This quote from the anti-abortion article: “[S]uffering is part of life. It’s most assuredly part of motherhood. The notion that we, as mothers, have agency over the circumstances of our pregnancies, births and even our children, is pure folly.” This made me angrier than I've been in a very long time. I don't even have words.
The scotus 6 absolutely have blood on their hands. Without their radicalism and hubris, this would not be happening. I assuredly think they're just as guilty of killing and maiming these women as if they had physically done it. Same for the forced birth legislators and activists.
If you haven't read this already, TNR has a good piece by lawyer Matthew Wollin on how abortion bans are new versions of the arcane legal concept of coverture, in which a woman lost her legal rights upon marriage - whereas the new versions strip us of our legal rights upon pregnancy.
It's very compelling and was quite a light-bulb moment for me:
Thank you for this! Please, everyone read this. I believe it gets to the core of how the life and rights of the pregnant woman are erased. Interesting isn't it that these bastards have to dig way back in history to find what they are looking for, because theirs is a movement that is exceedingly backward and regressive and has no place in modern thinking.
Hat-tip to Lawyers for Good Government Reproductive Health Digest Oct. 10, 2024 for linking this: Sofia Resnick, "Anti-Abortion Researchers Take Legal Action Over Retracted Studies Cited in FDA Case," Wisconsin Examiner (Oct. 8, 2024), https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2024/10/08/abortion-researchers[...]. Researchers whose studies funded by anti-abortion groups, and whose studies were retracted because of their poor methodology sued SAge, the publishes that deleted their papers in February. The case is Studnicki v. Sage Pubs. Inc., No. 2024 CUPA 031167 (filed in California Superior Court October 3, 2024). The filing asks the Ventura County Superior Court to order arbitration between Sage and the disgraced researchers. The plaintiffs claim that their reputations were harmed by politically motivated and unfair retractioni of their studies. These studies played a prominent part in the Supreme Court mifiprestone case.
Remember, kids, we're up against the obnoxious rich kid who threatens to take his basketball and go home if you don't let him win.
Archived webinar (free on YouTube), "Reproductive Coercion and Survivors' Lived Experiences in a Post-Dobbs World," from the American Bar Association: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/events_cle/recent/reproductive-coercion/. Speakers are Sara Ainsworth (if/when/how) and Marium Durrani, (National Domestic Violence Policy Hotline). Text of the Reproductive Coercion and Abuse Report is also available, as is an amicus brief in the Moyle v. US case.
Vote Pro Choice (voteprochoice.us)'s We Decide Voter Guide is live at https://voteprochoice.us/voter-guide. You can preview the ballot for your election and make a voting plan to support pro-choice candidates.
I have probably shaved off several months of my life stressing about the results of the looming election. I just hope that people will come out in force to support women and girls - and all the other people that Republicans are so eager to terrorize.
Your statement applies equally to us transgender folks. They not only want to take (and succeed in taking) away our bodily autonomy, but they want to kill us, too.
As I said in response to CBL, Bodily Autonomy is non-negotiable whether it be abortion or gender transition.
Thank you for the great work you are doing, as always. I have nothing to add, except I'd love to sit down with the men who told me I hated poor people because I begged them to vote for Hillary and ask them how they think its going. I would if I hadn't had to block them.
Thanks Jessica for your astute analysis as always. Abortion rights are clearly the leading edge of the right wing cultural wars. In Florida where I live, I feel DeSantis is following the Hungary playbook. Not only is our Florida Health Department promoting anti-abortion misinformation but anti-vax information as well. He is using the power of the state to fight against amendment 4 but threatening to arrest TV executives for airing proChoice ads and has created voter fraud enforcement to go after some of us who signed the amendment 4 ballot initiative.
We need to turn out the vote to fight back against these assholes.
Thank you. Yes that was the first time we had ever been in a hurricane of that magnitude. Usually we aren’t even inside the cone, let alone the eye wall which is crazy-scary. Luckily I had just had the roof repaired after a leak!
It made landfall just south of us. No house damage. Just days of no power.
