The difficulty in life is the choice — The Bending Of The Bough Act III
Many know a mother’s tears all too well when she sheds tears of joy and sorrow. Tears of joy seeing their child take their first step, graduate from High School or college, or at their wedding, and when she holds her first grandchild.
Joyful tears are what Kate Cox should have had when she received the news from a screening test that she and her husband were having a girl. But the fates, Coltho, Lachesis, and Atropos, had determined that her unborn daughter’s life would be short. Knowing she would have another girl, she was overjoyed, but the following news broke her heart.
Her unborn child had Trisomy-18, more commonly known as Edwards’ syndrome, a condition where the child has an extra copy of chromosome 18. Depending on the severity of this condition determines the likelihood of the unborn child’s survival. In Kate’s case, her unborn daughter had a 10% chance of living beyond the age of one but more likely would die within a week of her birth.
She was sitting on the roadside, devastated by the news that this new life she was about to bring into the world would not survive beyond a week. All she and her husband wanted was a big family to love and cherish, and because of a fluke of nature, this wouldn’t happen.
Though Kate understood her unborn child might only live for a week, she still wanted to have this baby. But the news got worse. If she carried this pregnancy to term and the doctors had to do another C-section, there was a solid possibility she would have to undergo a hysterectomy, forever ending the dream she and her husband had of having a big family.
This pregnancy was jeopardizing Kate’s life, and if she wanted to have more children, the devastating choice facing Kate was clear. She needed to have an abortion. But she lives in Texas, a state that is as backward as any state can be in matters of women’s reproductive rights.
The state government of Texas prides itself on being the ominous periwinkle on all things logical in the world. With their asshole governor Greg Abbott, and bought and paid for state government, along with NRA-owned and insurrection-supporting US Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, and utterly corrupt Texas State AG, Ken Paxton, have proudly wrapped themselves in Texas’s abortion ban.
If you looked up the definition of Bible-thumping religious stupidity regarding the phrase: ‘the man is the head of the woman,’ you would see that carved into the foreheads of these demagogic lickspittles along with the number 666.
These men don’t give a damn about the health of Kate Cox and the life-threatening situation she faced. The child she desperately wanted would die once she gave birth, and because of that birth, she could never have could never have children again. But Cruz, Cornyn, Abbott, and Paxton couldn’t care less. In the state of Texas, forcing the woman to have the baby even if the woman dies after delivery.
We have to expect this from this cavalcade of creten cowards. Let’s not forget these are the same men who did nothing when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos murdered two teachers and seventeen students at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022. So, is it any wonder they would be in lockstep on Texas’s abortion ban?
But the real slap in the face is what Ken Paxton did to Kate. She went to court and petitioned for an exception based on the state’s abortion law. The judge granted the exception. Then Texas’s corrupt AG stepped in and threatened to file charges against the doctor if they performed the abortion. Texas Supreme Court intervened because Paxton wanted them to and countered the lower court decision, essentially denying a life-saving abortion in Texas.
Abortion is — supposedly allowed — if the mother’s life is in danger according to Texas’s abortion law. Well, that is a damn lie. According to many who have examined Texas’s exception rule, it is vague and forces the expected mother to go to the courts to seek clarification, when in reality, it’s entrapment. What Paxton did was indeed unusual, according to the reporting on this case,
“One of the things that was also pretty remarkable at the time was that there was no Texas Supreme Court order overriding what the lower court had done,” she said. “So essentially, the attorney general was saying if you rely on a valid court order saying you can get this abortion or that you, in this case, can perform this abortion, I’m going to prosecute you anyway.
“So it was unusual both in the kind of aggressiveness, I think, of the attorney general, but also in the idea that you can’t rely on valid court orders that tell you you have a right to do something.”
Kate followed the law and received a bonified ruling from the court, and Paxton big-footed it by essentially saying, “I don’t care how the lower court ruled, I’m the chief mucky-muck here, and you can’t have this procedure that will save your life.”
There is a confluence of events on the horizon around abortion in states like Texas that have vaguely written abortion exceptions. They are not bugs but features, and other AGs like Paxton will think nothing of big footing their way into the lives of women who have to face the hard choice Kate made.
Let’s not forget. Kate wanted this child. She faced a decision no mother should have to make. For the sake of her health, she left the state to have an abortion, a decision she didn’t want to make but felt forced into if she ever wanted to have another child.
Let us not forget she sat on the side of the highway and wept for her unborn child. She wants to have more children, and hopefully, she will add to her family as she finishes grieving for the baby she couldn’t have.
If Kate should become pregnant again, perhaps Moirai (Coltho, Lachesis, and Atropos) will show favor to her for what she has gone through with another child, and she is crying tears of joy.
As to Ken Paxton, I have this vision of him staked out on a mound somewhere in Texas slathered with honey, with 100,000 red fire ants at the foot of the hill, and Paxton crying tears of excruciating pain.