Nikki Haley Thinks Texas Will Fix Its Unfortunate Abortion 'Dying Fetus' Oversight, Based On Jack And Shit
And you're not going to believe this, but Susan Collins is concerned.
Republicans, who spent decades loudly telling America that Roe v. Wade had to be overturned, have suddenly found themselves with very little to say about the actual consequences of states’ abortion bans for American women. They’ve largely gone quiet now that Americans see the awful case of Kate Cox, the Dallas woman who was still unable to get an abortion in Texas after her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal abnormality. Cox fled Texas for a free state Monday.
And now, you won’t see a lot of Republicans other than Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton touting that state’s near-total ban on abortion as a fine and wonderful thing. Texas’s two Republican Senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, dodged reporters’ requests for comment on Cox’s case altogether. Cornyn insisted it was merely a matter of jurisdiction: As a federal elected official, he couldn’t possibly comment on a matter of state law, but “I’m happy to comment on anything that I’m responsible for,” he weaseled. Cruz, who praised Texas’s abortion ban as “a massive victory” after the 2022 Dobbs decision striking down Roe, refused to say anything at all, robotically telling an NBC News reporter three times to call his press office, which never got back to her.
By comparison, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley was a regular Chatty Cathy, saying Cox’s case was a very sad situation that deserves “compassion,” even as she repeated the cherished GOP lie that women casually have abortions a week or so before their due dates for frivolous reasons. Which nobody does.
“We don’t want any women to sit there and deal with a rare situation and have to deliver a baby in that sort of circumstance any more than we want women getting an abortion at 37, 38, 39 weeks,” Haley said, emphasizing that she is “pro-life.” “We have to humanize the situation and deal with it with compassion.”
So, just like this thing that isn’t happening, we should be “compassionate” toward Ms. Cox, although Haley didn’t go so far as to suggest that Texas officials should have acted differently. She did at least suggest that some kind of nonspecific change in Texas’s vague “exception” would be a good idea:
“I think that Texas is going to go back and have their ... medical board look at this and say, ‘How should we deal with this?’” Haley said Tuesday. “I think every state’s going to do that.”
It’s a pretty dream — Texas “fixing” its unfortunate oversight (not at all an oversight) — which Texas AG Paxton had already quashed by promising to prosecute hospital officials for felonies if they helped the woman whose fetus was already going to die. But what else could she possibly say? That her party is filled with monsters and yes she too would sign their national abortion bill?
Then there was Sen. Susan Collins, who actually condemned the Texas supreme court decision overturning a restraining order that would have let Cox end her pregnancy. (The court said that it’s up to doctors to make the decision on the severity of a woman’s illness — again, after Paxton had threatened them all with felonies and prison.)
“I thought it was a terrible decision … that may affect her future ability to carry a child, was forced to leave Texas to get a much needed abortion — it’s just inconceivable to me.”
Then again, Collins was also shocked, shocked when Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh voted to overturn Roe, even though they said in their confirmation hearings they’d respect settled law, so maybe “inconceivable” doesn’t mean what she thinks it means.
In other, related news, the US Supreme Court announced today it will decide this term — by June 2024, in other words — a case on whether the FDA in 2016 properly made the abortion drug mifepristone easier to access. That 2016 rules change allowed the medication to be sent through the mail, to be prescribed without an office visit, and to be used up to 10 weeks, up from seven weeks in the original 2000 FDA approval. But the Court will not address the real rightwing wet dream of rolling back the FDA’s approval of mifepristone altogether, so there’s that.
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber and help us reach our goal of 5,000 paying subscribers — a metric fuckton of you fully funded filthy fuckaducks! — by the end of the year. Or if you prefer a one-time donation, that option is right here, and makes you every bit as worthy of the Filthy Fuckaduck title.
And if you’re shopping at Amazon anyway — for The Handmaid’s Tale or Supreme Court themed contraceptives — this portal gives Yr Wonkette a wafer-thin slice of your purchases.
Fuck Nikki Haley. She is a woman. She has had children. She knows perfectly well how to count gestation (unlike her mouth breathing male colleagues), and that women aren't having elective abortions for sport at 37, 38, 39 weeks, and that pregnancy can be intensely life-threatening, and expensive, and yields a child that requires even more money and commitment and ability. She JUST DOES NOT CARE. She is perfectly willing to parrot GOP talking points just to gain power, even if it means women die. She's as venal as they come. Fuck her.
"'I think that Texas is going to go back and have their ... medical board look at this and say, ‘How should we deal with this?’” Haley said Tuesday. “I think every state’s going to do that.'"
1) What authority does the medical board have? Your stupid fucking lawmakers wrote the awful laws they wrote. The medical board can't add exceptions.
2) State medicals boards are notoriously bad at removing actual bad actors, unless that bad actor is running a pill mill or some other easy cut-and-dried case. Complex politics is not their thing.
3) THIS IS YOUR PARTY'S FUCKING FAULT, YOU CLEAN UP YOUR DAMN MESS FOR A CHANGE.