Texas v women
Texas wants women to die of pregnancy complications.
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday rejected a challenge to the state’s strict abortion ban — a response to a lawsuit filed last year by a group of women who had serious pregnancy complications.
The ruling was unanimous. All of the nine justices are Republicans.
Five women brought the lawsuit in March 2023, saying they were denied abortions even when issues arose during pregnancy that endangered their lives. The case grew to include 20 women and two doctors.
That’s what happened to Savita Halappanavar, and what happens to women in Catholic-run hospitals in the US. Texas wants all pregnant women in Texas to run that risk. Texas wants all pregnant women to die rather than survive by terminating the pregnancy.
Zurawski v. Texas was the first legal challenge to the state’s bans that focused specifically on women with complicated pregnancies.
One of the lead plaintiffs, Amanda Zurawski, has said she nearly died in August 2022 when doctors delayed giving her a medically necessary abortion after she had catastrophic complications while 18 weeks pregnant. After her health deteriorated, her doctors eventually performed an abortion. She said she later went into sepsis and spent three days in the intensive care unit.
The Texas legislature wants more of that.
Women don’t matter. Women’s lives are not important. In-the-womb parasites are sacred, but out-of-the-womb infants, not so much.
Come to the land where abortion is murder, shooting someone for looking at you funny is self-defense, and failure to thrive is personal responsibility. Don’t mess with Texas (also never go there).
BKiSA, I actually enjoyed my time in Texas (five years). Of course, I was on a college campus where people were mostly liberal and progressive. The main problem with Texas is that it’s full of Texans; without the Texans, it’s a beautiful place. With the Texans, it’s perverse and frightening.
The introductory chapter of Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort” talks about him living in a suburb of Dallas, with friends and neighbors and family who wouldn’t think for a second of voting for George Bush in the 2000 presidential election, him knowing not a single person who would vote for Bush, while living in a state that voted overwhelmingly for Bush.
Texas is a big place, with a lot of people. There are enclaves of good people, and good individuals. It is a huge shame that the state is driven by a bunch of regressive authoritarian theocrats, but I don’t think I’d say no one should ever go there. I have friends and family in the state, good people. I know people who are working, against great odds, to try to make things better.
I live in a state on the same level of awfulness, Alabama. There are good people here, too. I’ve had people tell me they would love to visit me but they won’t, because I live in a state they don’t want to set foot in. It’s where I live, and it’s painful to hear that. I know people here, too, who are working against the odds to try to make things better.
Sackbut, I had a similar experience in 2004. A friend of mine at the university (she is from London) was sure there was no way Bush would carry Texas. She didn’t know anyone who was voting for him! She never stopped to realize she was on a large research campus, in the environmental science department. And still there were people who would vote for him, including a friend of ours who voted for him because he was Catholic (our friend, not Bush) and didn’t give a damn about any issue but outlawing abortion.
After the election, she was still steeped in shock when she started hearing from friends (not ones on campus) who were delighted Bush won.
She claimed not to understand US politics. I don’t blame her; most of us don’t. But as a scientist, she probably should have known better than to draw conclusions from a small, non-representative sample!
Maybe it is a beautiful place but my brief time on the tarmac on the way to Asheville last weekend did little to dissuade me of the notion
(the air was oppressive).
I dunno, maybe I’m just embracing federalism… It’s a big country and you can to an extent pick and choose what distasteful laws you want to be governed by.