The Arizona legislature, to its eternal frustration, can’t simply make abortion illegal. Its phony “conservative” Republicans want to shrink “Big Government” just small enough to fit under people’s bedroom doors. But the state is still part of America, however much they—or we—might regret this.
Arizona can, of course, make the experience of a simple abortion as miserable as possible for residents who have the nerve to pursue a legal medical procedure. And the state can throw a fit and just invent reasons that people can’t have abortions.
One imagines them criminalizing abortions taking place on February 30; banning abortions if the father is Elvis; and not allowing abortions if the mother is married to a kangaroo. Arizona’s latest scheme is outlawing abortions if they’re done for reasons of the race or gender of the fetus. And how many abortions have been done for this reason in Arizona? None. Even the sponsors couldn’t name a single case, much less an epidemic.
They seem to have Arizona confused with India. When you can’t tell the difference between a child and a clump of cells that isn’t even a human being, it’s hard to tell the difference between a small American state and the second largest country in the history of the world.
Supporters of the law note that a high percentage of abortions are being sought by minority women. Apparently, they don’t realize that reducing health care options, sex education, and contraceptive availability leads to more unplanned pregnancy. Anti-choice legislators are against abortion almost as much as they’re against reducing unplanned pregnancy. Maybe they don’t know where babies come from.
The new law does raise an interesting question. If a Hispanic couple wants an abortion, will they be challenged as wanting an abortion because the fetus is Hispanic? After all, it’s not a White, Black, or Asian fetus they’d be aborting. And what about a White couple who wants an abortion—when they know darn well the baby they don’t want is White? Are these “abortion because of race?”
Arizona—the state that values female fetuses so much it criminalizes adult women’s choices to run their own lives. Arizona’s motto: “more fetuses, more women, less women’s power.”