'I Have a Conceptual Memory of Being Born': These Are the Unhinged Men Who Want to Ban Abortion in Tennessee
JusticePolitics

Last week, the Tennessee state legislature began pushing for a total abortion ban, similar to those enacted (and blocked, struck down, or challenged) in states like Georgia, Arkansas, and Kentucky. (The goal of SB 1236, as with most other state-level abortion bans, is to escalate a fight to the Supreme Court and to ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade.) Over the course of two days, lawmakers debated expanding a currently proposed “heartbeat” bill to ban abortion upon the medical detection of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG), a hormone associated with pregnancy that can appear in blood tests within 11 days of conception, without exceptions for rape or incest.
To give you a sense of what sort of man is gunning for this legislation, Republican State Senator Mark Pody, who sponsored the bill, told CNN, “I still have not heard a valid argument in terms of why one bad act should kill somebody else.” At its core this line of thinking has always been about curtailing the bodily autonomy of women and nonbinary people, backed by men who devalue living adult pregnant people in favor of a hypothetical fetus. (Also, Pody’s express goal in introducing SB 1236 was to go “against Satan.” Separation of church and state, baby!)