day. For example,
1. Three of these 25 days when he reported State Business, 2-17,18, 19, were devoted exclusively to "hunting." It is not clear from those records if he was hunting at his "Niggerhead Lodge."
2. There is no record of how many hours during these days were actually spent hunting, as opposed to drinking, eating, or having sex.
For at least 10 other days he worked less than half time during each day:
3. On 12-25 he worked from 11:00 - 2:30.
4. On 12-22 he worked from 7:00 - 7:45.
5. On Thursday Jan. 19th, Perry announced he was dropping out of the GOP primary race.
6. On 1-23 he worked from 10:00-12:30, with 30 minutes before and after this state business when he was driven by his state paid chauffeur.
7. On 1-24 he worked from 1:15- 4:15.
8. On 2-2 he worked from 12:40- 3:00.
9. On 2-6 he worked from 8:30- 12:45.
10. On 2-7 he worked from 1:50- 4:45.
11. On 2-13 he worked from 1:15- 3:40.
12. On 2-25 he took one call at 4:45.
13. On 2-27 his only state "business" was his attendance at a funeral from 4:45 to 6:30
Thus for half of the 25 days that Rick Perry did some state business he averaged 2.5 hours per day. In conclusion even before and after declaring his intention to seek the GOP nomination for President Rick Perry worked LESS THAN HALF TIME!
B. Rick Perry Currently Receives Retirement Benefits from Texas.
Perry receives monthly retirement benefits NOW of $7698 per month, which brings his total annual salary, paid for by the State of Texas, to more than $240,000.00.
C. Rick Perry Promised that if Elected Governor in 2010 that he would NOT run for President in the 2012 race.
D. Rick Perry Lied.
On August 13, 2011, less than one year after the 2010 election, Rick Perry declared he would seek the Republican nomination for President.
E. Rick Perry's Expenses on the Campaign Trail Cost Texas Taxpayers Over $3,600,000.00
Rick Perry spent 160 days running for President. During that time Texas taxpayers were charged for travel expenses of Rick Perry, for he and his staff, and for his security detail, including overtime. Those costs have been documented to be $3,600,000.00, and there may be more charges to come.
F. When the Governor is Out of State, Texas is Required to Pay For a Substitute Governor.
During the time Rick Perry was campaigning outside the state of Texas, the state was required to pay more than $32,000 for the Lieutenant Governor or the Senate pro-tem to do the Governor's job. In addition to the salaries paid by Texas to David Dewhurst for his regular salary, the Lt. Governor was paid an additional $29,589 due to Perry's absence, and Mike Jackson, the Senate pro-tem received $2,876.
G. Taxpayers Have Been Charged For Triple Costs For Perry's Accommodations
In late 2007 Rick Perry moved into a lavish rental mansion in West Austin while repairs were to be made to the Governor's mansion. In June of 2008 the Governor's mansion burned, and required Rick Perry to extend his stay in the rental mansion. Costs for the rental property have been estimated to be $800,000.00. Knowing that the mansion has five bedrooms, seven baths, three dining rooms, a gourmet kitchen, and pecan wood floors, such a heafty price tag might be expected. Given the location of the mansion on 3.3 acres of land, who would question the expense?
Costs for the actual renovation of the Governor's mansion are being paid for by U.S. taxpayers through the use of federal stimulus money of $11,000,000.00 and by Texas taxpayers through taxpayer dollars of $10,000,000.00. Thus while Rick Perry was on the campaign trail, Texas taxpayers were paying for his hotels, his rental mansion, and the Governor's mansion.
H. Perry Re-built His Fire-Ravaged Home at a Cost of $40,000,000.00, while Texas Burned due to Budget Cuts of Less Than That Amount.
While Rick Perry found $40,000,000.00 to rebuild his mansion that burned, Perry cut 75% of the budget for volunteer firefighters or $34,000.000.00. Obviously his priority was rebuilding his own home rather than protecting the lives and property of the Texas taxpayers. Volunteer firefighters make up 80% of the state's firefighters. Even though the unprecedented drought was recognized as early as July of 2009, Rick Perry endangered the people and property of the state by cutting funding for volunteer firefighters. Over the last year, while Perry was off campaigning, Texas burned. Over 21,000 wildfires burned 3.6 million acres. More than 1500 buildings burned while Perry was doing the very thing he promised NOT to do if reelected Governor. Just one of these fires burning out of control, while he was on the campaign trail was 14 miles wide. Instead of determining where he could find the funds necessary to support firefighters in the state, Rick Perry was giving away money to his political donors, and rebuilding his mansion.
