No abortion enforcement, no flood control money.
That’s the position of Louisiana attorney general Jeff Landry, a sanctimonious Republican anti-abortion zealot who’s flipping the (mostly black) citizens of New Orleans a big bird because their city government asked local law enforcers to not enforce the state’s “trigger ban” abortion law, which allows no exceptions for rape or incest.
At his urging, the state bond commission held up funding for a flood control project in New Orleans (photo below) until the city council retracts its non-binding resolution, harming all New Orleans residents regardless of whether they individually support the abortion law or oppose it.
The Nazis used to shoot entire villages regardless of whether they helped the local partisans or not, but I digress.
“In a July 19 letter, Landry asked the bond commission to pause any funding benefiting the city of New Orleans because of city leadership’s opposition to enforcing the state law banning abortion,” CNN reported on Saturday, August 20, 2022 (read story here). He issued that letter the day after a court order blocking enforcement of Louisiana’s abortion ban was lifted.
“The officials in New Orleans took an oath of office to support and enforce the laws of our State, yet they have decided that some laws are not worthy of enforcement,” Landry said after a bond commission meeting on Thursday, August 18, 2022, without mentioning the Republican sheriffs across the country who refuse to enforce gun laws (see, e.g., stories here and here), or the countless Republicans who defied Covid-19 mandates (including him, see story here).
Landry called the city’s advisory resolution “open defiance of the will of the people of Louisiana.” In fact, Louisiana residents are nearly evenly split on whether abortion should be legal (see poll results here), so there is no “will of the people of Louisiana” on that issue.
Meanwhile, a black Louisiana woman carrying a fetus with no chance of survival is being forced to seek a medically necessary abortion out of state because nobody can figure out what’s legal and what isn’t in her home state (see story here).
This is the can of worms the Supreme Court opened by overturning Roe v. Wade.
