Anti-Abortion Vigilantes in Texas Will Have to Match Wits With Women's Rights
I thought I had a clever idea recently.
You have all heard of the new Texas law where citizen vigilantes are given protection and awards for a civil suit against anyone helping a woman get an abortion. This is my understanding it. It includes not only abortion medical personnel but anyone giving a ride, escorting a woman past screaming prayers on her way to a clinic or taking care of her pet while she is gone.
Reports are that medical personnel have stopped performing abortions of pregnancies except those in the first few weeks. It is as if there is no defense for this cruel religious law.
This was my idea. All of us in favor of abortion rights would buy magnetic signs to put on the outside doors of our cars, vans and trucks. The sign would say, ABORTION BUS, OUT OF STATE SERVICES. There would be thousands of these. Vigilantes would be checking license numbers, plotting relationships, checking facial recognition and wasting their time trying to score against an automobile owner who had nothing to do with any abortion anywhere.
I posted this idea on an atheist Face Book site thinking people would praise me for a smart idea. Instead, I heard from people already doing versions of my idea. They are starting threads of Face Book and other social media hinting they are looking for help with a pregnancy. Others chime in with fake offers to find a provider, driver and help in other ways. They are attempting to sucker the not-too-smart doofuses into charges of assisting with an abortion when no such thing happened.
While the law may yet be tanked by courts, we can count of certain things even if it remains on the books and is adopted by other states. The number of abortions will remain mostly unaffected. From what we know of the pre Roe history there were roughly the same numbers of abortions. They were more difficult to obtain and were more dangerous but women had them anyway. We can also compare entire countries where abortions are illegal and compare them with countries where they are legal. They are very close. In countries where they are illegal, women who are poor and in rural areas have somewhat fewer abortions. I know women who had abortions before Roe. Without exception they were women with the resources to travel to states where abortions were legal.
The wheels are turning to oppose the Texas law.
Rational thinking has evaded the humble blogger. Nouns, adverbs and adjectives are used as weapons, not vehicles of communications.
ReplyDeleteVigilantes, screaming prayers, cruel religious law, doofusses; all words resembling the literary genius of Plato, Aristotle and Homer.
This from a man who thinks the number of abortions remain the same regardless of the law but fights to "protect" Roe. Irrational thought compounded by irrational schemes of magnetic bumper stickers.
It's as if Joe Biden still had his marbles and was thinking. Google Robin Williams on Joe Biden. Still working on grand dad's dosage.
Prepare for post-Roe.
Matt, I think Jon’s point is there is no “post-roe”, only Roe and pre-Roe. Elective abortions continue either way. Outsourcing enforcement of law by setting neighbor against neighbor with ten grand on the line I don’t think ends well in a culture of gun junkies. We’ll see.
DeleteIf Roe is overturned, then it is post-Roe.
DeleteMatt @ 2:05 PM: My point was that your “post-roe” is essentially a return to pre-Roe circumstances for women which included seeking providers who are willing to perform abortions safely but criminally at great risk to their professional careers including imprisonment or by some means of self-induction like obtaining black market potentially poisonous abortifacients or worse, out of desperation, using one of a host of incredibly dangerous mechanical means. Recall the coat hanger or intentionally falling down stairs methods. Use your imagination. The outcome for the fetus is the same. For women perhaps also death or the inability to get pregnant at a later date because of irreparable damage. You have said that there is no reason for an elective abortion. Neither you or I can walk in shoes of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy. We just can’t.
DeleteI'm intelligent enough to imagine pregnancy. So are the male ob/gyns, and any other males. If you say you can't, I'll take you at your word.
DeleteThe abortion rate has dropped dramatically since a few years after Roe, i.e. half!
Joe has no basis for his claim that the abortion rate will stay the same after Roe is overturned. Just as he blows smoke about the pre-Roe rate.
Matt, September 7, 5:49 AM.: “I'm intelligent enough to imagine pregnancy.”
DeleteWell sir you did manage to get a guffaw out of my dear wife, mother of two, with your imagined pregnancy declaration. After years of your arrogant commentary we still have not sounded the depths of your hubris. Getting close we be matey. Since elective abortions have halved since the SCOTUS Roe v. Wade decision perhaps it should be codified, you know, for the safety of the fairer sex as they manage their reproductive lives and the rate of elective abortions continues to decline. Since hubris is a sin, I can imagine you will have some splainin’ to do at the pearly gates. Still, like it or not, I as a infidel wish you well.
I was there for 7 births. Guffaw all you, your wife and anyone else wants. You know the point. Hubrus?! Lol.
DeleteMatt, September 7, 2021 @ 11:52 AM: “I was there for 7 births.”
DeleteThere it is. I know the point father superior. Get well soon coach.
Matt-- You have predicted the end of Roe countless times here. Your score of success so far has been zero.
ReplyDeleteLet me think; Oh yes, the spying and reporting on neighbors and family was a practice in Nazi Germany, and followed through with the Stazi in East Germany until the fall of east Germany and the end of the USSR. I know it was / is practiced in many other countries in the Eastern block, in China, No Korea, and other piss ant dictatorships. Sam Houston or The Lone Ranger would not be impressed.
