The more I look at these "heartbeat" anti-abortion bills - I already railed against Georgia's, Alabama just passed an anti-abortion bill that's worse, Ohio is close to getting there, Missouri's voting on their own, Kentucky's is messed up - the more I see a repeat of the harsh laws our states had passed back in the 1800s to punish Blacks not just the slaves but also the Freed Blacks who were born and raised free in northern states.
I'm thinking of the Fugitive Slave Acts that the Slave states passed to force the Free states to return "their property" of human beings.
When I saw the Georgia law applying penalties to any woman "leaving the state to receive an abortion" and noticed it gave room for the state to punish anyone who helped her, it reminded me of how the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act forced local police and even ordinary citizens - under penalty of high fines - to help bounty hunters capture anyone they deemed - without evidence - an escaped slave (even when entire communities could prove that Black person was born free).
These bills aren't designed to help or protect the fetus. These bills are designed to hurt and punish people.
The Alabama anti-abortion law got rid of the exemptions "in cases of rape/incest" meaning women will be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies (and even be forced to share custody with the rapist!) and likely face severe health risks that could mean their death. Or else face life in prison. Any doctor helping to end that rape pregnancy can face longer jail time (life in prison) than the fucking rapist.
There's your slave chains tightening on women's necks.
There's your Far Right wingnuts imposing Sharia law.
There's the Republican Party ignoring every signpost warning them that banning all abortion will cause a backlash. They may argue that "everyone hates killing babies" but a vast majority of Americans accept and approve of the rape/incest/health of mother exemptions. Welcome to the paradox of abortion: Most Americans don't like the practice but they also realize there are situations where abortion is needed and should be available to the woman making that choice.
The anti-abortion fanatics may see those polls but they're still driven by their absolutist obsessions. They don't care what the majority think, only what they are willing to do to enslave the rest of us.
Just remember those Fugitive Slave Acts stirred a public outrage among Northern states that led to the rise of an abolitionist Republican Party - back when that party knew what it was doing, before the dark times of Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan and Newt - and to the Election of 1860 which found the Slave states outnumbered and outvoted... and we all know what that led to.
So Welcome to 2019, deep into the trumpian Darkest Timeline.
Welcome to the American Second Civil War. Whose side are you on?
2 comments:
The first written mention of abortion was 1550 BC and nobody besides Catholics gave a rat's ass about it until the Republicans made it into a campaign "wedge issue" and began lying about it to scare idiots into voting for them.
So abortion will never go away, and all that their restrictions will ever do is make poor women miserable and damage their lives.
But as others have pointed out about other issues lately, the cruelty is the point.
At least now we have medication abortion so poor women won't necessarily be left to the mercy of unlicensed abortionists like they were before Roe.
And there are many groups and organizations who have seen this coming and are stepping up to do what they can and what they have to for the women who will continue to need these services.
So I recommend supporting them while we resist this onslaught of dehumanization.
And I also recommend beating the Republicans with this, keeping on beating them with it, and not stopping beating them with it until the only women who will vote for them are too far gone to reach, and I guarantee you that they will be far fewer than the women who recognize this as the attack on their autonomy that it is.
-Doug in Oakland
And again, no consequences at all for the men who caused the unintended pregnancies.
-Doug in Oakland
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