Hi, good afternoon. First, I must apologize because I know you have surely been missing my rage posts here. I’ve been saving all my rage for the podcast over the last couple of weeks (actually I’ve just been too busy…. I have a list of like three rage posts I need to make). But this one couldn’t wait. Because guess what? Acadia was scared to send me this. I am rewarding him with a post about it.
So let’s see – on the surface this bill is about limiting a patient’s right to sue their doctor, apparently, even if their doctor finds abnormalities in a fetus and doesn’t tell their pregnant patient. On purpose. Hmmmmmmm, that sounds pretty suspicious. It almost sounds like some lawmakers are trying to control women’s medical care and deprive them of the knowledge they need to make informed decisions. You know, like when that guy in Kansas referred to pregnant women as “hosts”. Like that.
Apparently some involved have protested, saying it’s not about controlling women’s bodies and wombs, it’s just about cutting down on lawsuits. But oh, guess what?:
The architects of the so-called “wrongful-birth” bill have argued it would protect children with disabilities and prevent doctors from facing unnecessary lawsuits. “It is unacceptable that doctors can be penalized for embracing the sanctity of life,” Senator Brandon Creighton (R-TX) said in a press release when he introduced the legislation last fall.
That literally says that the entire purpose is to keep women from making medical decisions about whether to terminate their pregnancies due to finding out about medical issues involving the babies they are carrying.
Listen, Texas, I know you are doing your darnedest to make every single woman there leave the state, but I have news for you – that’s not going to happen. Instead, the women in Texas, and in this country, are going to do what we always do, which is not stand for your s**t.
No matter what state I live in, including even you, Texas, if you ever got lucky enough for me to cross your borders again in my life, I have the right to bodily autonomy. I have the right to make fully informed decisions, meaning I need to know everything about my body, my health, and my medical conditions – everything which my doctor knows anyway. And if that doctor were to keep information from me, for any reason – any, at all – then hell would have no fury like mine.
(If you don’t understand bodily autonomy, read this, easily my favorite Tumblr post of all time.)
When will you learn, Texas, that women are human beings, with exactly as many rights as, say, male doctors? You’re gonna learn real quick-like.
So glad I could help!
I can always count on you to find something to enrage me, friend! You and BNev. I owe her a rage post or two as well.