This is beyond belief. We are becoming a paradigm of an authoritarian state, piece by piece.
The Oklahoma law, which has yet to be signed into law but which will certainly be once Governor Stitt The Christian Supremacist gets his grubby paws on it, will rely upon citizens ratting each other out for enforcement which really makes it even more vile.
I can’t even write coherently I’m so angry so please forgive me. I’ll quote the NYT:
The bill subjects abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion to civil suits from private individuals. It would take effect immediately if signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who has pledged to make his state the most anti-abortion in the nation.
“There can be nothing higher or more critical than the defense of innocent, unborn life,” State Representative Jim Olsen, a Republican, said Thursday on the floor of the Oklahoma House, where the bill passed on a 73-16 vote.
The measure is modeled on a law that took effect in Texas in September, which has relied on civilian instead of criminal enforcement to work around court challenges. Because of that provision — the law explicitly says state authorities cannot bring charges — the U.S. Supreme Court and state courts have said they cannot block the ban from taking effect, even if it goes against the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade.
How about them apples. These state laws disenfranchise women and subject us to abuse and on top of that, they criminalize health care and ON TOP OF THAT they encourage vigilantism and oh by the way they’re outside the purview even of the Constitution????
This is darkness and it’s insane. And these people claim they LOVE life. Oh yes they do. They also think the death penalty is just peachy and also, slavery, because I do not see how forced birth isn’t slavery, enslavement of the vessel, I mean, WOMAN, who is a human being last I checked, and who can’t be forced into involuntary servitude according to the law!
And yet, here we are, because a certain subset of Americans believes their Christian diety Has A Plan For All Babies, unborn or otherwise, they they goddam well better be born. Period.
OK. What do we do.
First, let’s start working to tax churches. I have had it. I hate to paint a broad brush. Jews and Unitarians and Buddhists and so forth do not think like this. I know there are liberal Christians, people like Hillary Clinton who truly believe in her Methodist dictum, to work and work and try to help people until you simply couldn’t do any more. And they need tax relief. These people and religious institutions do good things.
But the religious abuse by the Christian Right is beyond political. It is reaching proportions that are outright Naziesque. Encouraging neighbors to rat each other out because they suspect a pregnancy has been terminated? Forcing us all to believe in a certain religion? As if!
Second. Keep working through the system and do not give up. I worry that we will just succumb. We will not vote. We will be mad because we didn’t get our stuff, our tax relief, our student loan relief, our thing we really wanted from Biden.
I get it. But. This is life and death for so many women and their families. People die in childbirth, suffer horrible injuries. And it’s FREEDOM. This is not a slave state and it isn’t a theocracy.
YET.
Finally, and this, I have no idea how to accomplish, but we have got to try to re-establish a sense of decency in this country. The MAGA are drunk with power and they’re dragging us into a dark, dangerous, violent world. We must keep working toward light. We must keep working for education, for kindness, for community; for our love of neighbor is our love of country. I don’t want to lose my home, from sea to shining sea.
www.nytimes.com/...