Kate Cox & Britany Watts: Women Being Persecuted by Republican Religious Fanatics
Understand that simply beating Trump is not enough
In Texas and Ohio women are facing jail as a consequence of the War on Women. Kate Cox is being told to carry a non-viable fetus to term. Britany Watts miscarried an already dead baby after being turned away from hospital emergency rooms.
There is more information about their situations further down in this post, but looking beyond their circumstances, their cases are representative of the GOP’s War on Women. They would have you believe that GOD has told them to stand against reproductive healthcare.
This cause isn’t about being pro-life; it is about shoring up a patriarchy threatened by women who chose to define themselves as being beyond a beast of burden. It is about a fantastical restoration of a social and political order where genetic expression was the basis for dominion. Those without white skin and male genitalia are to be otherized as enemies.
In states where theocratic politicians have achieved power, this vision is being put into place. In Congress they are asserting the power to hold the processes of governance hostage. And the man they believe to be their anointed leader is leading in the 2024 polls.
It's not like Republicans haven’t told us about their plans. Millions of American women woke up on November 9, 2016 with the sinking feeling that Donald Trump would be opening the floodgates for a future where his kind –in every sense of the word– would assert their dominance over society.
That’s why women were the first to organize and lead millions of Americans into the streets to express their disapproval of what the man stood for. Our historic system of divide and conquer against dissent kicked in, trivializing their concerns and amplifying differences in expression. The lack of an institutional backbone (usually labor or spiritual affiliations) kept their righteousness from becoming more powerful, resulting in a fractured movement.
Good parts of that movement still exist and they do good work, but co-optation and factionalism contribute to the lack of power beyond many small battles. A fatalistic sense of impotency atop the individualism aspect of our culture provides an easy excuse for not building the kind of movement needed to stop autocratic/theocratic rule.
The worldview needed to build a broader consensus on society is all-too-often suppressed. Even small steps in the right direction (like the current administration’s attempts to regulate predatory capitalism) are tar brushed as being ‘radical.’ Social democracy is not communism, but that’s how the right is projecting it, effectively keeping those options out of public discourse. And when public sentiment arises, the heckler’s veto is an antidote for taking action.
Locally, a very small coterie of property owners stand are blockading steps to help citizens displaced from their homes to the point where an internment camp appears to be the only available option. And, yes, they (wittingly or not) are acting on behalf of a larger movement to protect the interests (which ultimately include oppression) of the already-wealthy along with those temporarily embarrassed about not being wealthy.
What is being done to women is not just the fault of men; Texas -with its ‘freedom’-- has more female voters than male. But it ranks 44th in voter participation. Turnout for elections is typically less than 50%. One third of Texans fail to even cast ballots in presidential elections. This is how guys like the Lone Star State’s Governor and Attorney General keep winning, and are able to stack courts. If everybody votes, this will stop!
These deacons of dystopia are just getting started and they’re going to make things a lot worse if they’re not stopped. You might not think this affects you for whatever reason, but it does. It will. Because they won't stop here.
Referring to the latest outrage from Texas, Molly Jong-Fast said on MSNBC::
“What we see in this Cox case is that abortion is healthcare. This is a woman – she needs healthcare. She cannot have it because of Republican politicians… There’s so many ripple effects to this, and so many different ways in which Republicans are saying they are bringing religion into your doctor’s offices, and it’s really scary.”
This dastardly sequence of events was inevitable and it's only the beginning. Since they’ve declared that human life begins at conception as a legal definition, then every miscarriage will ultimately be investigated as a homicide. Agents of the state will demand evidence.
Did the mother eat right? Lift too much? Not get proper healthcare? Ride in a vehicle? Take a walk? Work? Have sex? Etc. Et al. The mother will become nothing more than an incubator with no rights whatsoever. This is the only possible end state of this religious fanaticism.
And if you think this is limited to Red States, think again. San Diego’s County District Attorney –who says she’s no longer a Republican but clearly buys their agenda– “settled” just such a case recently.
From the Guardian:
“I don’t want other pregnant women to experience what for me was the worst experience of my life,” Carpenter said in a statement from jail on Sunday. “I lost my child, and then I was prosecuted.”
The district attorney’s office has faced widespread scrutiny after Carpenter spoke out from jail in March about the nightmare she faced in the aftermath of the death of her newborn, whom she had named Keira, saying: “I am still stunned and horrified that a person could have the biggest tragedy of their life and lose a child who was loved and was so wanted, and then be charged with such a horrible crime. I had cherished the idea of this baby and was totally committed to becoming the best mother I knew how to be. I mourn every day for Kiera.”
The case, national advocates said, highlighted growing concerns about the criminalization of women across the US, who have increasingly faced surveillance, arrest and prosecutions for abortions, as well as miscarriages, stillbirths and other actions that law enforcement have claimed “endangered” their fetuses. It was also an example of how punitive responses to drug addiction can cause serious public health harms, her lawyers said.
Currently the prosecution of an Ohio woman has become a national issue. As in the San Diego case, she is facing felony charges on an adjacent legal cause.
From the Root:
The country’s war against Roe v. Wade has taken a complicated turn in the case of Brittany Watts, 33, a Warren, Ohio woman headed to grand jury on charges that she allegedly attempted to discard the remains of her baby.
Watts was handed a felony charge after the traumatizing events of Sept. 22, when she sat on the toilet at 22 weeks of pregnancy and felt the baby passing through, according to the Warren Police Department. Watts heard a “big splash,” a detective said in court last month. By the time police responded to her home, they said the fetus’ remains were stuck in the toilet.
Read more from WKBN News:
Forensic pathologist Dr. George Sterbenz testified an autopsy found no injury to the fetus, and that the unborn fetus had died before passing through the birth canal. He said Watts’ medical records showed she visited the hospital twice before the delivery.
“This fetus was going to be non-viable. It was going to be non-viable because she had premature ruptured membranes — her water had broken early — and the fetus was too young to be delivered,” Sterbenz said.
Finally, there’s the ongoing saga of Kate Cox, a Dallas-area mother of two who is about 20 weeks pregnant, who really wanted to have the baby in question.
Attorney General Ken Paxton is making her attempt to obtain an abortion under the exceptions allowed in state law into proof that his definition of the law says “no exceptions”
Her developing fetus has trisomy 18, a rare chromosomal disorder causing stillbirth or death of the baby shortly after it’s born. Continuing the pregnancy places Cox at high risk of a uterine rupture and would imperil her ability to carry another child in the future
Lawyers with the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a request for a temporary restraining order blocking the state’s abortion ban in this case, enabling her to terminate the pregnancy. The State Supreme Court has lifted a judicial order from a lower court, so Paxton’s defense of so-called Christian morality means she’s expected to carry to term.
Also, Paxton has sent a threatening letter to hospitals where Kate Cox’s OBGYN works, writing that any emergency order “will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws.”
Everybody involved including Cox will face legal consequences. And I expect Paxton will double down on being awful by having one of his buddies in the media say something to discredit this woman.
***
These examples are why just defeating Donald Trump’s re-election prospects are not enough. Every Republican/Forced Birther needs to be confronted. Locally, Kevin Faulconer (who’s running against Terra Lawson-Remer for Supervisor) will likely try to dodge this issue.
The bigger issue of what Faulconer and Darrell Issa’s party stands for will remain. Think of his candidacy as being like a Nazi Party member in prewar Germany dodging questions about support for ‘internment’ camps.
(By the way, Faulconer really has come out in support of an internment camp for San Diego’s unhoused population.)
Every Republican running for every office needs to own up to this. And every voter who thinks the War on Women as a war on themselves and their families needs to go vote in the coming year.