If you had any doubt that that Republicans were taking their cues on women’s health from The Handmaid’s Tale, consider Oklahoma representative Justin Humphrey, who said this week that women are not individual people once they get pregnant, just “hosts”.

Humphrey, who just proposed a bill requiring women seeking abortions to get written permission from their sexual partner, told a reporter at the Intercept that while he understands that women “feel like that is their body”, they are mistaken to think of themselves as autonomous human beings.

“What I call them is, you’re a ‘host’ … I’m like, hey, your body is your body and be responsible with it. But after you’re irresponsible then don’t claim, well, I can just go and do this with another body, when you’re the host and you invited that in.”

The upside is at least they’ve dispensed with any subtext.

It’s been a few years since the anti-choice movement moved on from their women-as-murderers tack to now claim that women “deserve better” than abortion. But every now and then, a legislator will trip up and let out the truth: they don’t consider women people, not really. We’re just walking uteruses, breathing homes for future citizens. And besides, if we get pregnant it’s because we weren’t “responsible” good girls, so why should we have any rights anyway?

The war on abortion is just beginning | Jessica Valenti Read more

The truth is that Humphrey’s “permission slip” bill is not likely to go anywhere – we’re only hearing about it because the proposed legislation, and Humphrey, are so blatantly misogynist. We’re much less likely to read about the more realistic and dangerous anti-choice legislation happening across the country because Trap laws and parental notification hurdles seem quite boring in comparison.

While everyday abortion restrictions don’t explicitly call to mind the dystopian future that securing a man’s permission for an abortion does, don’t confuse these laws’ mundanity for harmlessness. Anti-choice legislation – from clinic restrictions to waiting periods – all come from the same ideology that trumps the potential life of a fetus over a woman’s right to autonomy, health and sometimes life.



In the first month of the year, state legislators introduced 167 anti-choice bills, from “personhood” measures to define life as beginning at conception to ultrasound mandates that require unnecessary procedures on already-burdened women. And though there isn’t always a lawmaker saying something incredibly stupid as they launch an attack on reproductive rights, the attack lands just the same, and has the same consequences.

In Texas, where abortion restrictions are among the severest in the country, hundreds of thousands of women have induced their own abortions and maternal mortality rates have soared. The people most affected by these laws are the poor, the young and people of color.

So yes, let’s be furious at men like Humphrey, who would strip women of their rights and deny us our full humanity. Let’s call out these grossly misogynist legislators and bills for what they are. But don’t let your outrage begin and end at obvious indignities – we need it for the everyday horrors, too.

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