Get Used to It

This is what the aftermath of self-abortion looks like in Texas.

Authorities are awaiting the results of an autopsy before deciding whether to pursue criminal charges against a Houston woman who apparently induced an abortion and then discarded the 5-month-old fetus in a relative's trash can.

Bleeding heavily after delivery, the 29-year-old woman showed up at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital on Wednesday and told an emergency-room nurse what had happened. The nurse called police, who dispatched officers to recover the fetus, which the woman said she had wrapped in a blanket.

The woman, whose name was not released, told police she had taken unidentified pills on Tuesday to prompt the abortion because she could not afford to care for a child.

They don't need an autopsy to determine gestational development. Texas has a fetal homicide law that applies to 'an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth'.

This is LifeShite NOT being ironic.

Legalizing abortion was supposed to rid the country of these kinds of self-abortion cases, but clearly that is not the case.

Accessible, affordable, legal abortion would, but the Fetus Lobby® has ringed the procedure with so many restrictions and barriers, including two mandatory visits, mandatory ultrasound, 24-hour waiting period, bullshit lecture, parental consent, yadayada, that 'accessible' isn't the word that springs to mind to describe abortion in Texas.

Plus, there's the small matter of paying for it.

Texas has banned using state money for abortion for a long time and is now cutting funding to Planned Parenthood for family planning.

Texas can cut off funding to Planned Parenthood's family planning programs for poor women, a state judge ruled Monday, requiring thousands to find new state-approved doctors for their annual exams, cancer screenings and birth control.

And how about this nifty bit of police-state thought-control?

Judge Gary Harger said that Texas may exclude otherwise qualified doctors and clinics from receiving state funding if they advocate for abortion rights.

Can't access affordable birth control, can't access abortion, can't pay for abortion?

You are on your fucking own in these Individual Responsibility States of America. But don't get caught taking care of business or they'll throw your ass in jail.

@kailijoy And what a creepy headline.Might as well get used to these. How sad.

— Soraya Chemaly (@schemaly) February 14, 2013