I know you all know the depth of my fury and disgust right now. I am absolutely apoplectic, incandescent, shivering, and nauseous with rage. Not only are women in Texas being mistreated in hideously misogynistic, paternalistic ways, not only do most women have NO idea they’re pregnant at six weeks, Texas makes no exception for women seeking abortion after rape or incest.

The state is also offering $10,000 bounties to those who identify and turn in those who they think may have attempted to seek abortion. Not that it is anyone’s damn business, but some are seeking abortion because they have been raped by their father or brother or cousin or grandfather. Some are seeking abortion because they were raped by a stranger, a lover, or an abuser. In all cases, the woman no longer has any choice in what to do with the result of the incestuous, violent act: she must carry the baby to term unless she can figure out that she’s pregnant in the blink of an eye. What if she has a miscarriage? How does she prove she didn’t try to abort? Why should she have to? This is grotesque misogyny, y’all. Evil cruelty that is so far beyond the pale that I struggle to articulate it.

Don’t even get me started in this hideous ways this will impact poor women and women of color.

If she wants the child, if she doesn’t want the child, if the child is dying inside of her or will die soon after birth or will live a life beset by horrific medical challenges, she must carry the baby to term. If her inseminator doesn’t want the baby, won’t help care for the baby, may abuse the baby, doesn’t know about the baby, he’s off scott free, but she has to carry the baby to term. If she is poor or sick or lacks steady housing, if she knows Texas won’t help feed, educate, or care for her child AFTER it’s born, she must carry the baby to term. And if she tries to do anything, someone else gets $10,000. Who’s paying those? Taxpayers? The Kochs?

After Texas passed the law, SCOTUS declined to comment on it until the time to do so expired. Then, in a 5-4 decision, the smug fucks below shat upon their own Court’s 1973 ruling granting women a constitutional right to abortion. Though they, this same majority, had in April (yes, mere months ago) used an “indisputably clear” argument to block “California’s Covid-based restrictions on in-home gatherings based upon a ‘new’ interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause,” they turned around and under cover of darkness blatantly ignored the ‘indisputably clear’ fact of Roe. As UTexas law professor Steve Vladeck wrote, “When you put these rulings by the same 5-4 majority side-by-side, you see much of what’s wrong with the Texas decision: A Court untroubled by procedure went out of its way to expand religious liberty, but hid behind procedural questions to refuse to enforce a right already on the books.”

clockwise from top left: Beer, Handmaid, Smug Fuck, Gilead Leader, Wordless Idiot

The people who said we shouldn’t worry when McConnell stole a SCOTUS seat from Obama; when trump was elected; when Beer Kavanaugh was pushed through to a lifetime appointment after a sham hearing at which a woman was ignored, disrespected, and retraumatized for bravely sharing the story of her sexual assault by the man in question; when RBG died and Barbie Handmaid was shoved into her spot despite having a stunning lack of judicial experience…those people were so wrong and right now, they need to sit down and stay quiet unless they want to fight the fights that desperately need to be won by progressive, inclusive folks dedicated to equality and justice.

Our world is burning and dying, fools are ingesting horse dewormers, cancer patients and others who need medical attention are being shunted aside because of the immediate needs of desperately ill Covid patients, the vast majority of which have refused vaccination, and now women in Texas must live Under His Eye. Don’t kid yourself into thinking other red Christo-nationalist wannabe states aren’t working up their own such draconian laws now. SCOTUS had already agreed to hear Mississippi’s 15-week abortion plan later this fall, and you know Alabama and Florida are hot on their heels. I’d bet my ass Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Georgia won’t lag far behind those.

Oh wait, Florida has just announced its intentions:

Please read this article by Dahlia Lithwick, and do not even consider suggesting I calm down, not least if you are male and not completely on Team Women’s Rights. As Lithwick writes, “You only do the thing in the dead of night, without care or effort, because you believe women are so used to being gaslit that you expect them to just tolerate it. You only do the thing in the dead of night without care or effort because you genuinely believe that they’re only women, and they deserve what they get.”

I refuse to calm down or sit down in the face of such repulsive mistreatment. And Democrats, you need to do something you strategically-challenged….I can’t think of any sort of decent word to put there. Fill in the blank yourselves. Like Elizabeth McLoughlin, this is how I feel right now: