No, Republicans, women aren’t the same as pregnant sea turtles
Sen. Steve Daines from Montana compared women to reptiles, pregnant sea turtles to be exact.
No, seriously.
“Why do we have laws in place to protect the eggs of sea turtles, or the eggs of eagles?” he thundered. “Because when you destroy an egg, you’re killing a pre-born baby sea turtle.”
Daines seems to not understand that human women after a night of passionate sex don’t drive an untold number of miles to find their place of birth – the way turtles swim to find theirs – poop out a fertilized egg and leave it there to hatch 60 days later. He seems not to know that his analogy, if not for its absurdity, would make a stronger case for upholding rather than uprooting Roe v. Wade. Roe allows more robust abortion restrictions after a fetus can survive on its own the way a sea turtle’s egg can survive for a couple of months buried in sand rather than in its mother’s bosom. (If that’s the right word for a sea turtle’s womb.)
Or maybe Daines was sincerely trying to compare how we treat human babies after they’ve been born to hatchlings. But Daines and other Republicans wouldn’t want to do that. Because for far too many elected officials on his side of the aisle, brown children of undocumented immigrants aren’t precious babies to be sheltered. They are “illegals” who warrant neither asylum nor compassion.
Black children of women on welfare aren’t precious babies to be safeguarded. They are future “thugs” and “super predators” to be feared or used as political pawns to gin up votes about crime. Even the protection of white kids, like those killed at Sandy Hook, is less important than the protection of an extreme view of the Second Amendment that allowed that massacre to happen.
Nearly 4 million American children were thrust back into poverty when child tax credits made law by Democrats expired as Republicans stood in opposition to their extension. Because of the GOP (and Democrat Joe Manchin), Build Back Better, which includes potentially life-changing help for struggling families, is stalled. While Democrats have been fighting to enact policies to provide family assistance of various sorts, Republicans have steadfastly stood in their way. As we get closer to the official repeal of Roe, political strategists are telling Republicans to embrace pro-family policies because it would be good politics – not because of the sanctity of life.
And why not? Little else has mattered to them.
They probably didn’t listen to Janet Yellen describing why outlawing abortion would undermine economic gains made by women over the past half century. They don’t care that the abortion rate has fallen faster under pro-abortion rights presidents than anti-abortion presidents – or that the rate jumped for two consecutive years under Donald Trump.
Maybe they haven’t noticed the nearly 20 percent jump in the maternal mortality rate, with a surge among Hispanic and black women, or why we should fear that number increasing ever more in a post-Roe world. They don’t seem to mind that Louisiana is considering criminalizing women who have abortion and outlawing certain forms of birth control. Never mind that a woman in Texas was recently indicted after having a miscarriage.
Never mind that we know a married woman in Texas had an abortion because of Texas’s draconian bounty law. According to NPR, she didn’t know if the pregnancy was the result of a rape or from intimacy with her husband. Waiting to find out would have put her outside of the new 6-week legal limit, so she moved forward with the medical procedure.
Daines would rather not talk such unpleasantness. Images of cute sea turtle are more pleasing.
This story was originally published May 13, 2022 at 7:54 AM.