We *Must* Organize - Dobbs Was Only the Beginning

I am amazed at the ability of some people to ignore what is going on around them and simply choose to believe what they want to believe instead of seeking out actual facts. These would be the people that tell me that I’m a fearmonger because – they believe - Dobbs didn’t eliminate the right to abortion (it did), it just sent it back to the states (which makes it the states’ option, not a woman’s right). Or that the Court said the right to abortion was the only right on the table (it didn’t) and none of the other rights to privacy are under threat (they are). So let’s lay this out a bit.

Since Dobbs was handed down, legislation has been proposed in the House to:

protect a woman’s right to abortion – opposed by 99% of Republicans;

protect the right to contraception – opposed by 96% of Republicans;

protect marriage equality – opposed by 77% of Republicans;

protect the right to cross state lines to obtain an abortion – opposed by 97% of Republicans

(special thanks to Heather Cox Richardson for the above statistics).

None of that proposed legislation is likely to pass, because Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia says he won’t vote for them - Senate Republicans are just as opposed to those fundamental rights as House Republicans.

In the weeks since Dobbs, seven states have introduced personhood-at-conception laws, which will ban all abortions in all circumstances, because they grant a fertilized egg the same Constitutional rights as a living, breathing person. Which means, among other things, that IVF will be pretty much impossible– taking away a woman’s right to choose “yes” to pregnancy, as well as “no”. It also raises quite a few questions about the other rights a fertilized egg would have, but mainly it seems that the rights would belong not to the egg, but to to the state, which gains the right to detain and punish the woman carrying a fertilized egg. It’s actually been happening all along, but personhood bills would a) give the Supreme Court the opportunity they crave to ban all abortions in all circumstances by claiming abortion is unconstitutional; and b) expand the criminalization of pregnancy and miscarriage into mainstream law enforcement.

Now that these concerns are being publicized, some states are scrambling to carve out exceptions for instances like ectopic pregnancies, defining ending an ectopic pregnancy as “not really an abortion at all”, which only goes to prove that the legislators writing laws to govern women’s bodies are pretty much ignorant of the bodies and biological processes they are so intent on controlling. Because, you see, they want to define abortion, which is healthcare, as murder. And when you define a pregnancy that has no hope of succeeding as murder, you are revealed as a controlling hypocrite who only wants to force women to bend to your will.

There is much more, including the proposed bans on pregnant women traveling across state lines to obtain an abortion and the Unborn Child Support Act introduced in both houses of Congress on July 13, both of which, in order to be effective, would require enforcement infrastructure that would make privacy a totally obsolete concept.

The Unborn Child Support Act proposes to require men to pay child support starting at conception. Ignoring for a moment that the UCSA would be federal law and not up to the states (so much for the states being the arbiters of such things), no enforcement mechanism has yet been invented that can force men to support their children in the U.S., otherwise deadbeat dads wouldn’t be a thing, would they? And do you know who gets out of supporting their children most easily? Wealthy men who don’t have traditional jobs, who just manage their (usually inherited) wealth – because they don’t have paychecks to garnish. Same thing for the unemployed, same thing for the self-employed, same thing for the paid-under-the-table. I knew a guy once who negotiated with his employers (all men) to pay him less in wages initially and then make up the difference in bonuses paid later,after his child support obligation changed or expired, in order to avoid paying the percentage of his real income the court ordered paid. Money that was meant to support his child. While his method may have been unusual, his determination to flout a court order to support his child was not.

So how on Earth would the Unborn Child Support Act be enforced? First, the state (I use the term generically here, to mean both federal and state bodies) has to have a way to know when an egg is fertilized. Which means it has to have a way to know when a woman is fertile and when she has had sex. So how would that happen? They certainly can’t depend on self reporting. Do they make medical, prescription, and other purchase records (in case you’re buying birth control, tampons or other evidence of the presence or absence of menses) automatically reported to, and property of, the state? That wouldn’t be sufficient, it would only reveal general information. Would they have to have a registry for girls and women to report the dates of their periods and sexual activity? With maybe penalties thrown in for failure to report? Girls with a condition called Precocious Puberty go through puberty abnormally early, starting menstruation as early as 6 years old. So maybe the state would just force women and all girls over the age of six to have pregnancy tests monthly at a state facility?

What if a woman has sex with more than one man in a month? Do all of them have to pay child support until the fetus is far enough along for a DNA test to prove which man is the father? What if the forced amniocentesis causes a miscarriage (that does happen)? Is the state then to be held responsible for the “homicide”? Does the state then owe the woman money damages? You see what a rabbit hole this is. All because in order to control women’s bodies, you have to reduce them to something less than people. You have to make a fertilized egg more important than the woman carrying it. And there are far too many people willing and eager to do that.

So the moral of the story, friends, is get out and do something about all of this. Inform yourself and vote, yes; talk to your friends, neighbors, family, anyone who will listen about it, yes; but also volunteer to help elect candidates who respect and protect women. Phone banking can now be done from your home on your own schedule and 95% of the people you call don’t answer the phone. It’s easy, but it’s also valuable, because the 5% of people you have conversations with will then be statistically more likely to turn out to vote. Same with canvassing in person. You don’t try to persuade people to change their minds, it’s about voter turnout. So please, please, please volunteer. There are tons of organizing groups out there – just google “organize” and the name of your city, county, or state, find a group you identify with, then take action. Dobbs was only the beginning. It is up to us to make sure the madness it repesents ends.