19 State AGs Are Calling for a Fugitive Slave Law 2.0
This time, they aren't coming after slaves. They're coming after transgender individuals and those who either have had or are seeking abortions.
If you live in one of the following states, what you’re about to read may disturb you — especially if you are a childbearing-age female or the parent of one.
— Mississippi
— Arkansas
— Alabama
— Alaska
— Indiana
— Georgia
— Kentucky
— Louisiana
— Missouri
— Montana
— Nebraska
— North Dakota
— South Dakota
— Ohio
— South Carolina
— Tennessee
— Texas
— Utah
Attorneys General of these states want to enact a 21-century version of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act that required so-called “free” states to surrender escaped slaves, or even those suspected of escaping, to their former owners.
This time, though, they aren’t coming after slaves.
They’re coming after transgender individuals and those who either have had or are seeking abortions.
So much for returning women’s reproductive freedoms “back to the states” as so many anti-choice zealots claimed was their goal when the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision last year.
For many, states’ restrictions on women’s reproductive freedoms means entrapment. Not all people have the transportation and/or finances to hop across a border or two or three to a pro-choice state to obtain care.
Some, do, though.
And that is what these states’ AGs are going after.
Since we aren’t (yet) at the point where anti-choice states are erecting checkpoints to ascertain people’s travel intentions, AGs want the authority to obtain private medical records from other states to make sure no anti-choice state resident escaped.
The Tennessean reported:
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti wants the state to be able to investigate and compel information on out-of-state abortions, according to a letter he co-signed with 18 other Republican attorneys general in response to a White House-backed federal rules change that would further shield reproductive health medical records.
Kentucky’s Courier Journal added:
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron signed onto a letter last month opposing a proposed federal privacy rule that would block state officials from obtaining information on residents’ reproductive health care services obtained outside the state.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin seeks the same.
So does Georgia AG Chris Carr.
Every AG in each aforementioned state wants to make sure no resident is able to cross state lines for the purpose of obtaining an abortion.
Brought to you by the “party of small government”.
This has been a work in progress since 2021’s Texas’s Senate Bill (SB) 8 ensures a vigilante’s “private civil right of action” (civil lawsuit) against anyone suspected of obtaining an abortion or aiding an individual in the act of obtaining one.
We didn’t really think it was going end there, did we?
Writing for The Nation, Elie Mystal said:
I’ve already written about what the federal government should do: It must descend on these states with doctors willing to provide medical care. But the rest of us need to act like the abolitionists of old and get the word out. We need to let people who are trapped in these horrible places know that if they are able to make it out, there’s a whole world of people who will help them. And accept them. And shield them from Republicans looking to recapture them.