Tag: abortion restrictions
Mike Johnson

With IVF Ban, Fakery On Abortion Rights Is Biting Republicans Hard

The Life at Conception Act is the legal jewel in the anti-abortion crown, a federal law that would recognize a fertilized egg – Alabama’s so-called extrauterine child – as a human being with all the rights and protections provided to the rest of us under the 14th Amendment. The Life at Conception Act, which has no exceptions for IVF or any other fertility treatments, would amount to an automatic nationwide ban on abortions with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother.

The law would override state laws permitting abortion. In states with limits on abortion, such as a ban after six or 15 weeks, the law would cancel those time limits as well.

It’s an extreme anti-abortion law that would take the end of Roe v. Wade to the next level, completely taking away a woman’s right to control her own reproductive life in every state in the Union.

For 125 House Republicans who have co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, and the 19 Senators who signed onto an identical bill in the last Congress, the act was a no-brainer. If you were a Republican and you called yourself pro-life, you were for the Life at Conception Act, no questions asked.

Until now.

This week the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision declaring every fertilized egg a person immediately called into question the status of all the fertilized eggs at fertility clinics in the state and caused the closing of several, among them, the state’s most prominent. The Alabama decision flipped the anti-abortion script. The question became, “do you support in vitro fertilization?”, and Republican hands started popping up all over. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, an avowed Christian Nationalist who made his sponsorship of the Life at Conception Act a signature part of his agenda which includes support for the establishment of a national religion – Christianity, natch – raised his hand along with all the other Republicans who have found “Reverse” on their gear shifts.

On Thursday, Johnson was still pushing for co-mingling of Biblical principles in our system of secular laws and supporting overturning laws legalizing homosexual acts and same-sex marriage. If asked he thought frozen embryos were children as the Life at Conception Act says they are, he would have high-fived you. But by Friday evening, Johnson was fulsomely praising the very thing Alabama had just banned. “I believe the life of every single child has inestimable dignity and value,” Johnson squeaked. “That is why I support I.V.F. treatment, which has been a blessing for many moms and dads who have struggled with fertility.”

You will note that Mike limited his support of IVF to “moms and dads.” Gay and lesbian couples who want children using IVF? Not so much.

The days that Republicans could say they were pro-life and forget about the details are over. It turns out that being anti-abortion wasn’t about the fetus as much as it was about the votes. Today, the anti-abortion movement is all about trying to find a way through the minefield the issue has become for them. Laws about abortion in red states have turned into a pick-your-timeframe smorgasbord.

Republicans who used to say they are pro-life are all of a sudden for abortion but with caveats. Take Donald Trump, who this week was exposed trying to carve out a new position for himself that split the difference and as he put it, “make everyone happy.” Trump is all for aborting fetuses up to 16 weeks of pregnancy. Then he’s against abortion. In Florida, they’re pro-abortion up to 15 weeks, but only for the time being, while a new law works its way through the courts making abortion illegal after six weeks. Some red states, like Arkansas and Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana, have banned abortion completely, without exceptions for rape or incest. Other states have limits. In Arizona, abortion is legal up to 15 weeks; in Georgia, it’s legal up to six weeks; in Nebraska it's legal up to 12 weeks; in Ohio, aborting a fetus is legal up to 22 weeks, but after that it’s illegal with no exceptions for rape or incest; same with Wisconsin, where abortion is legal up to 22 weeks, and after that, it’s illegal except to save the life of the mother, but not for reasons of rape or incest.

Do you see what’s going on here? Republicans are against abortion except when they’re not. When the vote wind is being blown by suburban woman, some Republicans find a way to legalize abortion up to some arbitrary number of weeks. Republicans appear to be out there like fishermen, casting their lines for votes: Hey, I got a bite at 12 weeks! The Republican down the river hooks his votes at 15 weeks!

They’re all looking for a sweet spot with the abortion issue, and where they land depends, as ever, on what state we’re in. Trump seems to be betting he can con women by making abortion legal up to 16 weeks, a new number Trump pulled out of the air. But give him some time, and he’ll find another number, once he’s stuck his finger in the air and checked which way the votes are blowing.

Whatever they pick – and by “they,” I mean Republican state legislators and governors and candidates like Trump – at the tick of the clock past midnight on the last day of that arbitrary number, the fetus magically becomes a child and you can’t abort it, because…well, because Republicans say so, that’s why.

It's going to be fun watching Republicans running for the exits from the Life at Conception Act, because last week Alabama started a fire and anyone clinging to it is going to get burned. You’d like to think, wouldn’t you, that somehow Republicans are coming to their senses on the issue of reproductive rights, but that is not what’s happening. Instead, they’ve got their metal detectors out and they’re waving them across the ground in front of them trying to find their way through the minefield they’ve created for themselves.

