Continuing from Stanton's blather: "Most Americans do not know a new, individual, and living member of the human species begins to exist at fertilization. And younger Americans are the least informed. Consider this horrifying statistic: nearly one in four 18-22-year-olds think that a human life starts at birth."
No. That's such a manipulative sentence. Wow. Shame on Newsweek for letting her get away with that. There's no much wrong with her argument. She doesn't get to decide how to define "member of the human species," then cite a poll where the respondents didn't meet her definition. That's crap.
When that "member of the human species" can be a "new, individual" without having to be an extricable part of me, you can start to craft laws around it. Like Roe was. You can't subjugate me to get to your definition of "living member of the human species."
This woman is fanatical. Like almost the entire GOP. They have no governing philosophy other than to see this fanatical view of the world come to fruition, no matter how they achieve it.
Shame on Newsweek !!! " ...the fate of unborn children has been left to the whims of voters rather than to the "equal protection of the laws" for "any person" guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment."
Enough.
How do the editorial page editors let Stanton get away with this lie? Do they have such lax standards as to allow her to argue that "any person" includes embryos? That's INSANE. And this use of language is going to seep into the body politic as normal. They're trying to normalize it. We can't let that happen. I don't know what I'd do without this newsletter....
The attack on science education is terrifying to me because I was a high school biology teacher. I notice that young women are never taught about what happens to their bodies during pregnancy and all of the risks, warning signs to be aware of, or ways to mitigate risks during pregnancy. It seems like something that ought to be taught but has never been taught. Women are left to find out on their own. I remember showing The Miracle of Life and I am pretty sure that it concentrated exclusively on the fetus, almost as though the mother was unimportant.
The only thing I'm legitimately confused by is the fight for abortion 'reversal'. It just seems counterintuitive? Why would you want it out there that if you get an abortion, don't worry, you can 'reverse' it? Especially when clinical trials got halted cause everyone kept, uhhh, bleeding or something?
So sad that CNN used this language. And that even progressive Jen Psaki fell into the Republican trap in discussing late-term abortion! The mainstream media needs to be corrected every time this happens to reduce these kinds of misstatements. And Jessica is so correct that we need to keep repeating that NO legislation of abortion is acceptable. As the campaign unfurls there will unfortunately be so much misinformation to correct, and as the Republicans continue to debate the number of weeks in a so-called acceptable ban, the more this will be imprinted on the minds of the general public.
It's a tiny wave in the ocean. But let's not forget the Dissenting Opinion of Chief Justice Donald Beatty in the South Carolina case this week:
"The result will essentially force an UNTOLD NUMBER of affected women to give birth without their consent. I AM HARD-PRESSED TO THINK OF A GREATER GOVERNMENT INTRUSION BY A POLITICAL BODY (my caps)."
Can't read past the CNN thing. (I stopped watching CNN after the Trump propaganda show.) Reading that "abortion survivor" line is just infuriating. Forget the mainstream media. They don't get it and they're blinded by trying to be objective when objectivity about lies and subjugation is really aiding and abetting our descent into an authoritarian state.
Ron DeSantis is an IDIOT. His answers during that debate were nonsensical -- shooting drug traffickers in Mexico "stone-cold dead." I mean, really !
That debate overall was terrifying. One of them said the first thing he'd do to combat crime is fire Garland. They don't even know how the transition from one administration to the other works!
"You may recall that Texas is being sued by a former prison guard who had a stillbirth after her employers prohibited her from leaving work, even after she started to get labor pains seven months into her pregnancy. You also probably remember that their defense is that her fetus doesn’t qualify as a person under the law, in spite of the state abortion ban. Slate has a piece pointing out that “Texas isn’t alone in treating the very same unborn life in strikingly inconsistent ways across different contexts.” They point out that Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Arizona, Mississippi, and Idaho all have abortion bans but won’t allow parents to sue over the death of a fetus. It’s almost as if the laws aren’t about ‘protecting babies’ at all!"
