This is a re-run of a piece I wrote in March 2024. While it cites some news that is now old, it speaks of conditions and policies that only grow worse. Some of it is now, in retrospect, chilling. When I wrote of “forensic gynecology” and how “incarceration and execution are not off the table,” I had no idea how soon they’d actually be on the table. In a red state, it’s no great privilege to be born. Certainly not from a legal standpoint. Republican-run governments are highly protective of the unborn, and are now extending legal protection to frozen embryos, at least in Alabama. If you happen to be one of those far-from-born organisms, you now enjoy all the rights of a living child. It’s when you get yourself born that things get complicated. Not that you would then lose those rights, just that they’d be widely ignored, poorly enforced, and cynically violated. But as long as you stay unborn, you’ve got lots of rights you don’t need. In Alabama —...
Life and Politics in the Age of Covid