Republicans, Having Learned Nothing, Are Coming for Abortion Post-Midterms-Flop

Forward of the 2022 midterms, Republicans had predicted {that a} “crimson wave” would assist them take the Senate and maintain an enormous majority within the Home. Clearly, that didn’t come to move, and one main issue within the crimson wave changing into a light-weight coral trickle—whereby Democrats retained the Senate and Republicans gained an especially skinny majority within the Home—was abortion. Galvanized by the Supreme Courtroom overturning 50 years of precedent in June and having little interest in placing individuals in energy who needed to additional obliterate a pregnant particular person’s proper to decide on, voters got here out in droves to make it clear that reproductive rights really matter. Having had the final two months to replicate on the state of affairs, has the GOP determined to pay attention?

No! In fact not! As an alternative, the occasion that spent final week underscoring that it’s every bit the shit show people think it is has determined to make use of its first full week in energy to vote on two antiabortion measures.

The primary one, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Safety Act, was reintroduced on Monday. What would the passage of this surprisingly named piece of legislation do? Imprison medical doctors for as much as 5 years in the event that they fail to resuscitate infants “born alive” after an tried abortion, no matter whether or not the process was carried out because of deadly fetal abnormalities. As HuffPost notes, “the invoice is chock-full of misinformation,” together with the truth that, as precise medical doctors have identified, “it’s practically inconceivable for infants to be born alive throughout abortions later in being pregnant.” Proponents of the Born-Alive act additionally fail to acknowledge that such a invoice is solely pointless for different causes, like the truth that the rights of infants are already protected by a legislation handed greater than 20 years in the past. Additionally, because it occurs, homicide is against the law in the US, so regardless of what antiabortion advocates could inform you, medical doctors aren’t going round killing newborns.

The second vote is on a resolution to formally condemn assaults on “pro-life amenities.” As Jezebel notes, it‘s not clear if there can even be a vote to sentence “precise violence at abortion clinics, together with the 2009 homicide of Dr. George Tiller and a number of newer high-profile incidents of arson.” And by not clear, we clearly imply this can by no means occur.

Chatting with reporters on Tuesday, Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace mentioned of her colleagues: “We realized nothing from the midterms if that is how we’re going to function within the first week. Hundreds of thousands of girls throughout the board have been offended over overturning Roe v. Wade. What we’re doing this week is paying lip service to life. Nothing that we’re doing this week on defending life is ever going to make it by way of the Senate.” She added that she’d wish to see her occasion transfer in a extra “centrist course” on the problem of abortion, which is one other factor that’s unlikely to occur on this lifetime, given the a whole bunch of Republicans who don’t even wish to assure the precise to birth control.

In but additional—and arguably much more disturbing—abortion information, Alabama legal professional common Steve Marshall said Tuesday that girls in his state could possibly be prosecuted for utilizing abortion tablets to finish pregnancies. Requested by AL.com how this squares with Alabama’s Human Life Safety Act, which criminalizes abortion suppliers however particularly exempts individuals receiving abortions from prison expenses, he responded: “The Human Life Safety Act targets abortion suppliers, exempting girls ‘upon whom an abortion is carried out or tried to be carried out’ from legal responsibility underneath the legislation. It doesn’t present an across-the-board exemption from all prison legal guidelines, together with the chemical-endangerment legislation—which the Alabama Supreme Courtroom has affirmed and reaffirmed protects unborn kids.”

As AL.com notes, the state’s chemical endangerment legislation, handed in 2006, was created to “defend babies from fumes and chemical compounds from home-based meth labs” and was nearly instantly used towards girls who took numerous sorts of medicine throughout being pregnant (together with in instances during which the medicine that they had taken have been prescribed by medical doctors). In consequence, individuals have been being despatched to jail after having miscarriages and stillbirths. Final week, the Justice Division said the US Postal Service can proceed to ship abortion tablets anyplace within the nation, whatever the legal guidelines within the state the place they’re coming into.