After Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked last year, and Americans started coming to terms with the fact that the court’s GOP-appointed majority would soon overturn Roe v. Wade, the National Republican Senatorial Committee quickly distributed talking points to the party’s incumbents and candidates.
As regular readers may recall, the rhetorical suggestions were defensive, not celebratory. Party leaders seemed to realize that most of the country wanted to leave the Roe precedent intact, so Republican officials advised incumbents and candidates to tell voters, among other things, “Republicans DO NOT want to throw doctors and women in jail.”
It was an acknowledgement from GOP leaders that the American mainstream was repulsed by the idea of criminal prosecutions of physicians and women who feel the need to terminate unwanted or dangerous pregnancies.
That was last year. This year, the number of Republicans who do, in fact, want such criminal prosecutions continues to grow. The Associated Press reported:
Some Missouri lawmakers are renewing a call for the state to take an anti-abortion step that goes further than prominent anti-abortion groups want to go and that has not gained much traction in any state so far: a law that would allow homicide charges against women who obtain abortions. Republicans in both the state House and Senate have introduced bills to be considered in the legislative session that begins next month to apply homicide laws on behalf of a victim who is an “unborn child at every stage of development.”
Or put another way, if such a policy were to become law in Missouri, those who have an abortion could be arrested and charged with murder.
To be sure, every year, there are all kinds of obscure measures introduced in state legislators, the vast majority of which stand little chance of success. It’s entirely possible that these radical proposals in Missouri will…
Read the full article here