Thanks for the link to the CNN story. Those women speaking up are very brave to recount the suffering to which these atrocious laws have subjected them. Sadly, we need many more speaking out.
Ugh...that NPR story about the woman pregnant with her SEVENTH child. If they didn't have enough money to go out of state for an abortion, how are they supposed to care for another child? It's so illogical, and the lies told to these women by crisis pregnancy centers just makes everything worse.
T-Rump.... The democrats have to play over and over again the interview with Chris Matthews in which Matthews puts TFG's feet to the fire and gets him to say that the woman -- and not the man -- should be punished for abortion. Just keep reiterating that. It doesn't matter at what week or TFG meant it. He said it. He owns it.
Re Stefanik: Wonder how she feels about NY legislature signing a bill to protect doctors there when they prescribe abortion pills to out-of-state women.
Jessica is right: she's a handmaid for the patriarchy, just like that awful cult woman on SCOTUS. They should both be ashamed of themselves as women, but they're incapable of shame.
Hey, it would be great if you’d link to court decisions, or at least give name, court, and case number. I’d love to read some of these but they’re not always easy to find. Thanks for all you do!
As far as I can tell, it doesn't look like the American people are going to be taking to the streets to demand a new constitution (it may yet have to come to that). It seems we're going to try to muddle through. That means working with the current system, even with its heavy hand on the scale for one side. And unless or until party discipline completely breaks down, it is a binary system. It's not about the what, as in what policy(ies) a voter supports; it's about the WHO - which party you vote for. No ifs ands or buts. If everybody who thought school shootings were a bad thing (and only in this country are they even a thing) voted Democrat, we'd probably control almost every state and be able to repeal the second amendment. But they don't, so we can't.
Thus the quickest way to ameliorate and ultimately end this crisis is for Democrats to win as many elected offices as possible. Right now, if everywhere votes the same as it did for president last time, and everywhere votes the same for congress as it does for president, Democrats will have the white house and the house of representatives, and Republicans will have the senate 52-48. There's also very little if any scope to flip any more state legislative chambers.
That means it's not good enough. For this to matter, it has to change voting behavior. Someone who didn't vote before has to vote Democrat. Someone who voted Republican has to stay home. Or someone who voted Republican votes Democrat this time.
But because it's a binary system, that means how Democrats are perceived and perform on every other issue, is critical for reproductive rights. It's not enough for people to be pro-choice. They have to vote Democrat despite whatever misgivings they have about everything else. Or else it doesn't matter. So all those other issues that aren't relevant here, like inflation, are actually very relevant to what happens going forward. And that's where the worry is. Republicans are not going to win a referendum on abortion. But they don't have to, because that's not how it works.
Way back in 1981, I ran the research library for the 8 PP clinics in the Los Angeles area. Part of my job was to go through the NYTimes, the WaPo, and several other large daily papers looking for articles about reproductive rights. This was during the start of the rise of the Moral Majority & the religious right in general.
It was achingly clear that they were starting at the bottom, with school boards, town councils, county commissioners, etc. They were playing the long game. I could see exactly what was going on, and while I suspected that they’d eliminate Roe sooner than it happened, I knew exactly how it *would* happen. I raised the alarm as loudly as I could, but no one was listening. To me, it seemed as though they were deliberately blind to the implications. Even three years ago, very few people were willing to entertain the idea that Roe was going to be struck down.
It’s very, very frustrating. The Democrats used “they’re coming for Roe” as a fund raising and vote getting tool every four years during presidential campaigns, and then the topic would disappear the day after the election.
We need to take a page out of the Republican play book, and start at the bottom. We need to move with alacrity, but we can’t skip a step. And we need both stubbornness and patience. I see the Republicans starting again with school board in their fight against education and LGBT+ rights. If we aren’t careful, we will lose those too.
Too many people still think that we need to throw all our apples into a federal basket, but as we have seen, that’s easily undone when the reins of power switch sides. Yes, we need a federal law, but it’s going to have to be backed up with states laws and constitutional amendments.
And we need not only to concentrate on the tragic outcomes of women in medical distress. Because those are easily countered when the right points out that even at their most extreme, these cases are a small part of the overall picture of abortion. They are trying to make abortion not only illegal, but unthinkable. We cannot compromise on exceptions, for all the reason that this column outlines daily. We need to change the narrative from concentrating on the “innocent babies” to basic human rights for women.
