Texas College Professors File Lawsuit To Allow Them To Punish Students Who Get Abortions

A pair of college professors have filed a lawsuit seeking the power to punish their students who get abortions. These abortions are not performed on campus and in no way impact the university or classes that the students are taking, but the professors are apparently so outraged at the thought of women having control over their own bodies that they want to punish them anyway. This sounds like a great way to bankrupt your university and send students scrambling to transfer, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

Check out our merch by visiting our store

Subscribe to our podcast

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

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

Well, we've got some truly disgusting developments coming out of the state of Texas where two college professors, a philosophy professor and a finance professor, both men by the way, in case that wasn't already immediately obvious, who have filed a lawsuit in the state of Texas asking for permission to punish any female students or female aides they may have who get abortions, abortions, that, by the way, do not affect the college, that they don't affect the classes. I mean, it's really a personal choice for that young woman. But these college professors are so irate over the fact that, hey, women may have control over their own bodies. We gotta put a stop to that. So they've actually filed a lawsuit to allow themselves to be able to punish these women and flunk them out of their classes if they go seek an abortion. Let me read this.

This is, uh, uh, from Amanda martti@salon.com. And of course, this is quoted from the lawsuit, quote, pregnancy is not a disease and elective abortions are not Healthcare. University of Texas at Austin, professor Daniel Bak Sneers in a federal court filing with Professor John Hatfield. Instead, BAK writes, because pregnancy is the result of voluntary and consensual sexual intercourse, students should not be allowed time off to get abortions. If the students disobey and miss class for abortion care, the filing continues. The professor should be able to flunk the students. Additionally, bona vac asserts that he has right to refuse to employ a teaching assistant who has had an abortion calling such women criminals. Now, Marcotti continues and explains what the men are actually suing over at Issue are Federal regulations called Title IX first signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1972. They currently bar publicly funded schools from discriminating on the basis of sex or gender.

This means that schools cannot penalize students for healthcare based on sex. As a male student would be granted leave if he had to travel for surgery. So must a female student. The federal statute requires the two men argue that granting students an excused absence in such cases, violates their First Amendment rights. 'cause everybody loves to hide behind the First Amendment right? You can't do that. My freedom of speech, your freedom of speech does not trump the healthcare of another person. And contrary to what you said in your filing, professor abortion is in fact healthcare. It is literally a legitimate healthcare procedure. You may not like it, you may not agree with it. You may not ever have one wonderful for you. You don't have to be in that position because you physically can't be in that position. But you do not have the right to tell these students that if you do this, it violates my first amendment. Therefore, I get to flunk you from missing a class.

Like you can't flunk some by, like, this is ridiculous on its face anyway, because you can't even flunk somebody because they miss a class or two. I couldn't tell you how many times I missed classes in college and, uh, trust me, it wasn't for healthcare issues. I, I felt like crap, trust me. But, uh, that was, you know, due to the night before, missed classes all the time.