Texas' New Abortion Law

 

Depressing post up ahead. Be warned.

Texas enacted a new abortion law in September. It allows abortions only until a fetal heartbeat can be detected, generally about 6 weeks. As a dad and someone who got a few women pregnant when I was young -- despite the pill, despite the IUD, despite condoms -- I don't think I ever knew a woman who knew she was pregnant at six weeks. I'm sure there are some but I think they are rare.

Okay, so no abortions after six weeks.

And no exceptions for rape, sexual abuse, or incest.

Here is the kicker: police do not go after abortion providers, the public does. The law has the public suing providers, counselors who recommend to a person where they can get an abortion, the people who drive the woman to the abortionists. The defendants are subsequently indebted to pay up to $10,000 to the person who turned them in if the suit is successful. The woman herself cannot be sued.

The Texas legislature, for the most part a group of the craziest half-humans you could ever meet (remember that our federal reps include Louie Ghomert, Dan Crenshaw, Pete Sessions, and Ted Cruz, so you can imagine what the state house is made up of!!!!!) put that last part in to make it more difficult to overturn the law: After all, Texas is not asking police to counter Roe v Wade, so who are you going to hold responsible, the general public?

This is the horrible part, so be warned.

What this all means is that a young woman can be raped by her father and get pregnant. She discovers she is pregnant after her seconed missed period. For a lot of young women periods are not exactly monthly so being late even by four weeks would not alarm them, or alert them to a pregnancy.

So at 7 or 8 weeks they discover they are pregnant and the mom -- who does not necessarily know who made her daughter pregnant -- recommends an abortion and finds a doctor who will perform one.

The rapist dad then sues his wife and the doctor and wins $20,000 for having done the freaking unspeakable to his daughter.

Things like this, legislators who came up with this, these are what keep me awake at night. I could care less if you are a repub or dem or indi, or a purple Santa Claus freak. I only care that since politics on every level affect all of us, that people deal in science and facts. No Kellyanne, there are no alternative facts. Alternative facts are lies. And too many on the right these days are completely in the rapture of the lies.

I used to have a subscription to the New York Daily News and read the New York Post for free. Years ago I wrote a column or two for each of them. I read the New York Times as well, but that and the Washington Post are the papers of record for the entire USA, so they are automatic reading. The New York Post used to be a wonderfully flamboyant paper. Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill wrote award winning columns for it. They once had a headline that read: Headless Body in Topless Bar after a gruesome slaying. I had to stop reading it two weeks ago. The lies the Murdoch family is willing to publish, and the lies people are willing to believe are simply too much for me. They try to make the Texas abortion ban sound so normal. It is not normal. It is an alternative fact. It is a lie.

I have never known anyone who likes abortions.

I never liked being part of the decision to have one. But I knew in my heart that we were talking about a spirit that should come into the best circumstance in this world, and until I had a baby later in life I was not going to be that best circumstance. So you allow that spirit to return to wherever it comes from and find a better circumstance to arrive in.

I live in Texas and am fighting hard to get things changed here. We need more honesty and a lot less lying, chicanery, getting over on the libs, and alternative facts.