Before I started following RHRealityCheck, I had no idea of the sheer diversity in the Republican party. By which I am of course referring to diversity of ideas of how to shut down abortion! Naturally they don’t have any diversity in terms of race, gender, sexuality, etc. I think that James Joseph Sylvester summed up the Republican strategy concerning abortion prevention when he said “a prolonged meditation on the subject has satisfied me that the existence of any one such [of these things] — its escape, so to say, from the complex web of conditions which hem it in on all sides — would be little short of a miracle.”
He was actually speaking about an odd perfect number, a particular mathematical unicorn which has yet to be found or disproven. He was also speaking in 1888. But hey, if the Republican party wants to pursue policies from the 19th century, I’m going to mock them with quotes from the 19th century.
Finding a diverse list of anti-abortion legislation feels like shooting fish in a barrel. These are literally the first things I found on the front page of RHRealityCheck. South Dakota legislature wants 72-hour waiting period, not counting weekends or holidays (’cause I guess women don’t think on the weekends or holidays, lulz). The Alaskan legislature is trying to redefine “medically necessary” to be as restricting as possible. The Wisconsin legislature wants to force women to go through transvaginal ultrasounds before getting an abortion. And in Texas, yet more politicians want to put unnecessary restrictions on abortion providing clinics.
This is why it really feels like a war on women. It’s not just that there are a significant number of legislators that want to ban abortion. It’s that every single day there are battles being fought in state legislatures, trying to restrict women’s rights inch by inch. In states where they have a weak grip, the Republican party is using every method at their disposal to create a “complex web of conditions which hem it in on all sides” to bar women from accessing abortion, and in states that they really control, they roll out the big guns, a complete ban on abortions in the state, even in the cases of rape, incest, or the health of the mother.
Let’s hope they don’t succeed at dragging us back to 1888.
