Thread by @AIWashburn

THREAD:
1) Last year, Alabama enacted one of the strictest abortion laws in the country — banning the procedure at 6 weeks and including no exception for rape or incest.

2) Gov. Kay Ivey characterized the legislation as “a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious.”

3) Alabama is the only state in the nation where a jury does not have to be unanimous to impose the death penalty. On March 7, the state executed Nathaniel Woods, a black man on death row for being an accomplice to the shooting of three police officers in 2004.

4) Despite a confession from his co-defendant, who testified that Woods did not pull the trigger, and the pleas of one of the officers’ sisters to halt his execution, Ivey refused to step in and allowed the state to execute an innocent man.

5) Apparently, when Ivey said "every life is precious" she was only referring to fetuses.

The hypocrisy of the GOP’s “pro-life” ideology is abhorrent.

6) It always amazes me how the party that claims to be “anti-government overreach” wants government to vastly overreach in the most fundamental of ways when it comes to abortion, assisted suicide, and the death penalty.

7) If you don’t want the government to ask you to stay at home during a pandemic because it’s tyrannical government behavior, then why would you want government telling you or your family members when you can or cannot have a baby?

8) My position is entirely consistent across all three issues: I simply believe that government should not be involved in life-or-death decisions – at either end of the person’s life.

9) That includes assisted suicide. If a terminal patient wants to end their life with dignity and with minimal or no pain, that should be their choice – not the government’s.

10) Personally, I am anti-death penalty in every case. There is no moral justification for it that does not result in society being at least as much to blame as the criminal it's prosecuting.

11) If Person A is wrong to have killed Person B, then the government is just as wrong to kill Person A. Society has a right to protect itself, but it can do that (more cheaply, as it turns out, and, studies show, with greater deterrent effect) by locking Person A away.

12) As for abortion, I feel that it should be up to the woman and her doctor without interference from a society that clearly doesn't care enough about the fetus to be willing to support the child. No one is in favor of “killing babies.”

13) I am, however, in favor of allowing women to have bodily autonomy, again, without influence from the government. The power to say that a woman cannot have an abortion is the same power to say, in other circumstances, that a woman must have an abortion – ...

14) as they do in China, with their one-child policy for population control.

Don’t come screaming at me about so-called “late-term” abortions, either – they don’t exist.

15) The only time an abortion is performed after viability (the point at which the fetus can survive outside the womb, usually 7-8 months into the pregnancy) is when the fetus is already dead or dying, and the mother’s health is at risk because of it.

16) That’s what happened in Ireland that caused them recently to change their abortion laws to favor abortion to protect the mother – a pregnant woman died when the doctors determined that the fetus was dead and its rotting corpse was poisoning her, ...

17) but they would not have been safe from prosecution under the law at the time if they had removed it from her body.

18) Being a uterine cancer survivor, having a child is no longer a possibility for me. I was never so blessed. If I had been, I would have moved Heaven and earth to keep it. But I recognize that that is MY choice, and that I have no right to impose MY choice on anyone else.

19) Don't want an abortion? Don't have one. But don't rail against those who make that choice unless you're willing to support the child through your taxes paying for pre-natal check-ups, ultrasounds and vitamins; free delivery for low-income mothers; affordable health care; ...

20) daycare programs; WIC, free lunch, and headstart programs; and good, safe public schools. Otherwise, you’re not “pro-life.” You’re just “pro-fetus.” What’s the point of outlawing abortion if you’re going to turn around and damn the child to a lifetime of suffering?

21) Abortion is legal, and should stay that way. Assisted suicide should be more widely available to those who want it to end their suffering. The death penalty shouldn’t exist. Those are my positions. Kindly do not misrepresent them. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. ;)