One of my favorite lines of dialogue in The Birdcage:

Albert : [discussing abortion] Oh, I know what you’re going to say. “If you kill the mother, the fetus dies, too.” But the fetus is going to be aborted anyway, so why not let it go down with the ship?

A real bill in North Carolina:

NC Bill 158 would make it legal to murder a pregnant woman who intends to get an abortion if you are “defending the life of a baby”. pic.twitter.com/JwVnzkoSL1

— Musclesandnursing (@musclesnnursing) July 17, 2022

I assume it has no chance of passing and hope it never will. But to borrow another line from The Birdcage, the North Carolina bill is just following the forced-birther’s train of thought to a logical, yet absurd conclusion.

Open thread.

Going down with the ship…Post + Comments (255)

Alexandra Petri truly is a national treasure.

When is a child not a child?

by Alexandra Petri

When is a child not a child?

A child is not a child when believing in her existence would force you to notice your own cruelty. When the story of a 10-year-old who had to cross state lines to end a pregnancy that was the product of rape, because the post-Roe laws in the state of Ohio are cruel enough to force birth on a child in her circumstances, is sufficiently monstrous that you want it to be unimaginable.

A child is not a child. She is a “hoax,” surely (Fox’s Jesse Watters). A “fanciful tale” in the words of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, “a story too good to confirm.” A story that “looks like a lie” (New York Post). An exaggerated concoction by pro-abortion forces designed to make you feel that your laws are inhuman, that they are vicious, that they are written by people to whom these things could never possibly happen, and therefore they are clumsy and careless in the most bruising possible way.

She cannot be a child. Children are what your laws protect.

But then she is real after all. She is not a hoax. The story is true.

Then, a child is not a child simply because you are refusing to see her. Because you are trying to believe that what you were asking of her was not monstrous. In the words of the counsel for the National Right to Life, Jim Bopp, the man who should have thought about the people his words would affect as he wrote model laws for state legislatures looking to restrict abortion after Roe v. Wade, “She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child.”

Already, the child in this story is someone else! The 10-year-old child is not a child; she is a woman, one of “many women.” It is the fetus that is the child, now, the “baby.” The “benefit”! How convenient! How neat! How easily these words take a situation that is gruelingly, guttingly real and reduce it to a sanitary realm where there is not a victimized child anywhere to be seen. Just women (many women!) and babies and benefit.

A child is not a child when you are forcing her to give birth. She is a woman, suddenly, and the fetus is a baby. Presto, change-o! That’s not justice, it’s sleight of hand.

A child is not a child when she does exist but you cannot admit, now, that what you are forcing her to do is more than dangerous for someone in a body so young — it is monstrous. You scramble to make it sound as though a law that forces a 10-year-old assault victim to give birth is a good law, with benefits. Or that the law does not do what it says.

Read the whole thing.

There’s nothing I can add; what Alexandra Petri has written speaks for itself.

h/t to Josie for sending me the article.

Alexandra Petri: When Is a Child Not a Child?Post + Comments (147)

Every word of this:

“We've now gone through two rapid fire deception cycles in which first Ohio and then Indiana Republicans reacted to this story with mixes of denial and deception only to their stories collapse in no more than 36 hours.” https://t.co/XwubvFKmRA

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 15, 2022

First Republicans and their media enablers denied that the 10-year-old rape victim existed, and when that story collapsed, they tried to smear the doctor with false accusations that she’d failed to properly report the case, and then that story collapsed too.

The fact is, they’re in a panic because America is getting a look at the results of their policies, and it’s as horrifying as predicted. That’s what the lies and smears are about, and it’s going to get worse.

Open thread.

Squishable Morning ThreadPost + Comments