Yesterday, Republicans thought they could moderate their anti-abortion position by giving an inch on exceptions for rape or incest. Today, it’s IVF. But the truth is, they don’t believe anything they say about when life begins, or when a fetus becomes a child, or when a legal abortion should suddenly become illegal. Despite the best efforts of Republicans like Mike Johnson to yap about abortion out of one side of their mouths and Jesus out of the other, abortion isn’t about morality, it’s about votes.

Watch these shapeshifters. IVF bit them in the ass, and they don’t want to get bitten again. We’re going to need X-ray vision to find our way through the fog of Republican obfuscation and quick-change reversals and outright red-in-the-face lies ahead of us.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

With 'Death For Abortion' Bill, South Carolina Is Becoming Atwood's Gilead

With 'Death For Abortion' Bill, South Carolina Is Becoming Atwood's Gilead

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On Monday, 21 lawmakers in South Carolina proposed a bill that would punish any woman having an abortion with the death penalty. The bill would define as a “person” a woman’s egg that has been fertilized by sperm and apply to “an unborn child at every stage of development from fertilization until birth.”

That wasn’t enough for them, however. The bill goes on to state that enforcement of the law should “be subject to the same presumptions…as would apply to the homicide of a person who had been born alive.” That means they are proposing to treat an abortion as murder, and the woman who has an abortion as a murderer. Incredibly, having proclaimed that a fertilized egg is a “person,” they cite the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and its provision that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” that protection presumably applying South Carolina’s newly created right to life for the fetus.

They finally went there, as the saying goes. The right to life of the fetus now gives the state of South Carolina the right to kill a mother if she aborts one.

They leave an exception for a mother under “threat of imminent death or great bodily injury,” but there is no exception for an abortion performed because a mother has been raped or been the victim of incest with a parent, sibling, or close relative. So, if your father raped you, and you’re carrying your father’s baby – in effect, your own sister – you can be given the death penalty if you abort the resulting fetus.

According to The Hill, “The bill in South Carolina continues a trend of laws in Republican-led states to limit access to abortions and punish it under law after the fall of Roe v. Wade. At least 18 states have imposed near or total abortion bans.”

The South Carolina legislation will provide a roadmap for other states wishing to threaten women with death if they have an abortion. Already in the state of Texas, a man has filed a wrongful death suit against three women for helping his ex-wife get the pills necessary to abort her own fetus last year. He is seeking $1 million in damages.

Already the lack of access to safe abortions in red states is forcing women who want to end a pregnancy to give birth to unwanted children. Which raises the question of what could possibly be next? Will they arrest women seeking abortions who cross state borders and put them in a birthing camp, releasing them only after they have given birth? Will they put surveillance in drug stores to identify women buying home pregnancy tests and then issue warrants against the pregnant women, allowing the state to open their private mail to prevent them from receiving abortion pills through the mail?

They should give Margaret Atwood the Nobel Prize for literature for having alerted us to the dystopian world of the “Handmaid’s Tale” that is no longer in her sharply imagined future but actively upon us. South Carolina is just the first shiver of an earthquake that will strip women not only of the right to abortion, but of other rights as well. Will the laws surrounding consent to the sex act be next, making a conviction for rape harder to prove? The word chattel comes to mind.

Yesterday, several of the original signatories on the bill withdrew their sponsorship, apparently after having read (1) the bill they signed onto, and (2) the tsunami of negative coverage it generated. This doesn’t mean that the belly-slithering chickenshits who pulled their sponsorship won’t vote for the bill if it reaches the House floor. My bet is they will, because who controls women’s bodies in South Carolina, anyway? Women, or white male politicians? I give you one guess.

Having a womb within your body may soon be as dangerous as walking around carrying a bomb.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

Nancy Mace

South Carolina Republicans Urge Death For Women Who Undergo Abortion

Members of South Carolina’s GOP-dominated House of Representatives are mulling a bill — introduced by a pro-Trump Republican and initially sponsored by 21 others — that would make women in South Carolina who undergo an abortion eligible for the death penalty.

According to Rolling Stone, the bill, dubbed “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023,” would amend the term “person” under state law to include “an unborn child at any stage of development” — even as a fertilized egg.

If passed, the bill will “ensure that an unborn child who is a victim of homicide is afforded equal protection under the homicide laws of the state,” including punishment by death for offenders.

The bill explained its use of the term fertilization, stating, “As used in this article, ‘fertilization’ means the fusion of a human spermatozoon with a human ovum.” Such a fusion could happen in just six days after copulation, according to a Planned Parenthood article.

The proposed amendment “[acknowledges] the sanctity of innocent human life, created in the image of God, which should be equally protected from fertilization to natural death,” the bill stated.

