From September 1st all abortions had after six weeks of pregnancy became illegal. This law was first introduced by Governor Greg Abbott in May, and it was greeted with resistance. However, after months of battles, the Supreme Court ignored the emergency requests to stop the law before it had to be enforced.
This is the most restrictive abortion law in the country. And it conflicts with Supreme Court who banned states from making abortion illegal when the fetus is about between 22 and 24 weeks old.
The Texas Senate Bill 8, which is also known as The Heartbeat Act, makes abortions when the fetus has a heartbeat to be illegal. An unborn child starts to have a detectable heartbeat around the 6 week mark. Which is when women rarely know they are pregnant.
Also, the bill defines that the first day of a pregnancy is calculated from the first day of the woman’s last menstrual period, because it is impossible to confirm the day of the actual conception so it means that women have even less time to find out they are pregnant.
A lot of women who don’t want to get pregnant intentionally don’t usually do pregnancy tests, so the chances of them noticing they are pregnant before the 6 weeks are low. We have to keep in mind that pregnancy tests also can show a false-negative so even that is not a guarantee. Going to the doctors to do bloodwork constantly only just to be safe that you are really not pregnant isn’t reasonable too.
A late period is also not a definite indication of pregnancy too because there are women who have them irregularly or don’t track them at all. The sign that most women take notice of is the feeling of sickness out of nowhere. But that shows up only at about the sixth week when it can already be too late to make an abortion in Texas.
What is more, private individuals may sue any women who had an abortion and any abortion provider and doctors or just anybody involved in the process and get up to $10,000 as a reward. There are even pages where you can tip anonymously about people who are related to this affair now turned illegal.
People on the internet could not hold their mouths and were enraged that no actions were taken against this law, that the media is not talking about it more and were just simply baffled by the politicians who came up with this law. They were calling the $10,000 compensation a bounty and were predicting that it would cause chaos.
Many of them even compared this situation with the crisis that happened in Afghanistan, tweeting with the hashtags #American Taliban and #TexasTaliban. They were making fun of the people who were so concerned about the rights of Afghan women, but the rights of women in Texas seem less important.
A very heated argument was that the freedom to not wear a mask is more valued than the freedom of having a choice in women’s own bodies that will have long-term consequences. People were also triggered because on the same day that the Heartbeat Act took effect, another law came into force, letting Texans above the age of 21 who legally own guns, carry them in public without a license.
Although the internet really exploded with frustrated people’s reactions, there were a lot of them who were defending the bill, saying that abortions are straight up murders and they shouldn’t be allowed. Others were coming with the Christianity argument that it’s God’s will that a woman got pregnant and she shouldn’t change that.
But what are your thoughts? Have you heard about the Heartbeat Act and what was your reaction? Do you agree with people in this list or would you say they are overreacting? We would be curious to know so sound your opinions in the comments.
