Photo credit: D. Myles Cullen
President Donald J. Trump carries an umbrella as he disembarks Air Force One in a rain storm Friday, April 26, 2019, at Joint Base Andrews, Md.
The absurd Republican bill allegedly intended to stop the murder of live babies in Wisconsin is one of hundreds of ridiculous, cruel laws introduced by Republicans nationwide for the sole purpose of viciously attacking women having abortions and their doctors.
Since homicide laws outlaw killing live human beings at any age, the Wisconsin bill serves no actual purpose. It’s an inflammatory response to an outrageous lie from the nation’s Liar-in-Chief, Donald Trump. At his recent maniacal public rally in Green Bay, Trump claimed mothers and their doctors sometimes decide to “execute” live babies after they are born.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has promised to veto the totally unnecessary Republican bill, calling Trump’s lie smearing women and their doctors “horrific” and “a blasphemy.” Those words apply to many of the nearly 300 increasingly extreme anti-abortion bills introduced by Republicans in 36 states across the country so far this year.
Republicans Emboldened
Although the constitutional right of women to choose abortion has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court for 46 years, Trump’s appointment of two more rightwing justices to the high court is emboldening Republicans to attempt to pass ever more radical legislation preventing women from seeking abortions and threatening doctors who perform them.
Wisconsin’s bill carries a maximum life term in prison for any doctor or nurse who fails to provide professional health care for any child born after an attempted abortion, even though Republicans are unable to cite any time that has ever happened in the state.
Other proposed Republican legislation around the country is even more draconian. Dropping all pretense that Republicans are pro-life, a bill in Texas would allow prosecutors to seek capital punishment for anyone receiving or performing an abortion. A bill in Georgia would authorize law enforcement to criminally investigate women who have miscarriages to determine whether the painful emotional loss of an anticipated birth was self-inflicted.
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A particularly cruel version of hateful Republican anti-abortion legislation is the “heartbeat bill,” which Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law last week. Sixteen states have either passed or are scrambling to pass such bills banning abortion after doctors can detect what they call “a fetal heartbeat in the womb” at about six weeks before many women even know they’re pregnant. That’s intentionally also before medical screenings are able to detect many serious and even catastrophic birth defects.
Alabama Shouting Match
Bad Republican anti-abortion laws feed off each other. A few days after Georgia’s extreme law passed, a shouting match in the Alabama Senate delayed a final vote on what is expected to be the nation’s strictest anti-abortion law. The law bans nearly all abortions, making it a felony punishable by 99 years in prison for doctors to perform the procedure. The Assembly version didn’t allow any exceptions for rape or incest. The Senate added those exceptions, but by voice vote rather than a roll call so Republicans casting disgusting votes to force women to give birth after violent rapes or incest wouldn’t be publicly identified.
Court decisions already have struck down “heartbeat” laws in Kentucky, Iowa and North Dakota, but that doesn’t bother anti-abortion Republicans. They figure more court cases just give the new Trumped-up Supreme Court more opportunities to do its dirty work.
But Republicans should be careful what they wish for. Their recent tidal wave of ugly anti-abortion legislation already is having much the same effect as all their other repeated attempts to destroy access to health care for millions of Americans. Many Americans don’t appreciate what they have until there’s a real possibility they might lose it. Protecting heath care could be a winning issue for Democrats in 2020, just as it was in the midterms. For the first time in nearly two generations, Republicans feel like they’re actually on the verge of destroying legal access for all women to safe, sanitary medical facilities to end unwanted pregnancies.
And let’s be clear: Republicans are on the wrong side of the abortion issue. According to a June 2018 poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 67% of Americans do not want the Supreme Court to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion rights, and only 29% want to see the decision overturned. Only a very slight majority of Republicans, 53%, even want to see Roe overturned, while 43% don’t. Overwhelmingly, 81% of Democrats and 73% of independents don’t want the court to overturn Roe. There’s very little difference between men and women, with 68% of women and 65% of men opposed to overturning the decision.
In a democracy, anyone religiously opposed to abortion is free never to have one, but neither should anyone’s personal religious beliefs ever be written into law for everyone else to follow. Some of us still remember an America where desperate women, many very young, resorted to do-it-yourself abortions employing horrific devices. No one really wants to live in that country again.
