Update: NYT has defended publishing this piece as legitimate “opinion.” Fortunately, Erik Wemple, called them out in a rebuttal published in the Washington Post today.
Email to me from ACLU concerning an activist training opportunity
In the days since SCOTUS' destructive decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, we have heard from so many community members like you – asking how best to take action and truly make an impact in this awful moment. That's why ACLU People Power is hosting a new series of Abortion Activist Training sessions throughout this summer – so you can join the fight, no matter where you are.
We're kicking this series off on July 12 at 8pm ET / 5pm PT – with our first session, Know Your Rights: Digital Privacy and Abortion Access – and we hope you'll be there. Because with the fall of Roe and the loss of federal protections for abortion, our digital privacy matters more than ever. RSVP today and get ready to join fellow activists to mobilize for our rights and safety in this critical first training:
In this virtual session, we'll hear from reproductive freedom and speech, privacy, and technology experts on law enforcement's long history of weaponizing technology to track, surveil, and arrest us – and what we can do to digitally protect ourselves and our loved ones when seeking abortion care.
Most importantly, we'll learn how we can protect our constitutional right to privacy by supporting the 4th Amendment is Not for Sale Act. This critical piece of legislation will ensure that the government is not able to purchase our data (including our location and browsing history) from third-party brokers and make it harder for states to persecute anyone seeking an abortion by weaponizing their personal information.
Privacy, online and off, goes hand-in-hand with reproductive freedom. We must fight like hell to keep these civil liberties as safe as possible in this critical moment and for decades to come.
Claim your spot at this first Abortion Activist Training session.
Catch you there,
The ACLU Team
P.S. When you sign up for this first session with People Power – you'll also have the option to select any and all future sessions you'd like attend this summer, too. So RSVP today and together, let's fight back with everything we've got.
I see I didn’t make it clear that ACLU didn’t send this email to this substack. I received this email as a regular subscriber to ACLU updates and thought those of you interested in taking a leadership role might find this training opportunity useful. If this is one thing I regret it is not being more of an activist in my youth. I’ve corrected my first line above.
I read the piece in the NYT that you referenced here and also found it appalling.
But after listening to you explaining in your podcast the amount of fact checking that the Times required with your earlier abortion related article, I am even more disturbed and angry.
Thank you for adding that additional background. Without context like this in these daily updates you are doing I don't think any of us would have understood just how completely irresponsible that NYT decision actually was.
Please continue to use your voice as loudly as you are able.
I saw that opinion piece and fired off a letter to the editor. It likely won't get published, but I hope letters of rebuttal or even a guest opinion by a medical professional will. It was breathtakingly irresponsible for the NYT to publish this without a fact-check, but it seems to me that the anti-choice movement is getting MUCH more sympathetic coverage than the pro-women's rights and healthcare side. The media continues to give anti-choicers the benefit of the doubt that they really just want to save babies no matter how forcefully and repeatedly this is proven to be false.
Thank you, Jessica. Here's what I think happened at NYT: "both sides". As the right keeps getting more and more batshit, it's harder and harder for mainstream media outlets to find anything they can responsibly publish, so stuff gets through.
I didn't read the op-ed (for my own stress management), but I find that with the right it's often difficult to tell when they are being disingenuous and when they are just being insane. I think it's quite possible that a certain subset of the population (a minority, thankfully) will always see any fertilized egg of homo sapiens as a "baby", and every other error in their thinking comes from that. I don't know if there is any amount of education or science that could change those people's minds. I think the problem is religion, or faith, or whatever we want to call it, but that's a whole other can of worms.
Americans are very uneducated about pregnancy, abortion, and female biology in general. Those who can be educated, absolutely need to be. It's the first step towards ending this nightmare. But, whenever we try to educate about anything remotely scientific, there are always going to be quacks with other "opinions" spouting off. I don't know what to do about it so long as the first amendment protects both their right to speak and their right to believe and practice nonsense.
When I hear you talk about this I think about how the mainstream media (fictional tv shows) so often confused abortion pills with emergency contraception. Hopefully the next New York Times op Ed won’t be titled “plan b is abortion” because this downward spiral doesn’t seem to stopping anytime soon.
