God the Bounty Hunter
Actual footage of Texas in Sept. 2021
Everything’s Bigger In Texas
Amidst the news of Simone Biles withdrawing from the Olympics, another equally-decorated gymnast had some choice words.
Oh sorry, did I say gymnast?
I meant Texas’ deputy attorney general.
Aaron Reitz called Simone a “selfish, childish national embarrassment.” And, as infuriating as that is, the Simone slander isn’t even close to the worst news coming out of Texas.
As of September 1, 2021, Texas will have an abortion bounty, which is the most Handmaids Tale inspired shit I’ve ever heard. The Texas Heartbeat Act (or S.B.8) will encourage civilians to snitch on sexual health providers and pregnant women's friends by awarding $10,000 bounties to anyone who successfully sues those providing or aiding women in getting abortions after such time that the fetus has a heartbeat (around 6 weeks).
The bill does have a provisions for “medical emergencies” but not rape or incest. Babies created from those traumas are still expected to be born - at the expense of the woman involved, of course.
S.B.8 doesn't criminalize abortions after 6 weeks, but it attacks women's support systems by encouraging civil lawsuits. You could be targeted if you drive a friend to a clinic, given them information about their options, or even if you provide spiritual counsel to someone considering an abortion.
Texas is trying to legally isolate women in their time of need.
On top of the fact that this is financially-incentivized vigilante justice, 6 weeks is a very small window of time to decide to get an abortion. Many women don’t know that they’re pregnant by then. In fact over 85% of women who get abortions in Texas are beyond 6 weeks into their pregnancy.
Immediately you have to wonder who will jump on the opportunity to rat out providers: nosy neighbours, controlling parents, abusive partners.... None of the people you want to give power. In the name of family values, Texas has created a state-wide Stanford Prison Experiment. What could possibly go wrong?
Burning a little bush
The Lord’s Work
Abortions rights advocates and providers are fighting S.B.8 with a federal lawsuit. The strategy is to convince a federal judge to prevent court clerk’s from even accepting the lawsuits.
Beyond the horror of having your narc neighbour take you to court for helping a friend, the reality of the lawsuit is that many organizations who provide necessary sexual health services will be too bogged down in litigation to continue practicing.
There are no restrictions on how many independent lawsuits can be filed against one person or company suspected of assisting procure an abortion, meaning that helping 1 women could yield multiple court cases. If the defendant wins, they are still on the hook for their own legal fees. If they lose, however, they have to pay the fees of both sides. A company like Planned Parenthood would barely see the outside of a courtroom. Their other services, like providing contraception and feminine hygiene products, would fall to the wayside.
Reproductive health clinics are already under attack. In 2019 violent instances against abortion providers rose by 22%, including behaviour like trespassing, assault, death threats, hate mail, picketing, and invasions.
Texas saw this and thought, “let’s add lawsuits”
Criminalizing support systems is nothing short of cruel, but anti-choice advocates believe they are heroes for saving unborn children from murder. So why stop with Texas? With a majority conservative vote in the Supreme Court, Republicans are pushing to reevaluate more legislation around abortions.
Mississippi has jumped in on the action by urging the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision to legalize abortion nationwide before viability. Viability - meaning the baby is likely going to survive - happens at around 24 weeks.
The Supreme Court has said it would evaluate all pre-viability bans like S.B.8 to see which are unconstitutional. If they overturn Roe v. Wade, however, the marker of what is acceptable would change drastically.
Anti-choice advocates argue that scientific advances have shown viability isn’t the most important measure. The Texas Heartbeat Act points to heartbeat (obviously) as when abortions become murder. Mississippi has been trying (and failing) to pass the Gestational Age Act which would ban abortions beyond 15 weeks. To them anything resembling a “human form” is worthy of saving.
Funny that they all liked Trump then, right?
I feel you Snookie
I’m Gagging
Speaking of Trump, back in 2019 he instilled a Title X gag rule, which is as gross as it sounds. The rule banned doctors from telling patients how they could safely access abortion, which also affected how women were able to find safe places to access birth control (ie: Planned Parenthood).
