Greg Abbot, idiot Batman

Just a beige cowboy hat and a dream.

This is a guest post by Odette Ansell, a badass Toronto Lawyer

In response to an outcry that his new abortion bill doesn’t allow for exceptions for rape and incest, this week Governor Greg Abbott vowed to, in his words "Eliminate all rapists."

I'm not sure what planet this man is on, but if we unpack that, he could mean a whole bunch of nonsense.

He could mean eliminate in the purest sense of the word, as in kill. So let's murder all of the rapists. First of all my dear Gregory, no matter what your beady little eyes tell you when you look in the mirror, you actually don't get to decide sentencing in rape cases. That's a decision made by the Courts. In each individual case. If you'd like to put into motion the establishment of a mandatory death sentence on rape, I have a feeling you miiight not be successful.

Not to mention, your state doesn’t even prosecute rapists using the existing law. 0.8% of sexual assaults ever lead to conviction. Your stats are stellar, Greg, keep up the complete lack of effort to support sexual assault survivors in any way.

Second of all, and I hate to break it to you, unless we are living the Minority Report script, by the time you and your little goons try to eliminate these rapists you speak of, the rape has already happened. Which means the pregnancy is already in progress. So that doesn't work.

Maybe he means stop rapes before they happen. How do we do that, you ask? Well... let's look at other crimes we have been able to completely wipe off the face of the Earth. If anyone has an example of punishments, deterrents, high school syllabi, and public service announcements that have successfully eliminated a heinous crime from society, I'd fucking love to hear it.

So sorry Mr. Abbott, you're 0 for 2. or 3? who's counting.

Eliminating all rapists could mean what Greggy said it means, which is aggressively going out into the streets and arresting and prosecuting rapists. And as we all know from stop and frisk, the war on drugs, and countless other problematic, racist, and failed attempts to curb crime in America... that shit ain't gonna work.

There is nothing this "eliminate all rapists" could mean that isn't either completely unrealistic or just another layer of unconstitutional "governing" that Texas is seeming to really love so much right now.

Oh and don't tell him that Texas currently has over 2,000 unprocessed rape kits.

I'm sure he will have a plan for that too.

Odette Ansell, Badass Lawyer