Goddamn Texas Republicans. Now they’re saying it out loud.
Should Texas punish abortions by putting teenage girls and women to death? Or not? That’s the current debate in the Republican Party of Texas, where outlawing abortion is no longer a question of “if” or “when” but a question of whether to kill women for getting one.
They’re trying to pass a heinous bill.
A Texas lawmaker has filed a bill that would abolish and criminalize abortions, leaving women and physicians who perform the procedure to face criminal charges that could carry the death penalty.
The legislation, filed Tuesday by state Rep. Bryan Slaton, does not include exceptions for rape or incest. It does exempt ectopic pregnancies that seriously threaten the life of the woman “when a reasonable alternative to save the lives of both the mother and the unborn child is unavailable.”
“It is time for Texas to protect the natural right to life for the tiniest and most innocent Texans, and this bill does just that,” Slaton said. “It’s time Republicans make it clear that we actually think abortion is murder. … Unborn children are dying at a faster rate in Texas than COVID patients, but Texas isn’t taking the abortion crisis seriously.”
The only abortion crisis is that these assholes want to ban it. Would you be surprised to learn that this same representative wants to roll back all of the pandemic prevention measures in the state? He thinks no one is dying of COVID, but that more “unborn children” (there is no such thing) are dying than…zero.
This bozo is eager to start killing adult women, though. Gotta get the body count up somehow.
We got out of Texas nearly three years ago, when it was just too intolerable to stay there.
It becomes more intolerable every day.
Ignorant pillock misunderstands arithmetic and reality in favour of killing adults and children. So what’s new?
It is not just Texas where they want to kill girls and women.
They long ago had a similar bill in Idaho.
This makes sense within their sick ideology.
If a fetus is a person, then abortion is first degree murder.
I’m sure all the other Red states will consider these mass murder death penalty bills as well. They are after all, in a race to the bottom of what evil humans are capable of.
It is all very fundie xian.
You’ll note that there is no mention and no penalties for being the other half of these aborted zygotes. That is the fathers.
Penalty for being the father of an aborted zygote. Zero. Nothing.
Penalty for being the mother of an aborted zygote. Death.
Needless to say, legalized misogyny and discrimination is built into Texas law as much as they can get away with.
A reminder that Putin isn’t the only monster in the world. These pieces of human garbage are on deck to take control of America too within the next couple years.
Always good to remember that within the lifetime of most of these politicians abortion was something only Catholics cared about and they weren’t even “real Christians”.
Is it too late to build a wall around Texas?
@7 Will the Mexicans pay for it?
I’ll take the claim that they believe that abortion is murder seriously when they propose massive funding for the condition that is killing up to 80% of “babies” in their first two weeks, namely, implantation failure. Or even some sort of concern about miscarriage other than “how can we punish the person who had a miscarriage further?”
Its an oldie but a classic and Betty Bowers brilliant Betty Bowers brilliant summary of XN hypocrisy and biblical abortion is well worth a look for everyone here.
Thes misogynist douchebag female slavers are going against not only science and basic ethics but also their own hole-y and inconsistent religious book. But then hardly surprising given the fact that suppoosedly “pro-life” hypocrites like these strongly support the death penalty.
@ raven : There’s also the fact that many so called “anti-abortion” politicians and preists have tried to get abortions when they get people they don’t want pregnant, pregnant.
Frex Tim Murphy :
Source : https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2017-10-04/pro-life-rep-tim-murphy-pressured-mistress-to-get-abortion
Catholic Priests raping nuns then forcing them to have abortions :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/abused-nuns-reveal-stories-of-rape-forced-abortions
& an “illustrious” list of Republican men are publicly anti-choice, but privately have supported women in their lives having abortions (Quote but added necesary quotation marks around “illustrious” here – ed):
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/25/a-republican-theme-on-abortions-its-ok-for-me-evil-for-thee
^ Proof if it were really needed that its all about the power and control these misognyist bullies want over women and people generally.
Well, their true goal to remove all rights from women is partway there. Once doctors refuse to treat women at all, lest they be blamed for aborting a child, they’re most of the way to revoking every other right women currently enjoy.
Frankly, I’ve given up since I read Ginni Thomas’s King of Kings shit with Trump, for now they have a Moron Messiah.
Just cobalt the nukes and drop them on our own red states, the rest of us can just enjoy the glow.
I only live a few kilometres from the US border. I begin to worry whaht we must do.
The good news is that article is from last year, which means that legislation didn’t pass (and I would guess really didn’t go anywhere). The bad news is that, from an article I read about this (not the same one PZ has linked, but one that Amanda Marcotte posted on Twitter, apparently not noticing it, too, was from March of last year) is that this is not the first time someone in Texas has pushed such a bill, with the last time being in just 2018 or 2019. And, as raven pointed out, not the first time someone in the USA has tried to push such a bill in recent years.