"All this, so a handful of conservative men can proudly declare themselves protectors of ‘life’. Whose lives, I wonder, are they protecting? Certainly not ours."
Opposing abortion in the interest of a woman's pregnancy as if it were a real person is a savage flight from reality, no expense or pain anywhere to be spared for it. The struggle to promote understanding for women and their pregnancies would be easier if this were the only such flight. Delusion has become the only respectable fabric of public discussion and ignorance only the expression of cultural diversity.
But there are real actors here and real interests with ancient spiritual roots. They have lots of experience dealing delusion, fear and pain. Fortunately there are even older spiritual roots that persist and see victory on the horizon. That and real progress does exist and sustain advances in the face of setbacks.
I will add that the NEW York Times continues to give forced birthers David French and Ross Douthat LOTS of space to flog their anti-choice, misogynistic views on wotmn and reproductive rights.
The suffering is a part of life” quote is mind-boggling. How dare we expect to have agency over our own lives? How much more explicit can they be that they don’t consider us full citizens.
I’ve asked this question before— they give away their game when they pass laws creating extreme, draconian penalties for health care providers who err on the side of caution in making a medical judgment that a woman’s life is at imminent risk, when some legislator or prosecutor can decide that her death was not imminent. Who passed these laws? Not us! Who decides to prosecute these cases? Not us! The reaction to a doctor who, erring on the side of caution intervenes “too early,”whatever that is, should be “so what?” Then we wouldn’t have to “fearmonger”
This enrages me like nothing else. I’m an RN. The ENTIRE POINT of medicine (and nursing) is that there is no such thing as intervening “too early.” Our PURPOSE IS EARLY INTERVENTION. Because reducing suffering, morbidity, and mortality is OUR goal. It’s too early in my day to talk about what I think these R lawmakers’ goal is, but as always, JV already did. 🍻
"The suffering is a part of life" BS goes way back in the history of mainstream Christianity. It stems in part from the influence of the early male Christian thinkers who pushed women aside and promulgated an austere vision of life, with promises of joy in some imagined hereafter- a cynical way of diverting people from protesting against their overlords.
After all, go back to Eve, Lot's wife and the other bad women of the Old Testament.
So much of this column dredged up the feelings I had when a Catholic hospital denied me life-saving care, an abortion, when they discovered my pregnancy was ectopic. It was a casual denial born from the knowledge that they could put my life in danger with impunity. They didn’t sweat it, sending me on my way to figure it out for myself. They were free to deny me care in the USA in the 1990s when Roe was the law of the land. It never occurred to me that a mother with a four-year-old at home and a wanted pregnancy that, tragically, turned out to be not only nonviable, but life-threatening, would be denied care. And that a hospital could do this without losing their license. Doctors could do this without batting an eye or losing sleep. I can’t describe the fear I felt. And coupled with that fear, was the profound disappointment that my country would sanction this mistreatment of me. From that moment I understood that Catholic hospitals had to be the reason our nation’s maternal mortality rates were so abysmal. Now, this substandard care for women formerly only practiced in Catholic hospitals, is spreading to secular hospitals. Along with establishing our right to bodily autonomy, we need to outlaw the life-threatening non-treatment of women at Catholic hospitals. Women aren’t safe there. Believe me, they’re happy to kill us.
This quote from the anti-abortion article: “[S]uffering is part of life. It’s most assuredly part of motherhood. The notion that we, as mothers, have agency over the circumstances of our pregnancies, births and even our children, is pure folly.” This made me angrier than I've been in a very long time. I don't even have words.
The scotus 6 absolutely have blood on their hands. Without their radicalism and hubris, this would not be happening. I assuredly think they're just as guilty of killing and maiming these women as if they had physically done it. Same for the forced birth legislators and activists.
If you haven't read this already, TNR has a good piece by lawyer Matthew Wollin on how abortion bans are new versions of the arcane legal concept of coverture, in which a woman lost her legal rights upon marriage - whereas the new versions strip us of our legal rights upon pregnancy.
