Cruelty is Not a By-Product, It's the Point; Christian Taliban Ed.

Deborah and her husband, Lee, learned in late November that their baby had Potter syndrome, a rare and lethal condition that plunged them into an unsettled legal landscape.

The state’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks of gestation has an exception for fatal fetal abnormalities. But as long as their baby’s heart kept beating, the Dorberts say, doctors would not honor their request to terminate the pregnancy. The doctors would not say how they reached their decision, but the new law carries severe penalties, including prison time, for medical practitioners who run afoul of it. The hospital system declined to discuss the case.

Baby Milo was born without kidneys and with underdeveloped lungs. This was known three months ahead of time. He had no chance, his life expectancy was between a half-hour and two hours. He lived for 99 minutes, gasping for air the entire time. That suffering was inflicted on Milo and his family by the good G_d-fearing Republicans of Florida, led by their diminuitive fascist governor.

Let's be honest about this: The so-called exceptions in the various laws prohibiting abortions are there for public relations only. In practice, they are meaningless and those pushing those laws know that. Oh, they say differently, they pretend that they are so concerned about the mothers and their families, but they are lying.

The "exceptions" are meaningless because no doctor is going to risk his or her license, let alone a felony conviction, by trying to apply them. No hospital is going to let a doctor apply one of the exceptions. They are not going to risk running afoul of some zealous prosecutor, who is seeking to make a name for himself by prosecuting such a case. They are not going to take the chance of such a prosecutor trying to sway a jury and, even if they were so inclined, they're not willing to risk the legal costs from doing so. Sure, they may risk some bad publicity from making a mother get sick to the point of death or forcing her to bring a doomed baby to term or making an incest or rape victim carry her victimizer's kid, but that'll likely blow over.

Lakeland Regional Health in Florida can console itself that, while they forced a family to bring a child into this world who had no chance of living, they didn't get prosecuted by DeSantis's Fetal Protection Corps. The hospital can pat itself on the back for putting self-protection ahead of everything else.

And you can bet the farm that there is not a single member of the Christian Taliban who feels bad for that family. On the contrary, they are drinking carbonated grape juice and congratulating themselves for "mission accomplished".