(C) Florida Phoenix
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It’s 2023, but certain men are desperately grasping for control of women’s bodies [1]

['More From Author', 'December', 'Barrington Salmon']

Date: 2023-12-30  

America harbors a profound and deep-seated hatred for women. The misogyny is pervasive, leaching into just about all areas of life, tainting, polluting and poisoning relationships, the home, marriages, the workplace, friendships, education, intimacy and the privacy of the bedroom.

This toxic brew continues to percolate into the pores of the US consigning the distaff gender to second-class citizenship and systematic discrimination. This despite women comprising approximately 51.1 percent of the U.S population.

Perhaps the clearest example of this ruinous reality is illustrated by the scorched-earth crusade being waged by far-right anti-abortion forces against those fighting to ensure American women to have the right of access to abortions and control of their bodies.

We see the almost homicidal desire by Christian nationalist extremists like Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, former President Donald Trump, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, in the Panhandle and others to exert total control over women.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ultra-conservative majority voted in the summer of 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, their Republican – primarily male – allies in state government and governors’ mansions in 21 states have gleefully enacted the most revolting, cruel and draconian laws restricting women’s bodily autonomy and access to abortion and reproductive healthcare.

The stories are horrific and heartbreaking.

In Ohio last year, a 10-year-old girl, pregnant after she was raped, had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion because Ohio’s anti-abortion law has no exception for incest or rape.

Right here in Florida, according to Essence magazine, Anya Cook almost died when her water broke prematurely, Despite being rushed to the hospital, a doctor told her “because of the state’s abortion law, he could not induce labor.” She was discharged, handed antibiotics, and a nurse “promised to pray for her.”

The next day, Cook passed her baby in a public bathroom and barely survived in a hospital operating room because of the loss of so much blood.

Women in almost half of the nation are paying a monstrous price because of healthcare and abortion restrictions imposed by the state.

Of the 21 states who have banned or severely restrict abortions, 15 make no exceptions for rape or incest or both.

What happened in Texas two weeks ago crystallized the dangers pregnant women face. According to USA Today and The Texas Tribune, doctors told 31-year-old Dallas resident Kate Cox, who was then 20 weeks pregnant, that her child had Trisomy 18, a lethal genetic condition. According to court papers, Doctors told Cox there was “virtually no chance” her baby would survive, and carrying the pregnancy to term could endanger her ability to have another child.

Texas Tribune writer Eleanor Klibanoff painted a graphic and disturbing illustration of what Cox was dealing with.

“Two weeks ago, Kate Cox sat at her OB/GYN’s office, anxiously awaiting the results of her amniocentesis test. She knew her fetus was developing with a twisted spine, clubbed feet, irregular skull and heart development, and she’d gone to the emergency room three times in the last month for cramping, diarrhea and unexplained fluid leakage,” the story said. “The amniocentesis confirmed … an extreme chromosomal abnormality. If her child was born alive at all, they would survive only minutes, hours or days outside the womb.”

Before Roe was struck down in June 2022, Texas law would have allowed Cox to have an abortion at her doctor’s office or hospital.

Despite Cox’s life-threatening pregnancy and the acute danger to her life, legal miscreants – Paxton and the nine Republicans on the Texas Supreme Court – showed us the true face and nature of their disregard for women and their disdain for legal abortions.

Paxton – who for years fended off a range of ethics scandals until he was acquitted by the Texas Legislature – petitioned the state Supreme Court for an emergency stay. The court complied, dithered and eventually ruled against Cox. Fortunately, she traveled out-of-state to get an abortion.

Jessica Valenti, a feminist author and activist, was incensed.

“That’s how much they hate us,” she said. “There’s no chance for this woman to have a baby that lives, but they’d rather put her and the people who care about her through hell than lose,” she said. “But I don’t think enough folks understand that this is *exactly* what Republicans’ 15-week national ban – their ‘compromise’ legislation – would do to the entire country … (they would) do the same exact thing to all women in the U.S. that Texas has done to Kate Cox.”

Jason Linkins, deputy editor of The New Republic (TNR), slammed the zealots.

“I don’t personally believe that Republicans have any deeper thoughts to their extreme hostility to reproductive rights beyond a simple but deeply held belief that women are chattel. But you can judge for yourself,” said Linkins in TNR’s weekly newsletter publication, Power Mad. “Their talk of humane exceptions to abortion bans is bunkum. Their talk of leaving abortion restrictions to the states: hogwash. Their talk of compromise is a lie. They even lie to themselves about how unpopular their position is. Left to their own devices, they will identify people like Kate Cox – a loving mother who played by the rules – and subject them to stupefying cruelty. And there will always be a next Kate Cox; there already are some next Kate Coxes in the news. The rebranding is well underway.”

When the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out almost 50 years of legal precedent in 2022, the anti-abortion crowd was giddy, assumed life would be grand, reveled at a job done. But the dog caught the proverbial car and since then, the car has been beating the brakes off the dog.

Republicans have been losing. Bad. No wins – not in statewide elections, off-year contests or in referenda. In Red and Blue states, including Kansas, Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, an eclectic assemblage of Americans has voted to enshrine reproductive healthcare and abortion rights into state constitutions.

The GOP is panicking, rocked back on their heels but are doubling down.

In a mélange of states, Republicans are enlisting state courts to keep referenda off the ballot, blocking amendments from reaching the ballot and pushing to raise the threshold for amendments to pass. As Phoenix Deputy Editor Michael Moline wrote, Republicans “want to change the terms of the debate by injecting it with misinformation or overriding the referendum process.”

Republicans likely thought the public would be cool with being treated like the citizens of Gilead in the Handmaid’s Tale. They believed they could toss out laws, rewrite others and force those who don’t share their religious fervor to bend to their onerous and oppressive dictates. They’re discovering the error of their ways.

Progressives and their allies aren’t backing down. They’re buoyed by their wins.

Two Democratic state legislatures have constitutional amendments on their 2024 ballots, while organizers in nine other states — including Florida — are steering citizen-driven efforts to place similar anti-abortion measures on the ballot. The proposed amendments “have the potential to reshape abortion access around the country and even mobilize voters behind Democrats in critical 2024 battleground states and races,” a PBS Newshour report said.

According to POLITICO: “When the right to abortion is on the ballot, it wins. It wins in red states that voted for President Donald Trump. It wins in counties President Joe Biden lost by more than 20 points. It wins when popular Republican officials campaign for it and when they ignore it. And it wins even when the outcome has no immediate effect on abortion access.”

“Support for abortion cuts across party lines, performing significantly better at the ballot box than Biden and other Democrats, said POLITICO. “California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio — every county that voted for Biden also voted for abortion rights.”

With this type of track record, it’s gonna be a looong and excruciating 2024 election cycle for anti-abortion extremists. Given their misogyny, callousness and shameful abuse of power, a comprehensive trouncing would be just and well deserved.

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[1] Url: https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/12/30/its-2023-but-certain-men-are-desperately-grasping-for-control-of-womens-bodies/

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