As I have said for over forty years, without the right to control our reproduction, the rest of women’s rights are moot. A woman who can be forced into pregnancy by any passing sperm is not going to be able to build a career. What company in its right mind is going to hire or promote employees who may need to take maternity leave every couple of years? Especially in jobs that are professional, executive or managerial. It’s easy enough to replace a grocery store checker, not so easy to replace an engineer for a few months.
One thing we have on our side that we didn’t when Roe was first decided is a widened acceptance of sex outside of marriage. There’s still a double standard, and the right leans on its straw woman of dirty sluts, but most rational people don’t think that a woman having sex before marriage is immoral anymore.
Abortion on demand, and without apology. Women have the right to have a full life, including a sex life, without the risk of having that life knocked off track simply because a woman had sex.
Starting at the bottom is always more effective, but the federal vs. state question is so vexed in this country. We've known for over 160 years that, left to their own devices, the Confederate states will ALWAYS do SOMETHING evil. We gave up Reconstruction pretty quickly and it feels like they're unreformable. There's an outside chance we thread the needle in next year's elections and come out with a trifecta, but then the disaster outcome of them having a trifecta might be just as likely. Which is to say that we can't expect federal action anytime soon, so we're going to have to see what progress can be made at the state and local levels. We'll take any victory of any kind that we can get in any red state, but I expect it to be slim pickings. Ironically it may be the case that Republican judges are not as uniformly anti-abortion as Republican politicians, because they may be thinking about the issue in different ways. But yeah hope is not a strategy.
Such a good discussion. The Long Southern Strategy by Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields explores a lot of these ideas. The thesis is that southern voters can be well understood by the three factors of racial resentment, sexism (anti-abortion), and religious fundamentalism. It examines the variable of southern identity both in addition to and separately from that of geography. Would really recommend this book to others, or at least a quick watch of some of the author interviews on youtube. It's damning stuff, but shows clearly what we are up against.
GOP hypocrisy shall sink them with alacrity
Thanks for the link to the CNN story. Those women speaking up are very brave to recount the suffering to which these atrocious laws have subjected them. Sadly, we need many more speaking out.
Ugh...that NPR story about the woman pregnant with her SEVENTH child. If they didn't have enough money to go out of state for an abortion, how are they supposed to care for another child? It's so illogical, and the lies told to these women by crisis pregnancy centers just makes everything worse.
T-Rump.... The democrats have to play over and over again the interview with Chris Matthews in which Matthews puts TFG's feet to the fire and gets him to say that the woman -- and not the man -- should be punished for abortion. Just keep reiterating that. It doesn't matter at what week or TFG meant it. He said it. He owns it.
Re Stefanik: Wonder how she feels about NY legislature signing a bill to protect doctors there when they prescribe abortion pills to out-of-state women.
Jessica is right: she's a handmaid for the patriarchy, just like that awful cult woman on SCOTUS. They should both be ashamed of themselves as women, but they're incapable of shame.
Hey, it would be great if you’d link to court decisions, or at least give name, court, and case number. I’d love to read some of these but they’re not always easy to find. Thanks for all you do!
As far as I can tell, it doesn't look like the American people are going to be taking to the streets to demand a new constitution (it may yet have to come to that). It seems we're going to try to muddle through. That means working with the current system, even with its heavy hand on the scale for one side. And unless or until party discipline completely breaks down, it is a binary system. It's not about the what, as in what policy(ies) a voter supports; it's about the WHO - which party you vote for. No ifs ands or buts. If everybody who thought school shootings were a bad thing (and only in this country are they even a thing) voted Democrat, we'd probably control almost every state and be able to repeal the second amendment. But they don't, so we can't.
Thus the quickest way to ameliorate and ultimately end this crisis is for Democrats to win as many elected offices as possible. Right now, if everywhere votes the same as it did for president last time, and everywhere votes the same for congress as it does for president, Democrats will have the white house and the house of representatives, and Republicans will have the senate 52-48. There's also very little if any scope to flip any more state legislative chambers.
