The company claims that fully complying with the state law would put it in breach of its contract to operate the facility, raising the prospect of $160 million in lost revenue. GEO also says that complying with HB 1470 would require building upgrades estimated to cost over $3 million, including a complete redesign of the heating, cooling and ventilation system at the detention center.
Cox’s fetus was diagnosed on Nov. 27 with trisomy 18, a genetic abnormality that usually results in miscarriage, stillbirth or death soon after birth. Cox, who is about 20 weeks pregnant, said in her lawsuit that she would need to undergo her third Caesarian section if she continues the pregnancy. That could jeopardize her ability to have more children, which she said she and her husband wanted.
I know the answer, but the question deserves to be asked anyway: what the fuck does Ken Paxton gain by drawing a line here?? It’s just dumb and cruel. There’s no spinning this, I’m just…still in shock whenever conservatives reveal so transparently how much this is about control over preservation of life, an illusion they used to make at least some effort to maintain.
“The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability, is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” said Guerra Gamble in Austin, Texas, state court, at Thursday’s hearing.
It’s heartening to hear someone in authority speak some sense, but the fact Ms. Cox or any other person like her was ever in this position to begin with…I just can’t stomach it.
It’s not “leniency.” You’re still acting like there’s one available response and you either slide it up or slide it down, but that’s transparently untrue. This concept is at the core of this entire discussion and the fact you keep ignoring it indicates you’re here to troll, not engage.
If you assume both scenarios are identical, then yes. It’s a really bad assumption, because…they’re completely different substances with completely different characteristics (and just completely different scenarios), but if you make it anyway I would agree with you.
Pretty sure they’re arguing that charging parents won’t help children. We have a fentanyl problem so severe that children are dying at unprecedented rates, because the drug is so deadly is only takes an amount equivalent to the weight of a mosquito to be lethal.
And we are choosing to address that problem, as we have for 40 years, through stricter prison sentencing, which has never improved or otherwise addressed the root causes of addiction. Punishing addicts makes everyone feel better, because…children dying is fucking devastating and we need someone held accountable, and the parents do bear at least some responsibility.
But just because it makes us feel better doesn’t mean it is effective.
Detectives testified that when Waite found her daughter unresponsive she rushed to a pharmacy to buy naloxone, a drug used to reverse an opioid overdose. The couple did not call 911 until hours later when Allison started having trouble breathing.
These parents made a pretty disgusting choice, but they did it because they thought they had a chance of keeping their child. If we could set aside our impotent outrage and acknowledge that offering support and oversight to parents in these situations, rather than the heavy hammer of “justice”, this little girl might still be alive. Our appetite for vengeance would be unsated, but we would save more children and help people improve their lives.
There are many other things that need doing–many, many things–to make a dent in America’s drug epidemic, and headlines like this are frustrating because we keep pulling out the same useless tool.
You know those visual gags about someone about to engage in a duel choosing between an assortment of weapons and they pick something silly like a banana? This is the banana, and the joke is so, so old.
Agreed, that’s a problem too. Like I said, we need to start treating it like a societal failure (not an individual one). I’m not trying to lay out a detailed roadmap here, I’m just complaining online.
What blows my mind about this kind of thing is that we could definitively end this as consumers by just not purchasing products engaged in child labor, slave wages, etc. But these issues are so pervasive (across multiple industries) that we’re either unaware of them or accept them as inevitable.
This a major failing of our societal development and we need to start treating it like one asap.
Ellis on X reposted Trump ally Matt Schlapp, who suggested that other GOP presidential candidates drop out of the Republican primary so that party members can use donations for legal defenses.
What a world. Lawyer for former president of the united states calls on his competing candidates to voluntarily abort their campaigns, so he can better raise funds not for his own campaign, but to pay the unrelated legal fees of the co-conspirators who helped him attempt a coup in the last election that he lost!