After Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked last year, and Americans started coming to terms with the fact that the court’s GOP-appointed majority would soon overturn Roe v. Wade, the National Republican Senatorial Committee quickly distributed talking points to the party’s incumbents and candidates.
As regular readers may recall, the rhetorical suggestions were defensive, not celebratory. Party leaders seemed to realize that most of the country wanted to leave the Roe precedent intact, so Republican officials advised incumbents and candidates to tell voters, among other things, “Republicans DO NOT want to throw doctors and women in jail.”
It was an acknowledgement from GOP leaders that the American mainstream was repulsed by the idea of criminal prosecutions of physicians and women who feel the need to terminate unwanted or dangerous pregnancies.
That was last year. This year, the number of Republicans who do, in fact, want such criminal prosecutions continues to grow. The Associated Press reported:
Some Missouri lawmakers are renewing a call for the state to take an anti-abortion step that goes further than prominent anti-abortion groups want to go and that has not gained much traction in any state so far: a law that would allow homicide charges against women who obtain abortions. Republicans in both the state House and Senate have introduced bills to be considered in the legislative session that begins next month to apply homicide laws on behalf of a victim who is an “unborn child at every stage of development.”
Or put another way, if such a policy were to become law in Missouri, those who have an abortion could be arrested and charged with murder.
To be sure, every year, there are all kinds of obscure measures introduced in state legislators, the vast majority of which stand little chance of success. It’s entirely possible that these radical proposals in Missouri will ultimately fail.
But it matters that there are GOP policymakers who support such a drive, just as it matters that this isn’t limited to Missouri. Earlier this year, for example, there was a related push in South Carolina.
What’s more, the aforementioned AP article noted that similar bills were introduced this year in Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, and Kentucky. In each of these instances, Republicans introduced proposed statewide laws that would subject women to murder charges if they terminated an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy.
There are also several related Republican plans that would target doctors with possible criminal charges if they performed abortions, as we were reminded last week when Ken Paxton, Texas’ Republican attorney general, threatened to prosecute medical facilities.
In other words, when the National Republican Senatorial Committee distributed talking points that said, “Republicans DO NOT want to throw doctors and women in jail,” the party overlooked the fact that more than a few Republican policymakers want to do exactly that.
Commenting on the proposals in Missouri, Julie Chavez-Rodriguez, President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign manager, said in a written statement, “When Donald Trump said there should be ‘some sort of punishment’ for women who seek out reproductive care, this is what he had in mind.”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.