More on Texas (Content Warning)

By now a great many voices have weighed in with opinions and sound-bites on the recent abortion ban in Texas. Jill Dennison has lent their site to this matter with a passionate article, explaining how this ban represents a slippery slope. Indeed, other US states are threatening their own bans, so the erosion of women’s rights is not confined to Texas. One of the contributors to this site, Justdrivewillyou, recently posted to the Coalition of the problem of minority rule. Texas has moved ruthlessly and undemocratically to ignore the will of the voters in all of this, and the danger is that these moves will spread.

Forced-birthers (there is no such thing as pro-life in this equation) do not care about the women whose lives will be irreversibly changed and destroyed by these laws. They speak a lot of compassion for the embryo, but there is not a word spared for the women who are forced against their will to give birth. There is no acknowledgement of the risks to a woman’s health of pregnancy and giving birth. In the case of the Texas law, there is not even an allowance for cases of rape and incest. Do people understand what that gives rise to? If a grandfather, father, uncle or brother were to rape a female relative, that relative would then be forced to have the child. That also applies if that relative is an under-age victim as well. Yes, you read that right – a 13 year-old girl would be forced to have her own father’s baby in the event she was raped by him. That, right there, sums up what this law is and what the attitudes are towards women.

It’s not about life. It never was. It’s about coercion, and about control. If it was about life, then the lives of the women would count for something. In the eyes of forced-birthers, a woman’s life is meaningless.