The standard of care for a fetal anatomy scan is between 18 and 22 weeks gestation. In an instance where it is discovered that a fetus has multiple anomalies that are incompatible with life this fetus is already beyond the so-called "consensus" time frame to allow this couple to be counseled on abortion as an option by their OBGYN. Just to clarify, I am for abortion in any and all circumstances and I believe in a woman's right to bodily autonomy first and foremost. I am just curious as to why OBGYN's aren't speaking to this situation. Anyway, that is my thought for the day. Thank you Jessica for all that you do!
People who are voting on abortion overwhelmingly vote for us. The problem is people who basically agree with us on abortion but vote for Republicans for other reasons. To your point we need to make it harder for them to be willing to do that.
We'd have to stop trying to fight them through the normal democratic constitutional process, and go to guerilla resistance tactics. Not violence because they're the ones with all the guns, but everything else.
It would work for the most part, because the bans are so unpopular that the actions they would have to take to enforce them would generate even more sustained outrage. The thing is I don't think we have enough experience and practice at civil disobedience. By the time everyone agrees and is ready it will be very late. The other thing we need to do is make it hit them in the pocketbook. Corporations should all be strongly on our side instead of trying to sit it out. People who aren't personally affected by abortion bans can be made to care if it causes economic disruption. What's happening now is the red states are slowly committing suicide. If we could accelerate the process so that they're feeling the effects today we might gain more traction.
They absolutely will try. They will say it's a "15-week compromise" nationally, but states can still ban earlier than that and will. It will force states like CA and NJ to decide whether they want to just not comply. My gov, Murphy, said on MSNBC that if mifepristone is taken off the market he is seriously considering hoarding and defying the order. That's what it will come to.
I don’t know if this will help, but consensus is when ALL sides can agree and support the decision. It’s not voting where you have winners and losers.
We (us pro-choice folks)are NEVER going to accept a national abortion ban. We aren’t going back to the 1800s in women’s health care. I would like to see more aggressive messaging from our side - calling out the sham!
The push to pass local ordinances is so disturbing and crazy. It's just insane. It smells like a hunt, and seems desperate too. Like they'll get us any which way the can - nationwide, statewide, or at your local town hall. They'll stop at nothing to get in your business, all for a life they don't really care about once it's born. It's sick.
I think in response I'd be talking about how Nashville and Austin and Atlanta and Raleigh ought to be able to allow health care with their own local ordinances. These people want a war so that's what we're going to get; we just need to figure out the best way to win it.
Heard tonight that attorneys general from 19 states are trying to get medical records of women leaving their states for suspicious reasons. Women should leave those states permanently!
I said it the other day, and I’ll say it again: They won’t stop until women are locked in their homes like some Middle Eastern theocracies. I’m not exaggerating. Their goal is to return women to the home, to submit to their husbands, and to have children. Period.
Since not everyone in the Republican coalition is as extreme on this as the true theocrats, they will eventually come into conflict with one another as the theocrats keep pushing. It would be better to put a stop to it before then though.
100% agree. The hatred that sustains the anti-woman movement is malignant. Its nature is to grow and spread. Unless it is forcibly stopped, it will not give up until it has taken every one of our freedoms. And for what? The self-gratification of a cabal of theocrats and tech bro billionaires who are funding it all? Our voices and power are the last best hope for a better world.
Apparently there is something on social media (maybe TikTok - I'm not adept at social media): a trend promoting women being housewives, pregnant and barefoot and waiting for their husbands to come home. Like the 1950s.
I think this is one area where the left is failing. Instead of talking about the people who are being oppressed in these states and are stuck, let’s help them leave. We can call them refugees fleeing oppression. We can help them get established in more tolerant places. Many won’t leave because they don’t want to or feel like they can’t. But some will. Those are the people we can help.
One of the biggest policy failures by Democrats is housing. Housing in blue areas is invariably more expensive, often much more expensive. Because people would rather live there. The only solution to that is for supply to come more into balance with demand, which means more building. Lots and lots more building. But too many residents of those areas would rather keep people out (and because their own expensive houses are a very important asset to them they may be inclined to keep it that way).