As a taxpayer in Texas, I'm fed up with Rick Perry. He is already suggesting he "absolutely" might run for President in 2016. If Rick Perry runs for President, or even Governor again, you can absolutely know that his opponents will simply capitalize on his record.
In 2010, Texans learned all about the $10,000-a-month rental mansion that Rick Perry charges taxpayers for. We also also learned about all the other costs - the heated pool, the $1000 emergency ice machine repair, the $70 subscription to Food & Wine Magazine. Oh, and the $700 clothes rack.
To catalogue this gross abuse of our money by the greedy cretin at the helm of our state government, Burnt Orange Report created a Pinterest board called "Luxury Goods in Rick Perry's Rental Mansion." Check it out!
Governor Good Hair was zonked on painkillers during those primary debates in which he solidified himself as a national political joke.
This news comes from "Inside the Circus," a new POLITICO e-book out today from acclaimed D.C. journalists Mike Allen and Evan Thomas. "It became an open secret that he was using painkillers [for back pain] in sufficient dosages to keep him standing through the two-hour debates," the authors explain in the book. To keep him standing.
Before one of the debates, a "manager of a rival campaign" overheard Perry singing the song "I've Been Working on the Railroad" while in the bathroom. "Wondering who was making all the noise, the campaign manager turned his head and saw, to his surprise, the governor of Texas," the book states. "Perry came down the row of about twenty urinals and stood companionably close by." "Nonplussed," the campaign manager left the bathroom, but could still hear Perry singing, "I-I-I've been working on the ra-a-i-i-l-road, all-l-l the live-long day . . ."
It should surprise no one that Perry would trek twenty urinals to stand "companionably close by" another man. It's a little surprising that Perry's go-to buzzed song celebrates the working class. But what's really notable here is that we all believed Perry could act that stupid without being on drugs.
And for good reason: Rick Perry is as feebleminded as the whole country now believes him to be. This is a man whose response to 2011's longest-ever Texas drought was to encourage prayer for rain. He called the Gulf Oil Spill an "act of God." He scored lowly to failing grades while a college student majoring in animal science - including a C in gym. And this is just some of Perry's pre-2012 election idiocy.
Rick Perry was loopy on painkillers during the GOP debates, but he's been just as crazy at the helm of our state for the last twelve years. The only painkiller Texans can take to relieve the pain of Perry's tenure is brand new state leadership. A cheesy line, sure, but not as cheesy as how Rick Perry must have sounded singing "I've Been Working on the Railroad."
In a shocking move that stunned Democratic and Republican leaders in Texas, Rick Perry today renounced the Republican Party's deeply anti-humanist agenda and called on his fellow partisans to behave more in line with the actual teachings of Jesus Christ.
According to sources, Rick Perry emerged from Palm Sunday services at Lake Hills Church and was immediately struck with a profound realization that in his tenure as Governor he had done immense and decidedly unchristian harm to the people of Texas. The Governor vowed to change course and immediately begin implementing policies more in line with the teachings of the faith that he previously manipulated for political purposes.
Perry made a lengthy statement explaining his decision on the steps of the Capitol today, the text of which is below.
Statement by Gov. Perry Denouncing His Legacy and Vowing to Follow Teachings of Jesus
Gov. Perry today issued the following statement regarding his legislative legacy as Texas's longest serving governor:
"Today, on Palm Sunday, we celebrate the final stages of Jesus's life on earth and his entry into Jerusalem, where he would be crucified and rise from the dead, in fulfillment with the core tenets of our Christian faith. As I reflected on the life of Jesus in the pews this morning, I was overcome with a sense of grief and anguish for the suffering I have perpetuated on the people of Texas, all in the hopes of achieving short-sighted partisan political victories.
"The Bible says that in our moment of final judgment, Jesus will welcome into the kingdom of heaven those who gave food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and comfort to the sick and imprisoned. And to those who did not follow these basic teachings, Jesus said,
"For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
"In my unrelenting pursuit of power within the right wing of the modern-day Republican Party, I have turned away from this path of righteousness, and perpetuated partisan punishment on the least of us here in Texas. Just look at the legacy of my 11 years in office:
15.6% of Texans are on food stamps -- we have seen the highest rate of increase of food insecurity in the nation here in Texas. And yet I have spoken out against the governmental programs that provide food to keep these Texans alive.
