IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE WHAT SHAMELESS PIGS AND LIARS
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE REPUBLICAN HYPOCRITES ARE.
What is an old fashioned anti-abortion fundamentalist Christian to do?
The days that Republicans
could say they were pro-life and forget about the details are over.
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The Life at Conception Act
is the legal jewel in the anti-abortion crown, a federal law that would
recognize a fertilized egg – Alabama’s so-called extrauterine child – as a
human being with all the rights and protections provided to the rest of us
under the 14th Amendment. The Life at Conception
Act, which has no exceptions for IVF or any other fertility treatments, would
amount to an automatic nationwide ban on abortions with no exceptions for rape,
incest, or the health of the mother.
The law would override
state laws permitting abortion. In states with limits on abortion, such
as a ban after six or 15 weeks, the law would cancel those time limits as well.
It’s an extreme
anti-abortion law that would take the end of Roe v. Wade to the next level, completely taking away a woman’s right to
control her own reproductive life in every state in the Union.
For 125 House Republicans
who have co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, and the 19 Senators who
signed onto an identical bill in the last Congress, the act was a
no-brainer. If you were a
Republican and you called yourself pro-life, you were for the Life at
Conception Act, no questions asked.
Until now.
This week the Alabama
Supreme Court’s decision declaring every fertilized egg a person immediately
called into question the status of all the fertilized eggs at fertility clinics
in the state and caused the closing of several, among them, the state’s most
prominent. The Alabama decision flipped the anti-abortion script.
The question became, “do you support in vitro fertilization?”, and Republican
hands started popping up all over. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, an
avowed Christian Nationalist who made his sponsorship of the Life at Conception
Act a signature part of his agenda which includes support for the establishment
of a national religion – Christianity, natch – raised his hand along with all
the other Republicans who have found “Reverse” on their gear shifts.
On Thursday, Johnson was
still pushing for co-mingling of Biblical principles in our system of secular
laws and supporting overturning laws legalizing homosexual acts and same-sex
marriage. If asked he thought frozen embryos were children as the Life at
Conception Act says they are, he would have high-fived you. But by Friday evening, Johnson was fulsomely praising
the very thing Alabama had just banned. “I believe the life of every
single child has inestimable dignity and value,” Johnson squeaked. “That
is why I support I.V.F. treatment, which has been a blessing for many moms and
dads who have struggled with fertility.”
You will note that Mike
limited his support of IVF to “moms and dads.” Gay and lesbian couples
who want children using IVF? Not so much.
The days that
Republicans could say they were pro-life and forget about the details are over.
It turns out that being anti-abortion wasn’t about the fetus as much as
it was about the votes. Today, the anti-abortion movement is all about trying
to find a way through the minefield the issue has become for them. Laws
about abortion in red states have turned into a pick-your-timeframe
smorgasbord.
Republicans who used to
say they are pro-life are all of a sudden for abortion but with caveats.
Take Donald Trump, who this week was exposed trying to carve out a new position
for himself that split the difference and as he put it, “make everyone happy.”
Trump is all for aborting fetuses up to 16 weeks of pregnancy. Then he’s
against abortion. In Florida, they’re pro-abortion up to 15 weeks, but
only for the time being, while a new law works its way through the courts
making abortion illegal after six weeks. Some red states, like Arkansas
and Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana, have banned abortion completely,
without exceptions for rape or incest. Other states have limits. In
Arizona, abortion is legal up to 15 weeks; in Georgia, it’s legal up to six
weeks; in Nebraska it's legal up to 12 weeks; in Ohio, aborting a fetus is
legal up to 22 weeks, but after that it’s illegal with no exceptions for rape
or incest; same with Wisconsin, where abortion is legal up to 22 weeks, and after
that, it’s illegal except to save the life of the mother, but not for reasons
of rape or incest.
Do you see what’s going
on here? Republicans are against
abortion except when they’re not. When the vote wind is being blown by
suburban woman, some Republicans find a way to legalize abortion up to some
arbitrary number of weeks. Republicans appear to be out there like fishermen,
casting their lines for votes: Hey, I got a bite at 12 weeks! The
Republican down the river hooks his votes at 15 weeks!
They’re all looking for
a sweet spot with the abortion issue, and where they land depends, as ever, on
what state we’re in. Trump seems to be
betting he can con women by making abortion legal up to 16 weeks, a new number
Trump pulled out of the air. But give him some time, and he’ll find
another number, once he’s stuck his finger in the air and checked which way the
votes are blowing.
Whatever they pick – and
by “they,” I mean Republican state legislators and governors and candidates
like Trump – at the tick of the clock past midnight on the last day of that
arbitrary number, the fetus magically becomes a child and you can’t abort it,
because…well, because Republicans say so, that’s why.
It's going to be fun
watching Republicans running for the exits from the Life at Conception Act,
because last week Alabama started a fire and anyone clinging to it is going to
get burned. You’d like to think, wouldn’t you, that somehow Republicans are
coming to their senses on the issue of reproductive rights, but that is not
what’s happening. Instead, they’ve got their metal detectors out and
they’re waving them across the ground in front of them trying to find their way
through the minefield they’ve created for themselves.
Yesterday, Republicans
thought they could moderate their anti-abortion position by giving an inch on
exceptions for rape or incest. Today, it’s IVF. But the truth is,
they don’t believe anything they say about when life begins, or when a fetus
becomes a child, or when a legal abortion should suddenly become illegal.
Despite the best efforts of Republicans like Mike Johnson to yap about abortion
out of one side of their mouths and Jesus out of the other, abortion isn’t
about morality, it’s about votes.
Watch these
shapeshifters. IVF bit them in the ass, and they don’t want to get bitten
again. We’re going to need X-ray vision to find our way through the fog
of Republican obfuscation and quick-change reversals and outright
red-in-the-face lies ahead of us.
