A dreadful backward step

love0c

While this has been passed in Texas, I can not see it spreading across America. The American's do not stand for their rights being taken away. Shame many people in this country don't feel the same. Texas may well suffer a backlash yet.

Texas is at the forefront. It is just a beginning.
Other conservative states will inevitably follow.
I believe Texas is the “poster child” for right wing repression and this is being watched with great interest. It will spread out quickly I fear. Especially if the democrats do badly in the mid-terms.

Here’s a link to the Texas Tribune which explains why this is a “new sort of law” and potentially extremely damaging in how it works. Other states are watching with interest. I think it’s scary when the minority can exert such power over everyone.
www.texastribune.org/2021/05/18/texas-heartbeat-bill-abortions-law/

The cases can be heard hundreds of miles from the “accused” in hostile courts. Workers in clinics will basically be repeatedly tied up in these law suits which (even if they win) will make it nearly impossible to work.

Texas is only the start. The right wing Republican zealots have been packing the state legislature and lower courts across the USA. As an American living in the U.K. for 40 years, it horrifies me to see what the US has become

Rights of the child?

Horrendous. Women have abortions when they have no valid choice for whatever reason. And of course it is her choice. It is her body. Just adding my voice to yours. Shocking.

I have often wondered how many anti abortionists have adopted an otherwise unwanted child.

I once had a long discussion about this with an anti-abortion woman. She professed to care about the rights of the child, and blamed society for pushing women to have abortions. When I asked why she didn't campaign to change society and leave women alone until she'd done that she didn't seem to have an answer. As for the rights of the child. it isn't a child, it is a foetus and it will only grow to a child if the woman carrying it continues to thrive, and as I said before some don't. Besides which it's an irrelevance, women have always had abortions when they felt unable to have a child and they will continue to do so. They will just be back street risky procedures done in secret.

Someone Tweeted today that Texas is now Taliban.

Such a backward step for an advanced country. Womens right to choose ignored. Will surely lead to backstreet abortions. What happens in cases of rape? Will a woman be forced to have her rapists child?

It's an appalling slap in the face for women's rights. So women are now forced to carry to term a baby that they may not be emotionally, mentally or economically equipped to care for properly. I think it's absolutely disgusting and women who champion these decisions should, in my opinion, confine their beliefs to what they do with their own bodies and not other people's.

Polls show that over 70% of Americans are in favour of keeping Roe v Wade and the protection it offers for women's health. What we are looking at is the tyranny of a very active, vocal, self-righteous minority who somehow believe that if they show their own moral superiority by enacting laws, then the problems which gave rise to the need for abortions are somehow dealt with. America made the same mistake almost a hundred years ago with the institution of prohibition in an attempt to deal with problems of drunkenness.

And for anyone who starts arguing for the "rights of the child", what happens to those "rights" once the child is born? There is enormous poverty in the USA (and in fact here and in many other countries) but I don't see these groups campaigning for the right of little children to have a safe home, warmth, clothing and food.

Also, significant numbers of children in the US and the UK end up "in care" and face very uncertain futures, with a much bigger chance of ending up in psychiatric care or prison. There is a huge shortage of foster carers and suitable children's homes. Where are these sanctimonious people then - are they all rushing forward to take care of, or supply monetary support for, these children?

It seems that women have had to (and continue to) fight so hard in the battle for equality and fairness and just as we start to make strides forward we are suddenly being dragged back to darker times. Abortion is not a pleasant action, ever, but it is essential that women have the right to choose what happens to their bodies. For millions of women in the world there is no right to contraception or abortion and it looks like many states of America will join that long list of countries. Sadly the rights of women seems to be firmly held by males and religious zealots.

Yes, it’s a step backwards. I can’t understand why any women would support these state laws. I remember Alfie with Michael Caine and the huge debates here re: abortion. So many women died from illegal abortions.

