Hold That Thought

[Trigger warning for hostility toward autonomy and agency.]

As if it's not bad enough that the anti-choice folks are doing everything they can to limit a woman's access to safe and legal abortions, they're arresting them for even thinking about it. Via fiver at Daily Kos:

Ms. Taylor became light-headed and fell down a flight of stairs in her home. Paramedics rushed to the scene and ultimately declared her healthy. However, since she was pregnant with her third child at the time, Taylor thought it would be best to be seen at the local ER to make sure her fetus was unharmed.

That's when things got really bad and really crazy. Alone, distraught, and frightened, Taylor confided in the nurse treating her that she hadn't always been sure she'd wanted this baby, now that she was single and unemployed. She'd considered both adoption and abortion before ultimately deciding to keep the child. The nurse then summoned a doctor, who questioned her further about her thoughts on ending the pregnancy. Next thing Taylor knew, she was being arrested for attempted feticide. Apparently the nurse and doctor thought that Taylor threw herself down the stairs on purpose. [Italics in original.]

In the end, Ms. Taylor was not prosecuted; not because it was a wild-ass charge, but because she was not in her third trimester.

It's a good thing those Thought Police can't hear what I'm thinking about them because they are some seriously ungracious thoughts.

There are some other examples of the same kind of mind probe and manipulation at the hands of the "pro-lifers": a woman in Florida was forced into a hospital for prescribed bed rest to avoid a potential miscarriage because she told her doctor that she couldn't take time off work. And a teenager in Pennsylvania was denied an abortion without parental consent because she was deemed incapable of making an informed decision due to the bad grammar on her court application. As fiver notes, in the eyes of these people the women are fully capable of being mothers (by force), but clearly incapable of making their own decisions about their pregnancies.

The supreme irony is that every time someone proposes hate crime legislation to protect women or the LGBTIQ community or some other group from persecution, the right wingers carry on until Hell won't have it about the Thought Police taking control.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.