Maude's Abortion, That Bastard In Texas, And At Least One Good News In Your Reproductive Rights Roundup!

Right on!

Uterus drawings from ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves,’ which feels appropriate

This week saw the passing of beloved American entertainment icon Norman Lear. Of everything he did, and he did a lot (obviously!), one of the most controversial was Maude’s abortion — Maude being the title character played by Broadway legend, Marine staff sergeant, and Golden Girl, Ms. Beatrice Arthur.

It was a big deal, especially since the episode aired in 1972, a year before Roe became the law of the land. Though, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s never been another sitcom episode in which a main character actually has an abortion since then. Dramas, sure — sitcoms, not so much.

The episode was especially revolutionary in that rather than being some young gal who “got in trouble,” Maude was a 47-year-old woman dealing with a pregnancy with a good chance of going wrong, especially in those days — and also now for a woman who doesn’t have Diana Jenkins money.

Interestingly, at the time, only two out of around 200 CBS affiliates (both in Illinois!) refused to run the episode, despite the fact that they received more than 17,000 angry letters about it from anti-abortion viewers. I actually don’t personally understand that, because even if you’re opposed to abortion you know that abortions happen, right? And that people exist who disagree with you on whether or not they should be legal? Like, if your stance on something requires that everyone pretend that the specific thing you’re mad about doesn’t happen and that people who disagree with you don’t even exist, I think you might want to have a discussion with yourself about the actual merits of your position.

Two decades later, mind you, many of these same people would be very, very upset about Murphy Brown choosing to have a baby despite being unmarried — which just goes to show you that even fictional women can’t ever do anything right in their eyes.

---

---

Texas Judge Graciously Decides Not To Force Woman To Give Birth To Dead Baby

As we noted yesterday, Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble ruled that 31-year-old Kate Cox could legally have an abortion at 20 weeks. Why? Because the child was discovered to have trisomy 18, a condition that is nearly always fatal at birth or soon after — and because, according to her doctors, giving birth to that child could make it so Cox would never be able to have another child, which she and her husband desperately wanted.

“The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” Gamble said at the hearing, upon granting Cox and her husband a temporary restraining order that would allow her to legally obtain an abortion without the state intervening.

Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office argued in court that Cox should be forced to give birth as her condition “does not meet all of the elements” necessary for a medical exemption, is not happy about it. Paxton wrote in a letter to Cox’s hospital letting them know that his office will still prosecute Cox’s doctor and the hospital that employs her, more or less because they haven’t proven that she will definitely die if forced to give birth to the child.

He wrote:

Today, an activist Travis County Judge signed a Temporary Restraining Order ("TRO") purporting to enjoin the Attorney General's Office (the "OAG") and the Texas Medical Board ("TMB") from enforcing some of the state's abortion laws against Dr. Karsan if she performs an abortion on Ms. Cox. We feel it is important for you to understand the potential long-term implications if you permit such an abortion to occur at your facility.

[T]he TRO will not insulate you, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas' abortion laws, including first degree felony prosecutions. […]

The TRO and the allegations in this lawsuit, on their face, fail to establish that Ms. Cox qualifies for the medical exception to Texas' abortion laws. To fall within the medical exception, the physician must determine "in the exercise of reasonable medical judgment, the pregnant female on whom the abortion is performed, induced, or attempted has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced."[…]

The TRO is further deficient because it fails to identify what "life-threatening" medical condition that Ms. Cox purportedly has that is aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy, nor does it state with specificity how this unidentified condition places Ms. Cox at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced. The temporary ruling fails to show that Dr. Karsan meets all of the elements necessary to fall within an exception to Texas' abortion laws.

Judge Guerra Gamble is not medically qualified to make this determination and it should not be relied upon. A TRO is no substitute for medical judgment.

Except, again, it is the judgment of Cox’s doctor that she requires an abortion for medical reasons.

Fetuses with trisomy 18, or Edwards Syndrome, only have a 50 percent chance of surviving birth, and those that do survive usually live less than two weeks. Between 90 and 95 percent die in less than a year, and those who survive have severe intellectual disabilities and health problems. Anti-abortion rights activists have been more than a little obsessed with the five or so percent who make it past that, as though that is reason enough to force the vast majority of expectant parents to live through watching their child die.

This is because they are always obsessed with getting their chance to witness “a miracle” but it’s also because Rick Santorum’s daughter had it and survived — in part because he has been able to spend $50,000 a year for her treatment, as well as spending $25,000 on an air ambulance to save her life at one point.

Just to be clear, Ken Paxton has also been fighting pretty hard to get rid of Obamacare in his state, and we can assume he wouldn’t be down with single payer, either. So if Cox were to give birth and the child were to survive, his preference would be that she find $50,000 of her own money a year to care for it. He has not offered to raise this child himself or pay for its medical care, should you be wondering.

---

---

There Will Be No Abortion Access Restrictions In The Defense Bill

Tommy Tuberville backed down on his shenanigans this week, allowing military promotions to go through — and now the defense bill will continue on its merry way, without any ban on abortion access. Nice! I mean, I don’t personally feel super comfortable cheering for the passage of a $900 billion defense bill, but I am glad that service members will be able to have abortions if they need one.

The Right did not lose everything, of course — they did get to keep their ban on medical care for transgender service members, their ban on “critical race theory,” and a salary cap and hiring ban on employees working towards diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Why? Because they’re horrible people who are very concerned about preserving their own kind.

Hooray For This HIV-Preventing Vaginal Ring!

Here’s some of that feel-good news that is also very depressing and horrifying when you think about it — women in Africa will soon have access to vaginal rings that protect them from HIV for a full month. The development is particularly important because it is difficult for many to discreetly go to family planning NGOs on the regular to get other forms of HIV prevention, as well as because it will allow them to protect themselves “without their partner or anyone else knowing.”

Via NPR:

Those young women, especially in places where females have little economic power or power over their sex lives, need the ability to make a private choice to protect themselves against HIV even if their partner objects, for example, to a condom. "Women are not always in charge of who they have sex with, nor can they always negotiate the use condoms," says Anita Garg of for The Population Council.

"The ring is very private," says Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "The male doesn't necessarily even know it's there."

It is truly horrifying that something like this is necessary, for the reasons it is necessary, but sometimes things are really horrible and if you can’t make it better, you have to do what you can to ameliorate them. Making it less likely that these women will get HIV from those they are not “in charge” of deciding to have sex with (one way to put it) is decidedly better than the alternative.