ATLANTA, GEORGIA — Last month, Georgia joined a group of red states that have begun openly challenging the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that effectively gave women the right to have an abortion under most circumstances. Republicans in Georgia, Alabama, Ohio, and Missouri all enacted laws that sharply reduced the window of time in which a woman could legally seek to end her pregnancy, usually well before a woman might even know she was pregnant.
Some of the new abortion bans don’t even have exceptions for rape or incest. This means that under those laws, it is entirely possible that a rape victim could be forced to carry her assailant’s baby to full-term. Georgia Democrats this past week announced that they were considering a legislative proposal as a countermeasure to their states new abortion ban.
“Governor Kemp and his fellow Republicans in the state legislature have made it very clear that they do not want to govern for everyone in the state, but instead wish to pander to the most anti-progress among us,” Rep. Susan Traynor (D) told the media members at a recent press conference.
“If the governor is going to send the message that to him guns are more important than a woman’s right to have autonomy over her own reproductive decisions, then perhaps it’s time for those of us who oppose these senseless laws to think way outside the box,” Traynor said, “as in, outside the abortion clinic altogether.”
Traynor and three of her fellow Georgia Democrats were unveiling a new bill they are bringing to the floor that would move every existing abortion provider in the state and into the same spaces that are occupied by gun ranges, ammunition stores and gun retailers. The law would give both the gun ranges and the abortion clinics a chance to “go halvsies” on the rent, and would therefore have a dual impact of stimulating the Georgia economy.
Rep. Jared Fitzgerald (D) said at the press conference that “clearly Republicans in this state don’t value anything other than themselves and their guns” so he and his colleagues drafted a law that will “force them to consider other people’s feelings and needs.”
“Hey, I’m not anti-gun,” Fitzgerald explained, “I’m just also pro freedom, and no woman should be made to live in a state where they can’t exercise their own complete and total freedom, no matter what the emotional pleas from the other side of the aisle say.”
“Basically,” Rep. Becky Hanson (D) told reporters, “We trying to see if we can trick the Republicans into being decent human beings by pairing two things that are constitutionally protected — abortion and guns. Sometimes we get the feeling that Republicans really don’t accept that Roe v. Wade literally made abortion access an inalienable right up to the point of viability of the fetus. They can hem and haw all they want, but at the end of the day abortion access is every bit as fundamental to American liberty as firearm access is. If they don’t like that fact, they are welcome to find another country where they can use their religious beliefs to disenfranchise people, perhaps somewhere where Sharia Law is already in places.”
Traynor told the press that she and her fellow Democrats wouldn’t have to resort to such wild tactics “if the Republicans would stop pretending as if Planned Parenthood goes door to door aborting babies.”
“They, and so many other low-cost or free clinics, provide vital health care screening services,” Traynor said. “They provide basic reproductive health services for the poor. These are things that they do in far greater numbers than abortions, but let’s not forget — abortion is a constitutional right. They can scream about it all they want, but until the Supreme Court overturns Roe, they are hypocritically defending one constitutional right — guns — and ignoring another — abortion.”
It’s unclear when Traynor and her colleagues will introduce the bill, but they said they are not going to stop fighting the new laws, regardless of whether their law comes to the floor for a vote.
“Of course this is a stunt play for the press,” Fitzgerald told reporters. “But sometimes you have to do things to shake up your opponent, and to show the public just how insane they have become. So maybe, if we put abortion clinics in gun shops, Republicans will finally make the connection in their heads that guns and abortion are fully-protected constitutional rights and that they can’t defend either on constitutional grounds without acknowledging that both are protected.”
“But we won’t hold our breaths for that connection to be made,” Hanson quickly added.
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