Reprinted from hartmannreport.com
What we're seeing today in these attempts to regulate women's behavior is a simple extension of religious fundamentalism and patriarchy that goes back as far as ancient Samaria...
The tale is one of an evil time,
When souls were fettered and thought was crime,
And heresy's whisper above its breath
Meant shameful scouring and bonds and death!
""John Greenleaf Whittier, "How the Women Went from Dover"
Mifepristone, the abortion and miscarriage drug that is used in over half of all US abortions and routinely given to women having miscarriages to prevent complications, may well be functionally outlawed this week by a federal judge in Texas who's been a Christian activist his entire life.
Michael Kacsmaryk, 45, was appointed to the federal bench by Donald Trump. A Republican activist and religious fundamentalist, he's said that "so-called marriage equality" has put America "on a road to potential tyranny" and reflects a "complete abuse of rule of law principles."
As The Washington Post noted this weekend, Kacsmaryk has argued that:
"The sexual revolution ushered in a world where an individual is 'an autonomous blob of Silly Putty unconstrained by nature or biology' and where 'marriage, sexuality, gender identity and even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults.'"
Now an advocacy group that, according to Ms Magazine, includes the attorney/wife of Senator Josh Hawley, has brought a lawsuit to outlaw Mifepristone in the one specific Texas federal judicial district where Kacsmaryk -- and Kacsmaryk alone -- sits in judgement.
As a federal judge, however, his ruling will affect the entire United States.
This part of the anti-abortion crusade is clearly not about whether Mifepristone is a dangerous drug that needs more aggressive regulation.
The drug has been used millions of times in the US and around the world and is literally safer than Tylenol. It's been approved for use in the US for over 20 years, first for helping women struggling with incomplete miscarriages and later combined with a second drug to safely, quickly induce early-stage abortion.
And outlawing Mifepristone is not just to reduce the number of abortions, as much as the people bringing this lawsuit proclaim that's their goal.
If reducing the number of abortions was their singular and primary goal, they'd be putting much of their time, effort, and money into sex education, birth control, universal healthcare (particularly for fertility-age women), and government support for low-income families with children. Instead, most in the forced birth movement oppose all of those things.
No, this is part of a much larger effort. Because their "beliefs" are grounded in their religion and they believe that women who get abortions are committing the ultimate sin: murder. Therefore, they want to actually see these sinning women suffer.
Like people who love the death penalty (and in two states now state legislators have called for the death penalty for women who get abortions), they want to be able to torture them and watch them suffer; they want them to experience humiliation, and feel mortification for their sin of rejecting a pregnancy initiated by a man and ordained by their god.
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