In the morning thread, Kay flagged an excellent WaPo article by reporter Caroline Kitchener about the latest misogynistic madness happening in Texas. Here’s a reusable gift link, and please feel free to share it widely because this story demonstrates the lines anti-abortion fanatics are willing to cross in their never-ending quest to control and unperson women.
More than a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned, many conservatives have grown frustrated by the number of people able to circumvent antiabortion laws — with some advocates grasping for even stricter measures they hope will fully eradicate abortion nationwide.
That frustration is driving a new strategy in heavily conservative cities and counties across Texas. Designed by the architects of the state’s “heartbeat” ban that took effect months before Roe fell, ordinances like the one proposed in Llano — where some 80 percent of voters in the county backed President Donald Trump in 2020 — make it illegal to transport anyone to get an abortion on roads within the city or county limits. The laws allow any private citizen to sue a person or organization they suspect of violating the ordinance.
It sounds deranged because it IS deranged, but public roads are the new front in the war on women. The Stasi-like “private citizen” enforcement mechanism both empowers creepy busybodies to surveil women and makes it harder for abortion rights groups to sue to stop this chilling imposition of theocratic control.
Antiabortion advocates behind the measure are targeting regions along interstates and in areas with airports, with the goal of blocking off the main arteries out of Texas and keeping pregnant women hemmed within the confines of their antiabortion state. These provisions have already passed in two counties and two cities, creating legal risk for those traveling on major highways including Interstate 20 and Route 84, which head toward New Mexico, where abortion remains legal and new clinics have opened to accommodate Texas women. Several more jurisdictions are expected to vote on the measure in the coming weeks.
“This really is building a wall to stop abortion trafficking,” said Mark Lee Dickson, the antiabortion activist behind the effort.
This isn’t the first fetus-fetish rodeo for Dickson, who is a neck-bearded preacher, avid Trump supporter and self-described “36-year-old virgin.” As the article notes, he has worked with former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell for several years to deny women bodily autonomy. Before Roe fell, the two lobbied conservative areas to create “sanctuary cities” (for fetuses) and pioneered the tattle-tale enforcement mechanism for the so-called “heartbeat bill” that became state law after the Dobbs decision.
They’re hopping mad that women are evading their forced-birth dragnet, and they won’t stop until every uterus is state property. It’s an absolutely preposterous level of government overreach, especially from people who call themselves “small-government conservatives” in other contexts. It’s yet another demonstration that the Repub “small government” stance is a big fat lie.
Anyhoo, the article notes that a Missouri state lawmaker introduced a similar bill last year and that a lookalike law that applies to minors seeking an abortion is already in force in Idaho as of April. I expect it will spread to other red states because theocratic laws designed to oppress women and LGBTQ people tend to be more contagious among Repubs than Herman Cain at his final Trump rally.
Years ago, I used to pay so-called “pro-lifers” the courtesy of assuming they were sincere about their professed beliefs, even though I thought those beliefs irrelevant to lawmaking. I was wrong to do so.
The anti-abortion movement was and is and always will be about controlling women and driving them out of public life outside of rigid, gender-based, dependent roles. The same is true of these same people’s fanatical persecution of queer people. They’re misogynistic bigots, and they are liars.
Roadblock: New Front in the War on WomenPost + Comments (240)
