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Refuse Fascism podcast #82:
When Is It Time To Break The Law?

Uploaded October 24: Valerie Elverton Dixon, Ph.D., discusses her recent essay on the Texas abortion ban, When Is It Time to Break the Law, with Sam Goldman, along with the abortion rights emergency and the strategy and tactics that will meet the current crisis. Dr. Dixon is an independent scholar studying ethics, peace theory, public discourse and the Civil Rights movement.



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Dr. Valerie Dixon
I don’t think people recognize how deep an emergency this is. What I’m thinking here is that if a state can pass a law that violates Roe v. Wade, but more than that, violates several Amendments of the Constitution, and denies women their power over their own body, this is a threat to every person in the United States. It’s a threat to every human being walking the planet. We have to see it in those terms. Because what the state of Texas is doing is imposing involuntary servitude on people who are pregnant. That violates the 13th Amendment. If they can impose this involuntary servitude on women, who else can they impose it on?

Abortion providers in Texas ought to keep on providing abortions. Let them bring the lawsuits. When they bring the lawsuit, say we’re not cooperating with this law, we’re not going to court, we’re not going to pay any fines, we’re not going to pay any court fees. This will probably open up some people to a contempt of court prosecution or contempt of court actions. Then I think they ought to go to court and make the case that the law itself is wrong. The law itself is unconstitutional, the law itself violates so many rights that people already presume that they have.

Sam Goldman
This pro-fascist majority court with three Trump appointees, will be hearing two decisive cases for the future of Roe vs. Wade and legal abortion. As lawyer Laurence Tribe has highlighted, the brief Texas filed in this SCOTUS, on October 21, opposing the Department of Justice on SB8, actually argues that because, “the federal government cannot get an abortion,” it has no standing to sue Texas to preserve federal supremacy in the US Constitution. We better be using this logic against them. You know what else can’t get an abortion? The state of Texas, the GOP, Greg f'ing Abbott. 

Elie Mystal, Nation correspondent, has warned, “What people have to be ready for is the court finding technical grounds to eventually stop the bonkers bounty system in SB 8, but giving forced birth advocates what they want in Dobbs. And then some idiot MSN person trying to both sides of the thing, claiming they split the baby.”

In my opinion, it’d be great if doctors in Texas were taking Dr. Dixon’s suggested stance and people around the country were donating to their legal funds. That is something that really could have a galvanizing effect in a good way.

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