Heather Cox Richardson talked about the 13 year old girl in Missisippi and Judge Ho and his opinion about the "aesthetic injury" to doctors cited in the abortin drug decision. With all of the other major news going on I'm glad she is talking about this. The more people hilighting what's going on the better.
I read her substack too. The "aesthetic injury" argument for why anti-choice physicians have standing to bring the case was outrageous. In Judge Ho's analogy, women are fetus habitats. It is at least good that they are putting their deranged thought processes down in writing for public scrutiny. I guess when you take the witch-burner precedents out of the anti-abortion legal case, not much is left.
I’m so confused. Isn’t it the position of the forced pregnancy folks that abortion isn’t healthcare? Yet in Nebraska, they claim that it is healthcare for the purpose of combining it with gender-affirming care in order to claim that the state’s law banning both adheres to the state constitutional requirement that its laws address only one subject. If abortion is healthcare, then it is healthcare for the pregnant person, since it is certainly not healthcare for the embryo or fetus, and thus what is the rationale for banning it? If abortion is not healthcare, then the law banning it along with gender-affirming care addresses 2 different subjects. Which is it?
As usual, they want to have it both ways. Yes, this makes me crazy too. Below, you may notice a comment about the Catholic Church and its domination of hospitals--and the US catholic bishops putting restrictions on what healthcare can be offered and which not. (Which is not new. They've been doing this for years.) It's hypocrisy, nothing more. Their god is supposed to be loving and generous to all...except if you're female, unmarried, unstraight, etc. So, which is it? Loving or not? They can't have it both ways. (The reason I bring up the RCC's position on healthcare is because their idiocy about abortion and gender-affirming care is now well known. It's just an example of wanting to have things both ways.) If this sounds more like abuse than love, well--I'm one of those people who was so badly abused in a catholic family and community that I was mute about it for decades. Now, at age 70, I've just begun being able to talk about the abuse, which I can now see coming from miles away.
Wanted to put this out there, a continuation from Monday's comments section. We were talking about futur(istic) scenarios, and it was one of those moments when I took a step back and remembered I'm a man here among a mostly women readership:
We have gotten to a place where intelligent, rational women can reasonably ask the question, "Would men get rid of us, replace us, if they could?" If you're not a man, you can only imagine or guess what men think or would do, and everything we've given you to go on would leave a reasonable person lacking confidence that men would not, in fact, jettison women in favor of some scientifically engineered alternative.
If men have even a shred of humanity that should fill us with a deep sense of grief, and shame. This is how much hate our kind has put out there, and, yes, there are far too many women who are more than willing to throw other women under the bus to gain favor with the patriarchy, but we men are the ones responsible.
If we don't take this to heart, and do something about it, we're going to tear apart our civilizations and our species, because that's what it's coming to. All of this strife, here and elsewhere around the world, is a manifestation of toxic masculinity run amok.
I don't think I have the strength and the ability to get through to them.
That is beautifully expressed Zach. Robert Sapolsky writes about a time when the most aggressive, high-ranking male baboons took over the trash disposal area for a new African tourist lodge, where they regularly gorged themselves on discarded food. Sadly, tubercular meat was unknowingly being thrown out. All the most violent males, who fiercely defended access to the dump, got sick and died in a short time. This change allowed "beta" males to take over the troop. They enforced a new peaceable culture, where males groomed each other more frequently and did not harass the females. Young males and newcomers accepted the new rules, or were run off. Sapolsky returns regularly and reports that the peaceful culture has been preserved. It is one of the most hopeful true things I have read in a while, and an example of the possibility of lasting positive social change. Here is a recap of the story if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q-bB-qywJ0
I love that story and it is so incredibly relevant and timely! This IS the moment we're in. When Trump beat Clinton it unleashed all of the demons. MAGA may have started on race, but I think it's become more about toxic masculinity. And where the U.S. goes the rest of the world follows. Fast forward seven years and here we are. I have seen so much good discourse come out but we haven't won the battle yet. As a man when I observe other men I never know how much is cluelessness, made possible by privilege, and how much is they know but don't care. I do think you can rarely go wrong underestimating a man's awareness though. Men need to start to get it, or else those aggressive, high-ranking, violent males are going to destroy our trash dump. We need to look to the women for leadership and not to the alpha males. If not then I guess that's why we have cycles of war and peace in human civilizations, and we'll find ourselves in the war phase soon enough.
