Texas Takes Another Step Towards Becoming Gideon

A women's uterus is a de facto organ of state power

One of the nation's most restrictive abortion bills — which bans abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy — took effect at midnight after the U.S. Supreme Court did not take action on an emergency appeal by Texas abortion providers Tuesday.

The law prohibits abortions whenever an ultrasound can detect what lawmakers defined as a fetal “heartbeat,” though medical and legal experts say this term is misleading because embryos don’t possess a heart at that developmental stage.

Providers and abortion rights advocacy groups say this would affect at least 85% of the abortions taking place in the state. Many people don’t know they are pregnant within the first six weeks.

But the state wouldn’t enforce the law. SB 8 instead provides enforcement only by private citizens who would sue abortion providers and anyone involved in aiding or abetting an abortion after a “heartbeat” is detected.

This mechanism could allow SB 8 to skirt Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, within some limits.

I lived in Texas- specifically, the Houston area- for more than 10 years (3722 days, not that I was counting or anything). During that time, the vast majority of people I came to know were kind, generous, tolerant, and accepting. Yet even with that, I knew Texans (whom I avoided like the plague) who were racist, intolerant, self-righteous, and heavily invested in their “kill-’em-and-grill-’em” Christianity.

Texas can be and very often is an extremely schizophrenic place regarding politics, ideology, and religion. If you were to go to cities like Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, you might be surprised at how blue they are. Travel into small-town Texas, though, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the Texas Taliban rules rural swaths of the Lone Star State.

In fact, much of Texas IS ruled by the Texas Taliban. You might know it as the Texas Republican Party, but the difference is purely semantics. The Texas GOP is the province of Far-Right, socially conservative Evangelical Christians who believe that Donald Trump sits at the right hand of God His Own Self.

Republicans have ruled Texas as their own personal fiefdom for the better part of the past five decades. The old joke about Texans being willing to vote for a ham sandwich if it had an “R” behind its name is actually true. Most Texans have been conditioned to believe that “Democrat” is actually the direct Latin translation for “Satan-worshiping communist pedophile.”

The Texas GOP actually appropriated their unofficial slogan from NASCAR- “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.” Republicans in the Lone Star Star have no left no stone unturned when it comes to doing whatever it takes to ensure the electoral table is tilted in their direction.

Thus, the Texas Legislature managed to pass one of the most sweeping and draconian voter suppression bills in the country this week. Ah, but that’s not my raison d’ etre this time out of the box. That’s for another time and another rant.

No, this one’s about Texas’ brand new anti-abortion law that went into effect today. The law is as dastardly as it is ingenious. It was written in such a way that it effectively takes the state out of enforcing the ban. Instead, it empowers the people of Texas to enforce the ban by suing anyone and everyone they believe to have been associated with a woman obtaining an abortion. Anti-abortion zealots can’t sue patients themselves…but everyone else is fair game, no matter how tangential their association with the process may have been.

This means that a woman’s pastor may be sued if she sought counseling. A Lyft driver who dropped her off at the clinic may be sued. A rape clinic counselor may be sued. If a woman’s husband picked her up at a clinic after the procedure, he might be sued.

The idea, of course, was to write a law that would effectively do an end-run around Roe v. Wade and effectively end abortion in Texas. A group called Texas Right to Life plans to begin suing those they believe are complicit in abortion activity. To aid their cause, they’ve set up a whistleblower website that will allow anyone to report anyone for anything.

Under the new law, those filing suits don’t have to prove that they have standing to do so. So, yes, if you’re thinking that the potential for frivolous, harassing lawsuits is quite high under the new law, you’re not alone.

The biggest part of the problem is that most Conservative White men working so diligently to exercise control over women's reproductive functions know next to nothing about those functions. Not that ignorance on a subject has ever stopped Republican lawmakers from asserting their prerogatives, of course, but if they’re going to be telling women when, how, and what they can and/or can’t do with their bodies, you’d think they’d at least have a working knowledge of what they’re legislating.

I’d wager most of them couldn’t find a clitoris if you spotted them a flashlight and a sherpa….

While it’s easy to joke about the new law, there’s little doubt but that it will do a good deal of real-world harm. Some women will be able to go out of state to obtain an abortion, but many more will lack the means and resources to do so. So they’ll be stuck, without options or recourse.

Texas Republicans may be all about protecting the unborn, but they couldn’t care less about children once they’re out of the womb. So while this new law tells women that they’ll have their children no matter what their circumstances, they’re almost certainly not going to get any help from the state once that child is born.

From where I sit, the most offensive part of the new law is that it’s reflective of the Texas GOP’s tendency to be all up in people’s business. For a party that claims to be all about “small government,” they certainly have a funny way of showing it. Of course, what they don’t tell you is that “small government” really means “small enough to fit into a woman’s vagina.”

The law encourages and enables the worst busybody instincts of Texas Conservatives. Rather than ensuring they have their own houses in order, they can instead harass those they look down upon by filing frivolous lawsuits. Almost as bad as that is the reality that they can sue ANYONE for ANY reason if they believe them to have been connected in any way to an abortion, however tenuous that connection may be.

The Texas GOP isn’t the party of “small government.” They’ve become the Texas Taliban, a Far-Right, arch-conservative, kill-’em-and-grill-’em uber-Christian party that no longer recognizes the separation of Church and State. They believe that America is a Christian nation and that they and they alone have the right to legislate morality. Women are property, and a woman’s uterus is a de facto organ of state power.

If this seems familiar, it should. The Texas Taliban is busy turning the Lone Star State into a carbon copy of Gideon from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. If you think that sounds hyperbolic, you clearly haven’t been paying attention to what’s happening in Texas.

If the U.S. Supreme Court allows this law to stand, then Roe v. Wade will be all but dead. Reproductive rights will revert to where they were in the mid-20th century. Of course, that’s exactly what the Texas Taliban wants, but it will be a sad day for American women, who deserve far better.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you enjoyed it, why not pass it along to a friend or six who might also enjoy it? If you REALLY enjoyed it, perhaps you might consider subscribing or donating via Venmo (@Jack-Cluth). Magnus needs more dog toys….