Conspiracy Sites Once Again Insisting Dems Want To Legalize Murder Of Newborn Babies
No one is doing this.
Back in February, California Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks introduced AB 2223, a bill meant to protect pregnant people from being investigated or thrown in prison for having a miscarriage, stillbirth, or other unfortunate pregnancy outcome. While we'd love to believe that such a bill would be entirely unnecessary, according to the National Advocates of Pregnant Women, more than 1,200 people were arrested, jailed or otherwise deprived of liberty for exactly these kinds of things between 2006 and 2020.
We'd also like to believe that this is the kind of bill anyone could get behind, because what kind of person wants to see someone who has just endured a tragic life event sent to prison? Alas, there are a lot of terrible people out there.
Over the past two weeks, rightwing media has been breathlessly reporting that this bill is actually a secret plot to "legalize infanticide," because they truly think we all just really want to murder babies (probably for the purposes of harvesting their adrenochrome).
But how could they possibly think this? Glad you asked. The claim comes from one sentence in the bill, which states:
Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.
Anti-choice Life Site News even found themselves a lawyer from the Thomas More Society to explain how this paragraph means that parents could even possibly post-birth abort their toddlers.
According to LiMandri, the proposal “exposes the false narrative that the abortion lobby has been peddling for over half a century: That no one knows when life begins, and babies in their mothers’ wombs feel no pain. No sane person can deny that a newborn infant is a fully developed human being, one that is capable of feeling intense pain. Yet, by including ‘perinatal’ in its provisions, [the bill] would authorize the brutal murder of these infants even after they are born.”
LiMandri, an author and lecturer who has appeared and been published nationally and internationally, noted that the definition of the term “perinatal” varies, spanning weeks or even years after an infant is born.
He cited MedicineNet which puts the definition of “perinatal” at ending “1 to 4 weeks after birth,” as well as the government definition of the phrase via PubMed.gov, which states: “The perinatal period, broadly defined, encompasses the time frame from … 18 to 24 months after the birth of the child.”
“Hence, [AB 2223] leaves one to ask: ‘What kind of depraved monsters would justify the killing of innocent and helpless children between one week and two years after their birth?’” LiMandri said.
Literally no one. No one is justifying that or calling for that. Even full-on serial killing cannibals are not calling for that — probably because it would lead to them getting caught, but still. No one is calling for that, except in the imaginations of anti-choice conspiracy theorists who just desperately want it to be true.
Lawyers from the Thomas More Society, by the way, also filed a lawsuit last year claiming that children in California schools were being forced to pray to Aztec gods. Just to be clear about who we're dealing with here.
Focus on the Family, a notably very normal group of fundamentalist Christians who just really, really hate gay people, also found a bunch of lawyers with unfortunate reading comprehension skills to tell them that, yes, this bill definitely supports the legalization of infanticide.
READ MORE: Will Someone Please Explain To Anti-Choice Idiots That Nobody's Killing Born Babies?
The unfortunate thing is that if these people were at all "focused" on families, they too would support a measure preventing anyone from being arrested for having such a devastating thing happen to them. Of course, if they really cared about babies, they'd probably be so upset about the infant mortality rates in red states that they'd start calling for universal health care and maternity/paternity leave just to ensure that every pregnant person and newborn baby gets the care they need. Sadly, that seems unlikely to ever happen.
“Anti-abortion activists are peddling an absurd and disingenuous argument that this bill is about killing newborns, when ironically, the part of the bill they’re pointing to is about protecting and supporting parents experiencing the grief of pregnancy loss,” Assemblymember Buffy Wicks said in a statement. “No person should face prison time for a tragic pregnancy outcome, and this bill will ensure that prosecutions and investigations have no place in reproductive health care.”
However, because people are ridiculous, Wicks is filing a motion on Monday to clarify the language in the bill so that anyone out there seriously believing that it "legalizes infanticide" can feel confident that it does not.
The bill will then read:
Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights under this article, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause.
"The overall intention of the bill is to ensure that no one in the State of California is investigated, persecuted, or incarcerated for ending a pregnancy or experiencing pregnancy loss," a spokesperson for Wicks explained, citing the examples of "Chelsea Becker and Adora Perez, two California women who were recently prosecuted and imprisoned for their stillbirths."
There are far too many more examples of this from across the country, and we should all be as horrified by the idea of people going to prison because something went wrong with their pregnancy as we would be about an imaginary bill making it legal to drown your kids in a bathtub should the mood take you.
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South Carolina Ready To Execute People With Firing Squads Now
Well that's horrifying.
In 2011, the European Union took a stand against the death penalty in the United States by banning pharmaceutical companies from importing several drugs meant to be used for lethal injections. Since then, rather than just give up, states have scrambled to find other ways of killing people in order to show people that killing people is wrong.
In Arizona, lawmakers decided to ask death row inmates to BYOED (bring your own execution drugs) if they don't want to suffer through botched executions like the one inmate Joseph Wood went through in 2014. Thanks to an experimental formula the state came up with, it took Wood two hours to die as he struggled to breathe like "a fish gulping for air" and was “gasping and snorting for more than an hour.”
