To Control Women’s Bodies, Texas Empowers Bounty Hunters

That logic might sound a tad twisted, something reminiscent of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, but it was predictably good enough for Trump’s three high court appointees, plus Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito. They decided that thug justice should not be impeded, at least until we see how things work out.

Fred Wellman, a 22-year military vet and current advisor to The Lincoln Project, can perhaps be excused for thinking the worst. He tweeted, “If you don’t see the inherent fascism in a law that allows anyone to accuse another citizen of an act for a $10,000 reward, whether they did it or not, you are absolutely deluded. This is a law that will turn Texas into Iraq under Saddam. Citizens turning each other in. It’s sick.”

Now that the high court has allowed Roe to be overturned via the proverbial back door, how long will it take for thug power to be codified in other red states? This day of reckoning has been a long time coming – with a big assist, along the way, from feckless Democrats who’ve never prioritized the composition of the Supreme Court as a first-tier issue and who’ve long been out-maneuvered by Republicans in state legislative races virtually everywhere.

Now we’re getting the usual calls for Democrats and progressives (stuck, as always, in reactive mode) to “mobilize,” to “rise up” against the burgeoning oppressors. Unless or until they can turn the tide, we have to ask whether it’s already too late, whether in fact we’re already on the road to a patchwork red state/blue state country, where bounty hunters cash in on the pregnant women who lack the money and means to cross a border.

I shudder to think what it might be like for them to live in a place where “my body, my choice” pertains only to the refusal to vaccinate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com