A Spring Sale in Texas Babies

Imagine this: You are a pregnant woman and go to have an abortion. The health care provider at the clinic tells you that if you continue with the pregnancy, give birth and then give the baby up for adoption, you will be given five hundred dollars! Five hundred dollars for just nine months of labor! What a bargain! Astonishingly, if you continue with the pregnancy and decide to keep the baby you get nothing.

Why should you imagine any of this? Because Texas State Senator Dan Patrick has proposed a bill to do exactly this in Texas: to require abortion providers to tell the pregnant women about this wonderful opportunity to make some real money, though only after checking that the woman is an American citizen. There will be no illegal baby market!

The contempt for women so many on the religious anti-choice right exhibit always leaves me gagging. How does Dan Patrick think of women to arrive at a bill like this one? He must assume that women are greedy and stupid, greedy to accept money for making babies and stupid to accept such a puny sum. Is he thinking: Heh, heh, this will fool you into making babies for adoption, bitch?

Who am I fooling here? People like State Sen. Patrick don't think of those women as human beings at all. They think of their votes and campaign contributions.