Republicans Propose The Most Barbaric Anti-Abortion Laws Yet

Missouri Republicans are sneaking horrendous bills through state legislatures that will have devastating effects on women in America.

(image: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – The entire world is watching in horror as the war in Ukraine rages on, with an increasingly psychotic Vladimir Putin destroying maternity hospitals and other civilian targets in a violent assault on the fledgling democracy’s resolve to resist. 

Add into the mix the existential threat of nuclear war, and yeah. We’re all a little preoccupied at the moment. A relentless conga-line of existential threats tends to do that. Our own democracy is endangered by an increasingly fascistic Republican Party. We’re still suffering from thousands of deaths per week from the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s the climate crisis, too. And now Putin is swinging his tiny penis around, trying desperately to revive the old Soviet empire for his despotic swan song. 

Yet while we’re all looking the other way, and rightfully so, cynical Republicans are sneaking horrendous bills through state legislatures – a process that’s normally ignored by a nationally-minded political audience anyway, but now more than ever.

In Missouri, anti-choice misogynists are busily sneaking onto the docket a pair of new laws that would reduce reproductive age women to second-class citizenship. If passed, along with other anti-choice laws, these bills would allow a male-controlled state government to block those women from receiving safe and formerly legal medical procedures.

First, one amendment attached to HB2012, pegs off the Texas anti-abortion law by proposing that anyone seeking or helping someone else seek an abortion in another state can be sued by anyone else. I can’t imagine such legislation is constitutional and, of course, it would harm younger women and girls far more often than those with the wherewithal to privately duck out to Illinois for a few days or to simply move to another state permanently. Even in that situation, where reproductive age women who’d like to retain the right to terminate and so they move to a blue state, it’s unclear whether they could be sued anyway.

Either way, this would make fugitives out of women, with posses of lawyered-up zealots hunting them down like escaped criminals.

The second piece of legislation is far worse. Proposed by a Republican named Brian Seitz, HB2810’s primary goal is to codify the illegality of abortion drugs or equipment, thus entirely banning abortion after 10 weeks. But wait. It gets worse.

Seitz’s bill gets especially shitty in a line item that bans all abortions in cases of ectopic pregnancies, defining the procedure as a class A felony (that’s a 10-30 year prison sentence in Missouri, by the way). Ectopic pregnancies occur when a fertilized egg implants itself outside of the uterus. In most cases, implantation happens inside of the fallopian tubes, the channel that normally carries an egg from an ovary to the uterus. The fallopian tubes, however, don’t expand like the uterus does, threatening the health of the mother as the embryo grows.

In every case, ectopic pregnancies don’t survive. Nature, in this case, aborts them. The problem is that before it happens, the mother can be seriously injured and even die from such a mishap. So, unless a medical abortion is performed, the mother will die along with her pregnancy. 

The common sense, constitutional option is to terminate the ectopic pregnancy, which would die anyway, and save the mother, rather than allowing the state of Missouri to sentence women to inevitable death by ectopic pregnancy. Incidentally, ectopic pregnancies are the number one cause of death in women during the first trimester. The modern Republican Party wants to take away a necessary life-saving procedure in order to save an embryo that’s going to die anyway. This is both barbaric and egregiously dumb.

Since proposing the legislation, however, Seitz claims that he’ll clarify the language in the bill to allow for abortions in cases of ectopic pregnancies as long as the procedures are performed within the state mandated window for legal abortions. As of this writing, it’s 22 weeks in Missouri, but Seitz’s bill resets the window at 10 weeks, and it’ll be yanked down to six weeks before too long – six weeks, when most women don’t even realize they’re pregnant. And if Roe disappears, it’ll be banned entirely.

In a way, we’re talking about a Berlin Wall for pregnant women. If you’re pregnant, you have one choice: a full term pregnancy or die in the process. If you choose to leave, prepare to face the legal consequences, or simply don’t leave. It’s happening everywhere. If Black people want to vote in elections, they may have to move elsewhere. If LGBTQ people want to live without being targeted, bullied, or involuntarily outed/closeted, they’ll have to leave. The Republicans are re-segregating their states, and it’s more important than ever to get active in this year’s midterms. Volunteer, register new Democratic voters, and make sure they get to the polls. The alternative is to sit at home, screaming on Twitter, while the Republicans build that wall.

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