Biden scrapped the Gag rule in January, but effects are never instant. As of last year 1.7 million women in Texas live in “contraceptive deserts.” Texas is also 1 of only 2 states that do not cover contraceptions for low-income teens through the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
As of May 2021, Texas also had the 9th highest rate of teen pregnancy across the US.
For some reason stopping the problem before it starts would be too easy. Access to contraception and sexual education is a Texan taboo. Apparently God hates condoms almost as much as he hates gays and likely for the exact same reason: sex isn’t allowed to be fun. The pill is a one-way ticket to the Devil’s pleasure playground.
Vaginas are for babies. End of story.
Evidently the conservative compassion for life starts and ends with fetuses. My question is, if you like babies so much, why not treat parents better? Positive reinforcement yields more results over time, so let's plan incentives for mothers to keep their children instead of punishing those who can't.
Texan families spend 10% - 30% of their income on childcare, something that can cost more than college tuition for infants. Affording children is a huge barrier for many families, and lower-income, BIPOC women are disproportionately getting abortions as a result. If Texas can provide support for these struggling mothers, maybe abortion would become less necessary.
Additionally, if women were able to weigh their options about contraception BEFORE having sex, maybe less unwanted pregnancies would happen in the first place.
Exactly how I imagine IUDs
Divine Contraception Intervention
Abortion is a divisive topic. A few of you reading may fundamentally disagree with my stances. One thing everyone agrees on , however, is that we need to #FreeBritney.
All political parties were united when news broke of Britney's forced IUD. Britney Spears has wanted to have more children for years, but her conservator, Jamie Spears, has prevented her from removing her contraception. It's an abhorrent and disgusting flex of control over her body.
It's also surprisingly common.
Forced birth control is a normal practice for women in conservatorships throughout the US. Over 50% of states allow for “permanent sterilization” of conservatees at the discretion of their guardians.
The precedent was set with the rise of eugenics in the early 1900s. Medical professionals believed sterilizing people with disabilities would improve the genetics of the human race. Naturally it wasn’t just those with disabilities who were targeted - people of colour and promiscuous women were also deemed “unfit” to procreate. In California approximately 20,000 people were sterilized, a eugenics program that directly inspired the Holocaust.
All of this sterilization was done legally with the adamant approval and encouragement of the Supreme Court. In the case of Carrie Buck in 1927, which was the first court ruling that spawned a flurry of sterilization laws across the nation, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote:
“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind”
Seriously, it’s like reading dystopic fiction.
Today the rights of people with disabilities are still restricted, and, evidently, women are constantly told what they are and aren’t allowed to do with their bodies. Republicans can understand how harmful it is for Britney to have an IUD in against her will, but somehow they can't make the jump into understanding why having an unwanted child is just as emotionally damaging.
Me at family functions
Hell Hath No Fury Like A Girl With A Blog
The reality is that female and female-identifying people are seen as objects that can be controlled. I’ve written time and time again about how we are objectified, seen as helpless, used as landing pads for male aggression, and restricted in our behaviour.
Abortion and contraception are just more methods of control.
I highly doubt anyone is gleefully getting an abortion. Whether you eventually want to be a mom or not, it must be a traumatic experience.
In the same way no one is pumped about getting a pap smear, abortions are a necessary evil. When the world looks poorly on you for being a single mom, when the wage gap disproportionally affects mothers, when childcare costs 30% of your income, and when no one showed you where and how you can use contraception, terminating a pregnancy becomes a reasonable option.
To strip that option away without correcting for any of the other issues just sets women back further.
Here’s the hard truth: it doesn’t matter how restricted abortions are, women will still find a way to terminate their pregnancies if they have to. All this legislation does is make it more dangerous.
Reproductive laws value the life of an unborn children more than women, presumably because those children might grow up to be men. Women will die because of S.B.8, but I guess that matters less than saving babies on paper.
Amen.
