I am a clinical psychologist trained in research using the scientific method. Why hasn’t the AMA and the APA come out strongly against this bogus research they produce? Conservative judges including SCOTUS cite these garbage studies instead of the accepted research supported by the majority of the medical and scientific communities. Why aren’t these organizations suing states who make them give women C-sections instead of abortions? It feels like the medical and scientific organizations are MIA.
I've written this before, but when I had a trisomy-18 scare with my second child, I absolutely would have terminated the pregnancy. One of the reasons -- why would I take up the hospital bed, the resources, the nurses... Why put the "system" and the people around me through all that? I view it as indulgent. I realize others might not but don't I have a right to that view? To me it's more humane to end the pregnancy early.
The rage I feel at them for risking my health for all the complications that could occur at birth -- my first born had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. She was in distress, my amniotic fluid was drying up and I needed a last-minute c-section.
With my second all I could think was I'm not risking that for a doomed pregnancy. The nerve of them!
The system is set up for three-month supplies, so a degree of stockpiling is possible (and perhaps prudent).
Considering that decades of War on Drugs have made narcotics readily available everywhere, perhaps there is hope for illegal contraceptives and medication abortion. I was going to say that consumer protection will be lacking, but if the Supreme Court removes the FDA's approval of mifiprestone, and in another case rules that federal agency determinations are not entitled to any deference from the courts, then anybody will be able to sell whatever they describe as any drug whatsoever, so there will be no consumer protection for *any* kind of pharmaceutical.
We wouldn't do this to anyone who does labor. Imagine if a builder was building a house and had begun framing it. They then discover that the foundation was poured with faulty concrete and it would start to crumble under load. BUT THEN they were required to build the whole house, knowing that it would fail and THEY WOULDN'T GET PAID but have to eat that cost. The whole while they are building it, they have to have a sign saying that they are the builders and that sign stays up while the house collapses. And the workers' lives were in danger because they were working on an unstable foundation. Who would do that? It would be considered insane. But that's what's happening when they require a woman to build a fetus that they know will die. It's disgusting and lacks respect for the work a woman does to build a human. Disgusting and cruel.
They disagree and they are trying to make the United States that place. They won't stop until we force them to. I don't know how bad it has to get for the rest of America to understand.
Omg, he's a monster 👻. . President Biden on Tuesday wandered off stage, beelined toward a baby and sat in the crowd as he was being introduced at a campaign event in Phoenix.
Instant rage-induced headache when I read these sadists are calling fetuses with fatal conditions "disabled children." My niece at this very moment has an anacephalic fetus. We live in GA. She has chosen to carry her pregnancy to term, but I wonder what kind of counseling she has been given. The thought of someone trying to pressure or shame her when she is facing this tragedy absolutely ENRAGES me. My great-niece-to-be ISN'T a "disabled child;" she is a baby that is going to be lucky to survive her birth and (at most) live a week with ZERO quality of life. If my niece had wanted to end her pregnancy when she first found out, she was already passed the period our red state would allow; she would have needed to go out of state for care that would have been her absolute RIGHT to have and to choose. Dear goddess, I HATE these anti-women zealots.
And one other fury-inducing thing: my brother (my niece's father), and her mom, and many of her siblings voted for trump. They voted for him for reasons other than the anti-choice crap, but voted nonetheless, and his shitty judges ultimately stripped my niece of her choices. Makes me want to SCREAM.
Democratic State Sen. Eva Burch catalogued in detail to colleagues the tedious steps Arizona state law required her to go through to have the abortion.
This quote stood out to me: “All that the legislature has done is to nurture distrust and confusion in the relationship between patients and providers,” Burch said.
“If doctors and political leaders and advocacy organizations, religious organizations, faith groups and science groups have not been able to come to any consensus about the answers to these complicated questions, then I think we can all agree the right people for that job are not here in the Arizona legislature,” she said."
So, do these people believe they get some special place in heaven if they make these women martyrs? Are the women going to be sainted if they suffer from depression and neglect their other children and lose their job due to depression while they carry a dying baby for several months? Or if the baby is born and lives, but is severely disabled, is the woman going to be sainted if she gives up her entire life and forces her other children to suffer by devoting all her time to this child? Or, if she decides she cannot do it because her other children need her, then the disabled child will go to an institution or to one of the multitude of adoptive parents waiting for a disabled child. Women are aware of the situation they are in and they make choices that are best for them, their children, and their families. Nobody else, no matter what their religion is, should be able to decide for these women what is the right thing to do.
