The Cruelty is the Point, Part 11,813,749: What Hath Alabama Wrought?

I booked a hotel room a couple of months ago. A few weeks ago, I booked a car and used some rewards points to book a flight. I was excited because I was finally, after 9 years, returning to Columbia for Homecoming. After all, it is the 20^th anniversary of my time on Homecoming Steering Committee. But my excitement to visit had a bucket of cold water thrown on it.

What happened was the government of the state of Missouri decided to join Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Mississippi, and Kentucky in the enactment of draconian limitations on access to abortion. Granted, Missouri did not go as far as Alabama did (no one has) and is still two weeks short of the others in the hard limit it set. But the principal motive underlying the bill as enacted is the same.

It’s not because these (mostly) older, white men care about babies or the “unborn”. That may be the public stance that they take. But that’s not what the purpose of these laws are.

The purpose is control.

The purpose is subjugation of women.

The purpose is to consolidate power, in their minds, by not allowing for freedom of movement; not allowing for freedom for women to make informed decisions and control their own destinies.

They use terms like “abortifacient” to describe things like birth control (like, the pill. Which is not an abortifacient; anyone who has taken a basic health course knows this.). They use terms like “consensual rape.” They do things like voting down amendments to bills that seek to remove the legal act of marital rape.

They hold zygotes and fetuses up as some sort of totemic ideal example of an innocent, and yet continually vote down measures that seek to improve the lives of those children who are not born with means and need support;

who need access to quality health care to survive in the womb and outside once born;

who, once born, could be best served with safe, affordable childcare so their families can work;

who, once born, need the best teachers and educators they can get so they can become intelligent contributors to society.

None of that seems to matter, apparently.

Never mind the fact that they seek to assign more legal rights to a still forming brain in a womb than to the woman that has a fully formed one.

These abortion bills (the Alabama one in particular) are part of a larger play to overturn Roe v. Wade. This is why they want(ed) to pack the court. It’s why Merrick Garland never had a chance at a hearing. It’s why Mitch McConnell wanted to change rules for seating judges so they could appoint more young, extreme justices to lifetime federal appointments.

Again, control.

Make it harder to get an abortion. Don’t teach sexual education. Make contraception harder to access (and refer to it incorrectly every chance you get, as they already do). Oh, and make sure that those who were to break this law are considered felons and then they lose their voting rights.

It’s about 18,000 layers of bullshit. And it’s angering and frustrating and terrifying to watch play out because so far, the game has tilted in their favor. Maybe there is a 1 in 14,000,000 chance of pulling this one out. But I don’t have the time stone; I can’t see that many possible futures to figure out the best path forward.