"Abolition of Abortion in Louisiana Act of 2022"- A Woman's Uterus Is Not The Property Of The State

The party of (not so very) "small government" strikes again

For the past 49 years, Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land. “Settled law” is the legal term if memory serves. During that time, nominees to the Supreme Court have routinely stated that Roe is “settled law” and that they saw no reason or cause to revisit and reverse that precedent.

Of course, we now know that the last three nominees (now Justices)- Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett- were lying through their teeth when they stated they’d respect the precedent set by Roe. They were merely saying whatever they needed to say to be confirmed. Once they were, giving the court a 6-3 ultra-conservative majority, it was just a matter of time before Roe got thrown under the bus.

That day is upon us.

Realistically, this day has been coming for 49 years. Anti-abortion zealots long ago decided that they’d never be able to overturn Roe via a full-on frontal assault. So they resolved to nibble around the margins peacefully, removing a little bit of the right to an abortion here, a little there, until women woke up one day to realize that abortion rights were a thing of the past.

That’s no longer aspirational, and it may become reality as soon as next month.

Now comes the next chapter, as states attempt to outduel each to determine who can be the most gratuitously cruel to women needing abortion and other reproductive services.

A proposed law in Louisiana offers a glimpse of where the far right wants to take abortion law in America.

Republicans in the State Legislature this week passed out of committee, by a 7-to-2 vote, a bill that flatly treats abortion as homicide, meaning that women who get abortions could be charged with murder, along with doctors who perform abortions.

There is no exception for rape, incest or interventions to save the life of the mother.

“No compromises; no more waiting,” said Rev. Brian Gunter, who helped draft the bill.

Consider a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, which is completely non-viable; there is zero chance the fetus will survive. Meanwhile, there is a considerable risk that the woman will die.

She is rushed to the hospital to get emergency surgery to save her life, but the doctor, the woman and her family must then consider: Do they go ahead and save her life and risk being charged with murder?

This is no abstract academic exercise. It’s a real-world scenario that could and, at some point, almost certainly will occur. What then? The law may be an ass, but it’s still the law. What’s a poor woman to do? Because women of means will always have the ability to skirt the letter and spirit of the law.

A scenario such as this happens when a law is written by male ideologues who don’t understand the realities of medicine, much less the methods they seek to regulate or prohibit altogether.

“No compromises; no more waiting[.]” That’s a beautiful sentiment if you’re dealing with an ethical or moral quandary. It’s not so good when dealing with the inevitably grey areas of life and death scenarios. Medicine isn’t well-served by moral absolutes, if or no other reasons than those absolutes can’t begin to cover all of the possibilities that medical emergencies could create.

Or could it just be about gratuitous cruelty?

"The bloodshed in our land is so great we have a duty ... to protect the least of these among us."

Gunter also explained that the existing "trigger" law simply isn't vengeful enough against abortion providers and anyone seeking an abortion, because it only "says that abortion providers have to pay a $1,000 fine … that is woefully insufficient." He wants jail time, obviously.

While the bill doesn't specify penalties for abortion, it builds a ban on abortion into Louisiana's existing law against "feticide," which enhances prison terms for crimes in which a fetus is killed. The current law includes an exception for abortions, which would be revoked.

First degree feticide under current Louisiana law carries a sentence of 15 years in prison with hard labor, so that ought to be a linguistically satisfying penalty for people who terminate pregnancies. We'll have to see if that's tough enough to satisfy the holy spirit of vengeance, though. Republicans in other states have in the past introduced bills that would institute capital punishment for abortions, so there's little reason they'll refrain from pursuing that even more fervently when Roe is gone.

Just to be absolutely clear that human life begins at conception, the bill defines human life as beginning with "fertilization" and strikes out the older law's definition, so that "'Person' includes a human being from the moment of fertilization and implantation" and "Unborn child" is now defined as "an individual human being from fertilization and implantation until birth."

Because the proposed Louisiana law isn’t just about protecting the life of zygotes, it’s about vengeance.

The idea that an anti-abortion law would have no exceptions, not even for rape, incest, or situations in which the mother's life is at stake is nothing if not monstrous. It reduces a woman to the status of a vessel- a thing whose only value is to carry and deliver a child and whose life is secondary to the life of that which she is gestating.

The text of the proposed Louisiana law begins with language that gives the reader an idea that it isn’t designed with moderation in mind:

Section 1. This Act is known and may be cited as the "Abolition of Abortion in Louisiana Act of 2022".

Section 2. Acknowledging the sanctity of innocent human life, created in the image of God, which should be equally protected from fertilization to natural death, the legislature hereby declares that the purpose of this Act is to: (1) Fully recognize the human personhood of an unborn child at all stages of development prior to birth from the moment of fertilization. (2) Ensure the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all unborn children from the moment of fertilization by protecting them by the same laws protecting other human beings….

As drafts of the law worked their way through the legislature, the language became increasingly extreme. For example, the proposed law treats a fertilized egg as being equivalent to any other human being. Viability no longer has any part in this conversation.

The Louisiana law represents just how extreme and illogical the anti-abortion movement has become, in that they equate a fertilized egg with a human being. Never mind that a fertilized egg has no hope of surviving outside the womb.

”Supporters of this legislation expressed no reservation about imprisoning people for exercising control of their reproduction,” the Louisiana ACLU said, adding that the bill is “barbaric.”

The radicalization of the anti-abortion movement has led to the definition in many newer state laws that human life begins at fertilization, well before a woman is even aware that she’s pregnant.

