This piece first appeared in our weekly publication, The Fallout. Join it here.
Final week, the Washington Put up reported in regards to the latest line of political assaults on abortion entry from anti-choice activists in Texas: roads and highways that join abortion sufferers to potential out-of-state care.
Proposed by the identical group of extremists that introduced Texas’ abortion bounty hunter regulation that functionally overturned Roe v. Wade effectively earlier than the Dobbs determination was handed down, advocates have targeted towns and cities on main roads or connection factors to attempt to shut down any capacity to journey for abortion care through native ordinances. These ordinances make it unlawful to move anybody to get an abortion on roads inside the metropolis or county limits, and, like its predecessor Texas’ SB 8, permits any non-public citizen to sue a person or group they believe of violating the ordinance.
I imply, actually, what on Earth is occurring right here?
It’s an alarming escalation, and it’s an necessary reminder that whereas a number of media consideration will probably be targeted on the Republican presidential candidates and their varied and horrible positions on a nationwide abortion ban, the true of us who set abortion coverage on this nation are advancing essentially the most radical positions one city at a time. And it feels virtually like historical historical past at this level, however it’s price repeating once more that the Supreme Court docket let Texas’ SB 8 take impact through the shadow docket. The outcome devastated abortion entry in your complete area as well as to setting the stage for Roe’s reversal the next yr in Dobbs v. Jackson Girls’s Well being Group.
What occurs with abortion coverage in Texas doesn’t keep in Texas. Actually, it informs abortion coverage nationwide. So if Texas is severely methods to limit the suitable to journey, as Idaho has already tried to do, then we will all make certain that the following constitutional proper the conservative motion has its sights set on is the suitable to journey.
The Texas information additionally exhibits how overturning Roe v. Wade is unraveling a whole host of different constitutional rights like the suitable to journey. These elementary rights are what outline us as residents, and if the conservative motion is utilizing abortion to rewrite all of our elementary rights, which means the conservative motion is utilizing abortion to rewrite what it means to be a citizen on this nation. Full cease.
It is a theme you’ll see us coming again to repeatedly at Rewire Information Group as a result of this challenge of rewriting citizenship is central to the anti selection motion. They usually’ve absolutely weaponized the conservative authorized motion to attempt to make it occur.
