Thanks to social media and global news, it was heard even here in Australia. This week, Governor of Alabama Kay Ivey signed the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, a bill that could see doctors who perform abortions imprisoned for 99 years, into law, to protests across the US. My first thought here is of the irony that a woman governor, although unsurprisingly a Republican one, could legislate this. It's also the most prominent abortion-related legal or political decision in the US since the historic Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court one in 1973 (which, in fairness, also happened under a Republican government). I'm pro-choice although I have never personally had any experience with matters like abortion, but I digress. The AHLPA is not law yet.
It will likely face a very delayed implementation given the legal red tape it will probably encounter, based on previous anti-abortion legislation in America and the fact that not one of the six other American states that have enacted similar bills during the Trump administration have seen them implemented. I will lament the day they are.
Turning to one of those states, Ohio's GOP Governor Mike DeWine last month introduced the Human Rights Protection Act, which states women and girls, even ones as young as 11, must bear their rapists' babies. How much more misogynistic and cruel can you get than that? 11-year-olds themselves are still growing, so to have at that age something growing inside you which you'd have to push out would be unimaginably painful to me, I think, even were I female.
Women and girls all deserve to have the final say on what happens with or to their bodies. Now, I don't want to override that sentiment here but I want to end this post on a (perhaps) happy note with a comment on another abortion-related news item. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2017 acquired text messages from Republican pro-life representative Tim Murphy revealing that he asked his mistress to terminate her pregnancy. This week, he resigned his post.
Sources:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/15/politics/alabama-abortion-bill-fact-check/index.html
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/eric-zorn/ct-perspec-zorn-abortion-rape-heartbeat-ohio-child-argentina-20190509-story.html?fbclid=IwAR33niUx4shNxHUyQom5KrZHihyusL0IsZfhiRMuLLBMjeuO8aKHM40JapY
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/anti-abortion-rep-tim-murphy-asked-mistress-terminate/story?id=50274843
No comments:
Post a Comment