You are absolutely right. It isn't about the fetus at all; it's about who gets to decide and clearly it isn't the pregnant person. It's the government. I saw this happen in Florida in the case of Laura Pemberton. She was not allowed to decide HOW she wanted to deliver her child (she wanted to deliver VBAC but was forced by law enforcement and a judge to undergo a c-section). When she sued, she lost because the state said it had a vested interest in the life of the child. As though she didn't have a vested interest in the life of her child and hers wasn't more important...because clearly it isn't. They have made their position clear. Women don't count.
I can understand that some people have religious objections to abortion. I not only don’t understand why they believe that gives them a right to control other people’s choices, I don’t understand how you can think your beliefs are so sacred, so holy - that it’s perfectly ok to lie about the actual facts.
I was pissed off about South Carolina last night, and did a little research to refresh my memory on the details of embryology. I was right. And so I wrote the following:
In case you missed this little bit of fuckery, back in January, the South Carolina State Supreme Court threw out a 6 week abortion ban. It was found unconstitutional because it violated the state constitution’s right to privacy. The opinion was written by Justice Kaye Hearn, the only woman on that bench.
She has since retired, and was replaced by a man. The legislature then passed another 6 week ban, and Wednesday, the South Carolina State Supreme Court upheld the ban, which went into immediate effect.
Here’s the really, really infuriating part: In the ruling, Justice John Kittredge admitted that the law “infringes on a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy,” but “the legislature has made a policy determination that, at a certain point in the pregnancy, a woman’s interest in autonomy and privacy does not outweigh the interest of the unborn child to live.” Apparently, that “certain point” is before most women are aware they are pregnant.
Just to be crystal clear, the all-male South Carolina Supreme Court is stating outright that the ban is a violation of our privacy and bodily autonomy - but that it doesn’t matter.
Our privacy and bodily autonomy are of less value than a collection of cells that is 4-6mm in size. That’s two tenths of an inch. 0.16-0.2” Half a centimeter. But we are subordinate to it.
The South Carolina Supreme Court is saying that *we* don’t matter. Our hopes and dreams, our wishes and plans for our own future, our health, and our lives are subordinate to something so small, I’d need a magnifying glass to see it clearly.
Despite all the bluster, a six week embryo doesn’t have a heart (there’s a fetal pole which will become a heart). The head isn’t yet fully formed,it’s just a bump at the end of the neural tube. The brain hasn’t developed. There are no eyes, no ears, no nose. No spinal cord. There isn’t even an umbilical cord yet. It will not even be a fetus for two more weeks.
And yet. Our privacy, our autonomy, our futures, our very lives - must be subjugated to, and held hostage by, this embryo.
This is exactly what they are doing in sex Ed. They want to rewrite the standards to write out LGBTQ+ folks. And what they are doing with claims of CRT. And when they push homeschooling. And when they refuse to pay teachers or find their pensions.
Regarding the Republicans, we should probably consider ourselves fortunate that it's going to be very difficult for their party to not nominate Donald Trump. I don't think Trump can beat Biden. Barring an economic collapse or left-wing riots in cities, in which case almost any Republican would be favored.
Even though all of the other Republican candidates are just as crap, people seem to doubt, for whatever reasons, that Biden is up to the job, so he could be vulnerable to another Republican, especially if it made January 6th seem more or less off the table.
Without paying almost any attention to their candidates, I'm pretty confident in saying Nikki Haley would be the most dangerous in a general election. Women, and also people of color (and I believe she was considered 'of color' or 'other' growing up in South Carolina?) are perceived by voters as more liberal than they are. Notice how despite the fact that she's as nuts as the rest of them, she's somehow considered the moderate or sensible one?