25% of Texans are uninsured. We have the highest rate of uninsured residents in the nation. Yet rather than close the gap, I sued the Federal government for trying to implement a law that provides all Americans with the ability to obtain affordable, quality healthcare, even those with pre-existing conditions.
I refuse to fully fund healthcare for low-income Texans. I signed a budget that slashed Medicaid funding by $10.5 billion this past session and used accounting tricks to hide another $5 billion in costs that will need to be covered in 2013. I also cut provider rates to make it more difficult for doctors to afford to serve those on public health programs.
Over 300,000 Texas women have lost access to basic health care and family planning services thanks to me. I ended the Medicaid Women's Health Program just to block the main provider of services to the poor, Planned Parenthood, from receiving funds. I also cut $73 million from the state's family planning budget, which provides women with cancer screenings and basic check-ups, and has likely saved thousands of lives in its tenure. Clinics have closed, and odds are Texas will see abortions increase as women cannot access affordable contraceptives.
I have hoarded $6 billion dollars in the Rainy Day Fund while signing a budget that cut $4 billion from public education. I also cut another $1.3 billion in grants to school districts for early childhood education programs. As a result, many Texas public schools have closed and children have seen the quality of their education diminish.
"If we are going to be pro-life, then we need to respect the sanctity of human life from creation until death -- not merely until birth. We must support policies that allow all of God's creatures to thrive, and maximize their human potential. That means providing the best education, the cleanest air and safest drinking water, and the best access to medical care regardless of socioeconomic status. This philosophy means that our government must work for all of God's people, not just the highest earners or those who can write my campaign the biggest checks.
"I look back on my decade in office, and it's appalling that my mark in the history books of the great state of Texas will be one of using women, children, and the poor, infirm, and elderly as cheap political pawns to score points with the Republican Party.
"I have failed to follow so many of the basic tenets of my Christian faith. Jesus worked as a teacher, and yet I signed a budget that caused 11,000 teachers and 25,000 total school employees to lose their jobs. Jesus's father Joseph was a carpenter, who probably bore more in common with the immigrant workers and migrant day laborers than the Republican members of our Legislature. And yet those very Republicans continue to scapegoat immigrants, with "sanctuary city" bills that will hut public safety and destroy families. Worst of all, I have aligned myself with known hate groups in an effort to politicize religion and use it as a springboard for my failed Presidential campaign.
"I am filled with a deep sorrow and profound regret, and from this day forward, I vow to practice all of the teachings of Jesus, not just those that are politically convenient or expedient. May God continue to bless Texas, in spite of the big mess I've made of things."
Perry told reporters gathered at the press conference that he would be calling an immediate special session to remedy the horrors of the last legislative session, and that effective immediately, Attorney General Greg Abbott was forbidden from suing the federal government until further notice. He apparently also apologized for that whole "redistricting" thing, and was later spotted at Lammes Candies sending a box of pecan turtles to Lloyd Doggett with a hand-written note that --
OMG you guys, just kidding. It is April Fool's Day, after all. We all know that all of this would never, ever happen. Sorry y'all. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Over the last two years, through budget cuts and political maneuvering, Rick Perry has denied hundreds of thousands of women access to basic healthcare services.
First he signed a budget that slashed $73 million dollars in funding for family planning and women's health -- money that provides cancer screenings, well-woman care, annual check-ups, and helps prevent unwanted pregnancies. Next, Perry's Texas chose to exclude Planned Parenthood from the state's Medicare Women's Health Program, thus ending our state's participation in the program, which provided $9-to-$1 matching Federal funds for basic women's healthcare. Bowing to public pressure, Perry pledged to fund the program with state money, at the expense of Texas senior citizens and children.
Our Governor has no problem using Texas women and children as collateral damage in his efforts to score political points and remain relevant to the national Republican base.
Texas Democrats are fighting back. The Lone Star Project has put together the following video that reminds us of the real human costs of these budget cuts: the mothers, daughters, wives, and sisters of Texas that will be denied regular check-ups, denied cancer screenings, denied healthcare when they need it most. Take a look:
When a mother gets sick, the whole family hurts. This attack on women's health affects all of us. Click below the jump to see more about Perry's unrelenting, full-on assault on the health of mothers in Texas.