People are truly free to say what they want. But The NY Times and it’s peers are completely failing us. They have done so since her emails. They fail to give context. They fail to identify relative harm. What they are doing is inexcusable.
Not really. Girls as young as 8 are reaching menarche. At that age, and based on my own experience, I’d say up to at least 14-15, they’re more likely to be influenced by parental opinions on this issue. They have neither the knowledge nor opportunity yet to understand the nuances of politics, so they’d take their cue from the views of their family.
We changed the voting age from 21 to 18 (which some Republicans are trying to change back - some of want to make it 25) in the 1970s. When the push to change the age began in earnest, there was by then a lot of anti-war sentiment, and the draft was still in place. It seemed to a lot of people that it was incredibly unfair to send young men off to die overseas without allowing them a voice in how the country was run.
It takes time, effort and votes to change the voting age. It a constitutional amendment.- 26. Needless to say I am sure they will chip away at every amendment that came after the Civil War. I truly hate this country right now.
Yeah. I was just responding to the 16 year old she quoted. I was thinking, great, but it doesn't really matter what she thinks, because she can't vote next year. And likewise it's incredibly unfair to send girls off to die in pregnancy without allowing them a voice in what health care they're allowed to get.
Yeah, it was more a point, in response to that quote, than a policy suggestion :) Although when I see who the grown-ups are voting for it's hard to imagine 10-year-olds doing worse 🤷
"There aren't two sides to this. There is actually a demonstrable truth....."
Always true but it's no longer the standard in the world we live in. Somehow it feels like it's our fault. After years of arguing for acceptance of people's differences, they've decided to use it against us by saying they have the right to any lies and nonsense they want. Because we're not allowed to say there's a truth anymore. 🤷
My friend Kat is in journalism school in Copenhagen. She sent this article today (a reading assignment for her, but she thought I might get something from it.)
It is several years old now. I’m still working through it. I’ve tried some of these things with my family members. They sometimes defuse arguments but they don’t change minds.
Still, the discussion about how Democrats fail to hit all 6 messaging points resonated. We complain about it here a lot.
Part of the problem we have is that both sides see the other as the enemy. No one is going to be convinced to ban drag story hours by someone calling them a pedophile. No one who wants to eliminate abortion will be convinced by rhetoric about them wanting to control women. Now one of those is true, and the other isn’t. But we have to find a way to make our arguments on a less loaded field of words.
I’m hoping that the messaging I’ve seen from Harris may help. She’s talked a lot about freedom, individual liberty. That’s a profoundly American message that goes right back to our roots as a nation.
I guess what I am getting at is that we don’t have to talk to them in the vocabulary we use amongst ourselves. Sure, we know what the leaders of the forced birth movement are all about. But the average Republican voter doesn’t see it that way - they think about “innocent baybeez” and “irresponsible” teens and college age women.
I’ve had a number of discussions with forced birthers about the abortion I’ve talked about here. At least ninety percent of them have said “Well, your abortion was different. You were on medication that would have damaged the baby, and you were really too old to have a healthy child.”
Steve Bannon talks a lot about “flooding the zone with bull shit.” We need to flood the zone with real stories of real women who make the decision to abort. Everyone choosing abortion has a reason they make that decision, but honestly, they don’t know that.
I can see a way forward to living in peace with people who are very different from us. But I think it’s going to take a couple of minor miracles - one is breaking the grip of the MAGA morons, and the other is coming to an understanding that it’s ok if other people want to run their lives differently, as long as we all understand that freedom and individual liberty are the cornerstone of the American experiment.
It wasn’t that long ago that the big bugaboo on the right was feeling that the federal government was interfering in personal and business decisions they had no right to legislate. They need to be reminded of that.
Republicans are not going to convince anyone with their abortion messaging. What they're trying to do is persuade their OWN voters, people who've already been voting Republican, that it's not a big enough deal for them to defect or sit out. When they say 'Europe', that's shorthand for 'liberal', and the message is aimed at their own pro-choice voters to say that it's not so extreme. Those are the voters we need to fight them for.
