Hey GOP? There are no jobs in my uterus — I promise.
Last March I wrote about a bill Jan Brewer signed into law in Arizona — House Bill 2443, which makes it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion based on the sex or race of the fetus. Apparently, Trent Franks (R-Ladyhater) decided that women and minorities nationwide were in danger of extinction, and that what we really need is a federal version of Arizona’s crazy-ass bill.
Introducing PRENDA –the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act. At this point, I can’t decide which is more outrageous — the bill itself or the fact that these racist misogynist clowns decided to name their bill after Susan B. Anthony and Frederick fucking Douglass.
From Think Progress,
The bill seeks to somehow protect the “civil rights” of fetuses by banning physicians from performing abortions based on the fetus’s race or sex. While the woman would be exempt from prosecution, physicians who perform the procedure can be sued for damages.
Tomorrow, the measure will enter the spotlight in the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, as will the man behind the effort: GOP Rep. Trent Franks (AZ). His chief motivation, he told the Daily Caller, is to solely to end discrimination, or as his chief proponents argue, the genocide of minority fetuses:
According to Franks, a ban on these types of abortions is needed because minority babies are aborted at five times the rate of white babies and, based on a 2008 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. Census data shows that certain populations have ‘son-biased” ratios due to “sex selection, most likely at the prenatal stages.”[…]
“People will say I have a greater agenda — and they are right — I hope for a day when all children, regardless of race or color, all children because they are children will be protected,” he said.
“But right now regardless of what the long term impact of this might be the short term impact is very simple: Can we not agree that aborting a child based on a child’s race or sex is wrong?”
And from ABL (hey! that’s me!), eight months ago:
Essentially, this law attempts to turn abortion into a hate crime in order to lend an air of credibility to the absolutely bullshit theory that abortion is some sort of black genocide.
::sigh::
Here’s the thing about hate crimes: They are different from “regular” crimes in that proof of hate crimes require proof of a little somethin’ extra — prejudicial motivation.
For example: It’s one thing to assault a guy and steal his wallet. It’s quite another thing to assault a guy while calling him a homo and screaming about how you’re going to teach queers a lesson, and then steal his wallet. Both are crimes. The latter is fairly undeniably a hate crime.
Of course, the former may also be a hate crime; maybe the assailant only steals gay people’s wallets and maybe he keeps a journal somewhere entitled Number of Queer Wallets Stolen. Suck it, Homos! which can be introduced as evidence against him. But unless a prosecutor can prove a prejudicial motivation beyond a reasonable doubt, no conviction for a hate crime will result.
In order to morph a run-of-the-mill assault – an act intended to cause an apprehension of harmful or offensive contact, and which causes apprehension in the victim that harmful or offensive contact is imminent — into a hate crime, a prosecutor must prove that the accused’s undisclosed intent was based upon prejudice.
So, not only does a prosecutor have to get inside the accused’s mind to prove intent, the prosecutor must then go one layer deeper into the accused’s mind to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that bias or prejudice formed the foundation for that intent.
If you’re confused, you should be. A hate crime is, essentially, the Inception of crimes — a crime within a crime.
With that in mind, I give you a brief rant:
First of all, how dare these Teabilly assholes pretend to care about the plight of the Negro, when the very same Teabillies are gutting and intend to further gut the social programs on which black and brown women rely in order to keep their babymakers in check? I mean, Jesus F. Bieber — how can they defund Planned Parenthood on the one hand, but then deem the abortion rate in the black community to have reached such critical levels that it should be called genocide? How can they not see that these issues are directly related?! What the hell is wrong with them?! (That’s a rhetorical question.)
Second of all, how in THEE hell are they going to get inside an abortion doctor’s head to determine whether or not s/he would have been less inclined to perform the procedure had the fetus been of a different race? Are there scads of “Black Baby B’Gone” clinics from which this law is intended to protect black ladies?
Looky here: You’re not fooling anyone, assholes. It is plain that you are using this “black genocide” angle to push your anti-abortion agenda. How stupid do you think we are?
Furthermore, how stupid are you? If your little plan works, and brown women have fewer abortions, we’re just going to outbreed you! Yeah, let that little nugget of OMG! sink in for a while. You need to decide which you hate more: Brown people or dead babies.