A massive report released this week by the Center for Public Integrity found that Texas government has a high risk of corruption. Two other nonprofit groups, government transparency specialist Global Integrity and Public Radio International collaborated on the study, which produced corruption reports on all fifty states.
Though the language of the Texas Public Information Act gets good marks, the study found loopholes abound. Politicians can delay providing information for months, even years. Financial disclosure reports are basic and require barely more than surface numbers. To top all of this off, campaign contributions are unlimited, except in judicial elections.
"Texas politics is dominated by a very wealthy and a very small, elite group," said Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit that examines money in politics. "It's extremely concentrated."
Forty percent of all money flowing into Texas campaigns comes from donors giving $100,000 or more, so there is little incentive to cater to those without means, McDonald said.
Another massive ethics problem the study found was in Texas' handling of politicians' blind trusts. Partnership investments don't have to be revealed if the ownership is less than 50 percent. Gov. Perry kept his blind trusts secret until his competition in the Republican presidential primary forced him to release them. This type of covert influence peddling makes Texas government representative of the companies that our politicians will profit from, not Texans.
The Texas Ethics Commission was found to be ultimately unable to contend with Texas corruption. The TEC has no power to open investigations on its own; rather, six out of eight board members must agree to open an investigation. "Everybody knows that the way it's structured it can never function," said Fred Lewis, an attorney and a longtime ethics watchdog in Texas.
The budget writing process also poses transparency problems. The final version of the budget is written by the Legislature in "frenetic negotiations without citizen input." and "some meetings are held behind closed doors." The redistricting process is similarly secretive, with Texans' ability to provide input hampered by lawmakers' rush to pass a bill "favored by the controlling Republican Party.
The full story behind the score identifies more corruption risks and is well worth reading. Check out the transparency grades that led to Texas' overall D+:
If you need any further proof that the Affordable Care Act is working in Texas, here's a simple compare and contrast between the policies of Texas Governor Rick Perry and those of President Barack Obama. Be sure to check back all week for more on how the Affordable Care Act is working in Texas, and sign our Progress Texas pledge defending the Affordable Care Act.
The key policies contrasted above are:
Current - This is our status quo.
Governor Perry's Plan - If Texas opts out of Medicaid, like Perry wants, 2.55 million more Texans will lose their health care coverage. (Source - Dallas Morning News)
President Obama's Plan - If the policies of the Affordable Care Act are allowed to be set in place, then 91% of the state of Texas is expected to have health care coverage in the coming years. (Source - Houston Chronicle)
Learn more about how the Affordable Care Act is working in Texas below the fold.
The deregulation of the Texas electric utility market in 2002 was supposed to usher in an era of unlimited choice and cheap power for all. Instead, Texans have been saddled with some of the highest electricity bills in the nation, and Texans have been hit by a series of rolling blackouts that point towards a dark future as power generation in the State is falling woefully behind population growth.
Gov Perry at Ercot HQ Watching TX Consumers Get Screwed By Deregulation
The largest non-regulated generator of power in Texas, Luminant, and its parent company, Energy Future Holdings, are now blaming the Environmental Protection Agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule for idling four huge coal-fired electric plants the very week an arctic cold front pushed energy consumption in the state to the limit. It is no surprise that Republican politicians like Rick Perry, and heir-to-the-throne, Greg Abbott, have jumped to Luminant’s defense. The full story, however, reveals a company cobbled together during the worst excess of the early 2000’s boom years like some sort of sulphur dioxide spouting Frankenstein that is now on the verge of total collapse. The story also shows the central problem with our deregulated energy sector: Regulated utilities' primary goals are to provide reliable power to their customers. Deregulated utilities' primary goals are to maximize profits for their investors. As the experience of the last ten years in Texas shows, these two goals are not necessarily the same, and Texas residents are paying the price.
There are a couple quirks about power generation in Texas that must be understood before getting to the rest of the story.