But, also fortunately, that effect works against her among the Republican voter base. No matter how far to the right she goes she still won't be trusted by many of them. So I think even if they somehow avoid Trump, they won't be able to nominate the person who would have the best chance at getting the positive media narrative and fooling voters in the middle (and being most difficult for Democrats to campaign against, because of her gender and color). 🤞
CNN is disgusting for using the phrase 'abortion survivor'. But it does point to something. The truth about whatever did or did not happen regarding that woman is more complicated. Truth usually is, and it usually requires more time and effort, on the part of both the teller and the listener, than lies or nonsense do. Lies and nonsense fit much easier into sound bites than truth does. It's very worthwhile to try to make truth pithy. Nonetheless, if we're mostly not going to communicate beyond sound bites and short phrases, we're mostly going to end up spreading lies and nonsense.
I laughed out loud at the quote that 'Republicans are losing elections' because of "widespread scientific ignorance". REALLY? Because that's actually the only reason they aren't getting destroyed even more on the issue. There's nothing in the science to support considering a fetus as its own human being until around that point that we call 'viability', maybe 24 weeks or so? and plenty to argue against it. And despite the conservative libel and slander that gets doctors killed, a fetus would only ever be aborted after that point in pregnancy if it were seriously ill and had no chance of living more than a few painful moments after birth. In other words, if the fetus were NOT viable.
But if they want more education maybe we should take them up on it. Yeah I know what they really mean is propaganda in classrooms. And yeah in some states and some school districts that might be what they get. But the rest of us should consider that maybe if we had real education in this country on pregnancy and fetal development and all the horrific things that can and do go wrong in nature, and what abortion care really is (and is not), not to mention contraception, then maybe we wouldn't have a population so prone to believing the nonsense and outright lies conservatives tell about these subjects.
Continuing from Stanton's blather: "Most Americans do not know a new, individual, and living member of the human species begins to exist at fertilization. And younger Americans are the least informed. Consider this horrifying statistic: nearly one in four 18-22-year-olds think that a human life starts at birth."
No. That's such a manipulative sentence. Wow. Shame on Newsweek for letting her get away with that. There's no much wrong with her argument. She doesn't get to decide how to define "member of the human species," then cite a poll where the respondents didn't meet her definition. That's crap.
When that "member of the human species" can be a "new, individual" without having to be an extricable part of me, you can start to craft laws around it. Like Roe was. You can't subjugate me to get to your definition of "living member of the human species."
This woman is fanatical. Like almost the entire GOP. They have no governing philosophy other than to see this fanatical view of the world come to fruition, no matter how they achieve it.
Shame on Newsweek !!! " ...the fate of unborn children has been left to the whims of voters rather than to the "equal protection of the laws" for "any person" guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment."
Enough.
How do the editorial page editors let Stanton get away with this lie? Do they have such lax standards as to allow her to argue that "any person" includes embryos? That's INSANE. And this use of language is going to seep into the body politic as normal. They're trying to normalize it. We can't let that happen. I don't know what I'd do without this newsletter....
The attack on science education is terrifying to me because I was a high school biology teacher. I notice that young women are never taught about what happens to their bodies during pregnancy and all of the risks, warning signs to be aware of, or ways to mitigate risks during pregnancy. It seems like something that ought to be taught but has never been taught. Women are left to find out on their own. I remember showing The Miracle of Life and I am pretty sure that it concentrated exclusively on the fetus, almost as though the mother was unimportant.
The only thing I'm legitimately confused by is the fight for abortion 'reversal'. It just seems counterintuitive? Why would you want it out there that if you get an abortion, don't worry, you can 'reverse' it? Especially when clinical trials got halted cause everyone kept, uhhh, bleeding or something?
So sad that CNN used this language. And that even progressive Jen Psaki fell into the Republican trap in discussing late-term abortion! The mainstream media needs to be corrected every time this happens to reduce these kinds of misstatements. And Jessica is so correct that we need to keep repeating that NO legislation of abortion is acceptable. As the campaign unfurls there will unfortunately be so much misinformation to correct, and as the Republicans continue to debate the number of weeks in a so-called acceptable ban, the more this will be imprinted on the minds of the general public.
