Boycotting Texas

I wonder how many other scientists, speakers, organizations, etc. will be taking this position:

As long as the new Texas anti-abortion law remains in force, I will not be doing any lectures or events (in person or remote) in the state of Texas.

— Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) September 2, 2021

Kudos for Mann.

When I was younger a woman I was heavily involved with and I decided to have an abortion. We were educated and well off and used birth control. But a doctor failed to tell her a medication she temporarily needed counteracted the pill, and she got pregnant. 

It wasn't easy, but I don't regret what we did. I am outraged at what Texas has done and what other state legislatures will no doubt do, and the lies Supreme Court justices have told in order to pass nomination hearings, and the senators (like Susan Collins) who believed them in spite of evidence that they should not have. Those who favor a woman's right to choose are in the majority in this country and we have to take back this issue and allow women full autonomy over their bodies and their lives -- you know, like the anti-vaxxers insist on. I want young women and future young women to have the same options my girlfriend and I had -- the option to struggle with an ambiguous issue and, with or without a partner, decide for themselves.

It's not just the ban -- it's the draconian, mediaeval way in which Texas has instituted the ban, making everyone a bounty hunter against pregnant women in Texas seeking an abortion. You can be sued and convicted merely for aiding and abetting someone seeking an abortion. This threadroll by a lawyer and legal writer lays it out and is astonishing:

Thread by @jaywillis on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

And it's not just abortion in Texas, though effectively banning it is bad enough. It's guns, restrictions on voting, the lack of affordable health care, banning the discussion of certain ideas (like "critical race theory," at least as the legislature defines it), a safety net, and more. Dana Milbank put it pretty well in the Washington Post yesterday: 

Texas shows us what post-democracy America would look like. Thanks to a series of actions by the Texas legislature and governor, we now see exactly what the Trumpified Republican Party wants: to take us to an America where women cannot get abortions, even in cases of rape and incest; an America where almost everybody can openly carry a gun in public, without license, without permit, without safety training and without fingerprinting; and an America where law-abiding Black and Latino citizens are disproportionately denied the right to vote.

This is where Texas and other red states are going, or have already gone. It is where the rest of America will go, unless those targeted by these new laws — women, people of color and all small “d” democrats — rise up.

It still isn't clear that Trump, abetted by Mitch McConnell's theft of Supreme Court seats, won't yet destroy democracy in America, which effectively destroys America. The fascists smell blood. They are moral cowards who want more. They're determined to get it.