To assess what America’s increasingly radicalized movement against abortion rights is plotting next against America’s women, it’s generally useful to look to Texas. And what’s going on in the Lone Star State right now should be chilling not just to those who support reasonable abortion rights but to anyone who understands that unfettered travel within the U.S. is as fundamental a freedom for Americans as speech or religion. …
Ordinances already approved in two Texas cities and in two counties make it illegal for anyone to aid a pregnant woman in leaving the state for abortion services by using local roads and highways. ….
If a husband wants to prevent his wife from leaving the state for an abortion, for example, he could threaten to sue anyone who offered to drive her. …
Sit with that a moment.
For the almost five decades that Roe v. Wade was in force, its opponents argued that individual states, not a federal court ruling, should determine their own abortion standards. But since the overturn of Roe last year, that stance has given way to one in which lawmakers in some red states are aggressively seeking to extend their own bans on neighboring states in various ways.
Missouri’s abortion ban, in effect since the very day Roe fell, is as strict as any in the nation, outlawing the procedure from the moment of conception in every case, including rape and incest, with a sole, vague exception for medical emergencies. Doctors who violate it can face 15 years in prison.
Having cast off Roe in part with a state’s-rights argument, the antiabortion movement is now determined to cast aside states’ rights and impose its will on every region of the country, regardless of whether those regions like it. There is no better argument for a national law codifying the protections that existed under Roe.
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch
