It’s a crowded market right now for bad takes on Texas’s new law banning abortion after six weeks, but MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Alene seems to have the competition beat.
“Abortion & the right to control one’s own body once galvanized a generation of women & it will happen again,” she said Wednesday after the Texas law took effect. “But my heart breaks for the girls & women who will suffer along the way.”
Though Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the pro-life measure into law in May, it didn’t go into effect until this week, after the Supreme Court declined to act on an emergency appeal to block enforcement of the measure.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the law, S.B. 8, prevents medical workers from performing or inducing abortions if they have “detected a fetal heartbeat for the unborn child,” but does provide exemptions related to medical emergencies.
The legislation also allows individuals to file civil lawsuits against anyone who provides abortions or “aids or abets” them after the detection of a heartbeat, the Washington Examiner’s Kaelan Deese reports. A lawsuit filed under this provision can yield at least $10,000 in “statutory damages” per abortion.
On Wednesday, Alene reacted, her musings going from distraught to overwrought.
“And while this may be a bad, hot take in a moment of anger that the courts failed us, it feels like there’s now a bounty on women’s heads, just like there used to be on escaped slaves,” she said.
Oh, no. What are you doing?
It shouldn’t need to be said, but here goes: No, you are not just like an escaped slave. Your womb is not the underground railroad. You are not as oppressed as you like to believe.
“I acknowledge that it’s a bad take in the sense that there is no comparison to slavery. But the bounty provision is particularly alarming in what it says about who has control over women’s lives. So no offense meant here,” Alene said.
She added, “Finally, & then I’ll try to stop, if you’re really pro-life Texas, pass measures for pre-natal care, education, nutrition, child care & other measures to improve children’s lives. Until then, this is just a political stunt.”
Is there a more delusional, self-pitying, and self-important class of person than the liberal white woman who believes she ranks among history’s greatest victims?
If there is, I’ve yet to find it.