Republicans are dirtbags. When my lifelong Republican father passed away a couple of years ago, I took far more consolation than I should have from the thought he'd voted for his last Republican. And Dad wasn't even a Trumper - he despised Trump and refused to vote for him. Still voted for other Republicans though.
It made me so angry I wanted to scream. In my wandering around the web, unfortunately, I’m seeing a lot of this kind of thinking. “Well, if we just married off women, there wouldn’t be any abortions, so let’s make sure they have no way to stay single. Problem solved! No abortions.”
I really don't understand their logic. Most women who get pregnant out-of-wedlock keep their pregnancies but they don't marry. Do they seriously think that forcing the ones who don't want to stay pregnant will force them to get married? Or slashing welfare even more? All they need to do is look at Latin America for examples of how stupid this is.
They want to eliminate welfare *especially* for single mothers. They complain endlessly about the “marriage penalty” by which, when women marry, they lose access to welfare. They overlook entirely that the reason this happen is that the addition of another worker’s income brings the household above the very meager limit, instead claiming married people are being discriminated against.
They want that “penalty” eliminated - and by expanding the number of people eligible for a non-expanding pot of money, single mothers will suffer. This will push single moms to choose between abject poverty, and marriage.
They claim this is all about wanting people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but they miss the reality on the ground in so doing. Much of the need for welfare could be eliminated by forcing non-custodial parents to pay the full amount of court ordered child support. No, not all fathers make a lot of money, but many of them make money that isn’t counted as part of the official economy - it’s underground. Or, like my ex 30 years ago, who quit a $60k job to go to work as a waiter, and reported only $2.35/hr, plus the minimal amount of tips the government imputes to tipped workers (my attorney’s husband went to his restaurant one Saturday night, and watched him pocket $500+ in cash that evening that was never reported as income). Forcing those non custodial parents income into the light would help.
So would providing good quality child care, which would free these moms up to work. Even more, real educational opportunity for these women would provide a huge return on investment over time. But as much as the right claims that financial independence is the goal - it isn’t. In the places where education can be substituted for work, it’s limited to training for low level jobs like home health care aides, which will never allow these women to provide stability and opportunity for her children. Keep her struggling, and maybe she’ll just get married.
Sometimes, one child isn’t enough to push a woman into marriage, so attacking family planning is another way to take another bite. Look at Texas, where they filed suit to prevent Title X funds to be used to provide teens with BC unless they have parental consent. Texas has refused to expand Medicaid, and has re-routed state funding for family planning to community health clinics, without the expertise or experience in providing those services. Most of them don’t offer the full range of contraceptive options. Texas has been messing with contraceptive access since at least 2011, at one point proposing that “natural family planning” be emphasized.
It’s all connected, and it has the same goal - return the culture to the 1950s, if not earlier.
This isn't the fifties though. In Latin America, abortion is illegal and contraception is sparse. Women are forced to work low wage jobs. There is no welfare, childcare or child support and marriage rates have plummeted while out-of-wedlock births have exploded. In Columbia, 85% of children are born out-of-wedlock. These people are stupid if they think doing here what they've done in Latin America will somehow magically result in women being forced back into marriages and into the kitchen.
And your ex sounds like a real piece of work by the way. Just wow. This is why parents should get an unconditional monthly child tax credit. Child support is a joke.
Oh, I don’t disagree. But that’s how the other side thinks about this. They truly believe that women wanting to remain free of marriage is some sort of phase we are going through, and if they make it hard enough for us to remain single, we’ll give up.
Yes, my ex - I could tell you stories that would curl your hair. That one comes in around 498 on the list, in order of assholery.
I think *all* child support should automatically be taken out of the non custodial parent’s paycheck. - and if they change jobs, the order should follow with the change - using social security numbers would work. But yes, as practiced, child support is a joke. In the 14 years before my son turned 18, I received a total of $2,000. I’m facing a serious financial wall right now, as I’m turning 65 and will lose my private disability insurance - the several hundred thousand dollars he never paid me sure would come in handy right now.
Usually they start off with incorrect or at the very least incomplete facts. And if the facts you give them don't fit their narrative, they say you're lying about your facts. So it ends up the only way to solve it is for them to try the stupid way and have it be a complete disaster. We're starting to see that on abortion. The problem is there are certain issues, such as climate change, where that may not work because there may be no recovery possible from the complete disaster.