Ron DeSantis is not going to be president of the United States. Whatever "it" is, he doesn't have it. Reminds me of Scott Walker and his brief presidential run. Republicans who don't want Trump are not sold and I'd be more concerned that, somehow, they pick someone else who the media sells as "normal" and "safe" (which they most definitely would not be).
Agree. I'm also worried about votes by third parties taking from Democrats. This new No Labels group, for instance. Their stance on our autonomy has yet to be detailed but so far they say, basically, most Americans agree on [Roe - my word, cause that's what they seem to lay out.] Why on earth do they want to take votes from the Democrats. They will give us Trump.
100%. I was irked by someone on here a week or so ago bitching about the Democrats and talking about "false binaries". Hopefully they don't live in a swing state. Some people just don't get how things work.
No Labels is backed by far right money. I saw co-chair Larry Hogan, former Republican governor of Maryland interviewed on television tonight. Generally, he’s part of what has come to be called the “Team Normal” part of the Republican Party. He was also with Jon Huntsman, former Republican governor of Utah.
There was a lot of talk about how they’re a non-profit, and not a political party. But that was combined with discussion about getting on the ballot on all fifty states, and D.C. Hogan wouldn’t rule out running under their banner.
When abortion came up briefly, they were cagey. They certainly didn’t rule out a National ban, but there was talk about how on these type of topics, they were looking to find “consensus.”
And there’s that word. We know which side of the issue that word comes from.
Here’s where they’ll get tripped up. Right now, legally, they are not a political party. They’re a non profit, and don’t have to reveal funding, though we already know some of it.
If they get on the ballot in all 50 states, they’ll either have to set up a new No Labels party, or convert the non profit to a party. At that point they’ll have to reveal donors for the party.
I'm guessing the far -right money doesn't give a darn about "centrist" ideas, more about getting MAGA out so they can continue their rightward push and start winning more elections on the national level.
Yes. Their problem is they can't find a way to win votes without MAGA. They're trying to engineer an outcome that best serves their billionaires, but it turns out that's not popular, with anyone, so they always have to find a way to disguise it. People are stupid, very very stupid, but they're not completely controllable either.
We haven't mentioned it here but whenever we talk about the military's abortion policies it's worth remembering, and saying, that conservatives don't believe women should be serving anyway. Definitely violates their idea of proper gender roles.
That Senate seat in Ohio is a very tough hold for us as the Republican presidential candidate is almost certain to carry the state. If we're going to have any chance at 50 senators in the next congress, Sherrod Brown needs to hang on. Let's hope Republicans nominate a really bad candidate. (Exact same situation in Montana but of the two I think Ohio is the tougher hold. The other red seat, West Virginia, is gone and Manchin doesn't support reproductive rights or getting rid of the filibuster anyway.)
I know I shouldn’t be surprised by that statistic that 1 in 10 Americans knows someone who couldn’t get an abortion or had to travel to get one, but it still is crazy sobering. Only going to get worse.
I'm one of those 1 in 10 here in Texas. And it hasn't even been a year in most states that have banned it. That's wild. Hear so many stories in the comments of women who lived before Roe who couldn't get care, know someone who couldn't or died. Can't believe we're going back in time.
The standard of care for a fetal anatomy scan is between 18 and 22 weeks gestation. In an instance where it is discovered that a fetus has multiple anomalies that are incompatible with life this fetus is already beyond the so-called "consensus" time frame to allow this couple to be counseled on abortion as an option by their OBGYN. Just to clarify, I am for abortion in any and all circumstances and I believe in a woman's right to bodily autonomy first and foremost. I am just curious as to why OBGYN's aren't speaking to this situation. Anyway, that is my thought for the day. Thank you Jessica for all that you do!
People who are voting on abortion overwhelmingly vote for us. The problem is people who basically agree with us on abortion but vote for Republicans for other reasons. To your point we need to make it harder for them to be willing to do that.
Yes! Well said!
Can they really force a national ban? Is California going to take that shit? What about nj? What would that look like?
