The Rembis Report And Other Fascinating Topics - Volume CXXIX

Some things just don’t make sense and this is one of them.

Here are the cruel facts.

In early December, Kate Cox was 20 weeks pregnant. The fetus in her womb had been diagnosed with Trisomy 18, also known as Edwards Syndrome. This is irreversible and debilitating for the child, and may kill the mother through complications due to an overabundance of amniotic fluids, cause a stillbirth, or necessitate Caesarean birth. The odds of the child taking a single breath are extremely low. If it lives, it is likely to be a short life. About a third of children born with Edwards Syndrome die in the first week. Another third die in the first month, and only 1 in 10 will live for a full year. Beyond one year of age it is a slow crawl toward death.

The effects of Edwards Syndrome produce a child who is smaller than a normal healthy child. They have decreased muscle tone and heart and lung abnormalities. They may be born with club feet, overlapping fingers, low set ears, or other distorted features. In years past, far back when fetal diagnosis was impossible, the child, when born, may have been called a freak. If not culled, and if it lived beyond it’s first year, it would probably become a cripple. If it lived to adolescence it might have been bullied by other children for being different. If it lived to adulthood, it would face severe intellectual challenges, and would likely become an outcast. This genetic twist of fate is something none of us would wish on anyone.

Yet, the supreme court of the great state of Texas, in it’s ultimate wisdom, finds that forcing Kate Cox to bring her pregnancy to term and deliver this child is the right thing to do, even if it kills her. Which it could.

Kate Cox is a married 31-year-old mother of two. She is not hiding in shadows, trying to skirt the law. She wants to play by the rules, but the deck is stacked against her. Once diagnosed, she conferred with her doctor, and made the decision to abort this pregnancy.

This decision was shared by her husband. While sad about losing an unborn child, they found this option to be proper. It would ensure the life of the mother, give her a greater chance for producing healthy future offspring, and avoid the unknown complications that may come from carrying the child to term. The fetus would never be a person. It would not get a name, a birthday, a social security number, or be slapped on it’s ass to breath its first breath. It would simply not exist, save for the memory of what might have been, except for that pesky extra chromosome 18.

To make matters worse, her pregnancy was complicated by two previous cesarean sections, compounding the risk of uterine rupture during birth. Even a healthy fetus could cause this. But, this time, with a baby destined for a short and tragic life, if any, it did not make sense to give birth. It would be too risky for the mother.

Once Kate and her husband learned of their dilemma, they sought a legal abortion. In Texas, this is no easy task. They had to go to court and beg a judge for permission for health care. It is a shame that anyone needs to fight in court for health care. The judge who heard her case granted permission.

Then, the doctor who had agreed to do the procedure was threatened with losing their medical license if they proceeded. It wasn’t just a vague threat from a random stranger. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to the three hospitals where that doctor works, threatening them with lawsuits against performing an abortion on Kate Cox.

Once that happened the Texas Supreme Court got involved.

To back up the expectant mother in need of live-saving health care?

No. To uphold the law. A pointless, stupid law that should not exist.

Instead of following common sense regarding the mother’s health as a top priority, the six men and three women who make up the Texas Supreme Court followed what appear to be the guiding principles of religion that spurred the Texas abortion laws into being. They ruled in favor of her carrying the child to term and risking her life regardless of the likely event that the child will be stillborn or die shortly after birth, because they find this law to be more important than Kate Cox.

It is likely that if Kate Cox were forced to bear this child, she would also be forced to bury it. It would get that name, that birthday, that social security number assigned, and all of that information would be handed over to a service counselor at a funeral home to prepare the death certificate and the tiny headstone for the little casket below. Then, every year, Kate Cox would have to relive that birthday with sadness. Every time she hears the name she picked out for her baby, uttered in passing by strangers, referring to a person she does not know, she will relive this loss. She will memorize that defunct social security number because she won’t be able to help it.

That is, if she lives.

If Kate Cox dies due to complications from this pregnancy, and the child lives, her grieving young widower and mourning children will be caring for the child that killed her, until it dies. But don’t blame that kid. The babe is innocent.

Blame the law that forced that child to exist.

But Kate Cox is no longer relying on Texas to do the right thing. In her 21st week of pregnancy, she has reportedly traveled to an undisclosed location for a legal abortion, presumably in a neighboring state.

She must act quickly because as the fetus grows it complicates the procedure. She is running out of time, and in whatever neighboring state she went to, a doctor is saving her life. We don’t know what hoops she may be jumping through now to terminate the pregnancy, but, if abortion were completely outlawed in the United States, she could still get a legal abortion overseas; in Iceland or Vietnam before week 22, and in Columbia, Netherlands, or Singapore by week 24. Then, it is too late. If the pregnant woman does not get the care she needs before week 25 something unwanted will occur.

