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Texas Republicans Ban Women From Using Highways for Abortion Appointments
(www.newsweek.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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How tf would they even enforce this?
“Are you traveling to get an abortion?” “No, I’m going to visit family”
How would they prove otherwise? Is there something I’m missing?
The correct answer is “I don’t want to talk about my day.”
" Am I being detained or am I free to go?" If detained "then you shut the fuck up!"
It’s even better if you say “I invoke my fifth amendment right to stay silent” and then shut the fuck up.
Every day is Shut The Fuck Up Friday
Three people got busted in a raid. Third guy shut the fuck up, and the DA did not prosecute. They can’t prove what you’re doing there.
You're missing the right to privacy in your phone. Make sure you didn't put the clinic into Google maps or make a call to them ahead of time. Governmental AI is on the way and it will be steered by the same people making these rules.
LEAs have been shown to actively track women who use search engines or messaging services to seek information about abortion services. There's a non-zero chance that women who they suspect, and their friends and family, are tagged in their system when they search the plates of someone passing by.
It's not about lying to cops, particularly if they can already prove you were seeking those services in the first place. At that point they'll arrest you with probable cause.
They already use that kind of system with drug dealers. If they suspect you sell drugs, they will tag your name and plate and find a reason to pull you over if they spot you. Why would they hesitate to track women like that?
Arrest on suspicion?
It goes like this:
Whether they are correct in issuing an arrest doesn't matter for them because they have qualified immunity. They let the courts sort it out.
I was just having this conversation the other day. The person was absolutely confounded how in the world this law would be enforced. I essentially said that it doesn't matter. Cops will stop you for whatever, arrest you for whatever, send you to jail for whatever, doesn't matter. If they're wrong, oh well, that's the court's job.
It basically gives them an excuse to detain any woman they want, which is the purpose.
Easy, women shouldn't be allowed to use highways period. Then they won't be able to drive to abortions.
Fuck it, women shouldn't be allowed to drive. Long live the United States of Saudi Arabia!
These types of laws tend to rely on someone close to the pregnant person calling the cops, usually family. These communities passing these laws are full of people who would eagerly jail their children for getting an abortion.
No no, not their children. Their child's abortion is necessary. Their child has so much potential and Jesus will forgive them for it.
You childs abortion? You're a heathen that will burn in hell for baby murder.
They cannot because they do not have jurisdiction at all. You can't prosecute someone for doing something legal in another area.
There’s two things that apply in this situation. The first is that like several other states, they’re not making getting an abortion in another state illegal, they’re making traveling on their infrastructure for the purposes of obtaining an abortion in another state illegal. Is that an unconstitutional restriction on interstate commerce? Who the fuck knows anymore? I don’t think it will hold, but I didn’t expect Justice Thomas to rise like Cthulhu from his eternal and well grifted slumber to kill Roe, so I’m not offering an opinion on that.
The second way, and this is also worrying me, is that while they can’t make flying to California to smoke pot illegal, they can make having pot in your system when you land back in Texas illegal. If they can’t make having an abortion in CA illegal, can they still use medical records to track that your pregnancy was terminated out of state, and prosecute you on a charge after returning to the state with a terminated pregnancy?
To be honest, I think that will fail too, but I’m sure it’ll land on the books someplace.
I’m also sure that these will all become national level laws because people still think politics is a team sport, and if it does not terrify you that the worst president in the history of the US and with openly fascist statements of taking full control and going after his enemies is running neck and neck with just a regular pre-2000s style politician, you’re either not paying attention or you’re privileged as all fuck.
This is my take as well. I hope folks figure it out and that laws like these get wiped out.
This is why I as a Canadian can't fathom why Americans seem to think they have more freedom than I do somehow. To me the whole "States Rights" debacle essentially gives Americans two countries worth of laws that they are bound by instead of one.
The fact the US also enforces it's laws on non-citizens for things done outside it's country legally gives the whole thing the sense of the US being drunk on it's own sovereignty. Like it's legal to smoke pot here but if you are tricked into mentioning at a US boarder crossing that you EVER smoked weed on Canadian soil even if it was in the distant past you risk being forever barred from entry into the US.
And to be clear this is not their citizens doing things in their own country that are not illegal by the measure of that country's law. From what I understand there isn't much of an appeal process either because once it's done our citizenry suddenly goes into category "not my monkey not my circus".
The US is very very fond of restriction of freedoms from an outsider perspective.
The big issue is that it's not law enforcement that enforce this, it's everyday people - and those people are given immunity by this law.
They could just have checkpoints on the exit roads on the state. There are a lot of things Texas republicans are doing with police, namely allowing them to be border patrol agents with authority to deport people. This, along with precedent being pushed that police can find probable cause after the fact that you’re arrested, police can just arrest first because they saw a women “who looked pregnant.” I foresee women becoming second class citizens really soon in red states, and its really troubling.