Texas' repugnant abortion law is pure Republican hypocrisy

The cry of "Freedom!" echoes across the land, rising from places like Texas, controlled by Republican officials who are using every tool at their disposal to ban mask mandates or vaccine requirements. It's curious, then, that as of Wednesday morning, the women of Texas are essentially banned from choosing to get an abortion.

The same politicians who declare that mask requirements are an intolerable intrusion by government into sacrosanct individual freedom, have just imposed the country's most restrictive abortion law since the Supreme Court made abortion legal in the landmark 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade.

The Texas law, SB8, went into effect because the US Supreme Court and a federal appeals court refused to stop it, even though it stands in clear violation of the current law. Until now, the courts had allowed some restrictions, generally banning late-term abortions, those happening beyond the stage where a fetus is viable, about 24 weeks in.