Other states, desperate to continue this brutality, have turned to other methods of execution. On Friday night, after ten execution-free years, the state of South Carolina joined several others in officially reinstating firing squads as an option. The measure to introduce firing squads was introduced by Democratic state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, who claimed it was the "most humane" and "least painful" option. Though some of us might be able to come up with another.
“The death penalty is going to stay the law here for a while,” Harpootlian said. “If we’re going to have it, it ought to be humane.”
After spending over $50,000, the state revealed their newly revamped death chamber and fancy new firing squad protocols, all of which seem designed to make those carrying out the execution feel less bad about it.
Via NBC:
According to officials, the death chamber now also includes a metal chair, with restraints, in the corner of the room in which inmates will sit if they choose execution by firing squad. That chair faces a wall with a rectangular opening, 15 feet away, through which the three shooters will fire their weapons.
State officials also have created protocols for carrying out the executions. The three shooters, all volunteers who are employees of the Corrections Department, will have rifles loaded with live ammunition, with their weapons trained on the inmate’s heart.
A hood will be placed over the head of the inmate, who will be given the opportunity to make a last statement.
According to officials, Corrections spent $53,600 on the renovations.
The only reason we have the death penalty in a world where wrongful convictions exist is because it makes people feel good. As much as I hate that this is true, it makes a majority of Americans feel good. It makes them feel like justice is being done and that would-be-killers are deterred for fear of being killed themselves, and this makes them feel safe, whether or not those things are actually true.
And yet.
Firing squads, by their very nature, are an admission that the death penalty is wrong. If the death penalty were an unequivocal moral good, there would be no problem with one person walking up to a prisoner and just shooting them in the head — which, arguably, might be the more "humane" option. Hell, even a guillotine might be more humane, in terms of how much pain is felt by the prisoner. Firing squads exist specifically so that no one knows who fired the kill shot, so that people don't have that guilt hanging over their heads for the rest of their lives. Hoods are put over the heads of the prisoner's eyes so no one has to look at their face while they die.
If the death penalty is such a wonderful thing, then why would any of that be necessary?
[NBC]
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Florida GOP Loves Bad Fentanyl Test Strip Ban More Than Lives Of Spring Breakers
Because harm reduction would just be silly.
On Thursday, six students on spring break in Florida were hospitalized after overdosing on what is being described as "a powder possibly laced with Fentanyl." Four of them have been identified as West Point cadets, one of whom is an Army football player. They're pretty lucky they survived, given that the drug is currently the leading cause of death of Americans age 18 to 45, superseding even COVID-19 over the past two years: 79,000 have died of Fentanyl-related overdoses, while 53,000 have died of COVID-19.
The day after this incident, the Florida House voted against decriminalizing Fentanyl test strips — which, unlike the "powder" consumed by these students, do not in fact contain Fentanyl. They just test for it.
The Democrats in the legislature have been pushing to decriminalize these life-saving test strips since the beginning of the year.
Brandon Democratic Rep. Andrew Learned urged House colleagues to decriminalize the strips, alongside other Democratic lawmakers on the House floor.
“This is a product that doesn’t cause harm in any way,” said Learned, who proposed an amendment to decriminalize the strips. “The only thing it does is reduces harm. The only thing it does is save Floridians by simply telling people whether or not fentanyl exists.”
In the Senate, one Republican legislator argued that the state shouldn't have to legalize the test strips, because kids can just buy them illegally on Amazon — demonstrating that he was able to do so himself.
I never thought coming up here that I'd have to argue against something being illegal because it may implicate the bill sponsor and Chairman of the committee in a crime... Such is life in #FlaPol.https://twitter.com/DeFede/status/1502701844019175426\u00a0\u2026— Rep. Andrew Learned (@Rep. Andrew Learned) 1647115782
On the bright side, the Alabama House actually did approve a bill decriminalizing the test strips this week.
The rationale behind not legalizing the test strips, one would assume, is that people will say "You know what? I really, really want to do this cocaine, but I'm afraid there's Fentanyl in it, so I'm gonna pass!" And sure — that might work for some amount of people. But it's clearly not working enough, otherwise Fentanyl would not be the leading cause of death for people age 18 to 45 in the middle of an actual pandemic.
READ MORE: Free Crack Pipes Are Good, Actually.
We have to stop legislating based on how we wish people operated instead of how they actually operated, because it never works out and it usually ends up hurting the people it's meant to help. If deterrence-based criminal justice worked, the US would be an unbelievably safe country with no drug problems at all, but that is very clearly not the case. It doesn't work and it is frequently extremely expensive. Better to have unsatisfying solutions that actually work than satisfying solutions that don't.
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MO Lawmaker Can't Wait To Watch People Die From Ectopic Pregnancies
Bill would outlaw abortions, add extra penalties for aborting an ectopic pregnancy.