I swear, I’m going to go have a half dozen babies tomorrow – out of spite.
And in about 20 years, when my spite babies are all growns up, they’re going to join forces with all the terrorist anchor babies and BLOW YOUR SHIT UP.
Well guess what? Operation Spite Baby is back on! Who’s with me? Ladies? START YOUR UTERINE ENGINES, AND BREED! BREED! BREED!
(Brown ladies, only — sorry. Our white sisters should just breed at the standard rate. Much obliged.)
[via Think Progress]
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]
Baud
Not that I expect that these yahoos have thought anything through, but how the hell would that even be implemented? I can’t comprehend it.
John Cole
No freelance work for independent contractors?
Villago Delenda Est
Trent Franks is a guy who obviously needs a retroactive abortion.
Baud
@John Cole: Heh. She outsourced her uterus to China.
ABL
@John Cole: anything for page views.
A.G.
I loved the rant, ABL. Funny as hell and on point.
Urza
There could be jobs in vaginoplasty after you pop out all those kids. I’m sure the plastic surgeons doing that will need a tax cut to.
And then Gingrich or someone like him can whine about the use of food stamps to pay for said surgery.
Steve
Whose racist intent are we supposed to be examining here? The mother’s? (I’m going to keep trying until I have an Asian baby, I hear they’re the smartest!”) The doctor’s? (“My masters at Planned Parenthood pay me to turn away all the white patients! I only kill minority babies.”) Also, it would be horrible to get an abortion based on the baby’s eye color, so we need to ban that too.
Gus
Of course there is, their jobs as politicians.
Menzies
Speaking as a resident of Rochester, New York – you know, where Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony are buried (and not too far from where I’m sitting right now) – the only discriminatory abortion I’m seeing is this fucking bill.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
There are days where you think they can’t be more transparently awful and blatant, and then they do this shit.
Brian S
On the rare occasion that I’ve been able to have a reasonable discussion with an anti-choicer that didn’t immediately devolve into a shitstorm, this is where I’ve caught them. Why should the mother avoid prosecution. On the even rarer occasion where they’re willing to think it through, they realize they don’t have an answer. It doesnt usually change anything, but it stops them for a second, because they have to admit, even if it’s just for a second, that their position is baseless.
Kyle
The Repukes’ concern for minority babies begins at conception — but only if they can be used to corral mouth-breathers to the polls — and ends at birth.
RossInDetroit
Let Franks demonstrate that he gives even half a shit about minority babies after they’re born and I’ll think about taking this law seriously*.
*No I won’t. That was rhetorical.
AT
If Franks daughter/wife etc., happens to fall pregnant to a man of colour he won’t be able to find a Dr to provide an abortion fast enough.
In other news Republicans are hypocritical pieces of shit, item 1,000,334,200
Schlemizel
And again with their complete lack of knowledge of history.
Susan B. and many of the suffragettes made horribly racist speeches because black men got the vote before white women. But the irony of joining them together for their own twisted misogyny is lost on them.
Rome Again
There’s no jobs in my uterus either.
I get the feeling you’ve read Clive Barker’s Weaveworld.
mark
ABL – you are a little off the mark in your understanding of what the proposed bill is for.
This is for if a pretty white girl comes home from college and pregnant, and then when the parents find out its a black baby (non-white baby), they go for abortions.
And all those chinese that abort gross girls.
Rome Again
There are lots of children starving and living in cars. I think that’s a great place where this concerned activist can show how much he wants to save the children. Oh, I forgot, it’s too late for them since they’re already destined for Hell.
mark
…or the OBGYNs that pull the feti out if during an ultrasound of a white lady, it reveals its race to be other than mama’s white.
Mike G
@Rome Again:
Their families are poor, so by GOP logic they are evil, and deserving of punishment and pepper-spraying.
greennotGreen
I don’t know enough curse words to adequately condemn the proponents of this law to the proper circle of hell. It is because of the possibility of abortion, because that choice exists, that I have a bright, funny, beautiful niece. For those of us who carry a serious genetic flaw – just one gene! – it’s Choice that allows us to have children who aren’t destined to die slowly before our eyes. And it’s
Choice that will allow my niece to have children that won’t die slowly before her eyes. So, for those cretins who would deny my family that, damn them, damn them, damn them to hell.
the dude
So how is “OMG! You aborted that baby cuz it be black! Burn her!” any different to “OMG! You aborted that baby cuz it be a baby! Burn her!” ?
