Here's What I Have To Say About That

Louisiana passed a "trigger law" that will criminalize abortion if and when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Funny how no one on the right REALLY believed the protestations of Alito and Roberts that they still hadn't made their minds up about abortion. As soon as the Dems bought into that fiction and confirmed them, wacko states began criminalizing abortion left and right.

As everyone knows, criminalizing abortion won't prevent abortion any more than, perhaps even less than, criminalizing speeding or using pot or hiring prostitutes has eliminated those practices. Abortion used to be criminalized in America and there were still abortions. (In fact, some of the earliest recorded uses for various herbs were for abortiofactents. Abortion has been around almost as long as sex has been around and is a humane alternative to exposure. People are wired to have sex and sex sometimes results in unwanted pregnancy. You can no more change that than you can change the fact that people are wired to eat, breathe, and eliminate.) So what IS the point to criminalizing it?

In theory, and it's mostly theory, AFAICT, criminalizing something, say robbing banks, allows us to lock up those inclined to rob banks, thereby making the world safe for banks. There's another theory, that, AFAICT, doesn't have much factual support that by criminalizing bank robbing we can punish bank robbers, thereby discouraging erstwhile bank robbers. Maybe. Maybe not. But are we really going to put mothers in the electric chair when they "murder" their fetus so that they can support the other children they already have? Throw them in jail and give their children to good upstanding xians to raise? I guarandamntee you we won't be executing or jailing white male doctors who perform abortions. So there's no "deterrent" effect to be had.

No. What criminalizing abortion will do is result in death. Death by back-alley abortion. And, here's a clue: not only does back-alley abortion often kill or maim the woman -- which is what the fundie xians want; they desperately want to punish women for being sexual beings -- but it usually kills or maims the fetus, as well. Culture of life, my ass. It also creates, in the same way that drug laws have created, a criminal class of people willing to charge a lot of money to help people get something illegal that they want or need. Let's face it, we could start selling pot in drugstores and gas stations tomorrow and all that would happen is pushers wouldn't get to charge so much for it. Ditto abortion.

We all know that we could reduce the number of abortions in this country if someone thought that were a worthwhile goal. There are a number of factors associated with low abortion rates: education for girls; free, safe, effective, and accessible birth control, real sex education, and, interestingly, liberal abortion laws. But the fundies who are hell-bound to criminalize abortion hate all those things, as well.

Well, women and fetuses are going to die in back-alley abortions in Louisiana. You know, I'd have imagined that Louisiana had better things to do with its legislative time and with its dollars (you think that defending this nonsense won't cost the State money? It will. So will enforcing it. So will dealing with the women who are "only" maimed for life.) than this. Something about levees, maybe.