The seven-months-pregnant officer reported contraction-like pains at work, but said she wasn’t allowed to leave for hours. The anti-abortion state is fighting her lawsuit, in part by saying her fetus didn’t clearly have rights.

  • Melpomene@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    To be clear, Texas’s position is consistent… if you understand that the point of Texas’s anti-abortion laws have nothing to do with the protection of women and EVERYTHING to do with controlling women’s bodies. Those in power would prefer women as subservient servants, so denying the protections they supposedly champion when it protects a woman is… pretty much where they want to come out on this.

    TL;DR the people championing these laws wanted women controlled. They give zero fucks about fetuses.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      The double-speak is so strong it makes my head spin.

      But the prison agency and the Texas attorney general’s office, which has staked its reputation on “defending the unborn” all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, are arguing the agency shouldn’t be held responsible for the stillbirth because staff didn’t break the law. Plus, they said, it’s not clear that Issa’s fetus had rights as a person.

      “Just because several statutes define an individual to include an unborn child does not mean that the Fourteenth Amendment does the same,” the Texas attorney general’s office wrote in a March footnote, referring to the constitutional right to life.

      For more than two decades, in legislation passed by lawmakers and defended in court by the attorney general’s office, Texas has insisted “unborn children” be recognized as people starting at fertilization. And although it has traditionally referred to all stages of pregnancy, from fertilized egg to birth, as an unborn child, the state repeatedly referred to Issa’s stillborn baby as a fetus in legal briefings.

      It’s a stark shift in tone from the state’s self-proclaimed status as “a nationwide leader in the protection of the unborn” in the anti-abortion fight. A few months after Issa lost her unborn child, now-suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a press release that he would “continue to fight tirelessly for the rights of the unborn.” Paxton had not yet been impeached and was still at the helm of the agency when the state’s motions in Issa’s case were filed.

  • VanillaGorilla@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Holy shit, I can’t imagine a scenario where the state and prison could have acted any worse. That article goes from bad to worse to nuclear annihilation 😐

  • Chickenstalker@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How come even North Korea and Iran have paid maternity leave but the US, a country that supposedly idolizes mothers, does not?

    • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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      1 year ago

      Because we have a weirdly structured federalist system where people arbitrarily decided what could be regulated federally and then said it’s so sacrosanct that it can or should never be changed, ever, for all of time. Also, making new laws is illegal. Triple stamped it no erasies

    • Num10ck@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      the US idolizes productivity, and ignores the lower classes’ needs because they don’t fund campaigns. the younger generations have more empathy so theres hope.

      • the_itsb (she/her)@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        the younger generations have more empathy

        Some, but not all. My mid-20s niece and her husband are racist. My kid is in high school and is friends with a pack of awesome kids who give me tremendous hope for the future, but there are lots of Tate fans, Trump fans, and other shitheads there too.

        Kids are just younger people, they come in all different kinds just like adults - and just like adults, some of them are assholes.

        Not saying we should write them off, just saying we shouldn’t be complacent about the inherent goodness and decency of youth, because it’s fictitious. They learn everything from watching us, and sometimes those lessons suck.

  • dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    "So far, the U.S. Supreme Court has skirted the issue. It refused to take up a related case out of Rhode Island in October, and Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the Dobbs ruling that it “is not based on any view about if and when prenatal life is entitled to any of the rights enjoyed after birth.”

    Now, Ziegler says, we see Texas arguing against fetal rights when it’s being sued for the death of an unborn child."

    And that proves it. Anti abortion laws are only about control. If a fetus can’t have rights of a born person, then having an abortion is not murder. Period end of story. It’s about control and pandering to the forced birth crowd.

  • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Every act of misogyny originates from conservatives. Misogyny is part of the “traditional” conservative foundation.

    Why do women continue to associate with conservatives? Why do they even talk to them? It’s fucking bizarre.

  • DessertStorms@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I wonder how many people she’s witnessed miscarry or go in to early labour and left locked behind bars without medical attention, “just following orders”. Well, in that line of work surely she can appreciate that her colleagues were just following orders too.

    *this isn’t a defence of the people who “stopped” her from leaving (without any restraint, and she doesn’t even report being threatened with being fired or anything, just told not to go) or of how she was treated, it’s a display of disgust and a pointing out of the hypocrisy of people who choose to actively oppress others for a living and then act all surprised when they get oppressed themselves by the exact same system.

  • Kowlown@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I would have moved. No one is above your health and wellbeing. I don’t know why she didn’t told them to fuck off