I read a recap of JD Vance’s sit-down with Joe Rogan on the latter’s podcast. It was in the Independent (UK) and hysterically biased. They claimed that Vance “stumbled through” the appearance and was a “rhetorical shooting gallery.” Here’s the money quote:
“That was thanks to Rogan’s decision to press Vance — harder than some actual journalists — on his abortion stance. The host quizzed Vance as to what had been wrong with the precedent set by the Supreme Court in 1973, and further dug into why Republican lawmakers were passing overtly religious legislation, including bills that would prosecute women who sought abortion in states where it was legal if they returned home to states where the procedure was banned.
Vance could only sputter that he hadn’t seen those laws, and his statement in defense of the bans seemed even less prepared: Democrats, he argued, were going “way too far” with abortion rights and had begun to “celebrate” abortion.”
And that’s where I got pissed.
I’ve seen the stories and heard the fear-mongering about women getting prosecuted for leaving a no-abortion state to get an abortion elsewhere and then returning home only to be arrested. Let me just say this about that:
THAT’S A FUCKING FALSE AND RIDICULOUS CLAIM.
Are there some laws restricting travel to get an abortion? Yes, there are. Idaho has one such law. And those laws COVER MINORS. You remember minors, right? Children under the age of eighteen. These laws are designed so that someone other than the parents of said minor cannot transport the MINOR out of state WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT. Ask yourself – how comfortable are you with someone you don’t know taking your child out of state, without your knowledge, for a medical procedure?
When it comes to adults, i.e. women eighteen years of age and older, a state cannot prevent their travel out of state for any reason whatsoever. There’s this thing in the Constitution called the “full faith and credit clause.” This means that laws in one state have to be recognized by other states. Therefore, if State A restricts abortion and a woman travels to State B which allows abortions, State A has to honor the laws that allowed the abortion. State A has no jurisdiction in State B and thus cannot prosecute any of its residents for an event that occurred in State B. That’s how marriage (another power of the states) works, and that includes gay marriage. If a gay couple lives in a state that restricts gay marriage, but gets married in a state that allows it, their state of residence is required, under the full faith and credit clause, to recognize the marriage as a legal marriage and grant that couple all the same rights as every other married couple in their state.
Please tell me of one example of a state forbidding its residents to leave for any reason. No, you can’t. And this whole ginned up fear about pregnancy tests at state lines. Are you serious?? Do you really think that’s going to happen? Really? What fucking dystopia are you hoping to live in to make your “heroic” illusions of running an underground abortion railroad come true??
As an example of why none of these dystopian fantasies of the left would happen, let’s look at divorce.
Way back in the bad ol’ days, women in almost every state were unable to initiate divorce proceedings. One of those exceptions was the state of Nevada. Beginning in about 1900, Reno became a haven for women wanting a divorce. Women would travel to Nevada, live there for a period of six months to meet the residency requirement (lowered to three months in 1927, and then to six weeks in 1931 as a means for bringing in money during the Depression). The divorce acquired, the woman could return to her original state of residency and guess what? She was divorced! Under the full faith and credit clause, her home state had no power to reinstate her marriage or arrest her for getting an “illegal” divorce. With abortion laws now back in the hands of the state governments, abortion works the same way. An adult woman cannot be restricted from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion.
Bear in mind, the news story linked above discussing Idaho’s law is deceptive in its headline and the opening line of the story. It’s not until you get a few paragraphs in that you learn the law applies to minors. Which is an entirely different story than a law applying to women eighteen years of age and older, don’t you think?
Now for those screaming that some girls who get pregnant will suffer abuse at home, I take your point. And that means that you, who profess to be so concerned, need to start working with your state legislature to find exceptions to the law for those cases. Just as every state with a complete abortion ban has exceptions for the health and life of the mother, you can work to carve out an exception for potential abuse cases. You want to change something, you’re gonna have to do the work. And screaming at people isn’t the work you need to be doing.
A final note, based on a conversation I had a few months ago: For those now fearing that Trump will usher in a nation-wide federal abortion ban – the same SCOTUS decision that you hate and despise, Dobbs, in which the Court returned control of abortion laws to the states, restricts the federal government from recovering that power. So, a Trump administration cannot Constitutionally institute a federal ban on abortion.
And you didn’t like the Dobbs decision.
So to wrap us this screed… Vance did not “stumble” over his responses when he said he hadn’t seen laws restricting a woman’s ability to leave a state to get an abortion. He hasn’t seen them because they don’t exist. If you’re going to scream about Republican lawmakers ushering in some sort of Handmaid’s Tale dystopia, think about reading the entire article first, and then ask yourself why the author of that article led with something designed to get you to stop reading and start screaming.
Finally, if these laws bother you so much, you might try actually speaking with lawmakers in your state rather than simply putting on the pink pussy hat and screaming obscenities at them. People, including politicians, tend to pay attention more to calm, rational arguments rather than incoherent rage-screaming.
Just a thought.
