CommentsCOMMENTARY-If you are a man living in the Lone Star State today, there are a number of challenges you could face on your way to an abortion. . .
If your wife has been diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy that requires the fetus to be aborted, or she will die. If she dies before term, the state can keep her body on machines so that the baby can live.
Or you can face the justice of your neighbors suing you for $10,000 a pop.
If your significant other is Black and therefore three times more likely to die in childbirth than if she were white. And as a Black woman growing up in the south with limited medical care, she has a significantly greater chance for gestational diabetes and subsequent risks.
Or you can head to Canada or Europe where there are proper healthcare systems, and they recognize a woman’s right to control her own body.
If increased demand for foster care for unwanted babies leads the state to require the mother or her family to assume all financial responsibility, and there are already too many mouths to feed and bodies to clothe let alone consider educating.
Perhaps killing the mother-to-be would be a better choice – two less mouths to feed and, if you are white and have half a brain, you have a significantly greater chance of not being convicted at all.
The self-styled god of Texas, aka Governor Gregg Abbot who signed Senate Bill 8 into law, stated unequivocally that rape would not be an exception because, and I quote:
“Rape is a crime and Texas will work tirelessly to make sure we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.”
Huh? After they’ve raped? Clearly, the only way to ensure the elimination of rape would be to castrate all men who reside in or who enter the state.
Would you stay or emigrate?
Just think, with the expected egress that would follow that edict there would be the added benefit of significantly reducing oilfield workers thus reducing global warming and, in general, providing more and better-paying jobs for all women remaining in Texas.
On the other hand, with so many businesses suffering a significant lack of applicants for minimum-wage jobs, SB 8 and the resultant population growth could be the answer to the prayers of McDonalds and IHOP and others facing staffing shortages in low-paying positions.
In fact, why not make it mandatory for every Texan to produce at least eight children. To ensure an adequate retirement for the man of the mansion, keep the little woman barefoot and pregnant.
(Liz Amsden is an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.) Photo: Sergio Flores, Getty Images via AFP/ File. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
