Texas and the Taliban making headlines for terrorizing women

vasectomybill

Women should have general strikes whenever the rethugs confirm their repulsive idea that we have 3rd class status.

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Yeah, that’s the nature of anti-abortion laws, but what’s weird about this one is they’ve also effectively criminalized everything around pregnancy as well. Anyone perceived as being even tenuously connected to an assumed abortion (even if it was a miscarriage, even if there was no pregnancy to begin with), or even the idea of abortion, is now a target, because of the whole “aiding and abetting” bit combined with the bounty system. It makes it all so unpredictable and weirder than just a straight anti-abortion law.

Also, it ain’t even a solution. Abbott and this dude

don’t care if people stop fucking.

The point is that any entity offering (legal) abortions, or even just appearing abortion-adjacent, will get driven out of Texas/existence so fast it’ll never been an issue for Lyft drivers. (Not that there would be a high probability of lawsuits against Uber/Lyft drivers even if that wasn’t the case - there are too many more ideologically-tempting targets to go after first.)

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You do realize that the only reason we’re in this position is because the Republicans DO control the judiciary, right?

Choosing not to enforce and apply Roe v. Wade is functionally no different than overturning it.

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The fuck for?

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Not every judge everywhere.

If does leave considerably more room for independent action by local judges to decide for themseves whether or not it is constitutional. In fact, you could argue that the only opinion given by the supreme court is the minority opinion that described it as flagrantly unconstutional. It’s not binding, of course, but still, it’s the only opinon available.

Mentioned this in the other thread but it’s worth repeating here. If you can afford it, give to Planned Parenthood and/or the ACLU. I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN!!!

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If a judge doesn’t want to enforce an unconstitutional law, they don’t have to. Even a judge in the lowest civil court can say, “This is unconstitutional” and throw a case out. The supreme court has chosen not to say whether the law is or is not unconstitutional so far.

If I were a judge and a case like this came to my courtroom I would say that by deputizing individuals to enforce a law instead of having state actors doing it they are denying people the right to a fair trial and dismiss the case with costs awarded to the defendant.

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Which, after all, is literally their one job.

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I think probably the quickest way to get this law tossed is to hammer on the lack of standing of the people bringing the suites to court. A random rando has no standing to sue a doctor, or an uber driver that a woman may have used to get to the doctor’s office. A person who is not the doctor, or the woman, is not a party to the woman’s medical care or procedures, so has no standing to sue them for anything.

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You think they care about standing? We KNOW this law is full of bullshit that would not stand if that actually mattered right now.

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As a non-lawyer (and certainly non-Texas-lawyer) I’m pretty sure that the law basically gives standing explicitly and that’s something a law can do, so I’m not sure that approach would work. But I do think that judges who get these cases in their courts should dismiss the cases on whatever grounds they feel like. (Not that I think many judges in Texas would even have the inclination to do this, let alone the bravery, but they should)

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Over and above that, I’ll reiterate that the actions of the SC essentially upholding this law indicates to us that some don’t see the law as a consistent set of guidelines for shaping our lives. Rather they see it as a means of punishing people they don’t like and protecting their ability to enforce white, male supremacy on all of us. We’re no longer free. We already live in an authoritarian state if the rule of law is not applied in a way that ensures the people with the least power are protected from these kind of attacks.

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You’ve made me think of Masha Gessen and the “autocratic attempt”. The Texas government is saying, “We can do whatever we want to whoever we want, right?” the Supreme Court, rather than shutting that down, is saying, “Let’s see how this plays out.” It does seem a lot like the American Supreme Court is now in “we’ll go with the winners” mode, where they’ll back authoritarianism if they think it’s strong enough for them to back it.

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Yep. And that’s a WTF moment if ever there was one. A good reminder that we’re not out of the woods yet.

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And ironically, it’s the ‘originalists’ who are fighting for this nonsense.

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You see, it’s not the Founding Father’s original words that matter, but their original intent. And for the most part they never intended a country where women and non-white people had any real power.

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Rape victims will not be forced to have babies because Texas is going to “eliminate” rapists?

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Christ, what an asshole.

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