We'd have to stop trying to fight them through the normal democratic constitutional process, and go to guerilla resistance tactics. Not violence because they're the ones with all the guns, but everything else.
It would work for the most part, because the bans are so unpopular that the actions they would have to take to enforce them would generate even more sustained outrage. The thing is I don't think we have enough experience and practice at civil disobedience. By the time everyone agrees and is ready it will be very late. The other thing we need to do is make it hit them in the pocketbook. Corporations should all be strongly on our side instead of trying to sit it out. People who aren't personally affected by abortion bans can be made to care if it causes economic disruption. What's happening now is the red states are slowly committing suicide. If we could accelerate the process so that they're feeling the effects today we might gain more traction.
They absolutely will try. They will say it's a "15-week compromise" nationally, but states can still ban earlier than that and will. It will force states like CA and NJ to decide whether they want to just not comply. My gov, Murphy, said on MSNBC that if mifepristone is taken off the market he is seriously considering hoarding and defying the order. That's what it will come to.
They will force a national ban if they win a majority in 2024. No question.
I don’t know if this will help, but consensus is when ALL sides can agree and support the decision. It’s not voting where you have winners and losers.
We (us pro-choice folks)are NEVER going to accept a national abortion ban. We aren’t going back to the 1800s in women’s health care. I would like to see more aggressive messaging from our side - calling out the sham!
The push to pass local ordinances is so disturbing and crazy. It's just insane. It smells like a hunt, and seems desperate too. Like they'll get us any which way the can - nationwide, statewide, or at your local town hall. They'll stop at nothing to get in your business, all for a life they don't really care about once it's born. It's sick.
I think in response I'd be talking about how Nashville and Austin and Atlanta and Raleigh ought to be able to allow health care with their own local ordinances. These people want a war so that's what we're going to get; we just need to figure out the best way to win it.
100%
Seems like they don't really care even before they're born considering they don't want to expand Medicaid.
"Assholery" is the word of the day! Might get word of the year!
Heard tonight that attorneys general from 19 states are trying to get medical records of women leaving their states for suspicious reasons. Women should leave those states permanently!
I said it the other day, and I’ll say it again: They won’t stop until women are locked in their homes like some Middle Eastern theocracies. I’m not exaggerating. Their goal is to return women to the home, to submit to their husbands, and to have children. Period.
Since not everyone in the Republican coalition is as extreme on this as the true theocrats, they will eventually come into conflict with one another as the theocrats keep pushing. It would be better to put a stop to it before then though.
100% agree. The hatred that sustains the anti-woman movement is malignant. Its nature is to grow and spread. Unless it is forcibly stopped, it will not give up until it has taken every one of our freedoms. And for what? The self-gratification of a cabal of theocrats and tech bro billionaires who are funding it all? Our voices and power are the last best hope for a better world.
Apparently there is something on social media (maybe TikTok - I'm not adept at social media): a trend promoting women being housewives, pregnant and barefoot and waiting for their husbands to come home. Like the 1950s.
Yes, they’re called “trad wives.” It looks like something out of a 1950s sitcom.
Should, but many will not be able to.
I think this is one area where the left is failing. Instead of talking about the people who are being oppressed in these states and are stuck, let’s help them leave. We can call them refugees fleeing oppression. We can help them get established in more tolerant places. Many won’t leave because they don’t want to or feel like they can’t. But some will. Those are the people we can help.
One of the biggest policy failures by Democrats is housing. Housing in blue areas is invariably more expensive, often much more expensive. Because people would rather live there. The only solution to that is for supply to come more into balance with demand, which means more building. Lots and lots more building. But too many residents of those areas would rather keep people out (and because their own expensive houses are a very important asset to them they may be inclined to keep it that way).
People are truly free to say what they want. But The NY Times and it’s peers are completely failing us. They have done so since her emails. They fail to give context. They fail to identify relative harm. What they are doing is inexcusable.
If we allowed people to vote as soon as they're old enough to become pregnant, it would help us out.