One thing that really tends to get under the skin of anti-choice legislators and activists is the fact that the only treatment for ectopic pregnancies, other than just letting the pregnant person die, is abortion. For years, they have tried to deny this fact. In 2019, an Ohio legislator even tried to pass a bill requiring doctors to try to "reimplant" the fetus from the fallopian tube into the uterus, despite the fact that this is not scientifically possible to do. That would be the same bill that called for the death penalty in the case of an abortion performed in the course of a robbery. A new bill, proposed in Missouri by state Sen. Brian Seitz (R-Branson) is no less cruel and no less stupid.
The purpose of Seitz's bill is to make "trafficking abortion" a thing. He wants to make it illegal to import or export any device or drug meant to be used to induce an abortion, so that once the Supreme Court gets rid of Roe and Missouri makes abortion immediately illegal, they can throw people in prison for ordering Mifepristone off the internet. But it gets far, far worse than that.
A person or entity commits the offense of trafficking abortion inducing devices or drugs if such person or entity knowingly imports, exports, distributes, delivers, manufactures, produces, prescribes, administers, or dispenses or attempts to import, export, distribute, deliver, manufacture, produce, prescribe, administer, or dispense any instrument, device, medicine, drug, or any other means or substance to be used for the purpose of performing or inducing an abortion on another person in violation of any state or federal law.
2. The offense of trafficking abortion-inducing devices or drugs is a class B felony.
3. The offense of trafficking abortion-inducing devices or drugs is a class A felony if:
(1) The abortion was performed or induced or was attempted to be performed or induced on a woman carrying an unborn child of more than ten weeks gestational age;
(2) The abortion was performed or induced or was attempted to be performed or induced on a woman who has an ectopic pregnancy
So it actually is more illegal to perform an abortion in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, where the person will very likely die without an abortion, than in other cases. The goal here is to inure people to the idea of people dying in pregnancy — which much of the anti-choice brigade considers a good thing and a beautiful sacrifice, even if the fetus doesn't survive either. Much of the anger about abortion has less to do with precious fetuses than with a deep anger towards women, "mothers" in particular, being "selfish."
There is also a desire among some to separate "treatment for an ectopic pregnancy" from abortion, despite the fact that it is in fact an abortion. This is because they want to be able to say there is "no such thing" as a life-saving abortion. Of course, all abortions are life-saving abortions in one way or another — whether they allow the person having the abortion to live their life or to feed and care for their other children.
On Twitter, Seitz responded to criticism of his desire to make it illegal for those with ectopic pregnancies to obtain life-saving abortions, writing "Fact: treating an ectopic pregnancy is not an abortion, improper treatment (such as improper abortion drugs and implements) for an ectopic pregnancy can kill the woman being treated, this bill does nothing to curb or prohibit the necessary treatment of an ectopic pregnancy."
Fact: treating an ectopic pregnancy is not an abortion, improper treatment (such as improper abortion drugs and implements) for an ectopic pregnancy can kill the woman being treated, this bill does nothing to curb or prohibit the necessary treatment of an ectopic pregnancy.— Rep. Brian Seitz (@Rep. Brian Seitz) 1646953557
This is, of course, not true. While the standard Mifepristone-Misoprostol combination is not used to treat ectopic pregnancies, Methotrexate is the most common and safest way to end one — by stopping the cells from growing, which ends the pregnancy. Methotrexate is also used in medication abortions in combination with Misoprostol. Clearly, Seitz just saw something about how Mifepristone is contraindicated by the FDA for the treatment of ectopic pregnancies and went on his merry way writing this bill.
It's clear that he did not think a lot when writing this bill and seemed quite perturbed when asked about it during a House debate on the bill by Rep. Mark Ellebracht (D-Liberty), who had expected him to have some understanding of what his bill was actually calling for. Rep. Seitz did not know how long the prison sentence was for felonies in his state, but said — after being informed that this meant people could be going to prison for five to 15 years for a Class B felony or 10 to 30 years in prison for a Class A felony — that he didn't think those went far enough for what he considers "the murder of an infant in the womb." Rep. Seitz also added that the use of these medications or instruments in an illegal manner could result in the death or injury of the pregnant person, without a hint of understanding that this is actually why people want safe, legal and accessible abortions.
When asked if he would consider the death penalty in such cases, Seitz responded that they could revisit that with future legislation.
Rep. Ellebracht then asked Seitz to consider various scenarios in which people could be sentenced to 15 years in prison for ordering abortion medication online. Seitz explained that he didn't have to consider any of that and would have become a prosecutor if he wanted to do so.
Rep. Seitz was also questioned by Rep. Keri Ingle (D-Jackson) about whether he wanted to throw victims of rape, incest, or sex trafficking in prison for trying to access abortion, to which he just kept saying that he "would like to see the life of the unborn protected."
Like most Republicans pushing bad abortion legislation (or any other legislation for that matter), Seitz has not given much thought to what his bill will actually do. He does not want to think about the impact. He wants to be allowed to continue to believe that those with ectopic pregnancies don't need abortions and that if his law passes, the only people who get thrown in prison for having abortions will be those he would personally find unsympathetic, and everything will be super great and he'll never have to think about any of this ever again.
Of course, given his inability to get pregnant, his lack of empathy, and his lack of interest in finding out what his bills would even do, that would actually be entirely possible for him.
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