Ectopic pregnancy, abortion, and “reimplantation” for dummies. I’m talking to you, Ohio House of Representatives.

Dummy: Ohio Rep. John Becker 

(Republican) co-sponsored a bill that 

requires Ohio doctors to do the 

medically impossible or possibly

face murder charges. But medical 

science is, like, you know, his opinion.

Dummy:  Ohio Rep. Candice Keller 

(Republican) not only co-sponsored 

the ectopic pregnancy law, but also 

blamed homosexual marriage, 

“drag queen advocates” and 

“recreational marijuana” for mass 

shootings.

Uh oh! The Republican rocket scientists in the Ohio House of Representatives are at it again. 

It’s old news by now, but just in case you missed it…

Having banned abortions after five weeks of pregnancy — a ban that was blocked by a Federal judge whose IQ, if it’s merely normal, is probably higher than that of all the Republicans in the Ohio House combined — the House went on to something bigger and dumber.

It's legislative name is HB 182, but it ought to be called the Ohio Medical Nincompoop Act. This one involves ectopic pregnancies. An ectopic pregnancy is a mistake nature makes — okay, that God makes if you pro-life fundamentalists insist — that causes a fertilized egg to attach to the wrong place.

Usually that wrong place is a fallopian tube, where  the egg ends up fatally, instead of descending to the uterus, where the egg can grow normally and develop into a healthy fetus.

If the ectopic pregnancy isn’t terminated, not only will the baby die prior to birth, but the mother very well may bleed to death, too. So the only proper and humane way to deal with this tragedy is to abort the pregnancy. Hey, don’t take my word for it. I get this stuff from the medically renowned Mayo Clinic, which sums it up this way:

“An ectopic pregnancy can't proceed normally. The fertilized egg can't survive, and the growing tissue may cause life-threatening bleeding, if left untreated.”

 But trust those “Get the government off our backs” Republicans not only to get on women’s backs, but to crawl up into women’s private parts and begin practicing 12^th Century medicine in there.

What did Representative Becker come up with? Why, a bill criminalizing abortions of ectopic pregnancies if the doctor fails to do the impossible and “reimplant” the aborted fetus in the woman’s uterus. The doctor who fails to comply with this compliance-proof law would face “abortion murder” charges.

Meanwhile, Daniel Grossman, writing in in the Ohio online journal Cincinnatti.com, tells us:

While HB 182’s focus on a fictitious treatment is concerning, even more dangerous is the fact that the bill eliminates insurance coverage for the standard treatments for ectopic pregnancy unless the pregnant person’s life is in danger. This exception for life is not sufficient, since doctors may feel their hands are tied unless they are 100% certain that the patient is at death’s door. Ectopic pregnancy is the leading cause of pregnancy-related death in the first trimester, and as our nation faces a crisis of maternal mortality– particularly among African-American women – it is unconscionable to place obstacles in the way of treating ectopic pregnancy.

I assume that the next matter the Ohio House will deal with is the exorcism of witches from elementary schools. Stay tuned.