Quite often they believe that 'God' is sending the woman this trial to gain her attention and persuade her to repent, etc. I wish I were making this up.
Do you know what I never hear from these people? I never hear that women who can't have children are spared the pain and danger of pregnancy because they are pure and beloved by God. God spares them the suffering of childbirth out of love because they are that good. They never say that. You have to wonder why?
The Christian Taliban need to leave the rest of us the fuck alone, if a person doesn't think abortion is the right decision, then don't get one. they need to let us manage our own bodies.
I had thought Robert sat that one out, because technically his vote wouldn't have mattered either way at that point.....given the other 5, but Zach explains it better below.
Roberts tried to have it both ways. He said Roe shouldn't be overturned, but he ruled with Mississippi on the judgement. Essentially he would have restricted Roe to protecting only abortions before 15 weeks, I think. He said both sides were more certain of themselves than he thought one should be. Something like that.
While normally I admire compromise and efforts at peacemaking, not everything is subject to negotiation, and the midpoint between two positions is not always reasonable. This felt like him sticking his head in the sand, and I expect it earned him the respect of exactly no one.
Warning: this video in the tweet is disturbing but we are in a place as a country that we need to see these to learn how evil these mfers are and how NOT TO ELECT THEM.
This is a Nebraska R legislator (apparently the pig's name is Halloran) interjecting another (Dem) female legislator's name into a rape scene while reading from a book that is a memoir of a rape survivor. Cruelty in many forms and these are the fucking men who are also legislating on abortion.
Omg 😳 what a piece of filth that slimy old man is. He should be immediately expelled from the State Senate for sexual harassment & creating a hostile work environment. Just cruel & disgusting
These are some SICK people! He read that out loud and inserted a colleague's name! How is that even legal? How was he not booted out of the chamber for lack of decorum? What the hell is wrong with these people? We have to fight fire with fire. We need to find the worst pregnancy experiences and read them in detail into the record so that these sick mfers can hear what they require of women.
They have always hated women, they just generally kept it to themselves - but they are brazen and emboldened now given all the hateful rhetoric coming out of Donald's mouth.
We can't change them and the only recourse is not vote for them. At this point, we have to shame and embarrass the people who vote for this excrement. Take their jobs away. Elect people who are decent, civil, smart, and humane.
I clicked. I just saw a much worse story about abortion an hour ago. , so I have temporary immunity. Picture the Billy Bush interview and extrapolate with increased X rated verbiage.
A big part of it is the social media which has created this cacophony and has served as an excellent vehicle for corrupt grifters. It seems like a majority of deplorables have found their home in the Republican party. But we have to try. If we start from that assertion that everything is futile, there is no path forward.
Also this country was not built for people like trump to come into prominence, who makes a mockery of its very existence in the way it was constructed. Founders gave voters, electors, the other two co-equal branches, political parties too much credit that they would do the right thing and whatever barriers that would be there are all gone or weakened by trump and his people. Even if voters vote in large majorities for Biden, we are not out of the woods. We will be fighting this phenomenon for decades and more.
Yes I wouldn't say it's futile. But I would say we are not in 'normal' times, and have not been since 2016, and that we should recognize that, and that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Everyone on our side needs to understand that pretending it is normal will not make it so. (Definitely not saying you were doing this, but there's too much complacency out there.)
Agree, there is no use pretending this is normal and my comment is a bit clobbered as I reread it but I was saying that we have to try to convert voters and for some it may be futile but for others, (at least some of Haley voters), they can be made to feel embarrassed or educated about their choice for trump.
I just wish that there was a Repro Rights Central that could set up a pharmacy to sell all sorts of contraceptives at slightly above cost, and use the "slightly" to fund other projects. Of course it would be VERY important to make sure that shipments of mifi/miso NEVER got directed to a state where they are illegal. Because that would be TERRIBLE. Must be the fault of the AI.