Not really. Girls as young as 8 are reaching menarche. At that age, and based on my own experience, I’d say up to at least 14-15, they’re more likely to be influenced by parental opinions on this issue. They have neither the knowledge nor opportunity yet to understand the nuances of politics, so they’d take their cue from the views of their family.
We changed the voting age from 21 to 18 (which some Republicans are trying to change back - some of want to make it 25) in the 1970s. When the push to change the age began in earnest, there was by then a lot of anti-war sentiment, and the draft was still in place. It seemed to a lot of people that it was incredibly unfair to send young men off to die overseas without allowing them a voice in how the country was run.
It takes time, effort and votes to change the voting age. It a constitutional amendment.- 26. Needless to say I am sure they will chip away at every amendment that came after the Civil War. I truly hate this country right now.
Yeah. I was just responding to the 16 year old she quoted. I was thinking, great, but it doesn't really matter what she thinks, because she can't vote next year. And likewise it's incredibly unfair to send girls off to die in pregnancy without allowing them a voice in what health care they're allowed to get.
I agree with that, but I don’t think allowing 10 year olds to vote is the answer.
Yeah, it was more a point, in response to that quote, than a policy suggestion :) Although when I see who the grown-ups are voting for it's hard to imagine 10-year-olds doing worse 🤷
"There aren't two sides to this. There is actually a demonstrable truth....."
Always true but it's no longer the standard in the world we live in. Somehow it feels like it's our fault. After years of arguing for acceptance of people's differences, they've decided to use it against us by saying they have the right to any lies and nonsense they want. Because we're not allowed to say there's a truth anymore. 🤷
My friend Kat is in journalism school in Copenhagen. She sent this article today (a reading assignment for her, but she thought I might get something from it.)
https://thewholestory.solutionsjournalism.org/complicating-the-narratives-b91ea06ddf63
It is several years old now. I’m still working through it. I’ve tried some of these things with my family members. They sometimes defuse arguments but they don’t change minds.
Still, the discussion about how Democrats fail to hit all 6 messaging points resonated. We complain about it here a lot.
Part of the problem we have is that both sides see the other as the enemy. No one is going to be convinced to ban drag story hours by someone calling them a pedophile. No one who wants to eliminate abortion will be convinced by rhetoric about them wanting to control women. Now one of those is true, and the other isn’t. But we have to find a way to make our arguments on a less loaded field of words.
I’m hoping that the messaging I’ve seen from Harris may help. She’s talked a lot about freedom, individual liberty. That’s a profoundly American message that goes right back to our roots as a nation.
I guess what I am getting at is that we don’t have to talk to them in the vocabulary we use amongst ourselves. Sure, we know what the leaders of the forced birth movement are all about. But the average Republican voter doesn’t see it that way - they think about “innocent baybeez” and “irresponsible” teens and college age women.
I’ve had a number of discussions with forced birthers about the abortion I’ve talked about here. At least ninety percent of them have said “Well, your abortion was different. You were on medication that would have damaged the baby, and you were really too old to have a healthy child.”
Steve Bannon talks a lot about “flooding the zone with bull shit.” We need to flood the zone with real stories of real women who make the decision to abort. Everyone choosing abortion has a reason they make that decision, but honestly, they don’t know that.
I can see a way forward to living in peace with people who are very different from us. But I think it’s going to take a couple of minor miracles - one is breaking the grip of the MAGA morons, and the other is coming to an understanding that it’s ok if other people want to run their lives differently, as long as we all understand that freedom and individual liberty are the cornerstone of the American experiment.
It wasn’t that long ago that the big bugaboo on the right was feeling that the federal government was interfering in personal and business decisions they had no right to legislate. They need to be reminded of that.
Very good article. We need to find ways to hit the other three notes. The stereotype they use against us is that we are hostile to those three values.
I’ve been grappling with this a lot. I don’t know how we co-exist.
Idk. But it does seem like there's only so much relativism we can take before we're in George Orwell-Vladimir Putin land.
Republicans are not going to convince anyone with their abortion messaging. What they're trying to do is persuade their OWN voters, people who've already been voting Republican, that it's not a big enough deal for them to defect or sit out. When they say 'Europe', that's shorthand for 'liberal', and the message is aimed at their own pro-choice voters to say that it's not so extreme. Those are the voters we need to fight them for.