They want their future slave labor force. No other explanation. They clearly don’t GAF about less abortions, less births out of wedlock, less deaths, they don’t care about any of that. All lies. Power. Control. And they just hate themselves so damn much, we gotta suffer. I bet most of them are pure evil and all this is just pretend caring about “innocent preborns” and they just wanting to cover up and justify their bad behavior.
You right. My bad. I didn't mean to disparage anyone who has an actual psychiatric illness. I've known a fair number of people with mental health issues and would never think less of them because of that. It's not like it's their fault.
In 1973, I was working as a clerical staffer for a doc who had been doing "California-legal" abortions for a few years. I still remember Roe Day, when he came into the office with tears in his eyes. Anyway, a couple of months later a mom brought her 13-year-old daughter into the office. I will never, ever forget that child. She was chubby, like a little kid, and the fear in her eyes--there are no words. After they saw the doc, I was the one who called up to the hospital to schedule the abortion. I can still remember the anger in the hospital scheduler's voice when she asked, "She's *13*??" When the mom and daughter left that day, the doc came out to the front desk. He was usually a very calm person (he'd been a flight surgeon, had been one of the prime movers behind the establishment of the local ER, had been one of very few local docs to care for women on the "abortion ward", among other things), but that day he was clearly in a rage. He looked like he wanted to hit something. He told us shortly to cancel all his afternoon appointments and stomped out of the office. One of my co-workers said, "He's gonna go climb something." (The doc was a mountain-climber. My guess is that was how he got rid of the rage he felt.) The story about the 13-year-old in Mississippi who was raped and forced to carry that pregnancy--starting seventh grade as a mother--and the refusal of the local cops to do jack shit, reminded me of that bad old day. The kid in California in 1973 at least had options. The child in Mississippi in 2023 didn't.
My favorite line: “We have backup plans so we’ll continue to provide mifepristone and misoprostol to all 50 states. We have backup plans to our backup plans, so that will continue to happen.”
Church leaders and church leadership cannot technically endorse candidates (but many always have and there’s little appetite to pursue enforcement) but church members are free to endorse candidates and even promote those endorsements among other members.
I think so! It’s insane that I feel “guilty” for constantly bringing up the biggest cover up in Catholic history, while members continue the whole “yeah it’s bad, but Catholicism is still beneficial”. Yeah it was so “bad”. They still have not fully even acknowledged the horror they spread to thousands of young children. Makes me sick.
If churches actually were “prolife”, homelessness would not even exist. They have SO MANY CHURCHES and SO MUCH MONEY. Sickening.
I think one of the reasons that Republicans are pushing Robert Kennedy Jr in the Democratic primary is to confuse women ie Democrats could also ban abortion if elected. Democrats need to be out in front of this issue. I cannot understand why they are not speaking about this all the time.
Demographics, not just here but globally, are working against that massive low income workforce model, even if we do continue to do such a shitty job protecting people. There are going to be more (old) people to take care of, and fewer younger ones to do it. Supply and demand can do a number on labor. That's why they're excited about AI, if it can automate more jobs. But you can't automate everything, yet. AI could possibly replace doctors, but probably not nurses; you'd need robots for that (and it turns out robots are much harder. Motion is an area in which humans still have huge advantages.) I think demographics may ultimately win and we need technology just to keep pace. The times are changing and will change whether they like it or not.
I think how they resolve the strikes in Hollywood will set a tone for how we as a species are going to deal with AI, and guild members know it and they're ahead of the rest of us on it. Fingers crossed that we go to a place where AI is a tool that assists humans, not something that replaces them.
I think if this is the attitude we have the extremist right will win. They are counting and encouraging cynicism and apathy ie both sides are the same my vote doesn’t matter.
I live in a state the Democrats control, and describing them as protecting abortion access is complacent. They aren't the ones doing the work, it's the independent clinics and the abortion funds that are doing the work. It's grassroots organizations that are doing the work. This place isn't a haven. They throw away rape kits and let rapists fester in power just the same as everywhere else. Rape victims have their rapists babies just the same as everywhere else. Parents abuse and neglect their children just the same as everywhere else. There is no place that is safe, no place that is good. There are places that are slightly better, there are places that are much worse. Assuming the fight is over or it doesn't need focus is a loss, automatically.