DeleteHelper--Then there was lynching carried out by mobs, often of black men accused of "looking at a white women the wrong way." I don't claim to understand the world of law but I looked up civil lawsuits which are the tool of anti abortion zealots in Texas. From what I understood they are available when one person feels the other owes him/her compensation from something the defendant has done to him/her. In this case, the person seeking redress has not be harmed by the defendant. In this case no crime has been committed so it does not involve law enforcement. There is no Grand Jury convened to consider whether the case goes forward. It's like when in Afghanistan/Iraq did not the family down the street and whispered to the U.S. they were of the enemy--the U.S. took them out with guided bombs. I read this kind of law was used against anti slavery people in the South but was eventually dumped.
DeleteReporting my neighbors for child abuse, running a meth lab, operating a child porn website, ... all good things to turn my neighbor over to the law.
DeleteWe all know Jon's absurd musings and crazy claim; and he's not as crazy as Joe Biden.
Matt-- "Reporting my neighbors for child abuse, running a meth lab, ...porn website..all good things to turn my neighbor over to the law."
DeleteYou are comparing criminal matters to this law in Texas. As I understand it, their is no criminal law involved, no "turn my neighbor over to the law." It is between one citizen and another, civil law.
Good, then let us sue for child abuse, meth production and child porn! Whatever is worthy of ridding its practice!
DeleteOne would think would like to sue for Catholic priest abuse, but no, too Texasish.
DeleteThis entire law is befuddling to me, and there is no question in my mind that it was designed to fail. It was designed so that conservative politicians could have a peg to hang their respective hats on.
ReplyDeleteThe entire concept of a civil lawsuit requires the plaintiff to explain and quantify the damages. The first time this comes to trial, the judge will throw the case out of court for lack of standing.
The Supreme court punted. They didn't want to get involved, so they refused to grant the stay and remanded the case back to the lower courts.
And now, an officially recognized church The Satanic Temple, is suing on the grounds that it infringes on their view that a woman's right to bodily autonomy is a sincerely held religious principle.
I highly doubt this will make it back to the Supreme Court. The most likely path of action will be having the law struck down by the first court that entertains it, and then no appeal will be heard because there is nothing new in this law that hasn't been challenged a billion times before.
Bryan--I wonder if anyone will point out it is legal to pull the plug on a braindead child or adult's lifeline equipment even though there is a heartbeat. In the child/adult's case, there is an actual heart. In the few weeks old fetus the detection of nerves firing, there is no heart. Certainly there is no functioning brain.
DeleteDon't look now. Jon is trying to equate life with a functioning heart. That could put Jon in a position to look darn foolish when discussing abortion at 8 months.
DeleteI think I see a red herring!
DeleteI don't know about John, but I consider "late term" abortions to be a completely different topic.
I also consider "cardiac activity" to be an absurd way to define sentient life.
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DeleteJon favors abortion at least up to birth. I would guess his limit is 2 years of age.
DeleteNot a red herring but a fileted fish.
TSM: The legal definition of life tends to depend on sentience. Current scientific consensus is that sentience in a fetus occurs at around 21-23 weeks. The discussion on that is a completely different conversation especially considering the fact that late term abortions are quite rare.
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DeleteTSM: That's precisely the point. None of those other concepts are remotely relevant, and I can't see a rebuttal anywhere in what you wrote.
DeleteLife begins at conception for every mammal.
DeleteMatt--I have to say, you are really good at slight of hand religious demagoguery. Your actual religious belief is NOT that the process leading to a human life begins at conception. That gambit was already used here in a post by someone else that I deleted. Your religious belief is the fertilized cell IS a human being.
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Deletetsm "I would ask you a simple WHY question. ... yes, WHY."
DeleteThe answer is so simple as to be self evident. The Catholic Church had two reasons. One was to make sure women were kept at a lower rung of the pecking order than male clergy. The other was to maintain the revenue needed to keep the male enterprise going. More babies was like social security. The Catholic kept that dishonest thing going for a long time. Then, conservative branches of Protestantism saw they could get in on the spoils also.
Poor Jon. Tell us when a human life begins and when law should protect it? I'm on record as fertilization, as is biology and my Church agree. Science, follow it. Tell us you don't believe life begins a year after birth. Tell us. Come clean.
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DeleteMatt "I'm on record as fertilization, as is biology and my Church agree."
DeleteYes, you are on record for a law which is unworkable, unethical and not science. It's like, "I Matt am in favor of a law against peeing in the woods far from any other human beings." It doesn't matter what law you are in favor of, it has to be workable for most of society. Outlawing abortion is not. When do I think the life of a human being begins? I know one this for sure. It is not a the time when one female's egg is fertilized by one sperm. That cell is not a human being.
@John: I think that the primary contradiction in these arguments comes from the fact that brain activity determining sentience is also a purely biological construct. Therefore, citing "biology" doesn't work in this context for either side.
DeleteEven McDonald's isn't this fast
ReplyDeletehttps://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-clinic-67-abortions-17-hours
Abortions being done rapidly to avoid a new law. I guess laws do work to reduce the abortion rate.
DeleteThat's some odd logic. The law obviously reduces abortions because look at how many extra are being currently performed!
DeleteBryan K "That's some odd logic...."
DeleteGood observation, Bryan. Matt does struggle with math.