Portland May Put Economic Sanctions On Texas Following Attack On Reproductive Freedom

The city of Portland, Oregon is currently deciding whether or not to place what amounts to economic sanctions against the state of Texas for attacking the reproductive freedom of women in Texas. The "sanctions" would ban trade and travel (for city purposes) to and from the state, which actually doesn't amount to very much. But just as corporations began to boycott Georgia over their voter suppression efforts, so, too, could this spark a nationwide boycott of Texas. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains why this is important.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Tomorrow, the city of Portland is going to vote on whether or not to impose what amounts to economic sanctions against the state of Texas in response to the restrictive Texas abortion bill. Now, what this would do would say that there would be no official travel, no city sponsored travel, between Portland and Texas. The city would all show boycott any goods being produced in Texas and they would not send any goods produced in Portland to the state of Texas. Now, I admire what Portland is doing here and I support it 100%, but let's be perfectly clear about something. This isn't going to cripple the state of Texas. This isn't really even going to make that big of a dent in their economy if it makes one at all. What Portland is doing is taking a moral stand with these economic sanctions. And hopefully what Portland is doing is showing everyone else what to do. That's the effect here.

That's the power of what the city of Portland is voting on tomorrow. Not just for them, but for other cities to follow suit. Now think about this for a moment. When Georgia earlier this year passed their major suppressive voting bill, what happened? One by one, we saw companies stand up. We saw them stand up and say, guess what, we're leaving Georgia. We don't want anything to do with this. We're out. We're not going to film our movies here. We're not going to put our manufacturing base here. We're out. We're moving our sports games out of your state. You're going to lose a ton of money because of what you're doing here. And of course we had the corporations pledged to not give money to the politicians, a pledge that they almost immediately went back on and started giving money. But nonetheless, it did have an economic impact on the state of Georgia and I do believe that's what the city of Portland is attempting to do here with the state of Texas. But they cannot do it alone. Right.

This is just one city in the Northwest versus Texas. You know, second most populous state in the nation. So it's going to take more than that. And I do hope that much like with Georgia, other cities, other companies follow suit, and they say, listen, your restricting the reproductive rights of women across your state. You don't want people to get abortions, then maybe you ought to invest in better sex education. Maybe you ought to start talking to the men. I love, I love the trope of even if one woman has sex with a hundred men per year, she can only produce one full term pregnancy in that year. Meanwhile, a man, if he has sex with 100 women that year, he can produce 100 full term pregnancies in those women every year. So who's the real problem here, right? We're directing and attacking women when they're not the ones who are out there making all these babies on their own. And then of course you have the other situation where as soon as the woman gets pregnant, the state wants nothing to do with them.

You know, you get shunned, a social outcast, especially, you know, if you're not a married individual. We're not going to help you pay for anything. You know, we're not going to give you a health care. We're not going to give you food stamps. We don't want to help you at all. But just make sure you carry the baby to term.