Trust me when I say your vote matters a whole bunch. But voting across party lines because you bought the PR Democrats are selling is exactly how it's illegal in Baltimore for restaurants to serve kids to food from 8-3 on school days. Voting Democrat because they made promises they had no intention of keeping is exactly how all them Trump judges got put into power, it's exactly why the DeVos era rules on sexual assault in universities are still in place, it's exactly why abortion access has never been meaningfully protected. We got to where we are because of complacency and trust in liars. That may be good enough for you, but that's not good enough for those of us who have to live with it.
I am not talking about living in utopia when someone lives in a Democratic state or our problems magically disappear when Democrats are elected. I live in Georgia and I want women to have the right to an abortion which we do not have now and will never have with Republicans in control no matter what we do as activists. I also do not want to live in a religious autocracy including a national abortion ban which the Republicans will likely bring about if they regain power in the federal level.
So many people insist on having something or someone to vote FOR. That's just not how life works most of the time. Most of the time you're choosing against something. And that's okay and just as important. Also, props to Fani Willis and her team at the Fulton Co. DA's office. Someone tell the MAGAts that's the real America.
I think of it slightly differently. Im voting for reproductive rights and voting against people who want to (or have) take(n) my rights away. ( a Positive and a negative)
You're right that it's not good enough, but it's never going to be good enough. It's only ever going to be less bad, in a society made up of humans. Less bad is the whole point of democracy, since the ideal form of government, the wise and benevolent dictator, is exceedingly rare and very fragile.
I definitely agree that there is always a fight, and I don't think we should accept complacency. I just don't think less bad has to always be complacent.
In this country we have a two party system, and will continue to have that unless and until we adopt proportional representation, ranked choice voting, and/or other reforms. It works best to be llike big business and get both parties to play to your issues, but nowadays on most issues we're stuck with the Democrats as the least bad. So we have to fight, continuously, to push the party in the right direction, and I definitely think Democratic politicians who don't understand what this moment is about should be replaced with ones who do. In blue areas in particular there's no excuse, and at some point a place can be liberal enough that the Republicans don't even have to be the second party in the two party system; it can be Greens or another progressive party.
But every two years when November comes around, the choice in the big races is usually going to be Democrat or Republican, and if we don't get out and vote for that lesser of two evils, things just get worse. I think most people understand that but if it makes people feel hopeless and they don't vote that's how the worse of the two evils wins.
The states with Democrats in control are the one protecting abortion access. The states with Republicans in control are forcing rape victims to have their rapists babies.
We all have to suffer because some old white guys who are 90% or more of these deciding courts can’t get laid with their dusty balls and microdicks.
It actually is becoming Handmaids Tale, huh?
Heather Cox Richardson talked about the 13 year old girl in Missisippi and Judge Ho and his opinion about the "aesthetic injury" to doctors cited in the abortin drug decision. With all of the other major news going on I'm glad she is talking about this. The more people hilighting what's going on the better.
I read her substack too. The "aesthetic injury" argument for why anti-choice physicians have standing to bring the case was outrageous. In Judge Ho's analogy, women are fetus habitats. It is at least good that they are putting their deranged thought processes down in writing for public scrutiny. I guess when you take the witch-burner precedents out of the anti-abortion legal case, not much is left.
Yes, now is the time when everyone is forced to show their cards. We need to pay attention to it and make the right choices.
I’m so confused. Isn’t it the position of the forced pregnancy folks that abortion isn’t healthcare? Yet in Nebraska, they claim that it is healthcare for the purpose of combining it with gender-affirming care in order to claim that the state’s law banning both adheres to the state constitutional requirement that its laws address only one subject. If abortion is healthcare, then it is healthcare for the pregnant person, since it is certainly not healthcare for the embryo or fetus, and thus what is the rationale for banning it? If abortion is not healthcare, then the law banning it along with gender-affirming care addresses 2 different subjects. Which is it?
Excellent question. This is the danger that happens when people insist on denying logic and reason, in favor of something else.
