Vigilante mob rules over women’s rights

The new Texas law is a flagrant, unconstitutional assault on reproductive rights and the freedoms we hold dear. The law permits ANYONE to sue a doctor or nurse or friend who drives a patient to an abortion clinic, and it sets a bounty, $10,000, to be paid to the “injured party,” in other words, to the anonymous complainer. This week in a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court of the United States deemed this atrocity to be legal.

Equal rights before the law are out the door, vigilante mob rule is in.

The new law lets any nosy anti-choice busy-body, any angry self-appointed agent of righteousness bring suit against someone who helps to bring about an abortion. Anyone who is pregnant but might miscarry, or is pregnant against her will, is thereby isolated from comfort and protections.

This mischief will not remain in Texas. Other legislatures will hurry to craft their own versions of a so-called “workaround” which nullifies a right to legal abortion by shifting the job of carrying out the law from duly constituted government to private parties.

“First they came for the pregnant women, but I was not pregnant so I kept silent. Then they came for the feminists but I was not a feminist so I kept silent. Then they came for medical professionals but I was not a medical professional … by the time they came for me, no one spoke because no one was left.”

Speak up! Take your stand for women’s rights, including the right to choose.

— Robin Dizard, Chico