If one criteria is going to be illegal then surely any other criteria will be just as heinous and so should also be illegal.
At least that will be the reasoning behind this bill, I assume.
The Republic of Stupidity
Just out of curiosity…
Who’s going to be doing the suing… the fetus?
Jay in Oregon
@The Republic of Stupidity:
The
property ownerfather of the fetus, naturally.RSA
@Brian S:
Yeah, that’s always struck me, too. If abortion is murder, then it’s hard to explain why “the woman” isn’t a party to a contract killing. (I once did a back-of-the-envelope estimate that our prison capacity would need to be six times larger than it is now [already the highest in the world] to hold everyone. Crazy.)
empty house( formerly greennotGreen)
@RSA: The woman isn’t held responsible for the same reason a house isn’t held responsible if a murder occurs in it. See Jay in Oregon.
It just isn’t possible to be too cynical, is it?
greennotGreen
Oh, and if I ever get out of moderation, my comment was intended as bitter snark.
Groucho48
This is just another of numerous right wing attempts to give civil rights to fetuses that trump the civil rights of parents and doctors.
burnspbesq
Almost certainly Unconstitutional (vagueness). Still, a repulsive idea.
I’d say California is fortifying the wrong border. The risk of lunatics moving here from Arizona and inserting their ideas into our politics worries me more than anything that comes across the Mexican border.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Jay in Oregon:
Does that mean the law automatically grants the father the right to represent the fetus in all and any legal proceedings?
Doesn’t the fetus have any say in this?
G
have you ever seen the movie the butterfly effect?
not to spoil it for you but the baby/fetus had a say
different-church-lady
So wait… if the fetus is a white male this law doesn’t apply?
Barry
ABL: “So, not only does a prosecutor have to get inside the accused’s mind to prove intent, the prosecutor must then go one layer deeper into the accused’s mind to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that bias or prejudice formed the foundation for that intent.
If you’re confused, you should be. A hate crime is, essentially, the Inception of crimes — a crime within a crime.”
Incorrect – the crime is based upon what a prosecutor can get a jury to believe about the motivations of the defendant (or what the prosecutor can threaten the defendant into a plea bargain for).
As an analogy – I live in Michigan. First degree murder carries an automatic life sentence. Second and third degree murder carry far shorter sentences, as does negligent homicide. That’s all based on motivation.
Karounie
Does every first trimester abortion then need pre or post facto genetic testing to determine the gender of the fetus?
In the “pregnant white college girl comes home with potential black baby” scenario mentioned above, you’d need to test to prove the race of the baby as well. This is expensive. Maybe its just another $300 roadblock put between women and abortion?
Steve
Can you test for race? Is there an Asian gene?
Karounie
I was imagining matching DNA tests to both parents whose racial characteristics could be observed. If a father is doing the accusing he has to prove he is the father. And if the state is doing the accusing, they have to test everybody for gender and all women outside of the protected classes for um, miscegenation. The law would seem to open up the possibility of subclasses with different levels of protection and restriction.
blondie
PREACH IT SISTER. PREACH IT.
Summer
If fetuses (feti ?) of color are being aborted at higher rates than those of caucasians, wouldn’t it make sense to change the current structure so that women of color receive better educations, healthcare, etc… that would lower the abortion rates within that group? If female fetuses are aborted more often than male ones, wouldn’t it make sense to change the cultural structure that asserts males are “better” than females. Wouldn’t making changes to society in such a way that reduces the need/desire for abortion in these groups reduce the actual abortion rates? You know, take away the reason a woman might have for needing an abortion, and magically she doesn’t have the abortion.
Oh wait, I was using logic. Sorry about that. Clearly we just need to put abortion providers in prison for obviously being racist and/or sexist!
Bo Alawine
ROFLMAO!
What I would give to possess the gift of snark such as yours!
Paul in KY
@empty house( formerly greennotGreen): What if the ‘house’ consented to the ‘murder’?