Whenever there is a mass shooting, sadly so common in the US, the gun lobby and its servile politicians quickly repeat the ‘thoughts and prayers’ trope to avoid having to say anything about what might be done to stop the killings. Thanks to much ridicule, I notice that they are trying to avoid saying that and find different ways to say and do nothing. We are now seeing something similar with abortion.
Abortion has become a hot potato for Republican politicians who have long been stridently calling for the overthrow of Roe v. Wade but having achieved that goal, are now struggling to find ways to respond to the draconian anti-abortion laws passed by red states that are widely seen as political liabilities.
Take the case of Kate Cox who had to travel out of Texas in order to get an abortion that her physician had said was necessary because the fetus had a serious defect that made survival highly unlikely even for a few days after birth, and also risked the life of the mother and her ability to have more children. The Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis were asked about whether they agreed with Texas attorney general Ken Paxton’s action that forced Cox to go out of state and they ducked the question and resorted to calling for ‘compassion’.
“We don’t want any women to sit there and deal with a rare situation and have to deliver a baby in that sort of circumstance any more than we want women getting an abortion at 37, 38, 39 weeks,” Haley said, emphasizing that she is “pro-life.” “We have to humanize the situation and deal with it with compassion.”
…At a CNN town hall Tuesday night, moderator Jake Tapper asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his thoughts on Cox. Without addressing her case directly, he said, “We have to approach these issues with compassion.”
“These are very difficult issues, and nobody would wish this to happen on anybody,” DeSantis said. “If you’re in that situation as a mother, that’s an incredibly difficult thing to have to deal with.”
What about Vivek Ramaswamy, you asked? He continued with his policy of trying to be all things to all people by responding with a meaningless word salad.
“What I have said is that this is an issue reserved to the states, and as a U.S. presidential candidate, I have been crystal clear on that,” he said.
Ramaswamy later added that the “winning approach for the Republican Party” is to have a policy that says “men bear sexual responsibility for their decisions that give the woman sole option to make the man responsible for raising a child as the principal financial caretaker.”
What has making the man the ‘principal financial caretaker’ got to do with anything?
Even Texas senator Ted Cruz isducking the issue, even though it involves his home state and even though he took a victory lap when Roe v. Wade was overthrown..
Cruz was asked three separate times on Tuesday to weigh in on the matter but refused to do so, telling NBC News to speak to his press office, which didn’t respond to a request for comment. When asked again on Wednesday, the Texas lawmaker again refused.
Cruz has never previously been shy about discussing reproductive matters. Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, he was the lead sponsor of a bill that would have banned the procedure after 20 weeks nationwide. Weeks before Roe was gutted, responding to a leaked draft decision indicating the Supreme Court would reverse nearly 50 years of precedent, he wrote, “If this report is true, this is nothing short of a massive victory.” After it became official, Cruz called the Dobbs v. Jackson decision a “momentous moment” and a “vindication for the rule of law.”
Serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) and Chris Christie didn’t reply to requests for comment, showing how cowardly they are. Only Asa Hutchinson, who has not qualified for recent debates, answered the question.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, another GOP presidential candidate, told NBC News on Monday the responsibility should lie with doctors.
“The criteria should be if the life of the mother is at risk, and that should be determined by the health care professionals in their medical judgment,” Hutchinson said. “There should be clear rules so that they’re not intimidated for making a good health decision.”
There are going to be many more cases like Kate Cox coming up soon, and not just in Texas. Watch these people bob and weave, trying to avoid alienating the anti-abortion zealots in their base without supporting the Texas law and the attorney general’s persecution of pregnant women.
One of the most infuriating things about this issue is the number of “pro-life” women who have had abortions themselves. I spend way too much time visiting subreddits which highlight this craven hypocrisy. I’m sure many here are familiar with the essay entitled the only moral abortion is my abortion.
Hang on… did he just say something reasonable? He’s not going to get very far in the GOP with that attitude.
“The criteria should be if the life of the mother is at risk, and that should be determined by the health care professionals in their medical judgment,” Hutchinson said.
Soooo…even the most reasonable Republican opinion they can find still gives all the agency to the doctors, and even then only the life of the “mother” (notice how charged that term is: a person who wants an abortion is by definition not a mother and thus not worthy of consideration) is the sole acceptable mitigating criterion. Non life threatening situations are not acceptable, even if the woman’s long-term health, future child-bearing abilities, or financial well-being are damaged or destroyed. Women are not to be treated as people, they are simply incubators.
@sonofrojblake
No he did not. see @3.
Nikki Haley is trying to push the lie that women routinely wake up at 40 weeks’ gestation and say, “Hmmm, do I want to get my nails done today? Go out to lunch? Nah, I’ll just go have an abortion.” NOBODY has an abortion at 40 weeks and no doctor would perform one “just because the woman has nothing better to do that day”. I’ve heard any number of pro-liars scream hysterically that women have abortions “ONE MINUTE BEFORE BIRTH”, which is just nonsense.
However, in a medical emergency (such as preeclampsia), a near-full-term baby can be delivered early. NOT an abortion, just an early delivery. That kind of thing happens all the time in a medical emergency or a planned c-section (which is often done for the doctor’s convenience). The result is a live baby--babies born after 32 weeks’ gestation have an excellent chance of survival.
The Constitution calls out a person’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. By demanding women like Katie Cox risk their life (against their will) for a doomed fetus, Paxton & Co. are violating the Constitution they claim to revere.
@4 -- i meant (and I thought it was obvious) “by GOP standards”. I should have tagged my sarcasm clearly.
#1 Matt g
Don’t forget the equally infuriating “pro-life” men who pressure their wives and girlfriends to do the same. Bonus points for the ones who turn the screws on their mistresses.
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#3 moarsciencsplz
Even if she already has a child?
I tease, obviously the term is loaded, but I think you misunderstand it. The term mother is used to imply the fetus is not a blob of cells but a child, and all that is needed is for it to be born. Thus the mother is bludgeoned with the idea that abortions are murder of children.
I’m with the medical community on this one . fetal viability and women’s needs should be the only criterion for an abortion. Women aren’t baby machines . My maternal grandmother died giving birth to her 3rd child . My father at the time, the oldest, was only 4. My maternal great grandmother had more than 12 children with at least 12 or more pregnancies. She was treated as a baby machine and during the 19th and early 20th centuries, women couldn’t tell their husbands, no! According to my grandmother, her mother was sick with every single pregnancy . That’s no picnic because I was sick ( continual🤮 and a lot of trouble walking due to loose joints) with both of mine . No one should be forced to go through that without consent.
Back in the day they said that the child abuse rates went way down because women weren’t forced to have unwanted children that they resented and then were neglected and/or abused either by the women or the partners and family.
I’m proposing a new law called the Compassion For Job Creators Act. It raises the top income tax rate to 99% on annual income over $1 million, and the estate to 100% on wealth over $5 million, the capital gains tax to 99%, and imposes a 50% wealth tax on wealth over $25 million. We must show compassion for all the rich people who might now have to work for a living.
There are precisely two legitimate reasons for not performing an abortion. One is that the person is not pregnant, and the other is that the person is pregnant and wishes to remain so. And Nature has already set a time limit up to which an abortion may be performed — it’s called the onset of labour.