That means it's not good enough. For this to matter, it has to change voting behavior. Someone who didn't vote before has to vote Democrat. Someone who voted Republican has to stay home. Or someone who voted Republican votes Democrat this time.
But because it's a binary system, that means how Democrats are perceived and perform on every other issue, is critical for reproductive rights. It's not enough for people to be pro-choice. They have to vote Democrat despite whatever misgivings they have about everything else. Or else it doesn't matter. So all those other issues that aren't relevant here, like inflation, are actually very relevant to what happens going forward. And that's where the worry is. Republicans are not going to win a referendum on abortion. But they don't have to, because that's not how it works.
Zach,
Way back in 1981, I ran the research library for the 8 PP clinics in the Los Angeles area. Part of my job was to go through the NYTimes, the WaPo, and several other large daily papers looking for articles about reproductive rights. This was during the start of the rise of the Moral Majority & the religious right in general.
It was achingly clear that they were starting at the bottom, with school boards, town councils, county commissioners, etc. They were playing the long game. I could see exactly what was going on, and while I suspected that they’d eliminate Roe sooner than it happened, I knew exactly how it *would* happen. I raised the alarm as loudly as I could, but no one was listening. To me, it seemed as though they were deliberately blind to the implications. Even three years ago, very few people were willing to entertain the idea that Roe was going to be struck down.
It’s very, very frustrating. The Democrats used “they’re coming for Roe” as a fund raising and vote getting tool every four years during presidential campaigns, and then the topic would disappear the day after the election.
We need to take a page out of the Republican play book, and start at the bottom. We need to move with alacrity, but we can’t skip a step. And we need both stubbornness and patience. I see the Republicans starting again with school board in their fight against education and LGBT+ rights. If we aren’t careful, we will lose those too.
Too many people still think that we need to throw all our apples into a federal basket, but as we have seen, that’s easily undone when the reins of power switch sides. Yes, we need a federal law, but it’s going to have to be backed up with states laws and constitutional amendments.
And we need not only to concentrate on the tragic outcomes of women in medical distress. Because those are easily countered when the right points out that even at their most extreme, these cases are a small part of the overall picture of abortion. They are trying to make abortion not only illegal, but unthinkable. We cannot compromise on exceptions, for all the reason that this column outlines daily. We need to change the narrative from concentrating on the “innocent babies” to basic human rights for women.
As I have said for over forty years, without the right to control our reproduction, the rest of women’s rights are moot. A woman who can be forced into pregnancy by any passing sperm is not going to be able to build a career. What company in its right mind is going to hire or promote employees who may need to take maternity leave every couple of years? Especially in jobs that are professional, executive or managerial. It’s easy enough to replace a grocery store checker, not so easy to replace an engineer for a few months.
One thing we have on our side that we didn’t when Roe was first decided is a widened acceptance of sex outside of marriage. There’s still a double standard, and the right leans on its straw woman of dirty sluts, but most rational people don’t think that a woman having sex before marriage is immoral anymore.
Abortion on demand, and without apology. Women have the right to have a full life, including a sex life, without the risk of having that life knocked off track simply because a woman had sex.
Starting at the bottom is always more effective, but the federal vs. state question is so vexed in this country. We've known for over 160 years that, left to their own devices, the Confederate states will ALWAYS do SOMETHING evil. We gave up Reconstruction pretty quickly and it feels like they're unreformable. There's an outside chance we thread the needle in next year's elections and come out with a trifecta, but then the disaster outcome of them having a trifecta might be just as likely. Which is to say that we can't expect federal action anytime soon, so we're going to have to see what progress can be made at the state and local levels. We'll take any victory of any kind that we can get in any red state, but I expect it to be slim pickings. Ironically it may be the case that Republican judges are not as uniformly anti-abortion as Republican politicians, because they may be thinking about the issue in different ways. But yeah hope is not a strategy.
Such a good discussion. The Long Southern Strategy by Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields explores a lot of these ideas. The thesis is that southern voters can be well understood by the three factors of racial resentment, sexism (anti-abortion), and religious fundamentalism. It examines the variable of southern identity both in addition to and separately from that of geography. Would really recommend this book to others, or at least a quick watch of some of the author interviews on youtube. It's damning stuff, but shows clearly what we are up against.
I assume you are planing to publish this as a book, maybe two books.