In a Twitter video on Thursday, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) beamed eager-eyed at America. In the run-up to Mother’s Day, she promoted a bill called the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) Act.
On the surface, the intent of the bill is admirable. In Section 1 it proposes the creation of:
A clearinghouse of relevant resources available for pregnant and postpartum women, and women parenting young children.
That seems like a good idea. Why not give pregnant women a one-stop shop for the resources available for people in their situation? Perhaps Britt will next propose a bill creating a clearinghouse of relevant resources available to poor Americans. It could provide information on welfare, income support, rent assistance, SNAP and all the other strands of the safety net.
Do not hold your breath. Those unfortunates made the mistake of being born. So the GOP no longer gives a shit about them.
The smiley Britt’s deception starts with the comfortingly anodyne name of her proposed law — who does not want mothers to succeed? It gives no hint of the Big Brother totalitarianism contained in the details. But the list of MOMS Act’s supporters points to its 'Handmaid Tale’s' impulses.
Senators Marco Rubio and Kevin Kramer joined her in introducing the measure. Senators Roger Marshall, Steve Daines, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Jerry Moran, Thom Tillis, Eric Schmitt, Chuck Grassley, Mike Rounds, Roger Wicker, and James Lankford co-sponsored the bill.
The bill's intent is so evident there is no Democrat in sight. One paragraph alone should chill the spine of American women and the men who love them.
Section (4)
A mechanism for users to take an assessment through the website and provide consent to use the user’s contact information, which the Secretary may use to conduct outreach via phone or email to follow up with users on additional resources that would be helpful for the users to review.
(Bolding mine)
Let us parse this dystopian proposal — particularly the phrase “provide consent to use the user’s contact information.” Defenders of the bill will say that users can deny the use of their contact information. But that ignores that the site will require the user to provide contact information in the first place.
Why does the site request that? Wikipedia does not require me to tell them who I am to give me knowledge. I can estimate my taxes or mortgage payments online without the site requiring me to say who I am. (Granted, they probably know anyway.) Government benefits depend on your location, income, and other personal details. However, the user should be able to get needed information without providing a name, a telephone number, or email and street addresses.
Effectively, this will create a national registry of pregnant women — especially those most in need of government assistance. In addition, consent today means nothing if tomorrow the the big government GOP passes another law ignoring consent — safe in the knowledge that the Supreme Court will sign off on the destruction of privacy.
The political purpose of the law is affirmed by the promotion of only reproductive and maternity organizations that do not provide abortions — and worse, by those actively propagandizing women into not getting the medical procedure.
Consider this paragraph:
CRITERIA FOR MAKING RECOMMENDATIONS
—The Secretary shall develop criteria to provide to the States to determine whether resources recommended as described in paragraph (1) should appear on the website. Such criteria shall include the requirement that the relevant resource is not a prohibited entity.
The bill later explains what a prohibited entity is.
The term ‘prohibited entity’ means an entity, including its affiliates, subsidiaries, successors, and clinics, that performs, induces, refers for, or counsels in favor of abortions, or provides financial support to any other organization that conducts such activities.
Why is this language in the bill? Since 1977, the Hyde Amendment has banned the use of any federal funds for abortion, only allowing exceptions to pay for terminating pregnancies that endanger the life of the pregnant woman or that result from rape or incest.
The devil is in the details. Planned Parenthood does much more than enable women to choose. In states that ban abortions, it still provides reproductive care to poor women. But because it offers a medical procedure legal in many states, it would be barred from the federal database.
Worse, the bill would exclude Planned Parenthood and similar organizations even in states where abortion is legal.
And any organization that does not perform abortions anywhere would be excluded simply for saying that abortion is an option in some places. Meanwhile, the so-called pregnancy counseling services that lie to women to deceive them into carrying unwanted pregnancies to term would be golden.
The naked intent of this bill is not to improve life for poor pregnant women. Nowhere does it advocate for spending any money on paid parental leave — or expanding Medicaid in the red states that have so far refused it — measures that would significantly benefit expectant mothers. It is instead Big Brother placing a tracking marker on pregnant women.
Anyone who reads this and thinks the author is being hyperbolic should consider that the US Supreme Court is seriously considering that the American President may have a license to commit crimes while in office. A year ago, if you proposed that scenario, many would have thought you were being hysterical.
It is hard for decent people to understand how far some members of society will go. Hitler never received a majority of the vote. Yet by 1933, the Nazis — who had only been a political party for 13 years — had absolute power in Germany. And in less than another 13 years, they reduced a once proud, culturally rich, economically vibrant country into a smoking shit-hole of smoldering rubble.
Forty-five years ago, Reagan embraced the religious right — after Nixon set the ball rolling with his southern strategy. In 2024, the GOP could possibly sweep the presidency and both Houses of Congress — while, once again, losing the popular vote. God only knows what damage they would do to the country if they had two years in power — let alone 13.
Note: the last time they had this political hegemony (2017/18), Trump was new to the game. There were independent thinkers in the cabinet. The GOP’s congressional leadership had some self-respect. And not every GOP politician was lining up to suck orange ass. Now, the guard rails are gone.
Biden and the Democrats had better up their game in 2024. There are no moral victories. And any liberal thinking a third-party vote is proof of their political purity is aiding and abetting the evisceration of women's rights. If the GOP controls all the levers after 2024, there is no guarantee of a general election in 2028.