This Is Not A Drill

Susan Collins lied about Brett Kavanaugh (Of course, she did). Now we have an almost endless stream of new anti-abortion laws heading to the Supreme Court. Which is the plan.

Via Vox:

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Tuesday signed into law a so-called “heartbeat” bill, banning abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy. Georgia is the fourth state to pass such a law this year alone.

The bills prohibit abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. But reproductive rights advocates and doctors say the laws, which prohibit abortion before many women know they are pregnant, amount to a near-total ban on the procedure.

“It’s basically a forced pregnancy bill. It’s a health care ban bill,” said Dr. Krystal Redman, the executive director of Spark Reproductive Justice Now, a group that works on reproductive rights and other issues for women of color and queer and trans people in the South.

The bill also includes a penalty for those who perform abortions of up to 10 years in prison. It doesn’t explicitly exempt women who perform their own abortions with drugs, leading to speculation about whether they would also be subject to criminal charges. Some have suggested that it could even lead to murder charges for women who have abortions — but other experts say the consequences are far from clear.

Of course it doesn’t explicitly exempt women, that’s the next step. Along with making it illegal to cross state lines for an abortion. Everyone sees where this is going, right?

In Ohio, we have this:

The House bill, first introduced in April by Rep. John Becker, R-Union Township, seeks to limit insurance coverage for abortion procedures in which the mother’s life is not endangered. It would also bar coverage for drugs or devices that prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg, which experts say could affect certain kinds of IUDs.

That’s private insurance he wants to regulate. He’s also barring certain types of birth control. We expected female controlled birth control to be on Republicans’ hit list – one of their biggest issues for the GOP is women controlling their sexuality.

And then there’s this doozy:

The latest available version of House Bill 182 has an exception that would allow insurance to cover a treatment that does not exist:

“A procedure for an ectopic pregnancy, that is intended to reimplant the fertilized ovum into the pregnant woman’s uterus.”

An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants outside or in the wrong part of the uterus. With the exception of some very rare cases of abdominal pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies do not result in the birth of a child and can cause potentially fatal ruptures and hemorrhages.

The treatment laid out in the bill is “science fiction,” according to Dr. Daniel Grossman, an OB/GYN and director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California San Francisco who debunked this passage in a viral Twitter thread Wednesday.

The bill’s inaccuracy could create confusion about how and when a doctor would be able to treat a woman for an ectopic pregnancy, which could put her health at risk, experts say.

They just make stuff up.

Alabama has gone even further…

The legislation bans abortions at every stage of pregnancy and criminalizes the procedure for doctors, who could be charged with felonies and face up to 99 years in prison. It includes an exception for cases when the mother’s life is at serious risk, but not for cases of rape or incest — a subject of fierce debate among lawmakers in recent days.

Every stage of pregnancy? You mean, like conception? But if you think this bill is about rights for a fertilized egg, you’d be wrong.

Senator Clyde Chambliss, a Republican and sponsor of the bill in the Senate, defended the omission of those exceptions.

“When God creates the miracle of life inside a woman’s womb,” he said, “it is not our place as human beings to extinguish that life.”

Inside a woman’s womb. Chambliss means that.

Brian Lyman‏Verified account @lyman_brian

Chambliss, responding to the IVF argument from Smitherman, cites a part of the bill that says it applies to a pregnant woman. “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.”

Everybody got that? A fertilized egg in a lab is not a person. It’s only a person when it’s in a woman. This is, and has never been, about ‘saving babies’. Chambliss just told you.