Thread by @JessicaValenti

This piece is so important I wrote it through Covid:

Republicans keep saying they won't arrest women for abortion. But the Alabama AG's office fucked up and revealed *exactly* how they plan to get around that false promise

jessica.substack.com/p/republicans-…

Voters already overwhelmingly oppose abortion bans, and the last thing Republicans need is for already-worked-up Americans to start thinking about the women they love behind bars.

So they keep promising that they won't arrest women.

Some even wrote clauses in their abortion bans that women wouldn't be arrested, and that's what anti-abortion activists point to again and again as proof that women won't be prosecuted.

BUT...

Republicans have figured out that they don't have to prosecute women via the abortion ban itself - they can just use a *different law*

A spokesperson for the Alabama AG told a conservative reporter that while the state abortion ban prevents women from being arrested, it “does not provide an across-the-board exemption from all criminal laws, including the chemical-endangerment law..."

Essentially, Alabama’s Attorney General plans to arrest and charge women who take abortion medication—using a law meant to stop adults from bringing kids to drug dealers’ houses to do it.

This rep from the Alabama AG's office really gave up the game here - because he revealed *exactly* how Republicans will get around their own laws to punish women.

Which, of course, was always the point.

Here's where I tell you what you already know: Mainstream media is missing this shit, and I most definitely am not.

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