It's very compelling and was quite a light-bulb moment for me:
https://newrepublic.com/article/185911/abortion-coverture-arcane-legal-theory
Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you for this! Please, everyone read this. I believe it gets to the core of how the life and rights of the pregnant woman are erased. Interesting isn't it that these bastards have to dig way back in history to find what they are looking for, because theirs is a movement that is exceedingly backward and regressive and has no place in modern thinking.
Hat-tip to Lawyers for Good Government Reproductive Health Digest Oct. 10, 2024 for linking this: Sofia Resnick, "Anti-Abortion Researchers Take Legal Action Over Retracted Studies Cited in FDA Case," Wisconsin Examiner (Oct. 8, 2024), https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2024/10/08/abortion-researchers[...]. Researchers whose studies funded by anti-abortion groups, and whose studies were retracted because of their poor methodology sued SAge, the publishes that deleted their papers in February. The case is Studnicki v. Sage Pubs. Inc., No. 2024 CUPA 031167 (filed in California Superior Court October 3, 2024). The filing asks the Ventura County Superior Court to order arbitration between Sage and the disgraced researchers. The plaintiffs claim that their reputations were harmed by politically motivated and unfair retractioni of their studies. These studies played a prominent part in the Supreme Court mifiprestone case.
Remember, kids, we're up against the obnoxious rich kid who threatens to take his basketball and go home if you don't let him win.
Archived webinar (free on YouTube), "Reproductive Coercion and Survivors' Lived Experiences in a Post-Dobbs World," from the American Bar Association: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/events_cle/recent/reproductive-coercion/. Speakers are Sara Ainsworth (if/when/how) and Marium Durrani, (National Domestic Violence Policy Hotline). Text of the Reproductive Coercion and Abuse Report is also available, as is an amicus brief in the Moyle v. US case.
Ooooooh. Thank you! 🤘🏼☄️🍻
Vote Pro Choice (voteprochoice.us)'s We Decide Voter Guide is live at https://voteprochoice.us/voter-guide. You can preview the ballot for your election and make a voting plan to support pro-choice candidates.
I have probably shaved off several months of my life stressing about the results of the looming election. I just hope that people will come out in force to support women and girls - and all the other people that Republicans are so eager to terrorize.
Not just cis women and girls, but transgender people of all genders.
Whether it's abortion or transition, **bodily autonomy is non-negotiable**!!!
Yes!
I think there's 100 million women ready to vote and the ain't thinking gop.
What to do when someone is actively trying to kill you?
FIGHT BACK.
Never ever allow the lies to perpetuate. Never put up with bullies.
Never allow suffering, abuse, and death threats become normalized.
These things do not need to happen.
VOTE. Get loud. FIGHT BACK.
Your statement applies equally to us transgender folks. They not only want to take (and succeed in taking) away our bodily autonomy, but they want to kill us, too.
As I said in response to CBL, Bodily Autonomy is non-negotiable whether it be abortion or gender transition.
Yup. I am no man’s property, and if any of them disagree, they can come try to take it.
It absolutely does!
Thank you Jessica for this article. And deleting troll vomit 🤮.
Is that weird, fanatic jerk-off back to rave his insanity again? I swear he types with one hand.
EW. Well played. 😂😖
😆
Thank you for the great work you are doing, as always. I have nothing to add, except I'd love to sit down with the men who told me I hated poor people because I begged them to vote for Hillary and ask them how they think its going. I would if I hadn't had to block them.
Thanks Jessica for your astute analysis as always. Abortion rights are clearly the leading edge of the right wing cultural wars. In Florida where I live, I feel DeSantis is following the Hungary playbook. Not only is our Florida Health Department promoting anti-abortion misinformation but anti-vax information as well. He is using the power of the state to fight against amendment 4 but threatening to arrest TV executives for airing proChoice ads and has created voter fraud enforcement to go after some of us who signed the amendment 4 ballot initiative.
We need to turn out the vote to fight back against these assholes.
Greetings fellow Floridian, *waves from the west coast* I hope you and yours are okay after Milton.
I hope you are okay after Milton, Natalie!