Y’all still don’t get it, do ya?
Rep. Bryan Slaton’s proposal is moderate, by Texas Republican standards.
The next bill will authorize bounty hunters and ($)incentivize($) them to pursue abortion providers and all their henchpersons, as per Supreme Court-allowed precedent. Don’t you have any respect for precedent???
Bills after the midterm elections will get down to business, restricting bounty rights to cishet white Christian® real-estate-owning Republican gun carriers (not necessarily all at once or in that order).
Yeee–HAW!!1!
@8
Since it’s for keeping texans in they just might.
@ ^ Pierce R. Butler : I breifly read that as “..restrict voting rights to ..” which, yeah, they’re working on currently as well. Basically apartheid and, if they could reinstall it, outright slavery again. Chyaa-arrming MFers that these White Christian Male Supremacists are.
@ wzrd1 : “Just cobalt the nukes and drop them on our own red states, the rest of us can just enjoy the glow.””
Plus the deadly radiation , poisoned water and air, ncreased cancer risks etc.. Oh and its not like the innocent non-Republican non-Christian Supremacist people there matter is it? I presume you’re not serious but, yeah. Not funny really.
Googles Ginni Thomas. Finds :
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/ginni-thomas-the-insurrectionist/
Wife of SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas.
Long string of expletives.
How is Justice Thomas not impeached for impartiality questions here? If his wife is a Trump cultist at that level and of that variety.. Fucking hell. Of course Trump has been a de facto cult leader for quite a while now.. Still. Fuck-ing-hell. Now I get your other reference to that in a previous thread too.
StevoR:
Um, my wife is a practising Catholic.
—
Almost wants to make me invoke Gerrard. ;)
@ 19 John Morales
Yikes. I can’t imagine what she has to put up with. Please pass on my commiserations to your Catholic wife.
Not for the Catholic part, of course.
Silentbob, I don’t think you get it.
Mutual benefit. We fit. It’s good.
We met when she was 16. Eloped when she was 17, just after (her) school finished.
That was in 1979. Been shacked-up ever since, so it’s been a while.
(Guess why I got married? My family, her family were Catholic; I am not one to kick against pricks. And hey, turns out it was a good decision!)
Huh. That’s about the only part of her life where commiserations might be applicable.
(An awful ideology, but she’s been with me long enough to be philosophical about it)
PS Silentbob, I know you know why I brought up my own relationship.
(That is, I’m most certainly not Catholic)
@19 John Morales : Does your wife think Trump actually won the 2020 election and is she writing to powerful people – being an influential person of her own and having a SCOTUS Justice as a husband* – to overturn the actual democratic (in both senses of the word) election result?
It’s not the Catholic part that’s really relevant or the problem here.Its the whole her being a Trump cult follower trying to destroy democracy bit
Out of morbid curiousity what did she think of the Pell child sex case(s) and Minchin’s brilliant song
Which unless you are one of the SCOTUS Justices writing under a very unusal assumed identity I’m gunna say is a no for sure!
I’m sure he’d be chuffed that you think he’s a credible source and person here.
WTF?
She lives in the real world.
FFS. You really are clueless.
Point is, she is what I am not. Hence, what whatshisname’s wife may be is not relevant to what he is, any more than I am a Catholic.
(Sheesh!)
You married? Maybe we can swap wifely stories…
(Sheesh!)
<snicker>
(Cluey as always, you are)
As with all things Rethug, they only make sense when you understand that the cruelty is the point.
@ ^ John Morales : You brought up your wife and her Catholicism here not me. You seem to think that is a some kind of defense against being concerned by Ginni Thomas’es disturbing correspondences with White House officials and the legitimacy of American Democracy and the Trump cults attempted coup of January 6th from what I gather?
Being intimate with a mainstream Catholic as an ordinary person is a very long way from being the wife of a SCOTUS Justice potentially influencing future-changing legal decisions that shape what rights and quality of life people have – or lose.
Yes, fair enough, sharing your life with someone doesn’t make them you or mean that you agree with all they say. All the same, I think it does raise questions over Justice Thomas’es biases and judgement and if he has rejected his wives views and stated he thinks she’s very wrong here well, I haven’t heard about it. Have you?
Nope, I’m not married here – had a partner wjho I lived together with for a while, sadly it didn’t work out.
Do you agree with GotS re: nuclear impacts eg the devastation (or he thinks & you think – lack of?) that would be produced by using a large number of Cobalt Bombs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb ) on the Red (Repub) states killing millions of people – a large percentage of them NOT Repub voters – in the process?
