Some good news to report in Texas, the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a very strict abortion bill from taking effect that would close ALL but eight abortion clinics in my state, leaving millions women, particularly in South Texas and along the border region, without convenient access to obtain an abortion. This comes after the the very conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law not burdensome to the women of the Texas border and South Texas. I have a not so new theory as to why.
As you all may or may not know, I hail from the South Texas border and I have seen the conditions for women along that area. And I know what the rest of Texas (and the U.S.) thinks of us: “brown-skinned wetbacks, who live off of welfare, ride donkeys to school and feed our babies Pepsi out of a sippy cups and oh yeah…are a bunch of Mexican whores who open their legs for every baby-daddy, drug dealer out there and therefore deserve what we get…which is NOTHING but the kids we breed” ...which then will end up in privately-owned jails and therefore will become profit for the cronies of that same conservative Texas government who promoted this general hate of us through their rhetoric. (Most recent and prime example is when Rick Perry teamed up with Sean Hannity to fight ten-year criminals, or what I call refugees, along the border.) And that is what it is all about, isn’t it? An income producing “product?” “Slaves,” I believe is the term. “Give the brown-skinned people next to nothing, they will turn criminal and this will fill up our privately owned jails?” Take away abortion clinics in order to ensure the birth of this “product?” This racist view of my people (the people of the U.S. border and South Texas) has been ongoing for centuries and we are not the first brown-skinned ethnicity to be targeted. Jim Crow made sure Black people in the South were kept at the lowest levels of society, masking his laws of hatred as “separate, but equal” creating a “slave society.” The poll tax was aimed at the poorest people (mostly brown) to prevent them from voting (much like the voter ID laws happening today) which ensured that the “slaves” did not vote and change the status quo of the time and Andrea Smith, in her book “Conquest” discusses the American Indian Genocide and sexual violation and rape of American Indian women, which was perpetrated by European settlers, in order to take the control of the land, eventually creating slaves, mostly out of American Indian Children. Now we have forced birthing through the obvious lack (or what could have been, or might still be) of abortion clinics along the Texas border from El Paso to Brownsville. By the way, this idea of producing a modern day slave through the prison system is found in such literature written by Michelle Alexander, in her book "The New Jim Crow," Angela Davis, as well as an essay by Patricia Allard titled, “Crime Punishment, and Economic Violence.” The facts of written in this essay and the policies driven by our conservative Texas government run parallel: Rick Perry’s refusal of the expansion of Medicaid, cutting Education benefits, not supporting ACA in Texas. These inactions lead to isolation. Taking away access to a home, food, cutting funding towards education and desperately needed healthcare, (isolating people from basic resources in order to live, thrive and improve) can lead any person towards criminal tendencies, which then permanently punishes them from receiving benefits (the few Texas gives) in the future. In other words, no abortion in South Texas/border areas=a thriving future for the private prison system. And they are all over Texas. But this isn't a new idea I am coming up with here, just making the connection Texas.
As a South Texas girl, from a town edging on the Rio Grande Valley (Laredo), it never ceases to amaze me how our conservative Texas government fails to see us on big important issues, which then prompts us to ask the federal government to step in on our behalf, which then makes our conservative state government “cry foul federal government” (but only on issues inconvenient to them, such as a woman’s right to choose). As I believe in the notion that what is correct will always prevail, my confidence in the federal government, particularly SCOTUS, has waned as woman AND a Hispanic, and all because of five conservatively appointed judges: Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Thomas and Scalia (three who are as predictable as newborns needing a diaper change when it comes to which way they will vote, and Kennedy and Roberts, who weave the middle line like a drunkard during a DUI test). However, this is a promising step in a reasonable direction, as it is clear certain “pro-life” defenders do not care about a woman’s life, or the choices she has to make, especially along the border region.
Here is an idea (and I am speaking to pro-life commoners who are doing the conservative politicians' bidding): When you want to judge women for abortion, think about a chess set. You are a pawn, being used like a maxi pad for what is really going on in the minds of our conservative state officials. Try this instead: If you are pro-life then be pro-life as a whole. If you want to rescue every seed spilled, then start with black light in your teenage son’s room, or scoop some out of the toilet because that is as crazy as you all sound about “life beginning at conception” nonsense. Believe me when I say you are doing nothing but ensuring the future enslavement of a people in which the Texas conservative government could give a crap about because if they did, we would all be unified as a state, with the same access to healthcare, food, Education and abortion clinics and not isolated like a virus. I came from there, and am a product of all that is good from that region of Texas (just like any other place in the U.S.) We are Americans and have the right to decide what to do with our bodies without some slimy side game be played on us as women and as a people.
In other news:
Boko Haram might have agreed to return kidnapped girls
Battered NFL wives told to keep quiet by police or ruin their husband’s careers. It seems the culture of abuse has run rampant for years and there was no protection for the women who were beaten by their NFL-contracted husband's.