Many right-wingers are applauding the Texas law that bans abortions before many women even know they are pregnant.
Of course those lawmakers couldn’t stop with just an abortion ban, instead they also included an even more controversial provision that essentially leaves enforcement to private citizens through lawsuits against doctors or anyone who helps a woman get an abortion, such as the Uber driver who transports a woman to a clinic.
These same fanatics, or crazy Christers, are also the most virulent opponents of mandates for masks and vaccines. Go figure. They want to prevent the "killing" of the unborn child but the kids that will die of COVID are just collateral damage. I guess that for our right-wing politicians, including our dumb Governor DeathSantis, it is a form of classrooms' size reduction. Since early July the delta variant has sent over 2,000 children to hospitals in Florida alone, more than any other state. Gov. DeathSantis continues to stress that parents — not schools or government should decide whether kids need to mask up. These are living children risking their lives and exposing others to the virus but he is also looking into the Texas law to have the same abortion ban in Florida.
Hypocrisy and stupidity truly have no rock bottom.
People with this frame of mind are the first to make these off the wall statements: "It is about individual freedom " or “I don’t think I’d be comfortable with myself if I did something that went against my belief by getting the vaccine. It’s about liberty and having your own choice to be your own person.” Ok got it, but what about "liberty & freedom of choice" for women to control their bodies?
And as always those that will be most affected by these new laws will be the poorer segments of our society, the ones that need protection more than anybody else. The rich will always find a boutique clinic willing to perform an abortion and if not they will get on a private jet and go to a more liberal country. Maybe as a man I should not be discussing abortion since it is a woman's issue but on a large scale, men, and society at large, are also affected by it.
The effect of legalized abortion on crime for example (sometimes referred to as the Donohue-Levitt hypothesis) is the theory that legal abortion reduces crime. Proponents of the theory generally argue that since children who are unwanted or whose parents cannot care for them well are more likely to become criminals and that an inverse correlation is observed between the availability of abortion and subsequent crime. It is argued that the legalization of abortion in the U.S., largely due to Roe v. Wade, has reduced crime in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
But also, this: Roe v. Wade was a Supreme Court Decision as it was the legalization of gay marriage. How long before the same fanatics will try and take that right away from us? Think about it.
Pier Angelo was born in Italy, moved to England at the age of 17 and learned English at the Nelson School of English. He attended college and graduate school in Manhattan. In 2009 he founded SFGN with Norm Kent. Now he’s retired with his husband Tom and his Affenpinscher Cabbage. He still enjoys writing his column Off The Wall for SFGN.