Yep, good news. Those will be the next thing that the Christian Taliban goes after. And if Rump-roast getsinto the White House they will be pulled off the market.
These have been available in Europe for 10+ years, that's how regressive for United States is. And of course there is a barrier to access for these, you have to be 18 years old. We have an obligation to keep teenagers safe, even if we don't think they should have sex - not telling them about it has never prevented them from having it.
Hat-tip to the Society of Family Planning March 14 weekly newsletter:
Academy Health and the Commonwealth Fund had a webinar on March 6, “Understanding the Impact of the Dobbs Decision—How Can health Services Research Contribute?”
It really has nothing to do with cruelty, it's all about the myth of the personhood of the pregnancy. To these people, a pregnant woman is nothing more than an unreliable container for a child, a person deserving rights subsuming her own. Knowledge of gestation and its universal role in the ancient march of all animal life is the nuclear weapon against the anti-abortionists and their superstitious hysteria.
But what about birth defects that are survivable at birth? When a woman chooses to abort a pregnancy because of some failure in gestation or looming defect, is this discriminating against the disabled? Ask anyone who has lived their lives with birth defects, and I'm sure they would assure a woman that nobody is offended or injured if a woman makes that decision. Life is tough enough to have to endure living it with no limbs, no face, a crippled brain and the rest of the horrors that such birth defects impose on their living victims.
To say that their intent is not to be cruel focuses on them rather that the person subjected to their treatment. Who is suffering? Not they. You are saying that because they don't see women as more than a container, they don't intend to be cruel. But they know that women suffer. They CHOOSE to discount and ignore it. They CHOOSE to discount and ignore the suffering that severe birth defects inflict. To know these things and choose to discount and ignore them is cruelty, and whether or not that is their primary goal is a distinction without a difference. In effect, cruelty is the point.
I should clarify. When I say the cruelty is not the point; the cruelty is beside the point, there's a specific reason for that. Americans really don't understand why these people are so cruel, and so they seem to be repeatedly surprised by the new depths they go to. People think they just don't understand, or there must be some kind of mistake, that if they realized what was really happening, they would modify their position or their demands.
But that is not true at all. There are very specific reasons for the cruelty, and I don't think we can defeat it if we don't understand it. It all comes from a specific worldview informed by a specific interpretation of a specific religion. That is the only thing these people care about. They do not consider that their positions are extraordinarily cruel and unreasonable, because they believe they are obeying God, and that's the only thing that matters to them.
If Americans understood that is what we are up against, rather than mere cruelty or ignorance, maybe we would react differently. Or maybe not, idk, but we have to stop being surprised and shocked. This is all very predictable.
And who told them that this was God’s will? I am usually a patient person but I have ZERO patience for their misogynistic beliefs. I’m left handed and they used to burn folk like me at the stake for being of the devil. I’m neither shocked nor surprised. I’m furious.
We definitely should not be patient. I'm just not sure enough Americans understand why they won't stop, that there's no compromise, that this has to be excluded from our politics. Too many people think we can make peace with them.
You’re right. They still think there can be a compromise. The same thinking had people suggesting Fani Willis step aside to remove the “doubts” from the GA case but they are making the same mistake. It doesn’t matter what the GA Justice department does, they will cry foul. These people already have decided what the truth is and nothing will change their minds. This is why evangelicals are the perfect demographic for the Fascists. They believe blindly anything their leaders tell them. It’s terrifying.
They are the core base of this fascism. They are using Trump to get what they want. If Republicans win it will definitely be clear in 2025 how dangerous this is. But we desperately want to find a way to make it clear before the election. Too many people don't like the status quo and have the false belief that it's 'safe' to vote for the opposition, just because it always has been before. This time is different. Everything points to that.
Agree - control and cruelty are indeed their aims. Just read Twitter or comments in any social media platform like that from the forced birthers and you'll see all sorts of "close your legs" and "take responsibility" insults there. I've had men say to me that the problem is women's "psychological" issues and that they're sluts and all that. So I say back okay make sex education less taboo, make birth control universally available and affordable, etc., but that's not what they vote for. They're all conservatives. It's an ideological war and that's it. But when *they* have a pregnancy that's in trouble well then - they get a pass.
