Six weeks into pregnancy are enough for everyone to decide if they want to keep their babies or not including rape victims, Texas governor says

After signing the abortion election bill into law, the state of Texas and the Tex. Gov. Greg Abbott have filled the news and instantly became a hot topic in the last couple of days across United States.

It seems that the Gov. Abbott doesn’t really care that he has been slammed from the public recently in regards to the abortion law. Or at least that’s how it looks when we hear how Abbott tried to defend the law and the comments over the law he shares with the public.

After the bill was officially signed, many hospitals started immediately seeing the effect in practice, something what Texas officials and lawmakers were warned from experts in the past few months. We already reported about a young woman who was five weeks pregnant when she decided to abort her baby, but was denied because she tested positive on Covid-19.

She was denied service in the hospital because she tested positive and doctor from the hospital explained they can only treat patients negative on Covid-19. But the issue with this young woman is much bigger since she will enter in her sixth or seventh week of pregnancy until she tests negative on Covid-19, but she won’t be allowed to abort the baby then because of the new abortion law.

Although the case with the girl is only a temporary issue because of the pandemic, another major issue for everyone in Texas are the rape victims. It seems like Texas lawmakers missed these cases when they were preparing the law in the first place.

At the signing for a GOP-supported voting bill on Tuesday, a reporter asked Abbott why he would “force” a rape or incest victim to carry a pregnancy stemming from sexual assault to term. The new abortion law, which went into effect last week, outlaws abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected — as early as 6 weeks into pregnancy and well before many women even know they are pregnant.

The answer from the governor was nothing but a nonchalant answer for defending his decision to sign the bill into law, saying that the bill “doesn’t require that at all because, obviously, it provides at least 6 weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion.”

He also emphasized that “rape is a crime and Texas will work tirelessly that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets,” CBS reported.

According to the data provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety, almost a quarter of the violent crime cases in 2019 were rape cases. A total of 16,650 cases were reported across the state in 2019, but only 3,900 people were arrested for rape and other sex offenses.

The bill also allows civilians to sue anyone who helps someone get or performs an abortion for up to $10,000.

As expected, the public was not the only one to criticize the law. Some Democrats also opposed the law including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez commenting that those who prepared the law ignored the basic biology behind how and when people become pregnant.

“I’m sorry that we have to break down biology 101 on national television, but in case no one has informed him before in his life, 6 weeks pregnant means 2 weeks late for your period,” she said. “And 2 weeks late for your period for any person with a menstrual cycle, can happen if you’re stressed, if your diet changes, or for really no reason at all. So you don’t have 6 weeks.”

The last that joined the battle with Abbott over the abortion law is the Justice Department. According to USA TODAY, Justice Department is suing the state of Texas in an attempt to block the enforcement of a strict abortion law decried by the Biden administration as an untenable denial of reproductive health care for women.

“The (Texas) act is clearly unconstitutional under long-standing Supreme Court precedent,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday.

The next period will be interesting for both Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the public waiting for the final outcome after the public’s pressure in regards to the abortion law and the DOJ lawsuit.

Monica Doyle

Editor-in-Chief

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