The Texas State House has held an all-night hearing on proposed legislation that would not only criminalize abortion, but make it a capital crime, pushing an already-polarizing issue into overdrive:
“If you murder a pregnant woman, you get charged twice. So I’m not specifically criminalizing women,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R), explained during the hearing. “What I’m doing is equalizing the law.”
The “Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act” would classify abortion as murder “regardless of any contrary federal law, executive order, or court decision,” and allow both abortion providers and women receiving abortions to be charged with murder, which is a capital crime in Texas.
Lawmakers heard from 446 supporters of the bill, which would make no exception for cases of rape or incest, and would treat abortion in all stages of pregnancy with equal severity, conferring upon an embryo from “the moment of fertilization” the same “rights, powers and privileges as are secured or granted by the laws of this state to any other human child.”
The House also heard from 54 people opposed to the bill before the marathon hearing finally concluded at 3am on Tuesday. The bill was pending in committee as of Wednesday afternoon, according to HuffPost.
While Tinderholt initially introduced the bill in January 2017 to death threats and ridicule, it was never granted a hearing until Monday, when Rep. Jeff Leach (R), chairman of the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence, chose to give it an airing in the name of “creating a culture of life.” Even the “pro-life, through and through” Leach, however, isn’t too keen on a measure critics have likened to the misogynistic dystopia of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’
“I do not believe that convicting a woman who has had an abortion of murder and possibly subjecting her to the death penalty is constitutional, nor does such a policy advance the cause of life in Texas,” he said. Leach does not plan on allowing the committee to advance the proposal to a vote by the full House, though some of his colleagues have framed his lack of support as a betrayal.
Other pro-life groups have registered similar misgivings. Texas Alliance for Life has pointed out that even before the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision legalized abortion in the US in 1973, Texas never prosecuted women for having abortions. Texans for Life also opposes the ban, saying it “only protects the abortionist.”
Pro-life advocates have taken a page out of the play book of the Radical Left by taking an extreme and radical stance on abortion which will make any other restrictive measures on abortion seem moderate. Women who have abortions put themselves in the roles of judge, jury and executioner when it comes to the fate of their unborn child, so it only makes sense that they would also be willing to allow the State to judge them with the same arbitrary harshness.
Of course, all it would take is one public execution of a woman who had an abortion to greatly reduce the demand for abortions, at least in Texas. Young women who cut themselves are often put in mental hospitals, but if those same women want to cut a baby out of their own belly, it’s considered a perfect sane decision. But then again, no debate on abortion was ever won by using a rational argument. It’s legal because it appeals to the irrational mind.
“There simply is not any reason to care about abortion or homosexuality in America or the once-White nations as they exist at this time. Let us for a moment consider abortion, which so occupies the minds and efforts of certain fundamentalist Christian groups. It is not our concern that infanticide is legal for them in their system. Let us teach our own youth not to murder our grand-children. Our recourse is to remove ourselves and our children just as far as is feasible and possible from their system and its influence.”
– David Lane, ‘Victory or Valhalla’
I cannot see the the sense in it.
Common sense dictates that the doctor who actually does the abortion should be the one charged with murder. The consenting woman is only an accessory to murder (still punishable).
The effect would be the same. I bet there are no doctors out there who would risk their own execution.
Either way the beneficial effects of legislation like this would be enormous.
It makes sense under agenda 21 depopulation plan. The CV is part of it as accomplishes both requirements deemed to be the fundamental factors at reducing world population.
Lower the birht rate and increase the death rate as the Club of Rome insisted. CV does both.
Certainly a gigantic leap in the correct direction
This is the most sane piece of legislation that has come out of any state of the union in the last 40 years…
When someone kills a pregnant woman in Texas, regardless of which trimester the mother is, he/she will be charged with a double homicide. And yet if a doctor kills both the mother and child during a botched abortion, the doctor will not be charged with even manslaughter. The hypocrisy and double standards, however, won’t cause any “pro-choicers” to lose any sleep.
God bless Texas!!!