Texas Anti-Abortion Law: Punishing The Victims

When Texas' radical, Trump cultist Governor Greg "Abbadabba" Abbott isn't taking the voting rights of black, brown and young people away, he's taking away women's reproductive rights by signing a harsh, restrictive anti-abortion bill, banning abortions after six weeks. The Texas law doesn't even make an exception for incest and rape to get a safe abortion. Questioned about that yesterday, Abbott gave an incoherent, lazy answer:

",,,,let’s make something very clear: rape is a crime and Texas will work tirelessly  to make sure we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going after and arresting them and prosecuting them. And getting them off the streets. So goal number one in the state of Texas is to eliminate rape, so that no woman, no person, will be a victim of rape.”

Someone might want to clue Abbott in that a man isn't a rapist until he rapes. So a Texas woman would still be stuck with a pregnancy by a rapist if she doesn't know she's pregnant until after six weeks, as few women can. Abbott chasing down her rapist still leaves her with his fetus to carry under this law. Said Texas Republican Christofascist state Sen. Bryan Hughes in a clear statement of their priorities (CNN link above):

"Regarding the lack of exceptions for rape and incest victims, Hughes said, 'Let's do everything we can to hold people accountable who do something like that, to protect women from that,' adding, 'Let's harshly punish the rapist, but we don't, we don't punish the unborn child.'" (our emphasis)

But we will, he didn't say, punish the rapists' victim, because as fundamentalist Republican orthodoxy goes, rape is largely the woman's fault.

(photo: Sergio Flores/Getty)