Tennessee’s abortion ban leads to involuntary sterilization

So the statute is working as intended:

A Tennessee woman who was denied an abortion despite a fatal abnormality says the state’s anti-abortion laws resulted in her losing an ovary, a fallopian tube and her hopes for a large family.

“The state of Tennessee took my fertility from me,” Breanna Cecil, 34, told The Independent. She added that state lawmakers “took away my opportunity to have a family like my own biological family because of these horrible laws that they put in place.”

The mother-of-one said she has not felt the same since her doctor told her in January 2023 that her fetus was diagnosed with acrania, a fatal condition where the fetus has no skull bones.

Then, 12 weeks pregnant, Ms Cecil was getting her first ultrasound. She attended the appointment alone, so when the doctor told her the fetus was not viable outside the womb, she was left with only asking the doctor what she should do.

However, she was left with few options. The state’s near-total abortion ban prevents anyone from getting an abortion if there is still a heartbeat – which her fetus still had.

Meanwhile, in Louisiana Republican lawmakers oppose rape and incest exceptions because those slutty teenagers who get impregnated would probably lie and definitely need to be forced to carry pregnancies to term anyway:

In February, Louisana Representative Delisha Boyd (D) introduced legislation that proposed exceptions for rape and incest to Louisiana’s abortion ban. When it became clear that the proposal would fail, Boyd narrowed her bill to allow persons 16 years old and younger to have an abortion if they were the victim of rape or incest. 

The legislation was grounded in Boyd’s personal experience. She was born after her mother was raped by a man when she was 15 years old. Boyd said that her mother suffered years of trauma before dying at 30. 

Neelima Sukhavasi, an obstetrician from Baton Rouge, urged the members of the Louisiana House Committee on Criminal Justice to approve Boyd’s bill. Sukhavasi said that since Louisiana imposed its abortion ban in 2022, “[s]he and her colleagues have delivered babies for pregnant teenagers, including mothers as young as 13.” She told the committee, “[o]ne of these teenagers delivered a baby while clutching a Teddy Bear — and that’s an image that once you see that, you can’t unsee it.” According to Sukhavasi, these girls “can experience health complications that affect them for the rest of their lives.”

Nevertheless, the committee rejected Boyd’s bill last week on a 7 to 4 vote. All seven Republicans on the committee voted against creating the exception for child rape victims. One legislator who voted against creating the exception, Representative Lauren Ventrella (R), said she believed “teenagers who had consensual sex might feign rape or incest in order to get access to abortion service.” 

A reminder that all of these sickos were empowered by President Donald J. Trump.