Culture wars and leveraging power, is the closest thing the post Trump GOP has to an agenda – Creative Loafing Tampa
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Photo by Dave Decker
Protesters in St. Petersburg, Florida on March 12, 2022.
Missouri has proudly taken the lead. Last week, its legislature debated a bill that would ban all abortionnot just those more than six weeks after conception, as in Texasthrough the same private enforcement scheme. But theres a twist.
While most women who were denied abortions because of Texas law ordered abortion pills or went to a neighboring state, Missouris bill would allow bounty hunters to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident obtain an abortion anywhere.
As constitutional law scholar Michele Goodwin told Mother Jones, Texas lawand now Missouris effortrecalls the Fugitive Slave Act passed in the Compromise of 1850, which required everyone to help capture escaped enslaved people. This antiabortion campaign is meant to chill conduct and inspire fear.
Then again, the Supreme Courts conservatives havent been entirely beholden to precedent lately. And, technically, the Fugitive Slave Act was never declared unconstitutional.
Thats not Missouri lawmakers only innovation in their quest to control the uterus. Representative Brian Seitzs HB 2810 makes it a felony to traffic abortion-inducing devices or drugsand the most serious felony, with as high as a 30-year sentence, for doing so if those devices or drugs are used to abort a fetus older than 10 gestational weeks or an ectopic pregnancy.
You read that last part correctly.
Ectopic pregnancieswhen the fetus implants outside of the uterusare always nonviable and can be harmful, even fatal, to the mother. Seitz has no idea what an ectopic pregnancy is, and hes writing laws to prevent women from getting medical care to treat it.
Unsurprisingly, his bill is based on other scientific fallacies. In a hearing last week, he argued that abortion medications can actually kill a woman. When a journalist pointed out that, in real life, those meds are safer than Tylenol and 14 times safer than childbirth, Seitz responded, I'm not a doctor."
You dont say.
In this same spirit, Idaho Republicans declared transgender youth an emergency and not only made it a felony to provide minors with gender-affirming health carepuberty blockers, hormone therapy, etc.but also made it a felony for parents to take their children across state lines for treatment. Both crimes are punishable by life imprisonment.
Again, in more normal judicial times, such legislation would immediately be laughed out of federal court. But these times are not normal.
Texas was no slouch in the anti-trans department, either. At the governors direction, the states child welfare agents were investigating parents who provided their children with gender-affirming care as abusersuntil a state judge shut that down last week. The state has promised to appeal, and it seems more likely than not that the legislature will intervene if a higher court doesnt.
Across the country this year, Republicans have proposed nearly 30 bills that seek to prevent transgender children from accessing health care. Eleven states have banned transgender girls from participating in school sports. Republicans in Tennessee and Wisconsin have introduced legislation to preempt local antidiscrimination protections.
Then theres Floridas grossly homophobic Dont Say Gay bill, which seeks to eradicate any mention of sexual orientation or gender identity from the states elementary classrooms and allowing parents to sue if they believe little Johnny was forced to endure an age-inappropriate discussion about The Gays. (Here again, enforcement by bounty hunter.)
When Disneys CEO belatedly weighed in against the bill, Gov. Ron DeSantis spokeswoman dismissed the entertainment behemoth as a woke corporation. DeSantis banked $50,000 from Disney, while the state GOP brought in more than $900,000 during the 2020 cycle. (Having helped bigots take control of the state, Disney paused its political donations.)
There are a few common themes in these examples. One is the constant search for new culture-war territoryanother way to define themselves in opposition to the wokes and own the libswhich is the closest thing the post-Trump GOP has to an agenda.
The other is control: leveraging power to impose white, Christian, heteronormative values on a society whose peopleespecially young peopleare rejecting them. In that sense, the Fugitive Slave Act was little different. Southern states asserted the primacy of their beliefs over others freedoms andby threatening secessionbend the rest of the country to their will.
We havent gotten to secession. But Republicans are trying to privilege their beliefs over the rights of others.