And then what happened, grandma?
Like Jack Russell terriers, conservative zealots are.
So when opponents of women’s autonomy began attacking the right to an abortion guaranteed in Roe v. Wade (1973), they did not immediately go for the big enchilada. They started nibbling away at the edges. The Hyde Amendment (1976), the Global Gag Rule (1984), and more. After the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in 2009 came TRAP laws (starting 2011) and bans after 20 weeks of pregnancy (2014). Planned Parenthood has a list.
The U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to overturn Roe by the end of June. Opponents of women’s autonomy will achieve their decades-old goal.
You don’t think zealots’ labors will end there, do you? See: The Heritage Foundation goes full Gilead.
No, the zealots are just getting warmed up, writes Susan Rinkunas for Jezebel:
The country’s oldest, largest anti-abortion group has unveiled absolutely chilling model legislation that proposes not only near-total state bans on abortion—even for a pregnant person who’s suicidal—but would criminalize sharing information about abortion pills online or by phone. It previews a worsening hell of criminalization, state surveillance, and maternal deaths.
Abortion rights advocate and Alabama clinic worker Robin Marty highlighted the model legislation on Monday on Twitter. It’s essentially a boilerplate bill that would help Republican lawmakers propose pre-written legislation in their respective state legislatures—which they undoubtedly will.
In a press release dated June 15, the National Right to Life Committee said that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade—as it looks likely to do by the end of June—states should pass its model law that would ban abortion unless it’s immediately necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman, or if “a delay will create serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” Literally anything short of those scenarios? Sorry, no abortion. (It doesn’t count, the organization says, if a pregnant woman is openly suicidal.) If a pregnant person somehow qualifies for an abortion, the bill says the abortion should be “performed in the manner which provided the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive.”
The model law would ban abortions except to prevent the death of the woman, or if “a delay will create serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”
“With this model law, we a laying out a roadmap for the right-to-life movement so that, in a post-Roe society, we can protect many mothers and their children from the tragedy of abortion,” Carol Tobias, president of NRLC said in a statement on Wednesday. The NRLC release claims “the model law ensures that no criminal or civil penalty will be imposed on a pregnant woman,” nevermind that more than 1,300 people have faced criminalization for their pregnancy outcomes between 2006 and 2020.
Conservatives don’t simply wish to roll back the 20th century. They’re headed for the 19th after that.
“The Comstock Law of 1873 made it illegal to disseminate information about birth control and abortifacients,” Rinkunas reminds readers.
Then come the chastity belts.
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