Alabama Republicans Propose Homicide Prosecutions for Abortion, Pregnancy Loss

Plus: A Dallas man has allegedly murdered a woman for traveling to have an abortion

May 12, 2023

Here’s another edition of Hard to Believe It’s Only Tuesday, a weekly roundup of the top headlines, tweets (for now!), toks, takes, and more in abortion news. You can always email me ([email protected]) or DM me on instagram with action items, takes, and news clips.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’m going on actual, real-ass vacation next week, so unless some significant abortion-related news breaks, I won’t be sending out another edition of HTBIOT until 5/26. Thanks for your patience; I am really tired and looking forward to some time off!

The big takeaway: Popular support for abortion has only grown since the Trump-majority Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs. Poll after poll shows people in general — including Republican voters! — believe clinical abortion, especially early abortion and medication abortion, should be legal and accessible.

Because of this, anti-abortion politicians have resorted to a number of anti-democratic, dark-of-night style efforts to pass abortion bans that they know are deeply unpopular with voters. This is risky, but if it pays off — if they can succeed at banning abortion before the public has a meaningful chance to organize enough to push back — then there’s a whole domino effect of benefits for folks who see forced pregnancy and forced birth as a means to dominate, manipulate, and silence women and transgender and non-binary folks.

The fact that abusers — such as this Dallas man who court records say shot his girlfriend for getting an abortion, or this Galveston man who is suing his ex-wife’s friends for allegedly helping her purchase abortion pills — have seized the new abortion landscape as a means to terrorize their partners shows very starkly how the loss of reproductive autonomy and dignity can be used as a means of control in our personal and private lives.

It has a very similar effect in public:

  • the loss of reproductive autonomy is exhausting, demoralizing, and shame- and stigma-inducing

  • which foments hopelessness, fear, and burnout

  • which makes some people angry (maybe risky!) but also makes them feel helpless

  • which makes them feel disempowered — what’s the point, anyway?

  • which opens the door to normalization and acceptance — this is just the way things are now

  • which allows Republicans and right-wingers to push through even more oppressive restrictions on bodily autonomy and health care

Voter suppression and gerrymandering have already greased the skids for a lot of this stuff — now they’re pushing the cart on down the tracks. It doesn’t matter how unpopular abortion restrictions are with the general public when the general public’s input is neither required nor requested. Permitting the prosecution of abortion and pregnancy loss as homicide, as Alabama Republicans proposed to do this week, is awful enough on its face. But abortion bans and pregnancy criminalization have expansive benefits for lawmakers who like their voters cowed and compliant.

That’s not just anti-democratic; it’s explicitly fascist.

The Top Headlines

  • Jezebel’s Susan Rinkunas points out the bar is so low as to be on the ground when it comes to praising Republicans for not doing the absolute most to ban all abortions forever: “Of the three Republicans who blocked a near-total ban, two voted for a separate six-week ban—which is also pretty much a near-total abortion ban, as it’s before many people even realize they’re pregnant. Make it make sense.”

The Tweets/Toks/Grams

  • This week, the Atlantic published a profile of Dr. Warren Hern, who provides later abortion care in Colorado, that I can only describe as deeply, deeply strange and kind of weirdly hostile. I can’t say I necessarily recommend reading it! But I appreciated a couple of folks’ reactions/expansions to the piece, including this from @RHAVOTE on Twitter, about not erasing other compassionate later abortion providers from the conversation, and this thread from Sex, Culture, Power writer T.S. Mendola on holding space for the breadth of later abortion experiences.

Know someone who needs a little pro-abortion activism in their life, as a treat?

The Fuck Are We Supposed to Do About It?

Goodnight and good dunk — Author John Scalzi is not having this bullshit in Ohio!

That’s all for this week. I’m sure I’ve missed something you’d like to see featured in this roundup, for I am but one woman with a computer and an abortion-news-induced drinking problem. Holler at me — [email protected], or DM me on Instagram, and I’ll try to add follow-ups as I’m able.