The Handmaid’s Tale comes to Texas

The day after the 2016 election, Margaret Atwood’s literary agent rang her up and told her that she was “the only person who benefited from the election of Donald Trump.” Trump’s ascendency became a perfect prologue to the TV version of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Atwood’s chilling novel of a Christofascist America.

Recently, Texas just took a giant Texas-style step in that dystopian direction. The state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, has threatened to prosecute any doctor who provides an abortion to Kate Cox, a woman with a non-viable pregnancy. Paxton’s action comes in direct defiance of a Texas state court order issued on Thursday allowing Mrs Cox to receive the procedure.

Paxton, a MAGA Republican currently under criminal indictment, is using Kate’s tragedy to impress Donald Trump. Trump has personally paid for 8 abortions for 8 women — that we know of. Paxton is another old, white man who wants to control women and deprive them of their Constitutional rights. He is positively crowing about his extreme interpretation of Texas law and his open defiance of the court.

Kate’s foetus was found to be suffering from trisomy 18, also known as Edwards’ syndrome, a usually fatal genetic disorder caused by the presence of a third copy of all or part of chromosome 18. It is a profound disability with a 95% first year mortality rate that can also leave the mother with health problems of her own, including the possibility of never being able to subsequently conceive children.

In a disgusting dismissal of the court’s decision, Paxton wrote that the judge’s order “will not insulate hospitals, doctors or anyone else from civil and criminal liability.” Paxton also wrote that any hospital where Cox obtains an abortion may also be liable for adverse legal action. Paxton’s actions have understandably had a chilling effect on Texas healthcare professionals.

Cox’s case marks the first time a pregnant person has had to ask a court for an emergency abortion since Roe v Wade was decided in 1973. The effective repeal of Roe last year by the corrupt United States Supreme Court, and subsequent draconian Texas legislation, has now made this additional step necessary. Texas Women, and women from certain other states, now must come cap in hand to the courts asking for abortions in extreme cases like Kate’s, where before they enjoyed the Constitutional right to have an abortion for reasons private to themselves.

Kate’s life has been devastated. Her ordeal by itself is horrible enough, but she has also become a lightning rod for MAGA fury. And now the Texas Supreme Court on Monday overturned the lower court’s ruling that would have allowed Cox to get an emergency abortion. So evil has triumphed and The Handmaid’s Tale has come to Texas.

By the way, Attorney general Paxton is currently under criminal indictment for two counts of securities fraud. These days he calls it a “witch hunt,” claiming it’s motivated by his support and imitation of Donald Trump. The problem with that claim is the indictment is 8 years old. Paxton and his legal team have delayed his trial since 2015, before Trump disgraced America by becoming president. Paxton is facing indictment because of his shady business practices, and for no other reason.

Paxton and his wife are staunch “Christians,” of course, in constant attendance at Stonebriar Community Church, a North Dallas evangelical megachurch. Paxton brings his hypocrisy and his religion to work with him every day so he can inflict his mediaeval beliefs on innocent women like Kate Cox. His Handmaid’s Tale vision has no place in an America with a Constitution that prohibits its government from making laws based on religion.

The Handmaid’s Tale is, of course, a work of fiction. But we should be ever alert to the unmistakable fact that a large minority of Americans want it to become fact. They are attracted to stern and punishing authoritarian rule as long as they are the ones doing the punishing and the ruling. But we are all ultimate victims of intolerance. The only way for any of us to be free is for all of us to be free. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.