Originally published at: The Remains of the Day… Every Day: Texas's batshit abortion law | Boing Boing
Welcome to another edition of “Mystery No Science Theatre 3000.” In this episode, the Texas Department of State Health Services, (a place where medical evidence is given the same weight as the results of a Magic 8 ball) has approved a regulation that requires burials for ALL fetal tissue that comes from a miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or an abortion performed at a Texas healthcare facility.
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If Conservative men could get pregnant, we’d have FREE Abortion Clinics on every street corner in the USA with drive up windows!
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Henry Morgentaler isn’t with us anymore, but we can still quote him: “God is the greatest abortionist of all.” He was referring to the 80% of all miscarriages that happen in the first few weeks of a pregnancy – often before the woman even knows she’s pregnant. She’ll have, maybe, a slightly later/slightly heavier period as an indication, and that’s that.
Under a law like this, any sexually active woman who isn’t using birth control (or who is but still gets periods) should, to ensure they’re being law-abiding, a funeral every month for her menses, just to be sure. Alternatively, she’d have to submit her menses for examination to see if she had had an early-term miscarriage, to determine whether or not she needed to hold a funeral.
How’s that going to fly with Christian couples? Or any couple who’s trying to conceive?
I hate to say it, but this law almost sounds like it needs to pass and then affect the close relatives of the legislators before they’ll finally understand just how batshit it really is.
Meanwhile, of course, the only men affected are responsible grown-ups who want to be fathers.
Obligatory:
Every Sperm Is Sacred https://g.co/kgs/BdBTX5
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How will it affect them?
If you’re the close family of a legislator, you can afford to jump through all the loops and restrictions. Or to travel to a place where you don’t have to.
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Sigh. Of course you’re right. I suppose it’s wrong of me, but I’d really love these politicians to see the evil they wield sometime.
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Does this include the 50% of all fertilized eggs that fail to implant to begin with?
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Good point! If I’m understanding the summary of the law correctly, they’d have to be included as well, no?
“Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Doe, two of the implants were viable! You’re pregnant! Now, before we discuss the birth plan, let’s discuss the funeral for the embryos that didn’t make it…”
Then there’s the absorbed embryos from “vanishing twin syndrome”:
No wonder the funeral industry doesn’t want in. The volume increase is going to be hell to manage.
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God damn Sharia Law!
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Dear Texas Legislator:
I got my dead hamster cremated and put in a box pretty darn cheap. Would taking the fetus to the vet’s be OK?
–Curious
sigh
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Very public funerals for bloody tampons would make quite the protest I reckon.
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Should this go into effect we make sure every person who voted for this is invited to every single funeral it causes. Let them see the grieving and their hardships and see how long they go before they get it.
My wife and I personally went through a loss that would have triggered this law. We had enough hell to go through without needing a legally mandated funeral to punctuate it.
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I’d actually like to see them mailed to the governor with a note telling him he can bury them himself if he thinks it’s so important.
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That’s one of the worst aspects of this. Nobody voted for it. It’s a bureaucratic regulation, not a law.
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It’s a good plan. Apparently, a man is technically as likely as a woman to carry an ectopic pregnancy to term. There are four cases on Wikipedia where the mother and the ectopic fetus survived. We’re going to need a turkey baster, a hypodermic, and a crossbow.
It’s crazy … but it might just work.
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Guess Greg Abbot and the Health commission get all those invitations, then.
Looks like I have some reading to do and then some writing to do to the governor.
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Years ago a British humorist wrote a book about what would happen if it was men that got pregnant. I’ve long loaned or lost my copy, but his argument was that all of a sudden low cost childcare would rise, paternity leave would be long, and women would rapidly revert to being kept under restrictions to prevent them from accidentally inseminating men.
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There are 500,000 miscarriages a year in the US. 17% of pregnancies end in a miscarriage. If a woman has 2 kids she has something like a 35% chance of having had a miscarriage.
There are 2.4 million funerals a year in the US.
If actually evenly enforced (which won’t happen) everyone would soon know a woman forced to have a funeral for a miscarriage, and 20% of Texas funerals would be these shams.
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Texas and Texans are weird. They have this over inflated view of themselves and there conservatism is like anti-logic.
Texas has been a pain in America’s ass for a while. What are we going to do about? How do we turn that state?
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No to mention that their districts are a gerrymander twisted mess.
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Can’t we just get a saw and Floridize Texas?
What’s that? Louisiana and Mississippi and maybe Alabama would have to go, too?
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