This is an opinion column.

American woman, stay away from me

American woman, mama let me be

Don’t come a-hangin’ around my door

I don’t want to see your face no more

“American Woman” – The Guess Who?

Kate Cox is American woman, and Ken Paxton, Texas’ Republican attorney general, is screaming into the mic—the off-key lead singer of the moment for a party that continually and unabashedly croons its disdain for American women a-hangin’ around their door demanding the right to make their own choices.

About their bodies. About their lives.

It’s been more than a year since the Supreme Court torched that right in overturning Roe V. Wade. Its decision tuned up the ear-piercingly loud far-right chorus of purported pro-lifers and emboldened women’s voices declaring their right to discern what is right for them and their families.

Emboldened people like Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two who’s said to be the first to levy a court challenge against the wave of draconian abortion laws enacted in numerous states, including Texas. Including Alabama.

Laws that often forbid an abortion before most women even know they’re expecting.

Cox was 20 weeks pregnant when, earlier this month, she filed a lawsuit asking a district court to allow her to abort a fetus that had been diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a rare and deadly chromosomal condition that causes numerous organ abnormalities, including heart defects. Babies born with the condition typically live no more than a few days, says the Cleveland Clinic. Barely one in 10 live to their first birthday.

In an op-ed published in the Dallas Morning News, Cox wrote: “I’m trying to do what is best for my baby daughter and myself and my family, but we are suffering because of the laws in Texas. I do not want my baby to arrive in this world only to watch her suffer.”

What American woman would?

The judge ruled in Cox’s favor, granting a temporary restraining order against the state law. Judge Maya Guerra Gamble called the impact of Texas’ law “shocking” and a “genuine miscarriage of justice.”

Cue Paxton.

Now, many of the abortion laws include so-called exceptions, typically allowing abortions in circumstances where life and death are in the balance. But the AG reminded us—just as Alabama AG Steve Marshall has done repeatedly—that those exemptions don’t mean squat when the GOP wants to stand defiantly between a woman’s uterus and her physician and family.

Stand like George Wallace at the schoolhouse door.

In January, Marshall said women in the state can be prosecuted for taking an abortion pill, even as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced regulations allowing the use of two drugs commonly used to terminate pregnancies.

Five months later, Marshall declared folks helping a woman travel to a pro-choice state for an abortion could be prosecuted.

After the Texas district court ruling, Paxton took aim at Cox’s doctor, saying she could be hit with severe civil and criminal penalties by simply following the judge’s order and performing an abortion. Then he doubled down, charging to the state supreme court that Cox had not shown that the pregnancy was a threat to her life.

Just to the child’s life. So, pro-life—even a short and agonizing life, a life of pain-filled grief for mother, father, and siblings for having been forced to put a child through such?

That’s the GOP’s song.

The nine judges, all Republicans, chorus lined with Paxton last Friday.

Don’t come a hangin’ around my door

I don’t want to see your face no more.

On Monday, Cox traveled to another state, one where she could freely exercise her choice.

I reached out again for a perspective from my Reasonable Republican Friend, who’s on the front lines as an OB-GYN in Texas.

“The Texas law is ‘sneaky’, at best,” he told me. “[It forces] all healthcare providers to fear civil litigation for just giving advice, no less providing procedures themselves.

“Lethal anomalies should of course be an exception to this draconian law, and Cox’s case perhaps will add more incentive for lawmakers to at least make reasonable revisions.”

To change their discordant tune.

I got more important things to do

Than spend my time growin’ old with you

Now, woman, I said stay away

“American Woman” The Guess Who?

The abortion issue has been tricky on the GOP presidential campaign trail, even for the debate-phobic front-runner. Some candidates are struggling to remain steadfast in anti-choice party fealty amid a rising chorus of women equally in accord with their desire for choice.

Last month, Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s former Governor, confessed to a group of Christians in Iowa that if South Carolina’s state legislature had passed a bill banning abortions after six weeks (before many women know they’re pregnant), she would have signed it.

Yet, earlier this week, during an appearance on “Good Morning, America”, she sought to strike a more harmonious chord: “While I’m unapologetically pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice,” she said. “The goal should be: How do we save as many babies as we can and support as many mothers as we can—and that won’t happen until we reach consensus.”

Until we’re singing the same song, or at least in a similar key.

Until the American woman, women like Kate Cox, don’t have to flee to freely choose.

I’m a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. My column appears on AL.com, as well as the Lede. Check out my podcast series “Panther: Blueprint for Black Power,” which I co-host with Eunice Elliott. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach me at [email protected], follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj