The Absurd GOP

[Rev. Rye]

I think I’ve mentioned before that repealing Roe would likely make things even worse than before Roe. Before Roe, the women who actually got said abortions tended to be treated by the law as victims of those predatory abortionists. So the law was underpinned by some sort of “benevolent patriarchy.” In the intervening 50 years after Roe, the antis got more radicalized. Now, they’ve got laws targeting the women. Laws where women who underwent abortions were eligible for the death penalty? That simply didn’t exist before Roe. If one can find any evidence of an American woman being executed for having an abortion before January 22, 1973, I’d like to see it because I can’t find any evidence of it. Post-Roe, the antis have decided that a woman has just enough moral agency to be liable for the choices they make, but not enough to make it okay for her to make those choices. They saw the benevolent patriarchy of their forebears and decided the best thing to do was to drop any semblance of benevolence.