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Jessica— yesterday, I think it was on Deadline White House, Yamiche Alcindor talked about abortion in a way that really bothered me. You can probably access it, but if not, I probably still have it recorded and can get it to you. She seemed to insinuate that there were 2 kinds of reasons that women have abortions, and by implication that one reason is more valid than the other. I think it’s important that we don’t start categorizing or judging other women for their reason for having an abortion. I was going to write to them, but I thought someone who has more currency with the folks at MSNBC might be a better messenger. If you talk to them, please lmk what you get back. If you need to see it, someone can probably walk me through how to get it to you

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Why all the emphasis on the fetus as qualifying for personhood? Abortion is something that happens most commonly and most critically long before gestation advances to the fetal stage. Remember that for the core of anti abortionists, personhood starts at conception and any abortion at any stage after conception is murder. And declaring it murder is the foundation of the anti abortion movement.

We need to confront this and repudiate legally and morally that a woman whose ovum has been fertilized and gestation has begun is responsible for some other person. She is the only person that anyone should be concerned about and her authority over whether gestation goes to completion is absolute.

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This paper posted as PDF at Pregnancy Justice has some details on this. The paper is a difficult read, cluttered with many references, but here is a quote,

https://www.pregnancyjusticeus.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/fetal-personhood-with-appendix-UPDATED-1.pdf

" At least twenty-seven states – ... – include fetal personhood or personhood-adjacent language in anti-abortion laws. (There is overlap between this list and the list of states with the broadest provisions because some states have both sweeping personhood provisions and additional anti-abortion laws with personhood language.) This personhood language ranges from the most explicit – e.g., Kentucky’s trigger law defining an “unborn human being” as “an individual living member of the species homo sapiens throughout the entire embryonic and fetal stages of the unborn child from fertilization to full gestation and childbirth”77 – to the more ambiguous or personhood-adjacent – e.g, Iowa’s law defining an “unborn child” as an “an individual organism of the species homo sapiens from fertilization until live birth.”78 "

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Reading this blitzkrieg of horror in recent days has been hard on my spirit. I don't know how you and Grace do it.

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YES! This is what I have been waiting to hear for some months now...

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1750549196036337719

Joe Biden

@JoeBiden

Give me a Democratic House of Representatives and a bigger Democratic Senate, and we will pass a new law to restore and protect Roe v. Wade.

I will sign it immediately.

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Jessica, has anyone looked into who the DA and prosecutors are in this county. What is their background? Why is harassing young women their focus? This behavior is criminal. They need to be called out. Gov Kay Ivey needs to answer to this, also.

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Jan 25Edited
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Yes, you bring up an important point. It's not enough just to fight this through voting, government, and such. We need citizens banding together to take action on this issue against non-state actors like corporations and organizations. Those entities need to feel the pressure; otherwise they will just keep their heads down and try to stay out of it.

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Good idea to interview “the people on the ground.” Nazi-level cruelty. This would be grisly, but maybe we need a podcast about this stuff? An everyday, in-your-face parade of the effects of abortion bans and pregnancy criminalization? I know the newsletter is that, and I wish the horror stories weren’t happening, but since they are, we should broadcast them from the rooftops because they seem to be having an effect on the voting public.

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This is just appalling. How is putting a woman in jail and depriving her of prenatal care good for the baby if that is what you are concerned about? That baby will do better if the woman can go to rehab and get Suboxone or methadone and it will do better if its mother can work so she can support it after it is born. And how well will that child do in society growing up if its mother is in jail or still addicted to drugs? Studies now show that babies born to women who are depressed during pregnancy are more likely to premature or low birthweight. I don't know how a woman could not be depressed in a situation like this. This seems more like the authorities there are hoping her baby will die or she will die and incarcerating her is the vehicle.

