![]() Spaeth was struck by both the impossibility and the inhumanity of the state senator's directive. In Spaeth's tenure with the fund - which offsets or covers the costs of travel, birth control and abortion-related expenses for callers from North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and other states - she has spent countless hours, days and weeks supporting the thousands of very real children and women Myrdal references in her statement celebrating the law that will restrict their bodily autonomy. Destini Spaeth of Fargo, board director of the state's only abortion fund, the ND WIN Fund, tells me Myrdal has long proclaimed her desire to pass an SB8 "copycat bill," replicating Texas' ban on almost all abortions where fetal cardiac activity is detected and its employment of a bounty hunter enforcement mechanism in which its residents can file civil suits against anyone suspected of "aiding and abetting" the termination of such a pregnancy. Perhaps this senator's bizarre and frankly fantastical vision shouldn't shock me. North Dakota's Republican party "certainly" wants to "encourage" a child who has been raped, by a family member or otherwise, to "immediately go to medical care" and "get these things taken care of before there's fertilization." I read Myrdal's quote and was struck by both the transparency and the specificity of it. And with whose lives, families and freedoms are they willing to pay for this new privileged class? That's easy: They will always be willing to sacrifice the health, safety, freedom and wellbeing of these same constituents - no matter their individual wishes, their medical needs, their ages or their circumstances. Who are these lawmakers claiming to privilege and protect, with this new authority they are granting themselves over our bodies and our families? They are usually explicit about this: "the unborn," or other euphemisms for any fertilized eggs, embryos or fetuses which might exist inside the bodies of their pregnant constituents. Whenever a new state-level abortion ban passes, I search for the quotes given to journalists or the official testimony shared by the anti-abortion lawmakers who voted for it. ![]() "We certainly want to encourage any child, any woman, that experiences any of this, to immediately go to medical care and get these things taken care of before there's fertilization."Ī Texas man is suing those who helped his ex-wife get an abortion. Janne Myrdal, of Edinburg, North Dakota, speaking in April in support of the bill on the state senate floor. "We talk about rape and incest, and those are horrific circumstances," said Republican State Sen. The party's enthusiastic celebration of this deadly ban has brought some particularly telling language forth from the mouths of its endorsers. ![]() North Dakota Republicans are celebrating. What lawmakers call "six weeks pregnant" is about one week after someone might first know they were pregnant, if they had very regular periods they were tracking religiously - uncommon, among the incredibly busy and stressed-out mothers who make up the majority of U.S. ![]() Last week, the North Dakota GOP signed into law SB2150, a near-total abortion ban, with exceptions only for those who can prove their pregnancies are the result of rape or incest in the first six weeks of gestation, and to "prevent the death or a serious health risk" of a pregnant patient (to which the six-week limit does not apply). ![]()
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