Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) practiced civil rights law before she entered the political fray and in that role, she often had to work hard to prove a Black person’s “personhood,” she said during an appearance on Pod Save America.
So it’s “frustrating,” Crockett said, when the Supreme Court of Alabama [and the 125 GOP House members who signed the Life at Conception Act] “want to talk about embryos & say that they are people? Something that cannot breathe?”
When she was practicing law, Crockett said she felt like she “always had to prove a Black person’s personhood. After they were killed, it seems like there was every excuse in the book to kill a Black walking, living, & breathing human being.” [NOTE: Crockett was a public defender and, in private practice, did pro bono work for defendants in cases involving the Black Lives Matter protests.]
Crockett’s very deliberate distinction between an embryo and a “breathing” human being contains the resonance of the last words of NYPD violence victim Eric Garner, who was killed in New York in 2014 after being placed in a chokehold by a police officer. “I can’t breathe,” Garner pleaded.
Garner meant those words — “I can’t breathe” — literally at the tragic moment he spoke them, but in the wake of his death the phrase took on a powerful metaphoric meaning, a stand-in for oppression of many kinds. “I can’t breathe” became a grim signifier of unequal justice and a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.
[NOTE: “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirts became common attire for professional athletes with NBA stars like LeBron James wearing an “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirt in warm-ups after Garner’s death.]
Rep. @JasmineForUS on GOP attacks on IVF: “It seems like there was every excuse in the book to kill a Black walking, living, & breathing human being. And then you want to talk about embryos & say that they are people? Something that cannot breathe?”
Pod: https://t.co/lfBD8ckmLf pic.twitter.com/HZyQT0hclH
— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) March 29, 2024
Crockett calls the idea that an embryo that “cannot breathe” is a person “absolutely insane.” What is and what is not valued as human life is brought into stark relief by the challenges Crockett experienced in trying to get society to see a Black person in the fullness of their “personhood.”
“If you care about someone,” Crockett says, “I just need you to care about them all the way…You’re forcing people to have children yet I’m fighting with Republicans in the House when it comes to things like SNAP benefits where people only get $6 a day. You don’t want to feed them once they’re here.”
Crockett isn’t just battling Republicans in the House on reproductive rights — she’s got GOP-nominated enemies in black robes too, not just in Alabama, but in Washington, D.C.
“I hate this Supreme Court!” Crockett writes with candor, “Listening to these men twists themselves into knots to create new law to further restrict women’s access to save their damn lives & to control their bodies is confounding!
Side note: I hate this Supreme Court! Listening to these men twists themselves into knots to create new law to further restrict women’s access to save their damn lives & to control their bodies is confounding! Mifepristone has been safe for decades & now random whackos who know…
— Jasmine Crockett (@JasmineForUS) March 26, 2024