QOTD: Death Penalty For Abortion Patients?

If you thought the forced-birth crazies couldn't get any crazier, welcome to the Texas Republican Party, which has an extreme position stated in its party platform.  Jessica Valenti sounds the alarm:

"We need to talk about Plank 35 in the Texas GOP platform. Because while there’s been lots of coverage about how extremist the state’s Republican convention was, people seem to have missed the fact that delegates adopted a platform that calls for abortion patients to be punished as murderers. In Texas, that could mean the death penalty.

I wish I was exaggerating.

The GOP’s platform demands 'equal protection for the preborn,' and for Texas legislation to give fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses 'equal protection of the law.'

If you’re a regular reader, you know that 'equal protection' is a call for abortion to be treated as homicide, and for abortion patients to be prosecuted as murders. (Remember South Carolina’s Prenatal Equal Protection Act, and Georgia’s Prenatal Equal Protection Act? Both were bills to make abortion punishable as a homicide.)

That’s because 'equal protection' is the polite-sounding rallying cry of abortion ‘abolitionists’—radical anti-abortion activists who say women aren’t victims in abortion, but killers. The once-fringe group has been gaining more power and influence since Roe was overturned, with some running for and winning state office." (our emphasis)

As Valenti points out, similar moves have been initiated in other red states after the Malignant Loser's Supreme Court appointees gutted Roe v. Wade in 2022, as the reactionary forced-birth movement tries to expand its reach. For a movement that claims to be "pro-life," their view of women only as vessels for reproduction to be potentially executed if they won't reproduce is sick. Their extremism is why we're counting on the "Roevember" election to be the pushback on their dangerous actions.

(photo: Abortion rights supporters at the Texas State Capitol on Sept. 1, 2021. Sergio Flores / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

QOTD: Word Games

 

The Republican / Forced Birth / Shooters party knows it has a political anvil tied around its neck in the aftermath of the right-wing Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. It succeeded in mobilizing a heretofore quiet pro-choice movement, who went to the mid-term polls and defeated Republican candidates who embraced the court's reactionary decision. Now, seeing the upsurge in opposition, Republicans are doing what they do best: lying and obscuring their positions. Jessica Valenti writes at the New York Times:

"Republicans hope that by changing the way Americans talk about abortion, it might help change the way they feel about abortion — which is, right now, very pro-choice. A record 69 percent of American adults say abortion should generally be legal in the first trimester, and anger over bans has Republicans losing election after election, from ballot measure initiatives in Kansas and Kentucky to the State Supreme Court in Wisconsin.

It makes sense. After all, Americans have now seen a woman vomit before testifying about watching her newborn take pained last gasps for air — the result of being forced to carry a doomed pregnancy to term in Texas. The cruelty of abortion bans is revealed with every new story of a woman being allowed to slip into sepsis or a raped child being denied care.

But rather than change the policies that are causing so much suffering, conservatives seem to believe they can talk their way out of the problem not just with political messaging but also by manipulating medical and legal language." (our emphasis)

So, as Valenti points out, an "abortion ban" becomes a 15-week "standard," which is still a ban.  They're aided by wingnut doctors who want to obfuscate by using so-called "life affirming" language:

"This summer, for example, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists published a 'Glossary of Medical Terms' instructing doctors on what 'life affirming' language to use. Under their guidance, a woman whose fetus has a fatal anomaly would be told not that the condition is terminal but that it’s 'life limiting.' Similarly, if someone’s water breaks months before her due date, she would be informed not that the pregnancy is nonviable but that it’s 'pre-viable.' The goal is in part to persuade women to carry doomed pregnancies, which can be emotionally and physically catastrophic."  (our emphasis)

With over 50 years of opposing women's reproductive rights behind them, Republicans may try to deceive voters with their cynical wordsmithing, but they still have to come back to the bright daylight of defending their reactionary, misogynist positions to the public, whether they want to use the word "ban" or not. 

QOTD -- "What They're Celebrating"

 

We thought this worthy enough to be quoted in full.  It's Jessica Valenti's Substack post on the recent "March for Life" composed of puerile Catholic high schoolers, bible- thumping Trumpist hypocrites, and various other nimrods, zealots and charlatans.  Let's remember here's "What They're Celebrating":

This weekend marked the 50th anniversary of Roe v Wade, and anti-choice activists descended on Washington, DC and cities across the country to celebrate the end of abortion rights. Instead of making all the pro-choice arguments I’ve made before, let’s just take a look at what exactly they’re rejoicing over:

They’re celebrating the cancer patients in Ohio who sobbed when told they had to leave the state for their medically-necessary abortions. They’re smiling and cheering for the patients who threatened to commit suicide if they were denied care.

They were celebrating the Texas woman who ended up in the ICU with sepsis after she was denied miscarriage treatment, and the woman who was forced to carry a dead fetus for weeks. They were delighted over the pregnant woman in rapidly failing health who was told not to come back unless she had a stroke, and the woman who was told she couldn’t get treatment for an ectopic pregnancy until it ruptured.

The thousands who marched were applauding a law that left a Wisconsin woman bleeding for more than 10 days after an incomplete miscarriage, and led a desperate Idaho woman to document herself getting sicker and sicker on TikTok as doctors refused her treatment.

The people who were downright joyful over the end of abortion rights were celebrating the suffering Chelsea Stovall in Arkansas, who had to travel 400 miles to get care as she grieved the end of her doomed pregnancy. She said, “I should be able to say goodbye to her where I want to.” They cheered the anguish of Tara George in Georgia, whose life was put at risk by her pregnancy yet had to spend a week desperately calling hospitals in multiple states to find someone who would help her. They delighted in the Louisiana ban that wouldn’t allow abortion care to a mother of three whose fetus was missing part of its head and skull.

The protesters spilling onto the streets were celebrating the laws that forced a raped 10 year-old in Ohio to leave her home state for an abortion, and banned an Arizona 14 year-old from getting arthritis medication. They were reveling in the knowledge that the two Kentucky 9 year-olds in who needed abortions last year would no longer be able to get care.

I could go on—because every day that abortion bans are in place are another day that a girl or woman suffers. That’s what these people are celebrating; that’s what they’re happy over. And we can’t let people forget it. 

Let's make sure about that.