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Are these jails in Alabama for profit jails? Because in that case, incarceration is another motive for this kind of torture to a pregnant woman and her baby. This is on top of the viciousness that has always stemmed from deeply embedded racial prejudice. As Jessica says, they don’t care about the baby here. It was just luck that the baby was born healthy. State sanctioned torture against women. So many threads of misogyny.

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Attorney General races should be given a lot more scrutiny than they get. A lot more media coverage of cases like the ones in this article too.

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How many of the women arrested in Etowah County for chemical endangerment are people of color? I'd bet money that the majority are black, even though the Black population in the county is only 15%. As gross and effed up as the targeting of pregnant women for arrest and incarceration because of some drug use is - this is just one more example of how Black women (and men) are also targeted for incarceration as part of the systematic, overt, and planned oppression of Black people that has existed in Alabama forever and a day.

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I was reading an article about medical consent and the author wrote that the law says that should a person be unable to consent for medical care then the next of kin can make a decision. But that’s not what a court determined in Laura Pemberton v. Tallahassee Regional. She didn’t want a c-section but the doctor wanted her to have one so he brought in the law. They arrested her and had a hearing while she was in labor and only the fetus had representation. She lost her rights as a person over her own body AND as next of kin to her own fetus. She became nothing. I wonder if this is related to the thinking that allowed for coverture laws?

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More recently, a similar thing happened to Rinat Dray in New York.

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Let me see

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I was an activist 50 years ago when Roe v Wade was passed. I’ll be 70 this week, and I have to say that in some ways I think things are worse for pregnant people now than they were before 1973. It seems time does not stop the male (and thus societal) need to control women whenever and however they can. We all know that when it comes right down to it, none of this is to “protect” fetuses, or women, or children. It’s to control and punish women who dare to live our own lives. Picking on the poorer, weaker, more marginalized ones serves to keep the rest of us in check. My heart breaks for women and girls and trans people and anyone else who faces the wrath of our authoritarian society. I’m so glad that so many people are fighting these injustices. Thank you again, Jessica, for playing such an important role in this fight. This was truly an eye-opening article.

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The maga movement has a heavy emphasis on encouraging cruelty. Cruelty is their whole reason for existence. IMHO.

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This is a great interview. Thank you.

We have to fight fetal personhood laws. They're the death knell for us.

They're creeping in - look at GA where you can claim a 6-week-old fetus on your taxes.

Now, they say you can still claim even if the pregnancy results in miscarriage, but that raises a whole host of questions...

What's happening to these women in this interview - it's all about punishment. It just shows how little they value "life." They just what to lord power of women. It's nonsensical. Infuriating.

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First, we should fight to out and remove corrupt DA's, sheriffs and jail officials. All government officials in Alabama should be having to answer for this. IMHO.

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I had never heard of Pregnancy Justice until I started reading you. Their work and support is so critical right now!

Tommy Tuberville is from Bama...need I say more. Alabama has huge cultural issues. extremely oppressive state. That's the case with most southern states.

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The data center also has a newsletter sign up at the bottom. The interview was great 👍

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Another commenter (Amy Fox?) mentioned this on another thread. We need a state by state account of what is going on, court cases, victims, stats, laws, maybe a summary chart of some type to go with it. It would make it easy to highlight and shame the mfers if they have any shame at all.

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Another great research project for a University... either poli sci dept or criminal justice dept or what ever degree that falls under. Often students have an opportunity or at liberal arts colleges sometimes are required to do a research project.

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Yes. It could be as simple as reorganizing the material that JV puts together here into a different format. We need a visualization of where these goons live. Let us have a map of USA and put markers/links to states and their worst offenders (apologies if there is already one such graphic -- I have seen broad stats by states on a USA map but this one is dynamic and more detailed for instance, where the county mentioned in the article is. Let them know we know where they are).

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The DA's in stories such as this should be referred to by name. Calling them a 'prosecutor' just gives them cover to continue their criminal agenda.

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Yes. All perpetrators must be identified by name.

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