As usual, they want to have it both ways. Yes, this makes me crazy too. Below, you may notice a comment about the Catholic Church and its domination of hospitals--and the US catholic bishops putting restrictions on what healthcare can be offered and which not. (Which is not new. They've been doing this for years.) It's hypocrisy, nothing more. Their god is supposed to be loving and generous to all...except if you're female, unmarried, unstraight, etc. So, which is it? Loving or not? They can't have it both ways. (The reason I bring up the RCC's position on healthcare is because their idiocy about abortion and gender-affirming care is now well known. It's just an example of wanting to have things both ways.) If this sounds more like abuse than love, well--I'm one of those people who was so badly abused in a catholic family and community that I was mute about it for decades. Now, at age 70, I've just begun being able to talk about the abuse, which I can now see coming from miles away.
Wanted to put this out there, a continuation from Monday's comments section. We were talking about futur(istic) scenarios, and it was one of those moments when I took a step back and remembered I'm a man here among a mostly women readership:
We have gotten to a place where intelligent, rational women can reasonably ask the question, "Would men get rid of us, replace us, if they could?" If you're not a man, you can only imagine or guess what men think or would do, and everything we've given you to go on would leave a reasonable person lacking confidence that men would not, in fact, jettison women in favor of some scientifically engineered alternative.
If men have even a shred of humanity that should fill us with a deep sense of grief, and shame. This is how much hate our kind has put out there, and, yes, there are far too many women who are more than willing to throw other women under the bus to gain favor with the patriarchy, but we men are the ones responsible.
If we don't take this to heart, and do something about it, we're going to tear apart our civilizations and our species, because that's what it's coming to. All of this strife, here and elsewhere around the world, is a manifestation of toxic masculinity run amok.
I don't think I have the strength and the ability to get through to them.
That is beautifully expressed Zach. Robert Sapolsky writes about a time when the most aggressive, high-ranking male baboons took over the trash disposal area for a new African tourist lodge, where they regularly gorged themselves on discarded food. Sadly, tubercular meat was unknowingly being thrown out. All the most violent males, who fiercely defended access to the dump, got sick and died in a short time. This change allowed "beta" males to take over the troop. They enforced a new peaceable culture, where males groomed each other more frequently and did not harass the females. Young males and newcomers accepted the new rules, or were run off. Sapolsky returns regularly and reports that the peaceful culture has been preserved. It is one of the most hopeful true things I have read in a while, and an example of the possibility of lasting positive social change. Here is a recap of the story if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q-bB-qywJ0
I love that story and it is so incredibly relevant and timely! This IS the moment we're in. When Trump beat Clinton it unleashed all of the demons. MAGA may have started on race, but I think it's become more about toxic masculinity. And where the U.S. goes the rest of the world follows. Fast forward seven years and here we are. I have seen so much good discourse come out but we haven't won the battle yet. As a man when I observe other men I never know how much is cluelessness, made possible by privilege, and how much is they know but don't care. I do think you can rarely go wrong underestimating a man's awareness though. Men need to start to get it, or else those aggressive, high-ranking, violent males are going to destroy our trash dump. We need to look to the women for leadership and not to the alpha males. If not then I guess that's why we have cycles of war and peace in human civilizations, and we'll find ourselves in the war phase soon enough.
The perfect cartoon emulation for Republicans just popped into my noggin- Snidely Whiplash.
Republicans are dirtbags. When my lifelong Republican father passed away a couple of years ago, I took far more consolation than I should have from the thought he'd voted for his last Republican. And Dad wasn't even a Trumper - he despised Trump and refused to vote for him. Still voted for other Republicans though.
That Heritage article made me want to 🤮
"Pro-marriage welfare reform policies and abortion reduction policies are synergistic because increased marriage inherently reduces abortion."
These people are delusional. There were more abortions before Roe v Wade than there are now and most women were married when they got them.
Laura,
It made me so angry I wanted to scream. In my wandering around the web, unfortunately, I’m seeing a lot of this kind of thinking. “Well, if we just married off women, there wouldn’t be any abortions, so let’s make sure they have no way to stay single. Problem solved! No abortions.”
There is a constant battle between evil and stupidity for which one is more frustrating.
I really don't understand their logic. Most women who get pregnant out-of-wedlock keep their pregnancies but they don't marry. Do they seriously think that forcing the ones who don't want to stay pregnant will force them to get married? Or slashing welfare even more? All they need to do is look at Latin America for examples of how stupid this is.
Laura,
They want to eliminate welfare *especially* for single mothers. They complain endlessly about the “marriage penalty” by which, when women marry, they lose access to welfare. They overlook entirely that the reason this happen is that the addition of another worker’s income brings the household above the very meager limit, instead claiming married people are being discriminated against.
