Can you believe this guy failed to convince them?
Can you believe this guy failed to convince them? Ryan Rodrick Beiler / Shutterstock.com

Holy Toledo, how about this Supreme Court ruling on the Texas abortion ban? The law was a super-thinly veiled attempt to prevent women from obtaining reproductive medical services, and now its days are numbered.

As you might imagine, politicians and activists have a few thoughts on the matter. Some of them are nice thoughts about reproductive freedom, some of them are terrible thoughts about restricting access to medical care, and at least one thought is about how the media treats Donald Trump unfairly. You can probably guess who had that last one.

In his response, Senator John Cornyn of Texas copypasted one of the usual talking points from the right, that the overturned law represented "common-sense requirements that abortion clinics be held to the same standards as other medical facilities." Come on, dude, off the shit. If you really cared about safety, you'd be applying the same standards to dental surgery centers and diabetes clinics and plastic surgeons. Imagine if there were only ten places in Texas where you could get a root canal! And the justices knocked this BS argument down: people are likelier to die in childbirth or during colonoscopies and Texas lets women give birth at home and doctors can perform colonoscopies in their offices.

It gets worse, naturally: Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, said that abortion clinics can now "ignore these basic safety standards and continue practicing under substandard conditions," which would be quite a concern if it was true, which it is not. Despite what they want you to think, major complications arise in only about .05 percent of first-trimester surgical abortions. (Just for comparison, there's a 28% risk of complications following breast augmentation.)


Following the ruling, Governor Greg Abbott said, "Texas' goal is to protect innocent life, while ensuring the highest health and safety standards for women." Yes, safety standards for women! Unless you have complications from pregnancy, in which case the life of the fetus is more important and you might have to die in childbirth. Sorry ladies, shoulda been more careful!

Regarding those women, "hopefully they'll be more preventative and not get pregnant," said State Rep. Jason Isaac, who wrote the abortion ban. Hopefully!

The New York Times, bless its impartial journalistic heart, threw some linguistic shade and expressed that the case was a conflict between "lawmakers’ assertions" and "evidence." You could also simplify this to "lies" versus "facts" but let's not get picky.

So far Donald Trump (the self-described great friend to women) hasn't had anything to say about the ruling, he DID tweet, "CNN is all negative when it comes to me. I don't watch it anymore." So, good to know that he's keeping the important things top-of-mind.

Hillary, on the other hand, was quick on the draw: "The next president has to protect women's health. Women won't be 'punished' for exercising their basic rights," she tweeted. That's a reference to how Donald once babbled about how "there has to be some form of punishment" for women who get abortions, before he backtracked to saying "the woman is the victim" when seeking reproductive care. A few days ago he said that if he ever gets to appoint Supreme Court judges, "they will be pro-life."

This will probably never happen, not only because Donald is polling remarkably poorly, but also because the president doesn't get to appoint justices. He can only nominate them. Eh, details schmetails. It's only people's lives we're talking about here.