It's a tiny wave in the ocean. But let's not forget the Dissenting Opinion of Chief Justice Donald Beatty in the South Carolina case this week:
"The result will essentially force an UNTOLD NUMBER of affected women to give birth without their consent. I AM HARD-PRESSED TO THINK OF A GREATER GOVERNMENT INTRUSION BY A POLITICAL BODY (my caps)."
Can't read past the CNN thing. (I stopped watching CNN after the Trump propaganda show.) Reading that "abortion survivor" line is just infuriating. Forget the mainstream media. They don't get it and they're blinded by trying to be objective when objectivity about lies and subjugation is really aiding and abetting our descent into an authoritarian state.
Ron DeSantis is an IDIOT. His answers during that debate were nonsensical -- shooting drug traffickers in Mexico "stone-cold dead." I mean, really !
That debate overall was terrifying. One of them said the first thing he'd do to combat crime is fire Garland. They don't even know how the transition from one administration to the other works!
This is what happens to people who grow up with anti-science indoctrination. Also from Newsweek. I wrote it but post a link for newer folks: https://www.newsweek.com/children-motherhood-parenting-church-religion-1803783
It's crystal clear.
"You may recall that Texas is being sued by a former prison guard who had a stillbirth after her employers prohibited her from leaving work, even after she started to get labor pains seven months into her pregnancy. You also probably remember that their defense is that her fetus doesn’t qualify as a person under the law, in spite of the state abortion ban. Slate has a piece pointing out that “Texas isn’t alone in treating the very same unborn life in strikingly inconsistent ways across different contexts.” They point out that Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Arizona, Mississippi, and Idaho all have abortion bans but won’t allow parents to sue over the death of a fetus. It’s almost as if the laws aren’t about ‘protecting babies’ at all!"
You are absolutely right. It isn't about the fetus at all; it's about who gets to decide and clearly it isn't the pregnant person. It's the government. I saw this happen in Florida in the case of Laura Pemberton. She was not allowed to decide HOW she wanted to deliver her child (she wanted to deliver VBAC but was forced by law enforcement and a judge to undergo a c-section). When she sued, she lost because the state said it had a vested interest in the life of the child. As though she didn't have a vested interest in the life of her child and hers wasn't more important...because clearly it isn't. They have made their position clear. Women don't count.
Jeezus, I’m tired.
It’s a never-ending tsunami of bullshit.
I can understand that some people have religious objections to abortion. I not only don’t understand why they believe that gives them a right to control other people’s choices, I don’t understand how you can think your beliefs are so sacred, so holy - that it’s perfectly ok to lie about the actual facts.
I was pissed off about South Carolina last night, and did a little research to refresh my memory on the details of embryology. I was right. And so I wrote the following:
In case you missed this little bit of fuckery, back in January, the South Carolina State Supreme Court threw out a 6 week abortion ban. It was found unconstitutional because it violated the state constitution’s right to privacy. The opinion was written by Justice Kaye Hearn, the only woman on that bench.
She has since retired, and was replaced by a man. The legislature then passed another 6 week ban, and Wednesday, the South Carolina State Supreme Court upheld the ban, which went into immediate effect.
Here’s the really, really infuriating part: In the ruling, Justice John Kittredge admitted that the law “infringes on a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy,” but “the legislature has made a policy determination that, at a certain point in the pregnancy, a woman’s interest in autonomy and privacy does not outweigh the interest of the unborn child to live.” Apparently, that “certain point” is before most women are aware they are pregnant.
Just to be crystal clear, the all-male South Carolina Supreme Court is stating outright that the ban is a violation of our privacy and bodily autonomy - but that it doesn’t matter.
