On Tuesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott defended his state's week-old abortion law, maintaining it wouldn't lead to rape victims being forced to give birth. CBS News reports that a reporter asked the Republican why he would "force" a rape victim to carry a resulting pregnancy to term. His response: "It doesn't require that at all, obviously. It provides at least six weeks for a person to get an abortion," per NBC News. Critics swung back at the idea that six weeks is adequate time for a woman to know she's pregnant, like in this tweet from Julian Castro: "Greg Abbott is lying. Many women don't even know they're pregnant by the 6-week mark when abortion is outlawed in this bill."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez elaborated to CNN: "I don't know if he is familiar with a menstruating person's body. In fact, I do know that he's not familiar with a female or menstruating person's body because if he did, he would know that you don't have six weeks," Business Insider quotes her as saying. She went on, per CBS: "I'm sorry that we have to break down Biology 101 on national television, but in case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late for your period, and two weeks late for your period for any person with a menstrual cycle, can happen if you're stressed, if your diet changes, or for really no reason at all. So you don't have six weeks."
It was one of two lines from Abbott to get raked over the coals. The other: a promise to "eliminate all rapists" in the state "by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets." New York Magazine's response: "Exactly how Abbott plans to reform the entire criminal-justice system to properly prosecute sexual-assault cases is unclear." CBS cites data from 2019 showing 14,650 reported rape cases in Texas, with not even 3,900 arrests on sex offense charges. (More Greg Abbott stories.)
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