This hateful, murderous ignorance

The thing about bigots is that often, they have no idea what they’re talking about. Sometimes that’s because they’re stupid. But all too often it’s wilful stupidity, where the information is widely and easily available but they either don’t look for it or refuse to believe it.

Here’s an example from this morning. Over on Mumsnet, aka Prosecco Stormfront, the anti-trans lot are appalled at the idea of trans women being able to change the gender marker on their passports without having to present medical evidence, report to a panel and so on.

The thing they’re concerned about has been law for 49 years.

Not only that, but the law simply codified something that’s been happening since at least 1942.

If you weren’t wilfully stupid that might give you pause: after all, if self-ID were so dangerous and open to abuse we’d presumably have seen a flood of passport-changing predators over the last 77 years; the fact that there hasn’t been a single case demonstrates how ridiculous that argument is. But nobody’s going to change their mind here. All they’ll do is ignore the evidence and demand the law be changed to accommodate their bigotry.

They’re not interested in facts, or in evidence. They’re wilfully, maliciously, proudly ignorant.

Their far-right friends show just how dangerous wilful stupidity can be. In Ohio, right-wing forced-birthers have introduced a bill that would force doctors to carry out medical procedures that aren’t physically possible at significant risk to pregnant women’s health.

I’m not making this up. The bill, Ohio HB413, says that if a doctor doesn’t want to face charges of murder for letting an embryo die, they must try to reimplant an ectopic pregnancy – something that isn’t medically possible.

A doctor will face criminal charges unless they:

Takes all possible steps to preserve the life of the unborn child, while preserving the life of the woman. Such steps include, if applicable, attempting to re-implant an ectopic pregnancy into the woman’s uterus.”

There are no documented cases of this ever being done successfully. The likelihood of success is zero. The risk of killing the woman is significant.

But these so-called pro-lifers aren’t interested in the health of the woman. They already advocate “watchful waiting”, which means refusing treatment to a woman until she miscarries – despite the very real and significant risk that she may die of a haemorrhage if her ectopic pregnancy isn’t treated.

That’s where wilful stupidity leads you.

Women’s reproductive healthcare is not some dark art or some secret. The evidence around ectopic pregnancy, its dangers and how to minimise those dangers is solid and easy to access.

But these murderous yahoos don’t want evidence. They don’t want facts. They want doctors to do what they’re damn well told because they know better than so-called experts with their “facts” and their “science” and their “not killing women”.

As Grazia Daily put it:

This is what happens when people who know nothing about women’s bodies make laws about women’s bodies.


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