The Nays of Texas
Governor Goodhair and his pet legislature — and his batshit crazee lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst — go back at it today with another run at their new ladyparts legislation. You can follow the chaos in real time. Or you can rely on the redoubtable Burnt Orange Report for your updates.
(You may recall that it was Dewhurst, who wants to throw college students and newspaper reporters in the clink for not respecting his authoritah, who was the “moderate” and “Establishment” Republican whom Tailgunner Ted Cruz beat like a tin drum in a primary for the U.S. Senate seat Cruz now holds. Judging by his recent actions, Dewhurst certainly remembers. To paraphrase the late George Corley Wallace, Dewhurst ain’t gonna be out-wingnutted again.)
It’s hard to see how this abomination doesn’t pass this time around. The Republicans have the votes and they’ve demonstrated that they’ll do practically anything to have their way. Anything the Democrats do is a delaying tactic. This thing will pass and then be challenged in the courts. And I will continue to despair about the prospect of the GOP’s rebranding campaign with American women. And, yes, in case you were wondering, the people behind this website are colossal dicks, as are the people — including two alleged law professors — who link to it. But today’s House Cup goes to Ross Cardinal Douthat, Bishop Of the Archdiocese Of Shutupistan, who’s pretending that he thinks this whole thing is about women’s health.
But let me briefly raise what I think might be an illuminating comparison. The pro-life movement has been pushing legislation along the lines of the bill that David filibustered for some time, but the sudden energy behind SB5 in Texas or the similar post-viability restrictions that passed the House of Representatives has a great deal to do with the recent trial of Kermit Gosnell, and the spotlight that case put on late-term abortion nationwide.
In short, bullshit. There is no “sudden energy’ among the backers of this bill. As Douthat admits, it’s been coming down the tracks in Texas for months, and, as he doesn’t admit, it’s part of a national anti-choice strategy that’s popped up along Republican legislative majorities in states as disparate as South Dakota, Mississippi, and Wisconsin. Kermit Gosnell — who is a criminal and a murderer — has nothing to do with it, nor does a concern for women’s health, which is the only thing that would have made Gosnell relevant to the discussion at all. Gosnell is an excuse, nothing more. (And, as has been pointed out by smarter people than me, the overturning of Roe would guarantee hundreds of Gosnellian clinics around the country.) And an abortion at 20 weeks is not a “late-term” abortion. Not according to the only Supreme Court decision that still matters, anyway. The “illuminating comparison” that Douthat draws fails on this point. The push for gun regulation in the wake of Newtown actually was a reaction to a specific event. Gun control was a dead parrot before then. (The president was getting F’s from the Brady Campaign.) Absent Newtown, the push doesn’t happen. Bills like the one in Texas are part of a national strategy that has been in operation in the states since long before anyone ever heard of Kermit Gosnell because they are part of a national strategy to deprive American women of a constitutional right to choose. And that’s been rolling since His Eminence was fending off drunky coeds on the wrong side of the Charles.
More: The Nays of Texas