Rep. Rob Harris, an anti-Roe advocate and Freedom Caucus member, introduced the bill in late February, arguing that abortions should warrant the same punishment as murders.

“We have due process laws, as long as they’re followed,” Harris said. “I’m not inventing any new processes. The constitution of both states require due process and equal protection. So if you’re accused of stealing a candy bar, if you’re accused of murdering somebody, it would go through the same process,” Harris told WBTV.

The day the Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established abortion as a constitutional right, Harris took to his Facebook page to celebrate.

“Praise the Lord! Roe vs. Wade has just been overturned by SCOTUS! Now SC legislators need to step up and save our children! Let’s see what they’re made of. We’ll be keeping a very close eye on them!” he wrote.

Indeed, there are no exceptions for rape and incest in Harris’ bill — a point which Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who has long assailed her party’s stringent abortion policies, raised on the floor of the U.S. House on Friday, per The Hill.

“To see this debate go to the dark places, the dark edges, where it has gone on both sides of the aisle, has been deeply disturbing to me as a woman, as a female legislator, as a mom, and as a victim of rape. I was raped as a teenager at the age of 16,” Mace said.

She added, “This debate ought to be a bipartisan debate where we balance the rights of women, and we balance the right to life. But we aren’t having that conversation here in D.C. We aren’t having that conversation at home. We aren’t having that conversation with fellow state lawmakers.”

Harris dismissed Mace’s objections in a statement to Rolling Stone, saying, “There are other bills with exceptions, but will do little or nothing to save the lives of pre-born children.”

He suggested to the publication that the bill was appropriate because it contained a “‘duress’ defense for women who are pressured/threatened to have an abortion” exception and another for “medical care to save the mother’s life.”

“The functional language in that scenario is whether the baby’s life is forfeited ‘unintentionally’ or ‘intentionally,’” Harris told Rolling Stone.

When the Rolling Stone reporter asked Harris if it was ironic of him, a member of the “Freedom Caucus,” to draft a bill with such harsh restrictions on reproductive freedom, the Republican replied, “Murder of the pre-born is harsh.”

Two of the 21 Republicans who initially sponsored the bill, Reps. Matt Leber and Kathy Landing, requested to have their names scrubbed off the list of sponsors on February 28.

Five more Republicans backed out on Monday, the very day Rolling Stone and The Hill reported on the bill.

Incoming GOP Majority Previews 2023 Agenda -- And Of Course It's Absurd

Incoming GOP Majority Previews 2023 Agenda -- And Of Course It's Absurd

Incoming House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) sent a letter Friday to the Republican conference outlining the agenda for the first few weeks of the session for the Republicans’ tiny new majority. That is, if they can actually get a speaker elected, because they can’t do any business at all until that’s accomplished.

Once they get past that hurdle, Scalise promises they’ll “begin bringing up meaningful, ‘ready-to-go’ legislation” that will “address challenges facing hard-working families on issues ranging from energy, inflation, border security, life, taxpayer protection, and more.”

It probably won’t come as a big surprise that the bills Scalise lists in his letter don’t do any of that. He also omits as “and more” three pieces of punitive, politicized abortion legislation. They sure learned their lesson from November!

That forced birth agenda includes codifying the long-standing Hyde Amendment that prevents federal funding for abortion and “funding for any insurance plan that includes abortion on demand.” That’s private health insurance coverage they’re talking about. They’ll also vote on a cruel “born-alive” bill that would require medical personnel provide care to infants born with conditions that will keep them from surviving outside the womb for any amount of time, torturing the babies in their only minutes on Earth with futile medical interventions and preventing parents from having the experience of being with their newborn for whatever time they’ll live. It’s just sick.

Speaking of sick, they have a gotcha bill to try to force Democrats on the record “condemning the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches.” Recent attacks? On churches for being “pro-life”? In the U.S.? Outside of the synagogues and the Black churches, that is.

They do have some energy-related bills, mostly attempting to tie President Joe Biden’s hands if we’re faced with another oil shortage with a bill that “prohibits non-emergency drawdowns of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve without a plan to increase energy production on federal lands.” Sorry, America, you can’t have both affordable gas and pristine national parks and recreation areas.

There’s also plenty of immigrant-bashing to be had, including a bill that “requires the National Instant Criminal Background Check system (NICS) to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and relevant local law enforcement when a firearm transferee is illegally present in the United States.” So they found a gun restriction that they can support on a thing that probably never happens.

Oh, and they’ll try to repeal the increase in funding for the IRS that Democrats passed this year. They sure don’t want the agency to be able to investigate their well-heeled donors for tax fraud.

None of this is necessary. All of this was rejected by the American people in November. And none of it will make it to the Senate floor. But the Republicans don’t actually care about making policy. They want to score political points and shore up their shrinking base of fanatical bigots, because that’s all they got.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.