Texas Placing Bets on Whether a Woman Will Die

 

The Texas Supreme Court put a lower court's decision on hold regarding whether Karen Cox could receive what might be a life-saving abortion of an almost-certainly doomed fetus, following on AG Ken Paxton's claim that any doctor or hospital that performed that procedure would be prosecuted. This woman is the stake in a fucking card game. It seems to me that the elected zealots involved, like Justice John Devine:

John Devine, an anti-abortion activist and self-styled “Ten Commandments Judge,” will become one of Texas’s nine Supreme Court justices early next year, as the Democrats are not fielding a candidate for the seat in the November election.

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Devine has long been a staunch anti-abortion activist. At a June rally in Fort Worth, Devine told the crowd he had been arrested 37 times while protesting abortion clinics in the 1980s, Smith reported. Though, in a more recent interview, “he said he had been arrested during peaceful protests several times in the 1980s but did not remember how many,” Smith reported. Despite this history of activism, Devine insisted he “is still able to interpret the law impartially.”

In 2008, Devine and his wife, Nubia, showed everyone just how committed they were to the pro-life position when her seventh pregnancy endangered her life and that of the baby. The Texas Observer‘s Emily DePrang wrote about a video his campaign put out called “Elizabeth’s story.”

Like that bet. 

So-called pro-life people love to say that a woman's life isn't really jeopardized by a pregnancy. They love to act like they did something special by allowing a fetus to be born if it survives even briefly. And they will claim victory of anything short of this young mother of two just dying right now. Trisomy-18 isn't always fatal: kids with Edwards syndrome can live--see former Senator Rick Santorum's youngest child, Bella, for a story of a child with a way better than expected outcome. But keep in mind this is a former senator with a shit-ton more access to the best care for his kid, and whose wife did not have Cox's unique set of pregnancy complications.

This is why compassionate exceptions for health and life of the mother are a sham, especially as practiced in Texas. As evidenced by the women who have personally been touched with that so-called compassion and its denial.  As evidenced by the not-pro-life claims made when different circumstances present themselves. 

But before it starts looking like I'm uniquely "messing with Texas", I just want to note that other states want to do as much and worse and are. A woman in Ohio is being prosecuted for abuse of a corpse because she miscarried into a toilet. What does anyone think a miscarriage looks like? Can anyone fathom the state of mind a woman has having miscarried, and still want to punish her for her fetal failure? 

A woman in Kentucky is suing because she is eight weeks pregnant and does not want to be, but cannot get a procedure because of the state's ridiculous six week ban. A six-week ban takes absolutely nothing about an actual female menstrual cycle into account. 

In Missouri, a bill exists to prosecute women who seek abortion for murder. States are looking at forbidding women to travel to where abortion is permissible. Some call it abortion trafficking. Some politicians are disgusting enough to call travelling to get a needed or wanted procedure "abortion tourism" as if seeking medical care is a goddamn vacation. 

None of this shows respect for the dignity of the life of the pregnant person. None of this respects the life of that person; it treats the pregnant person like a would-be felon. A suspect class. A person who can be sentenced to die for their fertility when salvation is a simple procedure away. Determined by religious fanatics and people with no concept of anatomy and physiology who are playing with human lives for political reasons. 

How cheap human life is to so-called pro-life people. They make me sick.