It is fundamentally wrong to hinder healthcare. Laws are meant to protect people and bring justice to those misfortunate enough to have been harmed in some way. Using the courts to demonize a pregnant woman with no control over the genetic mutation within her womb is absurdly wrong.

How do courts have time for this? What do they gain? What does anyone get out of harassing and torturing this woman and her family? Is it a magical ticket to heaven, a place which, by all accounts is most likely fictional, and nobody can prove exists?

Do the supreme court judges and the attorney general get a kickback from all the revenue that follows when they stop the abortion? There is a lot of money involved. All the medical tests, the hospital fees, the funeral costs; do they get a piece of that?

Or is it a sinister plot to bring Margaret Atwood’s fictional Gilead to life? For those unfamiliar, her book The Handmaid’s Tale, imagines a dystopian misogynistic society, that forms in the aftermath of a civil war which has toppled the United States government. Women are kept like livestock to breed under the watchful eye of God. They have no agency or rights. Public execution is the norm. There is no abortion.

Texas seems to be well on it’s way and this may very well be exactly what anti-abortionists want.

Let’s start with Ken Paxton. You would think that the Attorney General for the state of Texas, one of the biggest judicial systems in the country, would have bigger fish to fry, you know, extortion, murder, rape, and a host of other nefarious crimes; drug smuggling, conspiracy, theft. But no. He is going after the pregnant lady who lost the genetic lottery. Forcing women to complete their pregnancy, hell or high water, is tops on his priority list.

What about the judges on the court? Why should they care if an otherwise healthy woman should want to do the right thing for herself and her family? They don’t. The law is blind to the scales of justice. They are just doing their job, interpreting the law as it is written and enforcing only that. Whether or not people do or do not get hurt is not their business. When necessary, to fully uphold the law in Texas, they let people die. The death sentence is business as usual in Texas. Perhaps the adoption of this viewpoint shuts down their humanity. It is not about common sense on a personal basis. It is about following the letter of the law. It does not matter whether or not the law makes sense.

Then, you have the doctors. Plenty of them are willing to perform abortions, but on the rare occasions where they are allowed to provide care, whether or not the procedure goes as intended, they could be held liable for murder. Then they have to deal with Ken Paxton and the judicial system. Just like that, they could become a statistic, serving a life sentence behind bars, or waiting their turn on death row.

If they frighten enough women will breeding stop altogether in Texas?

Not likely. It is also unlikely that we will see a mass exodus from Texas any time soon because so many people support abortion bans. Right-to-life advocates cheer on Ken Paxton and the courts. While staunch anti-abortionists only make up 13% of the population, they are still a lot of people, around 50 million or so.

But why? What is the end game?

Anti-abortionists are driven by religious zeal. They truly believe and have faith in a mythology where angels, souls, and an afterlife exist. They want to build the world that God wants, infusing church with state, even as they yearn for rapture. While sold under the guise of Christianity, it is no different than Muslim extremism like ISIS or the Taliban. They want to own people. They want slaves.

The concept is sold in tiny bits and pieces. Preying on people who find themselves in need, offering prayers, and bringing them into the fold at a church somewhere, convincing the flock that what God wants is the way everything should be. And God wants babies to live.

If not indoctrinated from youth, a church might lift alcoholics and drug addicts off the street, help them get into a program, cleaned up, and into a productive lifestyle. Some of those folks really bounce back and go on to do great things. Nothing wrong with that. But the whole time, you can count on religion preaching salvation, and one of the ways to do that is to reject abortion in every way possible. This is done in addition to everything else they teach the flock to reject. Pick anything that isn’t Christian and you get the idea.

They sincerely think they are rooting out evil through the denial of healthcare for biological circumstances while completely missing the mark on what should be common sense. That is the main part of it. The commodification of motherhood is the other part. Pregnancy is big business. Every aborted child is lost revenue.

I am of the opinion that life begins at the mother’s discretion. She may take a morning after pill, or use an IUD, or insist her partner use a condom to stop pregnancy. When she learns of her own pregnancy, it’s all hers, nobody else’s. Her body, her decision, her choice. If she wants a baby, whether married or single, she can have it, live her life, and provide for her child as she sees fit. If she decides that is not something she wants, she should be able to have an abortion without question. The law should be that nobody else can make that decision for her; not the presumed father, not a church, and not a court. The final decision should be hers alone.

Of course, there are extraordinary circumstances where exceptions may occur and these are the reasons to have specific laws in place. Raped children should not have children. Those diagnosed with severe metal illness, the criminally insane, who are a harm to others, a menace to society, should not have children. Cases like these are extremely rare. At least I would hope so. They should be.

Maybe if we let common sense rule and only focused on rare exceptions, such as these, we would not need courts to tell us how to live, and we could avoid dystopia altogether.

Thanks for reading.

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