Last week’s alarming news that the Supreme Court refused to block a Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks drew outrage from the entertainment community. And for good reason — the disgraceful decision could spell the end of Roe v. Wade, which has protected the reproductive rights of women for nearly 50 years.
The Texas law also states that anyone assisting a pregnant woman seeking an abortion — be it a friend, family member or stranger — could be sued in civil court. Those who turn someone in for aiding a woman will receive a monetary reward. Beyond revolting, this is sure to have a devastating domino effect in other red states, with more antiabortion bills being introduced. The Supreme Court justices voted 5-4 not to strike down the egregious law just before midnight on Sept. 1, right after the law went into effect. It is now the most restrictive abortion measure in our country.
Over the Labor Day weekend, I reached out to Barbra Streisand, who is never one to shy away from speaking out against social injustice, to give me her thoughts. She emailed me this exclusive quote:
“Thanks to Trump’s picks, the Supreme Court, in the dead of night, just swept away the constitutional right of women to control their own bodies. What’s particularly chilling about the Texas law is the way it deputizes random strangers to spy on women and anyone who helps them … and rewards those spies with a $10,000 bounty! This is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, where they paid people to turn in their neighbors.”
On Sept. 2, we posted a story by Matt Donnelly and Brent Lang titled “Will Hollywood Boycott Texas Following Six-Week Abortion Ban?” It’s probably a bit too early to know the answer to that, but in the piece, the president of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson, said she hopes that Hollywood will threaten to boycott Texas and take its business elsewhere.
“The unthinkable has happened,” said McGill Johnson. “There is now a state in this union where abortion is virtually inaccessible. Roe has effectively been overturned in Texas and there are 26 other states that have legislatures that are hostile to abortion rights that will move quickly to enact their laws.”
I was also struck by the personal note McGill Johnson relayed in our story, that she is 49 — younger than Roe — and has never known a time “when I wasn’t free to make decisions about my own body.”
And you can always count on Bette Midler to weigh in on Twitter when the conservatives make an inane decision. Proposing that women go on a “sex strike” to protest the Texas abortion ban, she said, “I suggest all women refuse to have sex with men until they are guaranteed the right to choose by Congress.