Our privacy and bodily autonomy are of less value than a collection of cells that is 4-6mm in size. That’s two tenths of an inch. 0.16-0.2” Half a centimeter. But we are subordinate to it.
The South Carolina Supreme Court is saying that *we* don’t matter. Our hopes and dreams, our wishes and plans for our own future, our health, and our lives are subordinate to something so small, I’d need a magnifying glass to see it clearly.
Despite all the bluster, a six week embryo doesn’t have a heart (there’s a fetal pole which will become a heart). The head isn’t yet fully formed,it’s just a bump at the end of the neural tube. The brain hasn’t developed. There are no eyes, no ears, no nose. No spinal cord. There isn’t even an umbilical cord yet. It will not even be a fetus for two more weeks.
And yet. Our privacy, our autonomy, our futures, our very lives - must be subjugated to, and held hostage by, this embryo.
How does that make you feel?
This is exactly what they are doing in sex Ed. They want to rewrite the standards to write out LGBTQ+ folks. And what they are doing with claims of CRT. And when they push homeschooling. And when they refuse to pay teachers or find their pensions.
Regarding the Republicans, we should probably consider ourselves fortunate that it's going to be very difficult for their party to not nominate Donald Trump. I don't think Trump can beat Biden. Barring an economic collapse or left-wing riots in cities, in which case almost any Republican would be favored.
Even though all of the other Republican candidates are just as crap, people seem to doubt, for whatever reasons, that Biden is up to the job, so he could be vulnerable to another Republican, especially if it made January 6th seem more or less off the table.
Without paying almost any attention to their candidates, I'm pretty confident in saying Nikki Haley would be the most dangerous in a general election. Women, and also people of color (and I believe she was considered 'of color' or 'other' growing up in South Carolina?) are perceived by voters as more liberal than they are. Notice how despite the fact that she's as nuts as the rest of them, she's somehow considered the moderate or sensible one?
But, also fortunately, that effect works against her among the Republican voter base. No matter how far to the right she goes she still won't be trusted by many of them. So I think even if they somehow avoid Trump, they won't be able to nominate the person who would have the best chance at getting the positive media narrative and fooling voters in the middle (and being most difficult for Democrats to campaign against, because of her gender and color). 🤞
CNN is disgusting for using the phrase 'abortion survivor'. But it does point to something. The truth about whatever did or did not happen regarding that woman is more complicated. Truth usually is, and it usually requires more time and effort, on the part of both the teller and the listener, than lies or nonsense do. Lies and nonsense fit much easier into sound bites than truth does. It's very worthwhile to try to make truth pithy. Nonetheless, if we're mostly not going to communicate beyond sound bites and short phrases, we're mostly going to end up spreading lies and nonsense.
I laughed out loud at the quote that 'Republicans are losing elections' because of "widespread scientific ignorance". REALLY? Because that's actually the only reason they aren't getting destroyed even more on the issue. There's nothing in the science to support considering a fetus as its own human being until around that point that we call 'viability', maybe 24 weeks or so? and plenty to argue against it. And despite the conservative libel and slander that gets doctors killed, a fetus would only ever be aborted after that point in pregnancy if it were seriously ill and had no chance of living more than a few painful moments after birth. In other words, if the fetus were NOT viable.
But if they want more education maybe we should take them up on it. Yeah I know what they really mean is propaganda in classrooms. And yeah in some states and some school districts that might be what they get. But the rest of us should consider that maybe if we had real education in this country on pregnancy and fetal development and all the horrific things that can and do go wrong in nature, and what abortion care really is (and is not), not to mention contraception, then maybe we wouldn't have a population so prone to believing the nonsense and outright lies conservatives tell about these subjects.
Hope all these anti-women, anti-freedom jerks rot in hell.
This is what needs to be taught, remedially, to Americans: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/18/pregnancy-weeks-abortion-tissue
I wish we could put it on billboards everywhere.
Our once great educational system is under attack by theocrats who want to replace science with nonsense.