a woman shouldn’t have to beg a judge’s permission to have healthcare

what fucked-up god does this serve?

sometimes, nature fucks up in the most extraordinary way. it’s nobody’s fault. it just happens.

Kate Cox is the mother of two children. she and her husband wanted a third, and so — spoiler alert — she became pregnant.

good news, right? unfortunately, in this case, no — because of that sometimes nature fucks up thing.

Kate’s fetus bears an extra copy of chromosome 18 — a condition known as Trisomy 18. this syndrome causes a fetus to have multiple severe defects, to the heart, the brain, appendages and elsewhere.

in most cases, such a fetus dies in utero and is stillbirthed, or is born and lives a few minutes or hours.

to add more horror to this story, if Kate brings her pregnancy to term, it will very likely damage her uterus — ending her ability to have the third child she wants.

in a civilized country, Kate Cox would be free to terminate her pregnancy and try again — but she doen’t live in a civilized country. she lives in America. even worse, she lives in the state of Texas.

Kate Cox

Texas, the poster state for medieval governance, has decided that a super fucking cool thing to do would be to torment and humiliate Kate Cox.

Texas is one of these forced-birth states were abortion is virtually outlawed, with almost no exception.

in Kate’s case, she was forced to appear before a judge and beg to be allowed to terminate her pregnancy.

that’s right, a judge got to decide what was best for Kate. not a doctor, not a trained medical professional, a judge.

what kind of upside-down bullshit is this?

Texas of course, fought against Kate as hard as they could.

Johnathan Stone, an attorney with the Texas attorney general’s office who represented the state in the hearing, argued that Cox and her husband had not sufficiently demonstrated that they would suffer “immediate and irreparable injury” without an abortion.

“The only party that’s going to suffer an immediate and irreparable harm” if the judge grants the requested order, he said, “is the state.”

excuse me, what? the state will be harmed?

if we can’t treat women like cattle, if we can’t force them to give birth, the state will be harmed?

fuck straight off with this fascist nonsense.

Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble ultimately issued the restraining order allowing Kate to end her pregnancy.

“The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” Gamble said.

so Kate Cox gets to have her abortion because of the fact that she wants to try again.

what if Kate hadn’t wanted another pregnancy? would she have still been allowed to terminate this one? why is a judge the one to decide this? why not the pregnant woman?

what fucking business is it of the judge’s — or the state’s?

when Ken Paxton, Texas’s corrupt-as-fuck Attorney General heard the news, he threw a shit fit, promising to prosecute and imprison anyone helping Kate to terminate her pregnancy.

In a statement Thursday afternoon, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that the judge’s order “will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws. This includes first degree felony prosecutions.”

In a letter to three Texas hospitals where Cox's doctor has practiced, Paxton warned that the facilities could be found liable for negligently credentialing her or for failing to exercise appropriate professional judgment in allowing the doctor to perform an abortion.

holy shit.

why are we torturing this woman? what fucked-up god does this serve?

why? because fuck you, that’s why. because patriarchy. because Texas.

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incredibly, Republicans still think that forced-birth cruelty is a political win for them — even after getting fucking crushed at the polls in 2022.

just last month, Ronna McDaniel doubled down on this on Meet the Press.

“I’m proud to be a pro-life party. we can win on this message. the American people are where we are, and they want common sense limitations, they want more access to adoption, we want to make sure that there are pregnancy crisis centers. these are things we can win on. but we have to talk about it, and you can’t hide in a corner and think that abortion’s not going to be an issue.”

Republicans are still out here falling all the fuck over each other in a mad dash to see which state can be the cruelest.

the New Hampshire GOP just proposed legislation that would ban abortions after 15 days.

Four Republican legislators in New Hampshire will introduce a bill that would ban abortion at “15 days” gestational age, according to a copy of the bill they prefiled.

that’s not a misprint. 15 days, not weeks — before any woman could know she’s pregnant.

and of course Little Donny Fuckface is hogging the credit for ending Roe.

“Without me there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to,” he wrote. “Without me the pro Life movement would have just kept losing. Thank you President TRUMP!!!”

back in 2016, Candidate Trump said that women who had abortions should be “punished.”

Matthews pressed again: “Do you believe in abortion or no as a principle?”
“The answer is there has to be some form of punishment,” Trump said.
“For the woman?” Matthews said.
Trump said, “Yes,” and nodded. Matthews pressed further: 10 days or 10 years? Trump said he didn't know, and that it’s “complicated.”

no one took Trump seriously at the time. Trump was just being Trump, we were told. set against the firehose of fucknuttery that never stops rocketing out of Trump’s mouth, this was just another quickly-forgotten sound bite.

“calm down,” we were told, “Roe is settled law.”

yet here we are in 2023, with women forced to beg judges to allow them to have healthcare.

keep it up, you fucking ghouls.

women are pissed off. no woman likes this shit. not even Republican woman.

enjoy getting crushed at the polls again next November.

you built that.