They want that “penalty” eliminated - and by expanding the number of people eligible for a non-expanding pot of money, single mothers will suffer. This will push single moms to choose between abject poverty, and marriage.
They claim this is all about wanting people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but they miss the reality on the ground in so doing. Much of the need for welfare could be eliminated by forcing non-custodial parents to pay the full amount of court ordered child support. No, not all fathers make a lot of money, but many of them make money that isn’t counted as part of the official economy - it’s underground. Or, like my ex 30 years ago, who quit a $60k job to go to work as a waiter, and reported only $2.35/hr, plus the minimal amount of tips the government imputes to tipped workers (my attorney’s husband went to his restaurant one Saturday night, and watched him pocket $500+ in cash that evening that was never reported as income). Forcing those non custodial parents income into the light would help.
So would providing good quality child care, which would free these moms up to work. Even more, real educational opportunity for these women would provide a huge return on investment over time. But as much as the right claims that financial independence is the goal - it isn’t. In the places where education can be substituted for work, it’s limited to training for low level jobs like home health care aides, which will never allow these women to provide stability and opportunity for her children. Keep her struggling, and maybe she’ll just get married.
You can also see this at work in states that have diverted welfare funding to crisis pregnancy centers, or like in Mississippi scandal involving Brett Favre. (https://mississippitoday.org/2023/08/10/supreme-court-blocks-brett-favres-escape-from-welfare-fraud-lawsuit/ )
Sometimes, one child isn’t enough to push a woman into marriage, so attacking family planning is another way to take another bite. Look at Texas, where they filed suit to prevent Title X funds to be used to provide teens with BC unless they have parental consent. Texas has refused to expand Medicaid, and has re-routed state funding for family planning to community health clinics, without the expertise or experience in providing those services. Most of them don’t offer the full range of contraceptive options. Texas has been messing with contraceptive access since at least 2011, at one point proposing that “natural family planning” be emphasized.
It’s all connected, and it has the same goal - return the culture to the 1950s, if not earlier.
This isn't the fifties though. In Latin America, abortion is illegal and contraception is sparse. Women are forced to work low wage jobs. There is no welfare, childcare or child support and marriage rates have plummeted while out-of-wedlock births have exploded. In Columbia, 85% of children are born out-of-wedlock. These people are stupid if they think doing here what they've done in Latin America will somehow magically result in women being forced back into marriages and into the kitchen.
And your ex sounds like a real piece of work by the way. Just wow. This is why parents should get an unconditional monthly child tax credit. Child support is a joke.
Oh, I don’t disagree. But that’s how the other side thinks about this. They truly believe that women wanting to remain free of marriage is some sort of phase we are going through, and if they make it hard enough for us to remain single, we’ll give up.
Yes, my ex - I could tell you stories that would curl your hair. That one comes in around 498 on the list, in order of assholery.
I think *all* child support should automatically be taken out of the non custodial parent’s paycheck. - and if they change jobs, the order should follow with the change - using social security numbers would work. But yes, as practiced, child support is a joke. In the 14 years before my son turned 18, I received a total of $2,000. I’m facing a serious financial wall right now, as I’m turning 65 and will lose my private disability insurance - the several hundred thousand dollars he never paid me sure would come in handy right now.
Usually they start off with incorrect or at the very least incomplete facts. And if the facts you give them don't fit their narrative, they say you're lying about your facts. So it ends up the only way to solve it is for them to try the stupid way and have it be a complete disaster. We're starting to see that on abortion. The problem is there are certain issues, such as climate change, where that may not work because there may be no recovery possible from the complete disaster.
They want their future slave labor force. No other explanation. They clearly don’t GAF about less abortions, less births out of wedlock, less deaths, they don’t care about any of that. All lies. Power. Control. And they just hate themselves so damn much, we gotta suffer. I bet most of them are pure evil and all this is just pretend caring about “innocent preborns” and they just wanting to cover up and justify their bad behavior.
It's definitely all done in bad faith. It is purely about punishing sexual behavior using motherhood as a justice system.
Facts rarely get in the way of beliefs. Unfortunately that's true for a wide range of people, not just these nutjobs.
Reality-challenged humans. Can they even be called humans? They don’t have hearts. Or brains.
Maybe they just forgot to take their antipsychotic suppositories.
That’s insulting to those with psychotic illnesses.
