Here’s the thing about trends, some are great and fun and we love them (we can’t like, really think of any right now… so maybe we don’t love trends… but… go with us). Some are garbage. Now for us, cold-shoulder shirts and now, gulp low-rise jeans, just make us want to go crawl in a hole.
But the absolute WORSE trend going on right now is these fucking unconstitutional bullshit, terrible HEARTBEAT BILLS. And what’s even more garbage-y about them is that most now DON’T have exceptions for rape and incest.
Here’s a scene for you, a monster politician is writing one of these garbage laws and he’s like, smoking a cigar and saying, “Naw, no exceptions for rape and incest… but I guess an exception if she’s my mistress” and everyone laughs in the room real big cuz they’re all rat people. And then someone’s like “Well, people DO die because of pregnancy complications, you know.” And then the politician gruffly pats the kid on the back “Yeah, we def don’t want them to die,” he winks. “Add it in.” Scene.
But how’d this heartbeat bill trend get started? Well wouldn’t you know it, Ohio has been trying to pass a heartbeat bill since 2011 (lol imagine any of the actually helpful things if they weren’t so hell bent on this crusade). But other states have been trying to pass these bills for years: in 2013 Texas proposed a law (not passed cuz, u know, unconstitutional), that same year Wyoming tried to pass a similar bill; Mississippi, Kentucky, Kansas, Arkansas, Alabama have all tried to pass similar bills but they usually die in committee.
What’s scary about the trend is that there seem to be some cracks in the whole “we’re not gonna pass a BLATANTLY unconstitutional law” thing. North Dakota had a fetal heartbeat bill signed into law 2013, but guess what happened there. Well it obvs got blocked! But that didn’t stop Iowa from passing another heartbeat bill LAST FUCKING YEAR. And that governor got elected. In December, Ohio (BACK AGAIN) tried to pass a bill and almost got around Kasich’s veto (with the new governor who knows what will happen this year.) But none of this history is a deterrent for Kentucky which wants to get in on the abysmal trend. And there would be no exceptions for rape here too.
Is being a politician doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Why are they wasting taxpayer money on a bill that is CLEARLY gonna get blocked. Well, to get to the Supreme Court of course! Everyone wants to be the big boy who passes law that ends Roe. Everyone wants to be the Wade.
So what can you do now? Well check if your state has any fetal heartbeat legistation on the books. And then get to protesting!