  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) defended his state’s six-week abortion ban on Tuesday, dismissing concerns that it does not provide exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest.
“Rape is a crime,” he said. “And Texas will work tirelessly to make sure we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.”
Abbott made his comments on the same day he signed a sweeping law restricting voting rights.
The governor’s claim that people have six weeks to get an abortion is completely detached from reality and the way pregnancy works. Many people don’t even realize they’re pregnant until after the six-week mark.
“Unless a woman is actively trying to get pregnant, she is unlikely to know that she is pregnant at six weeks,” Dr. Sarah Horvath, a family planning fellow at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told The New York Times.
In other words, a six-week ban is essentially a ban on abortion, period.
The Texas bill is the first six-week ban in the nation to go into effect after the Supreme Court refused to block it.
The state deputizes and incentivizes private citizens ― even those who aren’t Texas residents ― to sue individuals involved in “aiding or abetting” an abortion. That could be a doctor, a friend or even the driver who dropped the pregnant person off at the clinic.
A Texas anti-abortion group moved its online portal for snitching on abortions under the state’s extreme new law to a web hosting service known for working with far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists. And it may go too far for even that provider. People incarcerated in an Arkansas jail say the facility’s physician prescribed them ivermectin to treat COVID-19 and that they weren’t aware they were taking the drug. The anti-parasite drug, typically used to deworm horses and cattle, has developed an unlikely ― and baseless ― reputation as a COVID treatment in humans, despite stern warnings from the Food and Drug Administration.
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