Abortion & Snitch Culture
Abortion & Snitch Culture
The plan for abortion ban enforcement? People ratting each other out.
Whenever I write about the latest anti-choice bill and how it targets women—whether it’s legislation that classifies helping a teenager get an out-of-state abortion as ‘human trafficking’, or an abortion ban that would prosecute women who ‘cause’ their miscarriages—one question comes up again and again: How would law enforcement possibly know?
How could the cops find out that you drove your niece out-of-state for abortion care? It’s not like they’ll be checking at the border. How would prosecutors come to the conclusion that you’re at fault for your pregnancy ending? Or that you illegally used abortion medication? There’s only so much surveillance they can do!
The answer is snitch culture. Conservative lawmakers, zealous prosecutors and cops don’t plan on looking for people who break abortion laws—because they’re counting on Americans turning each other in.
There’s a reason that Texas passed ‘bounty hunter’ laws, which give citizens a $10,000 reward for successfully suing anyone who violates abortion bans—and why so many other states are following suit. The sad truth is that Republicans probably didn’t even need to attach a financial incentive to their legislation because people enjoy tattling. That’s especially true when it comes to an issue like abortion, hyper-charged with misogyny, racism, classism and ever-devolving conservative rhetoric.
These laws embolden the worst kind of people and the lowest type of behavior. They give the country’s worst busybodies and states’ most bored and bitter citizens the go-ahead to make other people’s lives miserable.
Even worse, conservatives are encouraging people to betray those closest to them. Anti-choice legislators and activists know that for every friend or family member willing to support a woman through an abortion, there’s someone in her life—an abusive ex-boyfriend, an estranged mother-in-law—eager to use the power of the state to punish her or anyone who helps her.
Worst of all, the strategy is already working. Police who arrested a Nebraska teen for an illegal abortion, for example, were operating off of a tip by one of her ‘friends’. A woman in Texas who was arrested and charged with murder for allegedly inducing an abortion was turned in by the hospital she went to for treatment.
Conservatives are relying on Americans’ appetite for punishment to enforce a cruel and divisive agenda—hoping that we’ll prioritize adherence to the state over the safety and health of our own communities.
That’s what makes this all so cruel: The people who claim to stand for ‘family values’ are depending entirely on our willingness to turn on each other. They’re incentivizing the breakdown of family and community trust, and codifying betrayal. It’s a way to make us feel disconnected from each other, and to make women feel as if they aren’t safe anywhere or with anyone. It’s downright terroristic.
We know the individual harm and suffering that abortion bans are causing—more and more stories are shared every day. The damage done to the faith we have in each other, however, will be much harder to gauge.
ON TV crime shows police will often react based on the evidence of a single “witness”. I put witness in quotes because I think what sloppy writing. Why would the police accept the word of a single person, who could be lying for any number of self-interested reasons, money, vengeance, to cover up someone else’s or their own involvement, notoriety, mistaken identity, the list goes on. While the shows are fiction, we know this also happens in real life. Sometimes in some police forces, it seems like any witness will do as long as it leads to a conviction, however questionable.
Bad enough that anyone in tragic circumstances is betrayed by friends or family or caregivers, but I can also see a lot of false accusations being made in the future and forced physical examinations terrorizing girls and women. The zealots will be pursuing every accusation and there will be wrongful convictions. I suffered several early miscarriages of intended pregnancies and frankly, if such laws existed at the time, I don’t know that I would have continued trying to have a child. Hardly a pro-life outcome. If life really mattered to these monsters then no child would go hungry or be shot at school by an assault rifle or be forced to carry a rape or incest pregnancy to term. I think the GOP are so far down the slippery slope of repression, suppression, and morally unsupportable behaviour that nothing they engage in makes any sense. Unless you consider that all of this is just a first step and front for the power hungry to gain authoritarian control. That is what makes sense.
More authoritarian tactics from the GOP 😡