Deputized

By Holly A. Stovall

Congratulations! You are Deputized!

Abortion after 6 weeks is illegal in Texas.

Help enforce the law by reporting an illegal abortion in the anonymous form below!

How do you think the law has been violated?

I’ve had three spontaneous abortions (that’s doctor lingo for miscarriages) in three years, each at 8 or 9 weeks, and that’s illegal. I know this sounds CRA-A-A-AZY, but my Yankee cousin in Chicago says that multinational fossil fuel corporations are poisoning my babies in my womb, and this is causing my babies to self-abort (that’s practically suicide)! I don’t want to sound like I’m not a good, patriotic Republican or anything, but why can’t I stay pregnant? These companies must be arrested under this great new abortion ban, and then you can make them pay for the cleanup of the chemicals they leave in the air and then maybe my babies will want to live. (Not only that, my family and friends got bad cancer. My aunt died. Everybody knows someone who died of cancer.) Here in Texas, we believe in pro-life through and through. I know you agree.

How did you obtain this evidence?

I found blood and red sinewy stuff on my panties. And then I read a report from some OSHA website (I think they meant to write “OCEAN,” because it’s probably some society that doesn’t want chemicals in the ocean) and the Mayo Clinic (that Yankee hospital), that everyday chemicals the multinational corporations put out there are causing my uterine babies to abort themselves. I know. Cra-a-a-azy, right? Except that I’m desperate for one of my womb babies to live. I’ll try anything, even reporting them for suicide so maybe you can do something to stop them.

Clinic or Doctor this evidence relates to:

Clinics of Hydrocarbon Gasses. Clinics of Mining, Quarrying, & Oil & Gas Extraction.

I’d add, in addition, The Clinics of Plastic Water Bottles, The Food Packaging Clinic, The Fossil Fuel Clinic, the Paper Mill Clinic, the Toxic Dyes Clinic, and the Off-Gassing Mattress Clinic. Clinic of White Male Lawmakers.

Don’t mess with Texas.

City Crowell
State Texas
Zip 79227
County Foard

I’m an MFA student at Northwestern University. This spring, I published my first short story in Litbreak Magazine. I’ve published essays, literary histories and criticism, and scholarly research in various news outlets, scholarly journals, and blogs, including Letras Hispanas, Peace and Change, In These Times, and Inside Higher Ed’s “University of Venus Blog.” I hold a PhD in Spanish literature and an MA in Women’s History. I was a tenured professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Western Illinois University until WIU eliminated my department and my position with it. I went to high school in East Texas, where my mom’s family is from. Now I live in Macomb, Illinois, with my spouse, son, and poodle.

Photo credit: Deputy Enforcement Officer Blanche Rogers, 1913, Dewey, Oklahoma, from the U.S. Library of Congress, restored by sixpounder and used via a Creative Commons license.

Note from Writers Resist: If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.