Gilead

Dear Reader, I’d like you to do something for me. Take out a pen and a piece of paper; this won’t take long. Now, on that paper, I would like you to write a dollar value that accurately captures your loyalty, integrity, and interpersonal relationships. Before you do; I’d give you the same caution my old bioethics professor gave me, “If you’re going to sell your integrity make sure you get enough to retire on.” Same thing goes for you.

I’m laying out this scenario because Texas, that shithole state, recently enacted the most restrictive antiabortion law in the US, the so-called “heartbeat bill” — I have no idea what it is with feeble-minded Southerners and their obsession with hearts. I mean, yeah, they’re essential for life, but so are brains, kidneys, and livers, and no one’s proposing an anti-alcohol or anti-meth bill. Maybe it’s because they don’t have enough brains to appreciate the entirety of the human organ system, maybe it’s because they dropped out after fifth grade; I don’t know. Yes, I’m going to cruelly stereotype and mock Texans for their stupidity, incompetence, inhumanity, and viciousness, because, in the middle of hurricane season, as COVID hospitalizations soar, as their creaky power grid gives out, they chose to… vilify women? Yes, that’s right, they outlawed abortion in every circumstance after six weeks (as several of my friends who are mothers pointed out, most women don’t even feel the symptoms of pregnancy before six weeks, so this is just terrorizing women for having sex)(which offers a solution, but we’ll get there). All of that would be terrible and disturbing, but the real kicker is that the bill allegedly provides $10,000 for every woman caught getting an abortion, which seems like a really weird sting operation that violates all sorts of privacy laws, but that’s another story and shall be told another time.

At the moment, the great state of Texas, displaying their usual competence, set up a website for anonymous tips, and, God bless the Internet, it was flooded with fake tips, eye-searing Shrek porn, and, one hopes, awful Twilight fan-fic. I, myself, reported the long-standing rumors of The Donald’s allegedly paying mistresses to get abortions, which, I suppose puts me on the same legal and moral scale as any poor Texan woman trying to exercise her Constitutional rights to get an abortion. I don’t know; I haven’t really thought of it, usually because I’m too preoccupied with what I’m doing to worry about what women do with their bodies. Which really begs the question, gents, who hurt you so badly that you want to make it illegal for them to risk pregnancy (just a reminder, gents, there is only one form of contraception that’s 100% fool-proof, and you probably aren’t interested in it)? I mean, yeah, rejection hurts, and some women can be scary (I have a number of family and friends who would qualify, but I don’t want to regulate their uteruses)(utreri? uterodes? What’s the plural?), but I fail to see what on Earth could possibly justify all this, “We have found a witch, may we burn her?” attitude.

But, I digress, let’s say that you, the aspiring abortion bounty hunter, decide that your trust and friendship are worth 10 grand — I get that doesn’t get you much in civilization, but you could probably get a cool, slightly-used trailer-camper and some primo meth in Waco. Let’s say you follow a woman down a dark alley and get a photo of her meeting with people in white lab coats (I honestly don’t know what that would prove, but I absolutely know that revealing details of a surgical procedure are protected by HIPAA, so the enforcement of this stupid law is going to be such a procedural mess that most attorneys probably wouldn’t want anything to do with it), and drag her down to your local police station. At this point, I’d like you to make a quick judgment as to what’s more-likely;

1. The cops cuff her, take her into booking, and give you a cool ten thousand bucks, or…
2. They keep you waiting in processing for a few hours, before telling you that the payout is dependent upon a conviction, and, because of that dreadful Fifth Amendment, you’re looking at a 12–24 month wait. In the meantime, all of your friends will know you’re not to be trusted, women know you’re a grade A stalker who follows women around, and your community teaches you why it’s “snitches get stitches” instead of, “tattletales get cake.”

Oh, there’s also…

3. You follow a woman to her car, home, place of work, or any other place that extends the “Stand your ground” laws, and shoots you (these are Texas women, don’t forget). Yeah, she might get the death penalty, but you’ll bleed out right away (especially if ERs are still inundated with COVID cases). That ten thousand barely covers your hospital and/or funeral costs, and you’re immortalized by local bar flies at “That guy who got his cock blown off for following women around.” (Or “that creepy woman who got winged for harassing other women;” I don’t know what the gender politics are surrounding women actively hurting each other to uphold the patriarchy, but, stupidity and greed don’t discriminate).

Right now, the aforementioned anonymous whistleblower site is gone, because most people are mostly good most of the time, and Go Daddy realized this was a can of civil lawsuits waiting to happen and backed away (or they realized that being the Internet’s premier destination for cartoon-based porn wasn’t a sustainable business model); Lyft and Uber are stating that they will pay all legal fees if any of their drivers are fingered for aiding and abetting women fleeing E̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶G̶e̶r̶m̶a̶n̶y̶ Texas to more-liberal parts, like Oklahoma.

If you are a woman, there are some easy steps you can take right now to reclaim some of your bodily autonomy. First, don’t fuck any man from Texas. This should be a fairly easy step; no woman deserves a male Texan. Ask to see an ID that confirms residency. Double-check that their signature matches the one on the license. Also, require proof of a vasectomy; don’t be afraid to “feel” for it (everyone knows that if you apply a grinding motion to the testicles, you can feel the knot tied in the system)(if you can’t, grind harder until it becomes a non-issue). If he complains to the cops, tell them that he was going to drag you to an abortion provider, and you had to escape.

The truth of the matter is; in the United States, women outnumber men slightly, and are one of the most-powerful voting blocs in the union (any number of estimates put “soccer moms” — white suburban women — as the deciding voters in the past several election cycles). This is just a cynical ploy to demoralize you, and stop you from going to the polls (and, this goes almost without saying, if you are a woman who feels threatened by this hollow, horrific political ploy, don’t vote Republican ever again, for any office; if there’s a Republican running unopposed, get onto the ballot, even if it’s just to split the vote). And remember, you don’t have to do this forever, simply until the next Texas lawmaker gets caught driving their mistress to Alabama for an abortion. Again, that’s cynical, but, for the last ten years, the GOP has notoriously passed laws that they, themselves, have absolutely no intention of following. And, if you’re in a position to safely and effectively sabotage any part of this system, obviously, that should be a priority, from electrical grids to construction projects to prisons, nothing in Texas should function. I mean, it should be even more nonfunctional than it currently is.

To all of my friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, because I still believe in personal responsibility, and I price my trust and loyalty at a high seven-digit figure, I won’t snitch on you for nonviolent crimes (mostly; if you’re one of those nightmarish employers that’s griping about how “no one wants to work anymore,” I might direct any inquisitive folk from the IRS toward you, but not the police). Hell, if it’s violent crimes aimed at Congressmen, I’ll drive.