First, Texas is unique in having a self-contained energy grid. While the rest of the nation is served by power grids that cross state lines, and even extend into Canada, 75% of Texas’s grid never crosses into another state. In fact, while power lines do extend into Oklahoma, there are DC power converters at the border to “prevent electrons from crossing state lines.” This allows Texas’s grid to remain largely free from federal oversight. Instead of the Feds, the two organizations tasked with maintaining the grid are the Public Utility Commission (PUC), and the Electronic Reliability Council Of Texas, aka ERCOT. ERCOT monitors power use around the state and oversees the flow of power on the grid, while the PUC is supposed to monitor the electricity market to ensure compliance. However, the rules created when deregulation came into being in 2002 actually prevented the PUC from “ordering restitution to consumers or entities harmed by improper market manipulation,” and allowed “some electric generation companies to engage in anti-competitive activities without fear of reprisal,”, according the Story Of ERCOT, a report by R.A. Dyer of the Texas Coalition For Affordable Power. Therefore, ERCOT - an organization whose board is dominated by “self-interested industry players” in which consumers, who “pay the entire cost of the organization and the electric market that it helps oversee, have only a limited voice” - is the only state organization with any real oversight over the electric grid.
Second, electricity prices in Texas are governed by the price of natural gas. The fluctuations in the price of natural gas had a profound impact on the history of deregulation in Texas as we shall see.
The Dallas Observer ran a great piece detailing Luminant’s problems that is long, but well worth the read. I’ll do my best to summarize below the jump.
Wondering how Rick Perry is going to find over $30 million to fund the women's health program, now that he's ended our state's $9-to-$1 federal match to fund it? Easy: he'll take the money away from other needy Texans by playing a shell game with Health and Human Services funding.
Rick Perry told Empower Texans, a right-wing conservative organization, that he will divert money from other health and human services programs to fund the Women's Health Program. On a statewide conference call with the group, Perry stated:
"There's absolutely no reason to go into the Rainy Day Fund. There's no reason to raise taxes. What we'll do is we'll go back into the programs that are at Health & Human Services. We'll make prioritizations about what is important... we'll find savings in the programs that are there."
Rick Perry is just playing a shell game with the health and well-being of all Texans. There isn't any Health and Human Services money to divert!
Last session, the legislature cut $73 million from the state's family planning budget. Those cuts caused women's health clinics across the state to lay off workers, decrease services, or shut down entirely. The sneaky Republicans didn't merely eliminate the $73 million -- they diverted $61 million into other programs that serve the disabled, children, and the elderly, thus trying to force Democrats to vote against amendments to fund these programs at the expense of family planning programs. Now, HHS will have to look for any money that hasn't been spent yet, or bills that aren't due until later in the biennium, and divert the money back to the women's health program. Meanwhile, Rick Perry refuses to raise revenue, refuses to use the Rainy Day fund. He'll just let the people of Texas suffer for his own fiscal mismanagement.
Texas will have to take money away from children, the disabled, and the elderly to fund women's health simply because Rick Perry is determined to shut down Planned Parenthood.
The Legislature underfunded Medicaid last session by $4.8 billion dollars. That means the state expects Medicaid costs to be $4.8B higher than what they've budgeted to pay for it all. By law, the state must pay for services to Medicaid-eligible patients, so our state will be running up a multi-billion-dollar debt before the next session due to Republicans' refusal to fully fund the program. Most recently, Health and Human Services Commissioner Tom Suehs in February told a legislative committee that Medicaid faces a $15-$17 billion shortfall.
Rick Perry could have continued the successful Medicaid WHP Program that provides Texas with $9 in Federal funds for every $1 in state funds we spend on women's health and family planning. Instead, he's so determined to shut down Planned Parenthood -- which Federal law says Perry cannot shut out from the women's health program -- that he'll take funding for seniors, children, and the disabled down with him if he has to.
The Texas Democratic Party released a strong statement excoriating this move by Rick Perry:
""It's unconscionable that Rick Perry make seniors and other vulnerable Texans pay for his assault on women's health. Rick Perry has already endangered the well-being of thousands of Texas women. It was both cruel and fiscally irresponsible of Perry to turn down federal funding for women's healthcare. Now he's promising to inflict harm on more Texans by slashing essential state services again."
Rick Perry is playing politics with women's health, and kicking the budgetary can down the road to the next session with his refusal to fully fund health and human services programs here in Texas.