You nailed it on the “Europe” line
Ron DeSantis is not going to be president of the United States. Whatever "it" is, he doesn't have it. Reminds me of Scott Walker and his brief presidential run. Republicans who don't want Trump are not sold and I'd be more concerned that, somehow, they pick someone else who the media sells as "normal" and "safe" (which they most definitely would not be).
45 is going to be the nominee unless he dies. Period. He’s who the base wants.
I think so, but we have to be prepared for any and every possibility.
Agree. I'm also worried about votes by third parties taking from Democrats. This new No Labels group, for instance. Their stance on our autonomy has yet to be detailed but so far they say, basically, most Americans agree on [Roe - my word, cause that's what they seem to lay out.] Why on earth do they want to take votes from the Democrats. They will give us Trump.
https://www.commonsensemajority.org/about-1-1-7
We are listed as "Idea 26" out of 30, under the category "Empathy and Equality." I really can't take the stupidity of all of this.
100%. I was irked by someone on here a week or so ago bitching about the Democrats and talking about "false binaries". Hopefully they don't live in a swing state. Some people just don't get how things work.
No Labels is backed by far right money. I saw co-chair Larry Hogan, former Republican governor of Maryland interviewed on television tonight. Generally, he’s part of what has come to be called the “Team Normal” part of the Republican Party. He was also with Jon Huntsman, former Republican governor of Utah.
There was a lot of talk about how they’re a non-profit, and not a political party. But that was combined with discussion about getting on the ballot on all fifty states, and D.C. Hogan wouldn’t rule out running under their banner.
When abortion came up briefly, they were cagey. They certainly didn’t rule out a National ban, but there was talk about how on these type of topics, they were looking to find “consensus.”
And there’s that word. We know which side of the issue that word comes from.
They haven’t revealed where their money is coming from (no labels)!! So scary!
Ramona, you may find this interesting. Mother Jones exposed some of their funding sources in late June:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/06/no-labels-exposed-heres-a-list-of-donors-funding-its-effort-to-disrupt-the-2024-race/
Here’s where they’ll get tripped up. Right now, legally, they are not a political party. They’re a non profit, and don’t have to reveal funding, though we already know some of it.
If they get on the ballot in all 50 states, they’ll either have to set up a new No Labels party, or convert the non profit to a party. At that point they’ll have to reveal donors for the party.
I'm guessing the far -right money doesn't give a darn about "centrist" ideas, more about getting MAGA out so they can continue their rightward push and start winning more elections on the national level.
Yes. Their problem is they can't find a way to win votes without MAGA. They're trying to engineer an outcome that best serves their billionaires, but it turns out that's not popular, with anyone, so they always have to find a way to disguise it. People are stupid, very very stupid, but they're not completely controllable either.
Well if they do run hopefully their votes come from that side too.
We haven't mentioned it here but whenever we talk about the military's abortion policies it's worth remembering, and saying, that conservatives don't believe women should be serving anyway. Definitely violates their idea of proper gender roles.
Yes. If they come to full power, women won’t be allowed to serve.
Or vote.
That Senate seat in Ohio is a very tough hold for us as the Republican presidential candidate is almost certain to carry the state. If we're going to have any chance at 50 senators in the next congress, Sherrod Brown needs to hang on. Let's hope Republicans nominate a really bad candidate. (Exact same situation in Montana but of the two I think Ohio is the tougher hold. The other red seat, West Virginia, is gone and Manchin doesn't support reproductive rights or getting rid of the filibuster anyway.)
I know I shouldn’t be surprised by that statistic that 1 in 10 Americans knows someone who couldn’t get an abortion or had to travel to get one, but it still is crazy sobering. Only going to get worse.
I'm one of those 1 in 10 here in Texas. And it hasn't even been a year in most states that have banned it. That's wild. Hear so many stories in the comments of women who lived before Roe who couldn't get care, know someone who couldn't or died. Can't believe we're going back in time.