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19 State AGs Are Calling for a Fugitive Slave Law 2.0

The Left Place
3 min readJul 27, 2023

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Photo by I.am_nah on Unsplash

If you live in one of the following states, what you’re about to read may disturb you — especially if you are a childbearing-age female or the parent of one.

— Mississippi

— Arkansas

— Alabama

— Alaska

— Indiana

— Georgia

— Kentucky

— Louisiana

— Missouri

— Montana

— Nebraska

— North Dakota

— South Dakota

— Ohio

— South Carolina

— Tennessee

— Texas

— Utah

Attorneys General of these states want to enact a 21-century version of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act that required so-called “free” states to surrender escaped slaves, or even those suspected of escaping, to their former owners.

This time, though, they aren’t coming after slaves.

They’re coming after transgender individuals and those who either have had or are seeking abortions.

So much for returning women’s reproductive freedoms “back to the states” as so many anti-choice zealots claimed was their goal when the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision last year.

For many, states’ restrictions on women’s reproductive freedoms means entrapment. Not all people have the transportation and/or finances to hop across a border or two or three to a pro-choice state to obtain care.

Some, do, though.

And that is what these states’ AGs are going after.

Since we aren’t (yet) at the point where anti-choice states are erecting checkpoints to ascertain people’s travel intentions, AGs want the authority to obtain private medical records from other states to make sure no anti-choice state resident escaped.

The Tennessean reported:

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti wants the state to be able to investigate and compel information on out-of-state abortions, according to a letter he co-signed with 18…

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The Left Place
The Left Place

Written by The Left Place

Ted Millar is a teacher, poet, and political writer for The Left Place. See also and subscribe to the Substack newsletter: https://theleftplace.substack.com/. t

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