And don't forget -- Planned Parenthood is one of the most efficient providers of women's healthcare in Texas. So by shutting them out of the program, Perry is going to have to find a lot more than $35 million to make up for all of the services their network of 65 clinics provide. Most of the other family planning clinics are already in peril due to the original budget cuts to HHS. So while he's talking a good game about funding women's health, in reality Perry is just playing a shell game with our insufficient state funding, a game that the people of Texas are going to lose.
As we reported on Monday, this week's strip of Doonesbury comics takes aim at the absurdity of Texas's mandatory sonogram law, which requires a transvaginal ultrasound of women seeking abortions in Texas. Tuesday and Wednesday's cartoons will be appreciated by Burnt Orange Report readers, as they stick it to the three middle-aged male Republicans responsible for this bill: Governor Rick Perry, State Senator Dan Patrick, and State Representative Sid Miller. The cartoons also bring in the ongoing Republican war on birth control, as the GOP wants to come between women and their monthly blister packs of pregnancy-prevention.
Here are Tuesday and Wednesday's strips:
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
Tuesday's panel, in which "Sid Patrick" (hmm, sounds like a mash-up of Sid Miller and Dan Patrick to me...) asks the young lady if her parents know she's "a slut," resonates strongly with the remarks made by Radio Blowhard Rush Limbaugh, in which he called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" for not only using birth control pills, but also having the audacity to speak up as a woman in favor of access to women's healthcare. More than 30% of American women who use contraception use The Pill. Looks like Rush just insulted one third of the country's ladies. Good work.
Additionally, 14% of pill-takers use them for non-contraceptive purposes including premenstrual dysphoric disorder, endometriosis, and controlling acne. Women also take the pill when they're prescribed other medications that have the risk of birth defects, to make sure they don't get pregnant. Thanks to the ongoing war by Texas Republicans on women's health and family planning programs, there are legions of women lining up to tell their stories about taking the pill for a variety of non-sexy reasons. In short, women take the pill for a whole lot of reasons, and it's none of our legislators' damn business why, nor is it their job to forbid us from receiving them.
Wednesday's panel takes direct aim at Rick Perry, who made sonogram legislation an "emergency item" to speed up the process by which it worked its way through the Republican legislature and into the vaginas of Texas. In his press release, Perry stated that the goal of the legislation was to make sure the "patient understands what's truly at stake" -- because, you know, most women seeking abortions have no idea that they're terminating a pregnancy.
Perry added that he hopes the sonograms compel women to make what he terms "the right choice" -- i.e. not to have the abortion. Of course, sonogram laws don't actually deter many women from having an abortion at all. The real key here is the 24-hour waiting period and procedural delays it causes women. Women need to take an extra day off from work, travel twice, pay for gas twice, pay for other childcare twice, all to exercise their legal right to an abortion. (Meanwhile, all of Perry's efforts to end women's health and family planning in Texas will only increase abortions, as a result of increasing unwanted pregnancies. Bitter irony!)
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a story about the hardships of Texas women who now seek abortions under the sonogram law, and quoted two providers who described their patients' experiences with the law. (Ironically, the Post-Dispatch is one of the papers that refused to run the Doonesbury cartoon, since it wasn't "family friendly" enough.) From their article on the sonogram law, emphasis mine:
"What we have noticed primarily is absolute outrage that they have to come twice," [Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Women's Health] said. "Many of our clients are already mothers; they know what is on a sonogram. They don't see it and say 'Oh, my gosh, I'm pregnant' and change their minds."
"It treats women as if they are stupid and don't know what is in their uterus," [Jenni Beaver, assistant director at Southwestern Women's Surgery Center in Dallas] said. "The law just creates hoops and barriers and drives up the cost for the women. And we have not had anyone decide not to have an abortion because of a sonogram."
Beaver's comments above are accurate with other research on sonogram laws: they don't cause women to change their minds. However, the increased procedural hurdles -- waiting periods, added costs -- do deter some women from accessing abortion, and as always it's the low-income and rural women who will suffer the most.
Wednesday's comic ends as the resigned doctor reads the ideological claptrap required by the state. As far as the Legislature is concerned, doctors "cannot be trusted" to provide their patients with the necessary information about abortion and have to say what the government thinks is correct. It's a move that irked the American Medical Association, and it's a move that should send a clear message to Texas doctors and patients alike: when it comes to women's healthcare, the Republican legislature thinks only they know best.
