The US Constitution says I don’t have to sacrifice my life in any way to anyone who cannot live without my contribution. No one does.
No person must give up organs (even after death) so another may live. You have to decide this voluntarily, and document it to boot.
Sacrificing like this is a choice. The principle is called bodily autonomy, and it is considered spiritually sacred and it’s enshrined in US law.
But in Texas, women must give up their physical and psychological well-being, and sometimes even more, for non-viable fetuses.
The state says so.
A woman, who may be accused of abortion with great reward to the accuser, is also subject to her private medical records being opened against her will. Alternatively, she may be forced to open them herself, laying her medical and sexual history bare in order to exonerate herself from false accusation. Like if she’s never been pregnant, or sterile, or a virgin…
Maybe she was just delivering a sandwich to a clinic, or herbalist, and her ex-boyfriend is pissed. Maybe she miscarried and needs a D&E, but he thinks she’s callous…
In other words, this law means a thousand cases of damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. Damned because she’s a woman.
Keep her legs closed, you may say. Tell that to rapists, I say, then save her at least the dignity of her private medical files.
THIS law is the slippery slope so many fear, especially those on the “right,” who claim they do this forced incubatorship to protect life. The little baby is the little zygote. It can’t breathe without its host until 24 weeks or so.
We do this thing as a choice, become parents that is, as it should be.
This Texas incubator law is not saving lives. It is robbing all women of their bodily autonomy, and creating a cottage industry of righteously mean accusers. Just you wait.
This law also sets a legal precedent for the state 1) to acquire access to your private medical records, and 2) to decide who’s life is worth saving, or not. Yes, for all citizens, not just the little hootin’ tootin’ child bearin’ little ladies… Ain’t they cute all knocked up and terrified lest they miscarry and get accused of murder.
But, perhaps there is a way to lift women in Texas out of a status on par with an incubating machine.
Should this law stand, a horrifying, but also appropriate legal scenario that should/could follow could be:
for every woman forced to carry a pregnancy to term against her will, an impregnating man is to be forced to give up an organ to keep another person alive.
And the corollary: for every person in need of an organ transplant for survival, the state has the right to demand private medical records of those fingered as “organ hoarders.” There is a bounty paid for singling them out, that they may be brought to justice. Since the state will need to know if donor profiles match, splaying open medical records of such vital men is crucial for the sake of saving life.
Certainly the accused and viable only need a quick surgery and perhaps a month-long recovery, no big deal. Most men have an extra kidney, right? Maybe a testicle too?
If a man wants to avoid being fingered as an organ hoarder, he simply must share his med records to prove his non-viability, or announce his incapability. Maybe to protect himself he could display his blood type on his sleeve, or carry papers that prove he’s exempt from extraneous organ harvesting– there are likely medical exceptions. So, let’s lay them out on the table like a true gentleman would!
Of course, the state would never take your “last” heart. It doesn’t want to kill you of course, but that lost month of work, meh. A lifetime of side effects, whatever! You should have known better. You are on your own, son. That’s what you were made for, helping others to survive, not this selfish “free living” thing!
Know any lawyers practicing in Texas, anyone? Let’s square this baby up and save some lives people!
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Or, (ahem, SCOTUS, do you hear me??), let’s call the Texas law what it is: government overreach. Illegal. And Dangerous.