If there's one thing that you can count on, it's that crazy-ass GOP motherfuckers who are elected to GOP-majority state legislatures will propose crazy-ass motherfucking legislation that sounds like something conjured by a sweaty Heritage Foundation intern who's trying to impress the boss. You can count on a bunch of people getting upset about the crazy-ass legislation and you can count on it not passing or even making it out of committee because there are enough semi-rational Republicans to tell them to fuck all the way off with that distraction.
However, there is something else you can always count on, and that's that sometimes those crazy-ass motherfuckers hit the sweet spot of timing and a critical mass of crazies in the legislature and statehouse so that they actually make that shit into law. And, often, that happens when Christian extremist men and cynical pretenders gang up on women and limit or eliminate abortion rights.
The prime example of this lately is the Texas anti-choice law that turns every citizen of the state into a bounty hunter trying to catch women attempting to get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and narc on anyone helping them do it. And the law has succeeded in forcing women in Texas who need an abortion into becoming de facto fugitives, trying to negotiate a way to get the procedure out of state at great expense or to get abortion pills so they can self-induce. It's a goddamn nightmare in the 2nd most populous state in the country, one where its biggest cities have Democratic mayors, and one where the number of people who identify themselves as Democrats is pretty much equal to Republicans (but with a large number of "independents," which generally means "Republican").
When the bill was first proposed, it was plainly so egregiously punitive, so insane in its methodology, so backwards in its approach that it seemed like another one destined for the legislative dustbin. However, tasting the blood of women as the end of Roe v. Wade is imminent, the legislature went for it and the savage fucknuts on the Supreme Court have let it stand, not giving a single fuck about how much actual harm is being done because, yeah, that's the fucking point. Punish women for daring not to carry a man's seed to fruition. It's like an incel fantasy come true.
Republican-led and controlled states are sharpening the knives to cut the legs out from women so they can be forced to have children, even the children of men who raped them (and that includes incest, since "incest" generally means "rape by a relative"). In addition to trying to pass bills identical to the one in Texas, states keep pushing back the number of weeks by which a woman can get an abortion (down to 15 in Florida and Mississippi, for instance), and South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Idaho went with the Texas "fetal heartbeat" nonsense, at 6 weeks, all of which are direct confrontations to Roe v. Wade and a sane Supreme Court would put a halt to that shit immediately.
But it gets even more savage when we get to the legislation that they are teeing up, even if it doesn't go anywhere yet. Yet. There was the attempt, twice, in Ohio to force doctors to try to implant in the uterus an ectopic pregnancy, one where the fetus grows outside the uterus, which is not medically possible. In Missouri, some Republicans not only want to end treatment that removes an ectopic pregnancy (which is always fatal to the fetus and, if not removed, fatal or deeply harmful to the woman), but they want to expand the Texas approach and allow people to sue anyone who helps a woman leave the state to receive an abortion, essentially imprisoning women and forcing them to give birth.
That's what these states are doing instead of making life better for their citizens. Republicans are actively harming women and stripping them of bodily autonomy. The next step is to continue to make it harder and harder for women to get abortion medication, which accounts for over 50% of all abortions in the United States. Meanwhile, 60% of Americans support Roe v. Wade, with 65% opposing laws like the one in Texas. Only 27% want Roe overturned, which is almost certainly going to happen in June.
And, yet, with notable exceptions, it's only Republicans who are fighting at the front lines of the culture war on abortion. Yes, Democrats tried and failed to pass a law that would codify Roe, which everyone knew would fail and thus was only a symbolic vote. (Honestly, the symbolic vote is one of the most bullshit things both parties do. How many fucking votes to overturn the Affordable Care Act were taken by the GOP? You know what's still there? The Affordable Care Act.) But, in many cases, because they have been cowed by right-wing media and religious nutzoids, Democrats don't fucking go full "Fuck, yeah, abortion rights!" on Republicans.
Democrats can fight and win on abortion access because we're no longer talking about anything in the realm of compassion. Anti-choice Republicans are pushing their fanaticism into other people's lives, too, with their bounty bills. How's this for an ad: "If you live in Missouri and drive an Uber and you bring a woman to a bus station so she can get an abortion in Illinois, you could be sued if a new law passes." And it's fucking true.
Yeah, you're gonna have to dive into some dark places here, but make the case that a 12 year-old raped by her father would be forced to go through with any pregnancy that happened. That's reality in Texas. Hell, if you really wanna fuck with the white suburbanites, play with their racism and tell them that if their daughters are raped and made pregnant by undocumented immigrants, they'd have to have the baby. These aren't exaggerations. The laws that are being passed by Republicans do this.
This is a visceral way to demonstrate just how fucking insane the GOP has gone. You're not gonna do that by talking about Trump or January 6 or Russia. For decades, Republicans have made it visceral, with pictures of literal viscera and endless talk about the death of a fetus. It's always been implicit, but now the anti-choice right is making it explicit: they don't fucking care about the women. They don't. They don't care if women are raped. They don't care if a doctor says an abortion is necessary for a woman's mental health. They don't care about hurting anyone close to the woman. And they sure don't fucking care if women die in the process. That's just an object lesson for other women not to try.
So get on the fucking field on this, Democrats. Center campaigns around women having freedom. We've ceded this rhetorical battle on this issue for far, far too long, relying on Roe to keep some measure of sanity. By the end of June, the guardrails are coming off and we better be in the fight already because Republicans will be.
(Note: The Missouri Republican who wrote the bill that prevents ending ectopic pregnancy says he will revise it to exclude that, but it will still be vague as fuck and why trust these fucks.)
