From abortion to schools, conservatives are depending on everyday citizens to spy on one another. MsReads via MotherJones
: Maybe those bans could be kept out of the courts if they relied on private citizens to enforce them.
That early morning knock on the door, the ominous legal papers, and the knowledge that someone out there is looking for a chance to sue you are the features of a dystopian new trend: The rise of vigilante enforcement to reverse progress and entrench control over women, LGBTQ people, and people of color.
Is this miscarriage legal to take care of? Can they discuss abortion with a patient whose pregnancy is dangerous or unviable?This spring, SB8 reached a new milestone: It had been in effect almost as long as a pregnancy, which means the first wave of people denied abortions in the fall began to give birth. “The past month, I have personally noticed a much higher volume of deliveries than we typically have in these months,” Moayedi told me in early May.
It is under this heightened surveillance that, in April, Texas sheriffs arrested a 26-year-old woman named Lizelle Herrera after she went to the hospital with either a miscarriage or a self-induced abortion and someone there reported her to the cops. She was placed in the county jail and her bond was set at $500,000. The charge was murder. Local groups helped her post bail and organized protests, bringing media attention.
If abortion rights herald the success of a new democracy like Argentina’s, then they’re also the canary in the coal mine for democratic backsliding: A blinking alert that other rights for marginalized people will fall next. In January, after the Supreme Court virtually invited more states to mimic SB8’s civil enforcement mechanism when it declined to block the law, Michaels warned, this time in the, that such laws were both a symptom and accelerant of “democratic decline.” Some colleagues told him to calm down, but the more he examined SB8 and its progeny, the more alarmed he became.
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