Thank you. Yes that was the first time we had ever been in a hurricane of that magnitude. Usually we aren’t even inside the cone, let alone the eye wall which is crazy-scary. Luckily I had just had the roof repaired after a leak!
It made landfall just south of us. No house damage. Just days of no power.
"All this, so a handful of conservative men can proudly declare themselves protectors of ‘life’. Whose lives, I wonder, are they protecting? Certainly not ours."
Opposing abortion in the interest of a woman's pregnancy as if it were a real person is a savage flight from reality, no expense or pain anywhere to be spared for it. The struggle to promote understanding for women and their pregnancies would be easier if this were the only such flight. Delusion has become the only respectable fabric of public discussion and ignorance only the expression of cultural diversity.
But there are real actors here and real interests with ancient spiritual roots. They have lots of experience dealing delusion, fear and pain. Fortunately there are even older spiritual roots that persist and see victory on the horizon. That and real progress does exist and sustain advances in the face of setbacks.
I will add that the NEW York Times continues to give forced birthers David French and Ross Douthat LOTS of space to flog their anti-choice, misogynistic views on wotmn and reproductive rights.
Why?
Ahh, both-sides-ism. Turns out that it may be what ends the American Experiment.
Here’s another woman’s experience in a Catholic hospital emergency room:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/opinion/sunday/roe-dobbs-miscarriage-abortion.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SU4.vuEe.HHdEVOm_rXOr&smid=url-share
The suffering is a part of life” quote is mind-boggling. How dare we expect to have agency over our own lives? How much more explicit can they be that they don’t consider us full citizens.
I’ve asked this question before— they give away their game when they pass laws creating extreme, draconian penalties for health care providers who err on the side of caution in making a medical judgment that a woman’s life is at imminent risk, when some legislator or prosecutor can decide that her death was not imminent. Who passed these laws? Not us! Who decides to prosecute these cases? Not us! The reaction to a doctor who, erring on the side of caution intervenes “too early,”whatever that is, should be “so what?” Then we wouldn’t have to “fearmonger”
This enrages me like nothing else. I’m an RN. The ENTIRE POINT of medicine (and nursing) is that there is no such thing as intervening “too early.” Our PURPOSE IS EARLY INTERVENTION. Because reducing suffering, morbidity, and mortality is OUR goal. It’s too early in my day to talk about what I think these R lawmakers’ goal is, but as always, JV already did. 🍻
I agree-these guys should have to walk around with “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” tattooed on their foreheads.
"The suffering is a part of life" BS goes way back in the history of mainstream Christianity. It stems in part from the influence of the early male Christian thinkers who pushed women aside and promulgated an austere vision of life, with promises of joy in some imagined hereafter- a cynical way of diverting people from protesting against their overlords.
After all, go back to Eve, Lot's wife and the other bad women of the Old Testament.
So much of this column dredged up the feelings I had when a Catholic hospital denied me life-saving care, an abortion, when they discovered my pregnancy was ectopic. It was a casual denial born from the knowledge that they could put my life in danger with impunity. They didn’t sweat it, sending me on my way to figure it out for myself. They were free to deny me care in the USA in the 1990s when Roe was the law of the land. It never occurred to me that a mother with a four-year-old at home and a wanted pregnancy that, tragically, turned out to be not only nonviable, but life-threatening, would be denied care. And that a hospital could do this without losing their license. Doctors could do this without batting an eye or losing sleep. I can’t describe the fear I felt. And coupled with that fear, was the profound disappointment that my country would sanction this mistreatment of me. From that moment I understood that Catholic hospitals had to be the reason our nation’s maternal mortality rates were so abysmal. Now, this substandard care for women formerly only practiced in Catholic hospitals, is spreading to secular hospitals. Along with establishing our right to bodily autonomy, we need to outlaw the life-threatening non-treatment of women at Catholic hospitals. Women aren’t safe there. Believe me, they’re happy to kill us.
JFC *hugs* they are vile, and should be forced to give standard medical care, or sued out of business.
So sorry to hear that story, Lesley. It’s infuriating how anyone in my old profession could treat you with such disrespect and put you in such danger.