You can do that when you don’t recognize a woman's personhood, but you DO acknowledge the personhood of a zygote. What sort of monster thinks like that? White, Christian, Conservative, heterosexual males in red state legislatures.

[T]his indicates the basic flaw in the anti-abortion argument: A zygote is just not the same as a human infant. Yes, we grieve miscarriages, but not the way we grieve the loss of a child. All societies feel revulsion for murder, but most societies have accepted abortion until quickening. Neither the church nor the law in American history was concerned with such early abortions until roughly the middle of the 19th century….

If social conservatives want to help children, how about passing the child tax credit that would reduce child poverty by half? How about backing national pre-K and child care programs? Why let your passion for being “pro-life” end at birth? Please, Republicans, if you care so much about unborn children, please also show concern for born children.

The previous paragraph lays out the most egregious problem- and most enormous hypocrisy- of the anti-abortion movement. They’re willing to go to the mat to protect the unborn, but that commitment mysteriously vanishes once a child exits the womb. In many cases, these same zealots become actively hostile to programs that would benefit children.

I’ve tried, without success, to understand how anti-abortion zealots can be so supportive of the unborn and yet so hostile towards children post-birth? Why not support programs designed to help single mothers? To help improve nutritional opportunities? To help first-time parents? These are the sorts of things that would represent a relatively small governmental investment, yet Social Conservatives too often are adamantly opposed to even that pittance.

Indeed, parents should bear the bulk of the responsibility and cost of raising a child. Still, there can and should be a role for government intervention depending on circumstances and education levels. Some parents are ill-equipped at the outset and need help. After all, it’s not as if one enters parenthood with a manual and a Sherpa to guide them. Parenthood is arguably mankind’s most important job; yet it comes with no internship, no training program, or handbook. You dive into it headfirst on Day One and are expected to figure things out on your own.

You wouldn’t be expected to do that if you operated a construction crane. Or a nuclear missile silo.

There’s a legitimate reason for government involvement at the beginning of life in some cases; sometimes, a minor investment at the outset can prevent a raft load of potential problems later in life. And it’s not as if that involvement requires a significant investment, especially when compared to other government programs.

Not when you consider that two BILLION dollars roll through the front door of the Pentagon every single day.

The anti-abortion movement LOVES the unborn, but they are significantly less agog over babies. But, then again, if there’s one thing I’ve long ago given up on, it’s divining the motives of Conservatives.

Nick Kristof, the former New York Times columnist and author of this piece, raises some very prescient scenarios that Louisiana legislators, in their haste to pass this bill, almost certainly haven’t considered:

• Median life expectancy in Louisiana will be negative. That’s because most estimates have been that about three-quarters of fertilized eggs do not survive. One study in 2017 cast doubt on such figures but still estimated that 40 to 60 percent of zygotes are never born. If half of zygotes are naturally expelled, should we really be treating them the same as, say, teenagers?

• A woman’s period becomes a potential crime scene, because it may contain what the Louisiana law regards as human remains. Medical examiners investigate suspicious human deaths, so in Louisiana, will they be subpoenaing and examining period blood?

• If a parent leaves a child in a hot car and the child dies, that is manslaughter. Will a pregnant woman be charged with manslaughter if she works out and has a miscarriage?

• Will women be charged with attempted murder for using I.U.D.s for birth control? While I.U.D.’s mostly work by preventing fertilization, they can also prevent implantation of a fertilized egg – which, under the Louisiana law, is murder.

• Should the Louisiana Tourist Board warn women to have I.U.D.’s removed before setting foot in Louisiana, or risk being charged with crimes?

• Police investigators could subpoena OB/GYN medical records to track down all women in Louisiana with I.U.D.’s, or subpoena cell phone location data to track down all women who have visited an abortion clinic in other states and then traveled to Louisiana.

• Consider a situation in which a sex trafficker kidnaps a 13-year-old girl and repeatedly rapes her. The girl escapes but finds herself pregnant, and her parents help her get an abortion. She and her parents are caught and face homicide charges, while the rapist faces lesser charges. Does anyone think that is just?

It’s possible Louisiana legislators may come to realize some of these problems and tweak the law to be less onerous and at least a bit more reasonable. The idea of a woman’s period blood becoming a crime scene is prima facie absurd, as is the idea of the Louisiana Tourist Board having to warm women to remove IUDs. There will be other problems, and, as with every proposed piece of legislation, the Law of Unintended Consequences will apply to some degree.

(So much for the Party of Small Government, eh? Just think of how much it will cost if the State plans on establishing a permanent law enforcement presence in the bedrooms of Louisianans.)

Voters in Louisiana and other red states will ultimately need to determine if they’re OK with their states becoming a modern-day version of Gilead, the corrupt theocratic version of America from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. With roughly 70% of Americans supporting a woman’s right to choose, I believe such a brutal theocracy will be too much for Joe and Ethel Sixpack to stomach.

Of course, if you’re a Republican and you support a law like what Louisiana is proposing, you can’t claim to be for smaller government. Laws like Louisiana’s are about anything BUT small government.

That they also would treat women’s bodies as property of the State is also a serious problem. Those who would rob women of their bodily autonomy had best prepare for the considerable blowback they will almost certainly face at the ballot box.

Speaking only for myself, I believe there’s a special place in Hell for anyone who’d reduce women to the status of property. We’ve come too far in the past 49 years to put that genie back in the bottle.

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