You have to hand it to Republican lawmakers in Texas. It wasn’t enough to force anyone with a uterus in Texas to carry to term every sperm-egg union they didn’t intercept before six weeks. They said, “I’ll raise you one,” and deputized private citizens to enforce their will on their fellow citizens’ bodies and agency, by enabling them to sue anyone who “aids and abets” those who obtain abortions and be rewarded with $10,000 or more for their trouble. At least these lawmakers had the courtesy not to allow those who have abortions to be sued directly–they’re not monsters, after all.
With this stroke of Governor Abbott’s pen, Texas may soon witness the rise of a new respectable and lucrative vocation: the pro-life bounty hunter!
Armed with Bibles and diagrams of the stages of pregnancy, this new breed of bounty hunter comes to the defense of the helpless unborn by taking to court the seedy accessories to its rampant, inhuman slaughter. Accessories such as women’s shelters, for instance, which seek to spare sexual assault survivors of piling on their trauma with a pregnancy. Other targeted accomplices may include clinics which provide accessible and affordable birth control, because nothing says ending abortion like going after providers of a public good, proven to reduce abortion rates.
Prospective defendants could be anyone from an Uber driver giving a ride to a clinic to a supportive friend offering practical help in obtaining an abortion. These folks may seem benign on the surface, but looks are deceiving–beneath the friendly facade is a heart of ice and a callous disregard for the life of the unborn.
Many of these plaintiffs will undoubtedly be the same folks who stand outside abortion clinics and show their love for women making personal medical decisions, by screaming “murderer!” in their faces and waving images purported to be of aborted fetuses in their faces. If you’re lucky enough to be accosted by these folks on your way into a medical clinic, you might even be treated to an analogy of your choice about your body to the Holocaust. What better way to convey your love for someone at their most vulnerable? And if you’re trans or non-binary and assigned female at birth, the pro-life crowd shows you even more love, telling you the very being of who you are is a sin in the eyes of God.
Now, these valiant warriors, these sidewalk prophets, these defenders of the sanctity of life have a new means of forwarding their agenda. We’re about to see a swarm of self-appointed protectors of the unborn flooding the courts of Texas, thwarting those attempting to slaughter their preborn children for selfish reasons, such as having conceived via rape, or not having the money to care for a child, or wanting basic autonomy over their own body.
Those who carry out this noble work do so with no other motive than the goodness of their hearts, as well as that $10,000 they owe to the IRS, or that they lost gambling on scratch-offs and lotto. Some might even have such a modest background as a washed-up, formerly incarcerated, disbarred anti-tax lawyer who filed one of the first lawsuits under this new legislation.
Others have proven themselves true devotees to the pro-life cause, and have the credentials to back it up. They may have even volunteered for efforts to support some of those they want to force to give birth, in taking care of those lives they saved. Sure, such volunteering could be for some crisis pregnancy center that isn’t even a real medical clinic, tricks vulnerable women into thinking they are an abortion clinic, and couldn’t distinguish an embryo from an IUD on an ultrasound. But hey, at least it’s something.
Rumor has it that Florida is entertaining similar legislation, which is fitting, since this reads like something out of a Carl Hiaasen novel. Hiaasen is probably torn between horrified and grateful for the material to write his next biting Florida satire. Margaret Atwood, on the other hand, likely sits in Canada shaking her head at us freedom-loving Americans, wondering, “Did they learn nothing from my book?”
If you are considering becoming a pro-life bounty hunter, to commend you for your display of selflessness and sacrifice, I propose we attach a rider to S.B. 8: anyone who brings forth one of these lawsuits is required to adopt the babies they save once they are born. On the surface, you might deem it unreasonable to make you responsible for a child, without factoring in whether you are ready for a child, or want a child. But since neither of those factors seem to matter to you where someone facing an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is concerned, surely you will come to find it a reasonable provision.
And in your case, at least you’ll have a choice.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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