They actually forgot to remove the sticks. So many deep up in their butts, it’s hard for them to find them all.
They are just so depressed that they can’t get laid, so the rest of us have to suffer. I better start looking for red cloaks! Under his eye!
You right. My bad. I didn't mean to disparage anyone who has an actual psychiatric illness. I've known a fair number of people with mental health issues and would never think less of them because of that. It's not like it's their fault.
I was just fucking with ya too. I just wanted to make sure we all know these scum are waaaaaay beneath anyone else, mental health issues or not.
I figured as much, but still...
And I have a nice mix of issues my self
Me too. Crazy huh? Oops&^&
In 1973, I was working as a clerical staffer for a doc who had been doing "California-legal" abortions for a few years. I still remember Roe Day, when he came into the office with tears in his eyes. Anyway, a couple of months later a mom brought her 13-year-old daughter into the office. I will never, ever forget that child. She was chubby, like a little kid, and the fear in her eyes--there are no words. After they saw the doc, I was the one who called up to the hospital to schedule the abortion. I can still remember the anger in the hospital scheduler's voice when she asked, "She's *13*??" When the mom and daughter left that day, the doc came out to the front desk. He was usually a very calm person (he'd been a flight surgeon, had been one of the prime movers behind the establishment of the local ER, had been one of very few local docs to care for women on the "abortion ward", among other things), but that day he was clearly in a rage. He looked like he wanted to hit something. He told us shortly to cancel all his afternoon appointments and stomped out of the office. One of my co-workers said, "He's gonna go climb something." (The doc was a mountain-climber. My guess is that was how he got rid of the rage he felt.) The story about the 13-year-old in Mississippi who was raped and forced to carry that pregnancy--starting seventh grade as a mother--and the refusal of the local cops to do jack shit, reminded me of that bad old day. The kid in California in 1973 at least had options. The child in Mississippi in 2023 didn't.
💛💛
You just filled my 'that's totally horrible' quotient for the day.
Sorry. It's those days that the forced-birth dirtbags want to bring back.
Under his eye
Ugh...all of it...infuriating and outrageous. And the fascists pushing these laws? I wish nothing but bad things for them.
Seriously. I think about it a lot. I watch Equalizer on repeat dreaming of it.
You know it.
My favorite line: “We have backup plans so we’ll continue to provide mifepristone and misoprostol to all 50 states. We have backup plans to our backup plans, so that will continue to happen.”
At least someone has their act together.
Too kind$^$
Those care denied stories!!! There are not enough expletives in the world for the GOP.
But I continue to try!
Isn’t it illegal for churches to tell people how to vote since that’s considered political activity? The IRS need to look into the Ohio diocese...
You would think but a lot of those cops, IRS agents, politicians are members as well.
Church leaders and church leadership cannot technically endorse candidates (but many always have and there’s little appetite to pursue enforcement) but church members are free to endorse candidates and even promote those endorsements among other members.
Exactly. What savvy businessmen finding those loopholes.
Isn't it illegal and immoral how many kids the clergy has raped.
I think so! It’s insane that I feel “guilty” for constantly bringing up the biggest cover up in Catholic history, while members continue the whole “yeah it’s bad, but Catholicism is still beneficial”. Yeah it was so “bad”. They still have not fully even acknowledged the horror they spread to thousands of young children. Makes me sick.
If churches actually were “prolife”, homelessness would not even exist. They have SO MANY CHURCHES and SO MUCH MONEY. Sickening.
I think one of the reasons that Republicans are pushing Robert Kennedy Jr in the Democratic primary is to confuse women ie Democrats could also ban abortion if elected. Democrats need to be out in front of this issue. I cannot understand why they are not speaking about this all the time.
They must know their future low income work force could disappear if we actually protect women, children, provide healthcare, basic human needs.
No other reason for them to stay silent! It’s infuriating. Do any of them care about alive children and women dying? It’s hard to see from here.
Maybe they vote for the issue so they can say “hey I tried”. Yeah, poorly.
They need to be speaking out vehemently
Demographics, not just here but globally, are working against that massive low income workforce model, even if we do continue to do such a shitty job protecting people. There are going to be more (old) people to take care of, and fewer younger ones to do it. Supply and demand can do a number on labor. That's why they're excited about AI, if it can automate more jobs. But you can't automate everything, yet. AI could possibly replace doctors, but probably not nurses; you'd need robots for that (and it turns out robots are much harder. Motion is an area in which humans still have huge advantages.) I think demographics may ultimately win and we need technology just to keep pace. The times are changing and will change whether they like it or not.
