Republicans Want To Charge Women Who Get Abortions, With Murder.

Republican legislators just don't care that women in abortion ban states are suffering and dying thanks to their laws. In fact, they'd like to execute women who undergo abortions.

Photo by Dev Asangbam on Unsplash

Like so much of Donald Trump and the MAGA’s agenda - cruelty is the point.

The president who swore during his campaign that abortion would be left to the states, is just fine that Republicans in seven states have introduced legislation that would charge women who get abortions, with murder.

Put Kentucky, Idaho, Indiana, South Carolina, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Texas on your Hall of Shame lists. The zealous Republican lawmakers in those states aren’t satisfied that they have all have passed strict abortion bans, they are salivating at the opportunity to arrest women, throw them in jail and punish them with execution.

And guess what - all those states except North Dakota have the death penalty.

Idaho Sen. Brandon Shippy, a Republican who introduced a bill like this last month proudly bragged that it would give embryos and fetuses the same legal defenses and protections as any living human, who was already born.

“Homicide laws should apply equally to the preborn,” he announced. The term “preborn” is a favorite of anti abortionists , who use it to describe any fertilized egg from the moment of conception. They want those eggs, embryos and fetuses to have equal rights to live as their mothers.

But Shippy’s thirst to see women strapped into the electric chair or be injected with lethal drugs , isn’t all he is fantasizing about.

His Bill could authorize law enforcement to investigate women who have miscarriages, in case they actually had an abortion.

Considering that 10-20% of all pregnancies end in a miscarriage, Idaho police could be exceptionally busy conducting murder investigations into every woman in the state who miscarries,if the law passes.

The fact that Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers throughout the country have zero understanding of what goes into women’s reproductive healthcare, hasn’t stopped them from passing abortion bans in 20 states in most cases without exceptions for rape, incest the health of the mother or for fatal fetal anomalies.

REPUBLICANS WANT TO MONITOR WOMEN’S PREGNANCIES

And now they’d really to turn their states into police states which monitor every women’s pregnancy.

How chilling and just downright creepy is that.

Speaking of miscarriages, I myself had two. I was heartbroken after each since they were much-wanted pregnancies. My first miscarriage started when I was in Europe covering fashion shows.

I was about six weeks pregnant and sitting in the Milan airport waiting while my flight to Paris was delayed for hours. It was awful. I was cramping, bleeding and depressed that I was losing the baby I wanted, but at least I didn’t have to worry that I might be investigated for possible murder.

Now, women in Republican - dominated states need to beware of the insidious intrusiveness that their lawmakers want into their pregnancies.

And Brandon Shippy is hardly an outlier in Trump’s Republican party. He’s the norm and Trump is setting an excellent example to all of them on the cruelty front.

He just had his Department of Justice led by anti abortion zealot Pam Bondi, drop a lawsuit, critical to saving women’s lives in Idaho and in other Red states.

The Idaho abortion ban is so strict that since Roe was overturned pregnant women with complications which placed them at risk of dying have been airlifted out of the state by hospitals, who feared they couldn’t legally save their patient’s lives.

President Joe Biden, appalled by the state’s determination to deny health-saving abortions, had sued Idaho to force its hospitals to abide by the 1986 federal EMTALA ( Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) and provide terminations to pregnant women so they would survive and also avoid serious health consequences.

The federal EMTALA Law requires all hospitals in the country to provide stabilizing care to patients, even if that requires an abortion.

So it’s bye bye to this protection for pregnant women if you live in Idaho, Texas or any other Red abortion ban state. Your pregnancies just got even more dangerous.

Now as Trump/ Elon and the Republicans promise to devastate Medicaid medical coverage for 80 million Americans including millions of children, none of them give one hoot about the soaring deaths of the pregnant and post pregnant women, who are their constituents.

For example, maternal mortality for White Alabamans rocketed up 76% between 2018 and 2021 and for Black Alabamans , deaths skyrocketed 86%. Meanwhile, in Texas, maternal mortality rates leaped 56% between 2019 and 2022, following the implementation of the state’s two abortion bans.

The bottom line is that Republicans think pregnant women’s lives are worth less than those of their fetuses and when it gets right down to it - women ( our ) lives are expendable.

TRUMP NOMINATES ANTI ABORTION FANATIC TO HEAD CDC

Donald Trump sadly did an extremely effective job of confusing millions of women about his abortion stance. They fell for his claim that he didn’t plan to restrict abortion even more than he already had, when he appointed the three right wing justices who overturned Roe.

But now, on top of dropping the federal lawsuit to enforce EMTALA, he just appointed Dr David Weldon, an anti vaxxer and longtime anti abortion crusader, to be the Director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Weldon is a former Republican Congressman from Long Island who introduced the Weldon Amendment in 20025, which made it legal ( long before state abortion bans) for medical providers to refuse to provide women with abortion care and even any information about abortion, if it contradicted their own personal beliefs.

So if you thought Trump had been too busy siding with Putin against Ukraine, imposing tariffs on Canada, threatening to take over Greenland and dismantling the federal government to turn his attention to abortion - you thought wrong.

He’s gleefully put Weldon on the case of further dismantling your abortion access, even if you live in a Blue state or one that’s passed a constitutional amendment to protect your rights.

In other words, he lied - surprise, surprise - about his intent to not restrict abortion at the national level. If you believe that, I’ve got a Trump crypto coin to sell you.

And with Trump’s lust for cruelty setting an example from the White House, get prepared for his fan boy Republican state legislators to pass laws in more states that subject women to homicide charges if they get abortions.

Don’t kid yourselves - punishing women who as a group voted 53% for Kamala Harris - is very much Trump’s point.