I feel so sad for women in this part of the USA. It’s interesting that in Texas it’s legislation by the backdoor. Anybody can be sued for aiding abortion past 6 weeks. This will be a very good way of putting clinics out of action and those with money will be pursuing their policies whilst those without may suffer the consequences.

As someone up thread suggested - the land of the free!

Are they allowed the morning after pill in Texas?

As Margaret Atwood pointed out USA is a Puritan founded land, Europe did not want them - what do we expect? Having observed their service officers, they are not given the right to free speech as us in the UK, circumspect is the best word that describes them. Gilead is coming true and not under Trump. Religious fundamentalists rule that land.

Doodledog

That is dystopian.

I saw Margaret Atwood on her UK tour just before lockdown (it was to promote The Testaments) , and she said that the US was slipping into Gilead-like ways. It looks like she wasn't wrong.

I've never understood the concept that a shortage of fertile women would devalue fertile women. I'd have thought it would be the infertile who would have been turned into servants and the fertile would be prized.

Sorry completely off track.

I’m pro choice and find this a very worrying step. The film Vera Drake was a great way to demonstrate how hard it was for women before reliable contraception and access to safe abortion, particularly for poorer people.

This is a long and shocking article. It is worth reading if you have the time www.thenation.com/article/politics/anti-abortion-white-supremacy/

Well said! I think you will find some of them voting against free school meals or decent education funding for children!

From the outset, Gilead didn't seem too far into the future, and the Trump presidency brought it ever closer... His deliberate skewing of the judiciary ensured that the most Conservative, intolerant of anything that doesn't support White Male Supremacy views will have the upper hand legally. Bigots and Women haters continue to oppress those without the power to oppose them. This is the ongoing legacy of a man who was described in no uncertain terms by leading psychiatrists as very dangerous. What does it say about America that not only did he become President, but that his malign influence continues. Meanwhile, there are many many people who will suffer as a result of this awful retrograde step.

Just because a country has the might of the military, the finances to wield control and state of the art technology, it doesn't mean that the people are progressive or liberal in their views. Unfortunately, America still has a lot of laws based on hardline religion and that means that women are finding themselves having to obey draconian laws. I have a friend who lives over there and had to remain married to a religious, controlling husband because he seemed to hold all the cards when it came to the children. It was heartbreaking and totally alien to us as British citizens who would have found that the state is incredibly supportive of us as mothers in comparison.

Clearly this change in the law has not been thought through properly and encourages extremist reactions at either end of the scale.
It is a much more complicated situation than we are seen to condone or reject in these responses and there is no easy answer. Sometimes these dreadful procedures have valid reasons for taking place.
However, I would still suggest that people do a little reading around the International Rights Of The Child. It may give some people time to pause for thought.
The girls and women ,who, for whatever reason, agree to getting rid of the life growing inside them often suffer psychologically for the rest of their lives. We try to soften the words used to describe the procedure but at a very base level the underlying belief for many of these people is "I killed my baby".

There are many Christian pastors and 'Christians' in the USA who preach hatred as far as abortion, homesexuality etc etc. Hatred to me is not a Christian attitude. I know someone who works for a pro life Christian charity and they 'help' and encourage women who are pregnant (for many reasons - rape, incest, young girls) to keep the baby by offering free baby clothes, pushchairs etc. However, I am not sure for how long this assistance goes on. I think that after the baby is born the help finishes. They are very anti abortion and it is known that they make the women feel very bad about themselves for considering an abortion even though the circumstances in which they got pregnant could have been very traumatic.

When I read about the Texas decision, I thought I'd woken up in the 1960's - horrendous. What really creeps me out about the people who put the rights of a fetus before the rights of a women to control her own body, is that I never hear ANYTHING from them about the responsibilities of men to use contraception. Are they going into schools and colleges to teach both young men and women how to avoid unwanted pregnancies? Of course not! They're just sanctimonious women-hating hypocrites.