Totally, been reading so many articles about the AI..,.
I think how they resolve the strikes in Hollywood will set a tone for how we as a species are going to deal with AI, and guild members know it and they're ahead of the rest of us on it. Fingers crossed that we go to a place where AI is a tool that assists humans, not something that replaces them.
Right. All I can think about is how everyone thought Will Smith was crazy in I, Robot.
Because Democrats will also ban abortion when elected.
After a certain point, inaction becomes intention. And they've been showing their intentions all over the place.
Indeed. It’s so disappointing and disheartening
I think if this is the attitude we have the extremist right will win. They are counting and encouraging cynicism and apathy ie both sides are the same my vote doesn’t matter.
I live in a state the Democrats control, and describing them as protecting abortion access is complacent. They aren't the ones doing the work, it's the independent clinics and the abortion funds that are doing the work. It's grassroots organizations that are doing the work. This place isn't a haven. They throw away rape kits and let rapists fester in power just the same as everywhere else. Rape victims have their rapists babies just the same as everywhere else. Parents abuse and neglect their children just the same as everywhere else. There is no place that is safe, no place that is good. There are places that are slightly better, there are places that are much worse. Assuming the fight is over or it doesn't need focus is a loss, automatically.
Trust me when I say your vote matters a whole bunch. But voting across party lines because you bought the PR Democrats are selling is exactly how it's illegal in Baltimore for restaurants to serve kids to food from 8-3 on school days. Voting Democrat because they made promises they had no intention of keeping is exactly how all them Trump judges got put into power, it's exactly why the DeVos era rules on sexual assault in universities are still in place, it's exactly why abortion access has never been meaningfully protected. We got to where we are because of complacency and trust in liars. That may be good enough for you, but that's not good enough for those of us who have to live with it.
I am not talking about living in utopia when someone lives in a Democratic state or our problems magically disappear when Democrats are elected. I live in Georgia and I want women to have the right to an abortion which we do not have now and will never have with Republicans in control no matter what we do as activists. I also do not want to live in a religious autocracy including a national abortion ban which the Republicans will likely bring about if they regain power in the federal level.
So many people insist on having something or someone to vote FOR. That's just not how life works most of the time. Most of the time you're choosing against something. And that's okay and just as important. Also, props to Fani Willis and her team at the Fulton Co. DA's office. Someone tell the MAGAts that's the real America.
I think of it slightly differently. Im voting for reproductive rights and voting against people who want to (or have) take(n) my rights away. ( a Positive and a negative)
You're right that it's not good enough, but it's never going to be good enough. It's only ever going to be less bad, in a society made up of humans. Less bad is the whole point of democracy, since the ideal form of government, the wise and benevolent dictator, is exceedingly rare and very fragile.
Less bad is complacency, and it can very easily be lost. Less bad was Roe v. Wade, and now look at where we are.
I'm saying there's not a single place that there isn't a fight, regardless of who is in charge. Thinking otherwise is a mistake.
I definitely agree that there is always a fight, and I don't think we should accept complacency. I just don't think less bad has to always be complacent.
In this country we have a two party system, and will continue to have that unless and until we adopt proportional representation, ranked choice voting, and/or other reforms. It works best to be llike big business and get both parties to play to your issues, but nowadays on most issues we're stuck with the Democrats as the least bad. So we have to fight, continuously, to push the party in the right direction, and I definitely think Democratic politicians who don't understand what this moment is about should be replaced with ones who do. In blue areas in particular there's no excuse, and at some point a place can be liberal enough that the Republicans don't even have to be the second party in the two party system; it can be Greens or another progressive party.
But every two years when November comes around, the choice in the big races is usually going to be Democrat or Republican, and if we don't get out and vote for that lesser of two evils, things just get worse. I think most people understand that but if it makes people feel hopeless and they don't vote that's how the worse of the two evils wins.
The states with Democrats in control are the one protecting abortion access. The states with Republicans in control are forcing rape victims to have their rapists babies.
The sad truth is I suspect most of us could do a better job managing Democrats' messaging than they do.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the lovely anti vaccine nutjob caught RSV or covid and dropped dead. One can only dream.
I wish they all would