Perspective on the 6-week rule in Texas:

[tblue37]

Link to tweet

Text

Why is a 6-week-old cell-cluster that has no formed organs considered: "a person," but an ACTUAL adult woman is called: "a host body?"

[raging moderate]

1. And that cell cluster is NOT 6 weeks old.

The 6-week period is calculated starting at the first day of the last menstruation. And ovulation usually occurs somewhere in the middle of that period, and conception usually occurs some time after that.

[crickets]

2. Excellent question. nt

[Hekate]

3. Because it is of overriding importance to keep women where you can see them, the untrustworthy...

… bitches. They exist solely for men’s designs, and if it means having a baby every year so daddy can have a Quiverfull, she better be up to it. If the man in charge (her father, husband, or lover) finds her pregnancy inconvenient, he’ll make sure she gets that abortion, or else.

Strip away all the fancy language about Gawd and the sanctity of unborn life, and that’s what you’ve got: toxic patriarchy, a system in which women’s lives have no relevance except in relation to men.

Sounds Talibanish? It very much is.

I didn’t used to think like this, or write like this, or talk like this. But I’m in my 70s and just watching this cancer grow across my country has stripped me of my innocent optimism …

[littlemissmartypants]

7. I love your no filter feminism. Please never change. ❤

[alwaysinasnit]

8. I suspect that for certain men, the woman they impregnate is proof to others of their potency and

reaffirms their masculinity.

[GopherGal]

11. and you gotta keep your eyes on her to make sure that baby is yours.

Seems like many traditional and religious gender norms serve to ensure that the paternity of a woman's issue can be known to be her husband's.

[alwaysinasnit]

13. +1000

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. GovAbbott Texas abortion law "provides at least six weeks is false

Link to tweet

[MiniMe]

5. Why 2 separate appointments?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. For this thread

Link to tweet

[GopherGal]

10. Without looking it up...

many states have "waiting periods" that effectively require two appointments.

Or maybe it's just a first appointment to confirm the pregnancy and a second one to abort it.

[Hekate]

12. To make it harder to near impossible for poor rural women. #1 visit: Vaginal-probe ultrasound plus...

…forced viewing of whatever’s inside plus the recitation of a script written by anti-choice politicians about the “unborn baby.” It is against the law for a medical provider to skip any part of this. #2 Then go home for a mandated waiting period (3 days, I think) to think it over. This has the added benefit in Texas to allow time for the electrical pulse to begin — that thing they call a heartbeat. #3 Second visit: the abortion.

There is only one part of this charade that is medically required. Guess which it is.

Texas closed nearly all the women’s clinics some years back. It is (as we all know) geographically huge. My husband describes how he, as a young man in the military, drove himself back to California from Biloxi. Texas took an entire day and he still wasn’t done.

Imagine any one of several scenarios for women: an abusive domestic partner who watches what you do and wants an accounting of your time outside the house. A loving domestic partner, but also a passel of kids who need babysitting. An employer who would like an accounting of your time off, plus there’s no pay for those days away. A high school teenager whose absence is definitely going to be noticed. An old clunker of a car, or maybe no car at all. Busses that take all day.

And you’re supposed to pull all of that off not one but twice.

Money. The average American no longer has even $400 in the bank or the cookie jar to cover an emergency, any emergency.

And now add: any Nosy Parker who’d like to collect a $10,000 bounty and feel a warm glow of righteousness, too.

[Solly Mack]

9. K&R

[mainer]

14. Right across the border is Mexico. And clinics.

Americans already drive across the border for cheap pharmaceuticals and dental care. Now that Mexico has made abortions legal, there'll be other options for Texas women. And you can bet the doctors in Mexico will willingly certify that all the pregnancies are less than six weeks.