Should We Perhaps Check Under The Floorboards Of 'Born Alive' Bill Supporters?

Plus other abortion news.

Abortion news for the week!

How long have Republicans believed it is legal to kill a newborn baby?

Ever since the founding of our nation, it has been entirely legal to just kill a newborn baby. Like, just as soon as it's born, take a hammer to its head and go to town.

Or not.

It's actually always been illegal to kill a newborn baby, except in cases of self-defense.

With all these little Kyle Rittenhouses crawling around, it could happen.  Mommyish  

Quite notoriously, New Jersey resident Melissa Drexler was sentenced to 15 years in prison for having a baby in a bathroom stall and leaving it to die (though she only served three years and really should not have served any, given her mental state).

Despite this, and despite the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 signed into law by George W. Bush, every Republican in the House, plus Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, was apparently under the impression that this was entirely legal until Wednesday of this week, when they passed the "Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act." The act will make it illegal to kill a baby born alive after an abortion, a thing that was already illegal, and also require doctors to perform extraordinary life-saving measures on babies that are born alive after an abortion.

This is, of course, not a real thing that happens during the course of a regular abortion, 98.7% of which occur before the 20 week mark. On the rare occasion that something like this has happened, because labor has been induced in order to save the life of a mother suffering from preeclampsia or some other serious condition, the infant is not "executed" post-birth, but rather — if there is no chance of survival — kept warm and comfortable until it passes naturally. What this bill does is require doctors to perform extraordinary life-saving procedures that they know will not work and will be excruciatingly painful for the infant.

Ironically, this is the first time Republicans have supported a "right" to medical care, though it is not clear who will pay for these procedures when and if they ever happen.

What exactly have these Republicans (and one Democrat) been doing this whole time while they were thinking it was legal to kill a newborn baby? Should we be checking under their floorboards to ensure that they don't have some kind of John Wayne Gacy situation happening down there? Probably!

Of course, the purpose of this law is not to save any newborn babies — it is to put the idea in people's heads that babies are regularly being born alive during abortions (and that people are regularly having abortions post-viability for no medical reason) in order to make abortion appalling to them. That is the whole point. Still, for all we know, Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), who introduced the bill, could be living in the American 25 Cromwell Street, so maybe someone ought to check her garden. Just to be safe.

Alabama Attorney General Very Excited To Send People Who Take Abortion Pills To Prison

For a long time, anti-choice groups made a whole thing about they didn't want to see pregnant people punished for having abortions. This was not done out of empathy, but rather because much of their narrative was reliant on the idea that women didn't want abortions. Rather, they were simply confused babes in the woods who were pressured to have them by bloodthirsty doctors and other nefarious people in their lives — and who would be horribly depressed and regretful for years afterwards.

That theory has fallen by the wayside, and not just because every study that has been done on this subject has shown that being denied an abortion is far more harmful to one's mental health than getting one.

Alabama’s Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall announced this week that pregnant people who take abortion pills could indeed be prosecuted under the state's chemical endangerment law, initially enacted to protect children exposed to fumes from home meth labs. The law has, however, been used to prosecute people who have taken drugs while pregnant.

“The Human Life Protection Act targets abortion providers, exempting women ‘upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed’ from liability under the law,” Marshall said in a statement to AL.com on Tuesday. “It does not provide an across-the-board exemption from all criminal laws, including the chemical-endangerment law—which the Alabama Supreme Court has affirmed and reaffirmed protects unborn children.”

Democratic Alabama state Rep. Chris England says this is a misreading of the law and that it cannot be applied to those taking a prescription. I suppose we shall see.

ACLU, Abortion Rights Groups To Bring Abortion To Ohio's Ballot

If there is one thing we learned over the last year, it is that when given the opportunity, voters opt to keep abortion legal — so much so that anti-abortion groups have fought desperately to keep abortion-related measures off the ballot . Thus, a bunch of Ohio abortion rights groups have banded together to push for a vote on reproductive freedom.

Via News5Cleveland:  

The coalition – made up of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, Abortion Fund of Ohio, New Voices for Reproductive Justice, the Ohio Women’s Alliance, Preterm-Cleveland, Pro-Choice Ohio and Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity (URGE), along with the ACLU of Ohio – said the amendment would “explicitly protect reproductive freedom for all Ohioans.”

“We are working expeditiously and prudently because we know that skipping steps or rushing the process would be a reckless approach when stakes are so high,” said Erin Scott, co-founder and director of the Ohio Women’s Alliance, in a joint statement of ORP members.

Naturally, anti-abortion groups are whining, claiming that all of these "out-of-state groups" (that, strangely, have the words "of Ohio" in their names) will never get abortion rights passed in their state, because everyone there really, really hates abortion and loves it being illegal.

 Fifty-nine percent of Ohioans, according to a recent survey, would like to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution, but these groups are not counting any of those people. For reasons.

 Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons .

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