With the overturning of Roe v. Wade likely to happen in the coming months thanks to an unethically tilted Supreme Court, various states will have laws kick in, making abortion illegal.  But a number of states have already implemented a law based on one passed by Texas that allows a civil “bounty” to be collected by suing anyone connected to a woman’s effort to have an abortion.

The law, known as SB8, allows any individual, from anywhere, to sue a person who facilitated the woman terminating a pregnancy, from the person who drives her to the clinic, to the doctor that performs the procedure, to the person who pays for it.  Each person can be sued for a minimum of $10,000 per abortion.  There is no stated limit on the number of people who can sue and the number of people who can be sued.

The despicable “beauty” of the law is that it holds the plaintiff in these civil suit harmless:  they cannot be countersued even if their complaint fails in court.

I hope you were paying attention, because everything you need to know about how to make Republicans repeal the law is contained in the last two paragraphs.

On Page 8 of the law, SB8 states that one can sue anyone who

knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this chapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this chapter[.]

So again, do you see it?  The key is “reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise.”  Let me put another part of the law up and see if you can put the pieces together:

“Unborn child” means a human fetus or embryo in any stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.

Notice how it says “from fertilization.”  Not implantation in a uterus, but from the moment of fertilization.

Let’s put it all together:  According to this law, an abortion is when a zygote–oh, excuse me–unborn child is destroyed.  The law provides that you can sue anyone who helps someone dispose of a zygot–dammit!  Did it again!–unborn child.  There is no exception.  If you facilitate the disposal of a zyg–unborn child, you can be sued.

So here’s the thing:  in vitro fertilizations typically result in a number of zyg–unborn children that are either never implanted in the uterus or that are removed to help the chances of other zygo–shit!–unborn children to survive.  Those unborn children are disposed of through medically appropriate means.

Virtually every hospital that’s not linked to the Catholic Church provides in vitro fertilization reproductive services.  And all of the 10,000 or so health insurance plans or self-funded benefit plans from Texas companies cover IVF treatments.

So here’s what we do:  we sue each and every insurance company, self-funded insurance plan, hospital and reproductive clinic in Texas–and every level of the organization from the CEO to the lowest janitor–for facilitating the abortions of those unused zygo–goddammit, I’ll get it right one of these times–unused unborn children.

And each one of those suits–starting at 10 G’s each–could be lucrative.  Typically, IVF creates five or six unborn children, and we should sue on behalf of each one of those unborn children that is not given the opportunity to uterusize itself.

The CDC estimates that 1-2% of all pregnancies are a result of IVF.  So if we look at the 370,000 births in Texas annual (pre-post-abortion), that comes to–let’s see… carry the seven…move the decimal–18,000 unborn babies that can generate $10,000 each multiplied by the number of people sued.

But let’s say we just sue, say, the insurance provider.  That would reap $180 million dollars per year.  I’m sure Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas will willingly write that off as a business expense, right?

Can you imagine the phone calls going to every single legislator’s office, to Ken Paxton, to Greg Abbott from every insurance company CEO and every union leader and every major company CEO when they realize they face the prospect of tens of millions of dollars in lawsuits annually?

Or can you imagine the calls from every family seeking to have a child through IVF?  Texas:  the pro-child state, but only if you’re fertile.

Mess with Texas?  Damn right we should.