After Losing in the Supreme Court, Abortion Foes Turn to Desperate Distortion
The recent Supreme Court decision in Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, where the justices struck down a slew of Texas regulations severely limiting abortion access on the grounds that they were medically unnecessary, has been a devastating one for the anti-choice movement. Decades of trying to convince the public that an embryo the size of a walnut is the equivalent of an actual baby hadn’t moved the needle of public opinion on abortion. Now the notion that abortion needed to be regulated out of existence to protect “women’s health” — the anti-choice argument before the court — was shot down.
There are limits, in the United States, to how much lying you can get away with in your legislative maneuvering.
The anti-choice movement has been sent back to the drawing board. The two strategies abortion foes appear to have settled on are come up with are, first, trying to trick people into thinking embryos are babies and then trying to trick people into thinking abortion is too medically dangerous to be allowed.
They’re turning, in other words, to the very strategies that have failed them before. But the new spins anti-choicers put on these old ideas reek of desperation, though even their worst ideas can do some damage to abortion access in red states before they finally sputter out politically.