America doesn’t make sense anymore. How is it that we’ve become numbed to the massacre of children in classrooms (four killed this week in Michigan and another seven injured) by classmates wielding guns that, more often than not, were purchased by their parents. Yet at the same time, the loudest “pro-life” folks among us insist that abortion is murder and must be restricted if not completely outlawed?
To these folks – all too often Republican men – “pro-life” doesn’t carry the same urgency when they demand it be easier for Americans even as young as 18 to obtain and carry deadly weapons. In Tennessee, one can do this with “permitless carry.” And with no gun safety training, either.
But you’d best believe that’s not the case for women carrying a fetus they cannot care for or do not want to see reach viability.
The abortion case before the U.S. Supreme Court now, the one likely to be decided in June, is a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. But here in Tennessee, we have a law pushed and signed by Gov. Bill Lee that is said to be one of the most conservative, “pro-life” pieces of legislation in the country. (A federal judge almost immediately blocked the measure and it’s still tied up in courts.)
Under our law, no abortion would be allowed when a fetal heartbeat is detected, at around six weeks gestation – a time when many women don’t even yet know they are pregnant. This while we have virtually wide-open access to guns with no carry permit and no instruction.