Based on any reasonable interpretation of Texas law, the highway cop who stopped Brandy Bottone on a Dallas thoroughfare asked the wrong question.
Instead of, “License, insurance and vehicle registration,” he should have asked, “Do you have an embryo inside you? And what do you plan to do with it?”
As the news story reported, Bottone was carrying one of those inside her — yes, pregnant, which makes it Texas’ business.
The story was that the officer ticketed Bottone for using a high-occupancy lane without a passenger. She fought it on a novel interpretation of post-Roe law.
She said she was in the rightful lane because she was pregnant.
Texas Republican lawmakers and Gov. Greg Abbott have inserted themselves into women’s lives with the whole fetus-as-person matter. That meant, Bottone said, that she had multiple passengers in her car. The ticket was dismissed.
Welcome to the made-to-order mess that is state intrusion into the most delicate and important matter imaginable.
A handful of Texas counties have passed ordinances making it illegal for women seeking abortions to come through their confines in route to get to other states for the procedure.
Question: Will the Embryonic Highway Patrol insist that female motorists pee on a stick?
What about a six-pack of embryos on ice in the passenger seat?
The GOP now is the BGP — Big Government Party — when it comes to the most important decision anyone will make: becoming a parent.
Alabama’s Supreme Court just made government bigger and more intrusive by pronouncing frozen embryos people.
This jeopardizes the practice of in vitro fertilization – which, contrary to Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s understanding, is not about making gridirons greener.
Many Republicans since have come out in favor of IVF, but many on the religious right see a new opportunity for states to further interfere.
An influential few would be happy to return the nation to the days before Griswold v. Connecticut, where the Supreme Court told states they could not ban birth control.
The fact is that we are in a moment where a minority of a minority is calling the shots.
This is not limited to abortion rights, supported by the vast majority of Americans.
It applies to gun safety and gun proliferation. It applies to climate change and environmental protection. It applies to common-sense public health measures like vaccines.
But let’s get back to embryos.
Until this untenable point, the most egregious example of minority rule was George W. Bush’s prohibition on embryonic stem cell research.
What a dubious debate that was, considering that many embryos in question were destined for the waste bin.
A lot of important research was slowed by those who insisted we itemize how many angels could be hosted on the head of a pin.
Most Americans wanted to save lives instead.
The fate of IVF is analogous to how the religious right has contaminated public policy about reproductive health.
On the news, I heard Sen. Lindsey Graham say that no way, no how, would Republicans prohibit birth control. He didn’t ask Justice Clarence Thomas about that.
In fact, “pro-life” extremists are staunchly opposed to the birth control pill. They label it an abortifacient, misrepresenting what it does, just as they do by falsely linking abortion to breast cancer.
It’s part of the Right-to-Lie (no typo there) strategy. Like MAGA, this political force isn’t interested in truth. It is interested in having its way.
Speaking of birth control: By providing contraception to so many, particularly those of low incomes, Planned Parenthood has prevented more abortions than any single player on the globe. Yet the Republican Party carries out a blood vendetta.
Planned Parenthood also provides fertility counseling – yes, Sen. Tuberville, “more babies” – including referral for IVF.
Long ago I wrote that whenever a politician – or next-door neighbor, if you dare – claims to be “pro-life,” we should respond, “Be specific.”
Abortion banned even in cases of rape or incest? What to do about frozen embryos?
If you oppose abortion, do you support birth control? Comprehensive sex education?
If not, your cause is penalizing sex and monitoring the movement of zygotes.
John Young is a longtime Texas newspaperman who now lives in Fort Collins, Colo. Email jyoungcolumn@gmail.com. See johnyoungcolumn.com.
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2024
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