@24 John Morales
“Point is, she is what I am not. Hence, what whatshisname’s wife may be is not relevant to what he is, any more than I am a Catholic.”
It’s just as likely that she was acting as Justice Thomas’s voice as he wasn’t quite stupid enough to do it himself. You will note that he was the only justice to vote for hearing the case.
There’s additional evidence that Clarence and Ginni Thomas are politically aligned, so this isn’t purely speculative. Whether they agree on her “Stop the Steal” texts it still looks like a conflict of interest. Clarence Thomas was also the lone dissent in an order to reject Trump’s bid to withhold documents.
There are enough reasons to look at this “power couple” and draw some conclusions about what to expect. It is not just a case of guilt by association.
Rep. Slayton represents East Texas, the piney woods region that hosts Louie Gohmert. He ran on a platform to oppose everything in Austin (yes, the state capital where he works.) He has a bible degree from a Baptist college in Arkansas (alumni include Mike Huckabee) and a masters of more bible and “biblical languages” from Southwest Theological (once home to Dr. Dr. Dembski who was fired for heresy – charming place) This nitwit is thick as two planks making Gohmert look like a fricking genius in comparison. For most of his “career” he has been a youth minister which just gives me the creeps. Spidey sense.
Another thing… since I’m not a lawyer and don’t know how conflict of interest works in this case, I can at least comment on the significance of family connections in insider trading. Restrictions on trading apply not only to individuals with potential insider information but also their spouse and other family members. While I could object that my wife and I are individuals and I don’t talk about my company, this does not hold up according to the rules. The possibility of passing this information is enough, as well as the commonsense belief that it is likely to happen.
So while there’s no reason to assume that Clarence and Ginni Thomas work in lockstep, there are enough opportunities for Justice Thomas to further his wife’s political goals, that a mere promise not to is at least as weak as my promise not to reveal any material information about my company to family members (which I shouldn’t do either, and I will get in trouble if they appear to be trading on it).
I has always been on pro-choice people to compromise with them. You know, find common ground.
Another Republican atrocity: The Utah Legislature just passed a bill to allow school officials to inspect the genitalia of kids wanting to play sports. It overrode the governor’s veto, so it was a super majority.
dstatton @31
Why should AFAB people find common ground with people who want them destitute or dead?
@31
What “common ground?”
PZ, as I suspected, this story is from 2021 and before the actual current law utilizing citizen vigilantes.
How did I know? The Texas lege is in session only every other year, and it would not be currently possible to file a bill unless Abbott calls for yet another “special session”. There were at least two special sessions last year, which is where the “just sue them” abortion bill was finally hatched. Texas Dems had filibustered the 2021 regular session to prevent its passage. Legislation season is strictly delimited by the Texas Constitution.
Hmmm. How many years did it take me to notice that the Freethought servers are in a different time zone?
I’m still lazing in bed, debating whether to go back to sleep this Sunday morning. I was momentarily startled by the timestamp on my previous comment. Had U really been unknowingly websurfing for over two hours? (It could happen!) Did my phone and bedside clock fall back out of DST? Was I asleep and still dreaming? Why is my phone asking me to correct the spelling of bill and still?
The answer to these and other questions is GO BACK TO SLEEP!
Oh.
That is all right then.
No big deal and everything is cool.
Actually what difference does it make whether it was last year or yesterday?
It is the thought that counts.
The fundie xians want to murder 55,000 women a year in Texas.
Because nothing says jesus loves you like prison camps and mass executions.
They’ve done exactly that whenever they have had political power. The witch hunts, Inquisitions, and genocides of the middle ages were just part of the xian body count.
The fundie xians are wannabe killers and say so very often.
It is likely that such bills to legalize mass murder of girls and women will be introduced in the future in Texas and elsewhere. The fundie xians are always in a race to outevil one another.
PS: As a bonus, of those 55,000 executed women in Texas, about 5,500 of them will be girls under the age of 18.
This pastor in Oklahoma is running for state senator.
He wants to set up military tribunals to try and execute “godless communists”.
He has no idea what godless communists are but that is no problem. He just wants to kill liberals, Democrats, uppity women, and everyone else not an illiterate hillbilly Republican.
But really this is no big deal.
This story is old after all.
It is now a whole two day old, from March 25, 2022.
@mcfrank0 : Yeah, for me (in Oz) and much of the rest of the planet America is a day behind in timezone and, er, well,I’ll leave it there.
So?
Does that mean the “answer” (to what? When?) is sleeping?
How does that actually help beyond the personal self-care?
I mean I should be asleep already here physically and all but, dude, really? Also FWIW its nearly 5 am moday morning here..
sigh