The Intercept has a good article on the varied reactions among conservatives after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled IVF embryos were people. But then we get a statement that the outrage and dismay by couples who want to have children means “the GOP faced the present, palpable harms inflicted on real people by its abstract religious pieties.”
Excuse me? They’ve looked at the palpable harms their forced-birth stance inflicts on women and made their choice: they’re fine with women dying. Or risking death. Or cases like a 14-year old patient who was raped by her 60 year-old landlord and carried the pregnancy to term” because of Kentucky’s abortion laws.
They’d sooner withhold the HPV vaccine and risk women getting cervical cancer than tolerate women having sex outside marriage. They hate birth control because they hate sex without “consequences” (well, as long as the consequences fall on women). And women having sex without consequences are nymphomaniac sluts. As Jessica Valenti says, the issue isn’t in vitro fertilization, it’s that they want courts to say fetuses have rights and use that to take them away from the woman. Or as Linda Holmes puts it, away from women they don’t approve of — single moms, WOC, etc.
They’re fine with women getting c-sections instead of abortions. And gathering data on abortion patients which I guarantee will not be used for their benefit.
I was also amused/not amused by a quote in the Intercept piece from Emma Waters of the Heritage Foundation writing that “The well-being of children, not profit margins, should be the top priority when it comes to IVF and embryonic cryopreservation.” Outside of using fetal personhood as a crutch to eliminate women’s rights, they certainly don’t care about placing children ahead of profit margins. Given the current push to gut child-labor restrictions, it’s telling Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore thinks it’s perfectly fine for children to start work at 12 or 14. I am unsurprised he’s also a gender segregationist who freaks at the evil of coed soccer and his horror of women refereeing NCAA games.
Pretending they care about “the well-being of children” is just another forced-birth lie. Ditto the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America spokesforced-birther Marjorie Dannenfelser claiming she wants “unborn children and their mothers” protected from “the abortion industry.” This is a classic Undead Sexist Cliche, that women are victims of abortion doctors’ Jedi mind tricks implanting the illusion they don’t want to have a baby (“I find your lack of abortion … disturbing.”). This is the excuse for forced ultrasounds and waiting periods that make it harder and more complicated to get an abortion: it’s because women just don’t understand it’s a baby inside them! Yes, they understand. They choose abortion anyway, and that’s their right to decide. And as noted at that link about Dannenfelser, women are indeed being punished. Her foundation ain’t doing crap about it.
Dannenfelser’s declaration was a response to Trump saying we should leave abortion to the states. But that’s just another lie: Trump will say anything he thinks will get him elected and take it back whenever convenient (like claiming all legal scholars favored repealing Roe) If Congress gets a Republican majority and sends him a ban on abortion, he’ll sign it. However if his saying otherwise pisses Republicans off and keeps them home sulking, forge ahead!
Vote Democratic. They’re flawed but at least they believe women are human beings, not aquariums.
For more forced-birth bullshit and other topics, check out Undead Sexist Cliches, available in ebook or in paperback. Cover by Kemp Ward.