Update: NYT has defended publishing this piece as legitimate “opinion.” Fortunately, Erik Wemple, called them out in a rebuttal published in the Washington Post today.
Thanks for the update, Terri - I'm going to go read Wemple now!
Email to me from ACLU concerning an activist training opportunity
In the days since SCOTUS' destructive decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, we have heard from so many community members like you – asking how best to take action and truly make an impact in this awful moment. That's why ACLU People Power is hosting a new series of Abortion Activist Training sessions throughout this summer – so you can join the fight, no matter where you are.
We're kicking this series off on July 12 at 8pm ET / 5pm PT – with our first session, Know Your Rights: Digital Privacy and Abortion Access – and we hope you'll be there. Because with the fall of Roe and the loss of federal protections for abortion, our digital privacy matters more than ever. RSVP today and get ready to join fellow activists to mobilize for our rights and safety in this critical first training:
In this virtual session, we'll hear from reproductive freedom and speech, privacy, and technology experts on law enforcement's long history of weaponizing technology to track, surveil, and arrest us – and what we can do to digitally protect ourselves and our loved ones when seeking abortion care.
Most importantly, we'll learn how we can protect our constitutional right to privacy by supporting the 4th Amendment is Not for Sale Act. This critical piece of legislation will ensure that the government is not able to purchase our data (including our location and browsing history) from third-party brokers and make it harder for states to persecute anyone seeking an abortion by weaponizing their personal information.
Privacy, online and off, goes hand-in-hand with reproductive freedom. We must fight like hell to keep these civil liberties as safe as possible in this critical moment and for decades to come.
Claim your spot at this first Abortion Activist Training session.
Catch you there,
The ACLU Team
P.S. When you sign up for this first session with People Power – you'll also have the option to select any and all future sessions you'd like attend this summer, too. So RSVP today and together, let's fight back with everything we've got.
I see I didn’t make it clear that ACLU didn’t send this email to this substack. I received this email as a regular subscriber to ACLU updates and thought those of you interested in taking a leadership role might find this training opportunity useful. If this is one thing I regret it is not being more of an activist in my youth. I’ve corrected my first line above.
I read the piece in the NYT that you referenced here and also found it appalling.
But after listening to you explaining in your podcast the amount of fact checking that the Times required with your earlier abortion related article, I am even more disturbed and angry.
Thank you for adding that additional background. Without context like this in these daily updates you are doing I don't think any of us would have understood just how completely irresponsible that NYT decision actually was.
Please continue to use your voice as loudly as you are able.
I saw that opinion piece and fired off a letter to the editor. It likely won't get published, but I hope letters of rebuttal or even a guest opinion by a medical professional will. It was breathtakingly irresponsible for the NYT to publish this without a fact-check, but it seems to me that the anti-choice movement is getting MUCH more sympathetic coverage than the pro-women's rights and healthcare side. The media continues to give anti-choicers the benefit of the doubt that they really just want to save babies no matter how forcefully and repeatedly this is proven to be false.
YES. THIS.
Thank you, Jessica. Here's what I think happened at NYT: "both sides". As the right keeps getting more and more batshit, it's harder and harder for mainstream media outlets to find anything they can responsibly publish, so stuff gets through.
I didn't read the op-ed (for my own stress management), but I find that with the right it's often difficult to tell when they are being disingenuous and when they are just being insane. I think it's quite possible that a certain subset of the population (a minority, thankfully) will always see any fertilized egg of homo sapiens as a "baby", and every other error in their thinking comes from that. I don't know if there is any amount of education or science that could change those people's minds. I think the problem is religion, or faith, or whatever we want to call it, but that's a whole other can of worms.
Americans are very uneducated about pregnancy, abortion, and female biology in general. Those who can be educated, absolutely need to be. It's the first step towards ending this nightmare. But, whenever we try to educate about anything remotely scientific, there are always going to be quacks with other "opinions" spouting off. I don't know what to do about it so long as the first amendment protects both their right to speak and their right to believe and practice nonsense.
When I hear you talk about this I think about how the mainstream media (fictional tv shows) so often confused abortion pills with emergency contraception. Hopefully the next New York Times op Ed won’t be titled “plan b is abortion” because this downward spiral doesn’t seem to stopping anytime soon.