Health: Forced to flee Texas for an abortion
Kate Cox has exposed the cruelty of the antiabortion movement, said Andrea Grimes in MSNBC.com. After learning her fetus had a fatal genetic condition, the Dallas mother of two sought an emergency court order last week that would let her terminate the pregnancy despite Texas’ near-total abortion ban. Hearing that the “wanted but nonviable pregnancy” could risk Cox’s health and future fertility, a district judge ruled in her favor. But state Attorney General Ken Paxton wanted Cox, 31, to “stay pregnant against her will.” He appealed the ruling and threatened legal action against doctors and any hospitals who help carry out the procedure. By the time Texas’ allRepublican Supreme Court ruled against Cox this week—saying doctors, not judges, should decide when abortion is medically necessary—she had left the state for treatment. In theory, Texas’ abortion ban includes exceptions to protect the health of a pregnant women, said Kylie Cheung in Jezebel.
In practice, it lets state officials intimidate doctors with the prospect of life in prison and force patients to “beg for lifesaving care—then tell them no.”
Even we pro-lifers should acknowledge Cox’s “heartbreaking reality,” said Nicole Russell in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She learned in her 20th week that her unborn child has trisomy 18, which results in miscarriage or stillbirth in 95 percent of cases. Over the past month, she visited three ERs because of severe cramping and leaking fluid. How many more times should she have visited the ER to prove to Paxton that her health was in danger? “Texas’ abortion law is in desperate need of clarification.” If the state Supreme Court had allowed Cox to end her pregnancy, said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times, that display of mercy might have widened support for the anti-abortion movement. But the Right “would rather inflict unimaginable suffering on women than relax the tiniest bit of control over their medical decisions.”
Cox’s case will have “far-reaching ramifications,” said Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. Can any law cover the wide spectrum of pregnancy complications that endanger women? Can the Republicans who “keep touting a national ban” explain how such cases would be handled without sounding like ghouls? Voters support abortion rights “in higher numbers than ever,” because they’ve seen the “horrendous injustices and medical travesties” that have followed the toppling of Roe v. Wade. Republicans must open their eyes or “prepare to reap the political whirlwind in 2024.”
Trump insiders have shared his vision for a second-term cabinet, said Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei in Axios, and “this time, it’d be all loyalists, no restraints.” In his first term, Trump’s worst antidemocratic impulses and most deranged ideas were quietly blocked or shelved by experienced, levelheaded officials such as chief of staff John Kelly and defense secretary Jim Mattis.
This time, Trump wants only “MAGA warriors” who won’t balk when he wants to call out the military to quash protests on American streets, fire missiles into Mexico, and pull the U.S. out of NATO. Trump loyalists Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem are candidates for vice president, and right-wing ideologue Kash Patel may be tapped to head a Trumpified CIA. Stephen Miller, the anti-immigration zealot behind Trump’s family-separation border policy, is a potential attorney general. For all these and other key positions, Trump is seeking toadies who are eager to “jail critics” and “test the boundaries of executive power.”
Some potential Trump picks are already trying out for jobs, said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. Vance sent a letter last week to the Department of Justice saying neoconservative scholar
Robert Kagan should be investigated for “inciting insurrection” over a recent essay in which Kagan warned that in an autocratic second Trump term, blue states like New York and California may “refuse to recognize the authority of a tyrannical federal government.” MAGA loyalist Patel made the threat to free speech and the press even more explicit, said Dareh Gregorian in NBCNews.com. “We’re going to come after the people in the media” who “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel said.
As alarm over such messaging grows, Trump and his allies aren’t denying that Trump would rule as a strongman, said Peter Baker in The New York Times. Instead, “they seem to be leaning into it.” Asked by Fox’s Sean Hannity to deny he’d be a dictator, Trump grinned and said he’d only be a dictator on “Day 1” of a new term. “This is something new in contemporary Western politics,” said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. Rather than hide his plan to defy the rule of law and crush his enemies, Trump believes “it’s his special sauce”—and it seems there’s “a constituency for this pitch.” Whether that constituency can get him elected remains to be seen, but it’s “a much larger cohort than we imagined.”