I hear Paul's point too that women are just vessels, but the lack of caring when the vessel becomes, as Jessica says, a "walking coffin" reveals their true lack of compassion. The woman is invisible to them.
To be sure, there are garden variety misogynists involved here too. But the push for these policies is all coming from groups with a specific worldview informed by a specific interpretation of a specific religion. That's what we're fighting, and they don't think in terms of cruelty; their only concern is establishing 'God's law' on earth. If it's cruel, it's coming from 'God', not them. I think they keep staying one step ahead of us because not enough Americans understand that, so we are repeatedly wrong-footed by what they do.
You are so correct Zach, if terrible, horrific things happen as a result of their laws or religious rules…well it is just “god’s will” & that absolves them from any & all responsibility or guilt
I usually respond with, "Keep your sperm to yourself." Agreeing to sex is not agreeing to pregnancy, just as agreeing to dinner isn't agreeing to eat something you don't like or are allergic to. And calling women vessels is dehumanizing as hell.
Ugh, I am so sick of the deference the media gives the Charlotte Lozier Institute! They do usually now refer to them as anti-abortion but they almost never fact check their quotes. It’s a tax exempt religious propaganda and medical misinformation machine.
Thank you for not citing the crazy-talk. It is still hard to comprehend the cruelty, especially from other people with uteruses. Carry on, sending energy.
I am a clinical psychologist trained in research using the scientific method. Why hasn’t the AMA and the APA come out strongly against this bogus research they produce? Conservative judges including SCOTUS cite these garbage studies instead of the accepted research supported by the majority of the medical and scientific communities. Why aren’t these organizations suing states who make them give women C-sections instead of abortions? It feels like the medical and scientific organizations are MIA.
I've written this before, but when I had a trisomy-18 scare with my second child, I absolutely would have terminated the pregnancy. One of the reasons -- why would I take up the hospital bed, the resources, the nurses... Why put the "system" and the people around me through all that? I view it as indulgent. I realize others might not but don't I have a right to that view? To me it's more humane to end the pregnancy early.
The rage I feel at them for risking my health for all the complications that could occur at birth -- my first born had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. She was in distress, my amniotic fluid was drying up and I needed a last-minute c-section.
With my second all I could think was I'm not risking that for a doomed pregnancy. The nerve of them!
The system is set up for three-month supplies, so a degree of stockpiling is possible (and perhaps prudent).
Considering that decades of War on Drugs have made narcotics readily available everywhere, perhaps there is hope for illegal contraceptives and medication abortion. I was going to say that consumer protection will be lacking, but if the Supreme Court removes the FDA's approval of mifiprestone, and in another case rules that federal agency determinations are not entitled to any deference from the courts, then anybody will be able to sell whatever they describe as any drug whatsoever, so there will be no consumer protection for *any* kind of pharmaceutical.
We wouldn't do this to anyone who does labor. Imagine if a builder was building a house and had begun framing it. They then discover that the foundation was poured with faulty concrete and it would start to crumble under load. BUT THEN they were required to build the whole house, knowing that it would fail and THEY WOULDN'T GET PAID but have to eat that cost. The whole while they are building it, they have to have a sign saying that they are the builders and that sign stays up while the house collapses. And the workers' lives were in danger because they were working on an unstable foundation. Who would do that? It would be considered insane. But that's what's happening when they require a woman to build a fetus that they know will die. It's disgusting and lacks respect for the work a woman does to build a human. Disgusting and cruel.
Very good analogy. As always :) It's just that they don't think it's a choice. They think it's 'God', and that they, and all of us, must comply.
They need to move to a country where their religion is part of the government. That isn’t the US.
They disagree and they are trying to make the United States that place. They won't stop until we force them to. I don't know how bad it has to get for the rest of America to understand.
https://open.substack.com/pub/project2025istheocracy/p/what-is-a-christian-nationalist?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=l0fb9
Omg, he's a monster 👻. . President Biden on Tuesday wandered off stage, beelined toward a baby and sat in the crowd as he was being introduced at a campaign event in Phoenix.
Instant rage-induced headache when I read these sadists are calling fetuses with fatal conditions "disabled children." My niece at this very moment has an anacephalic fetus. We live in GA. She has chosen to carry her pregnancy to term, but I wonder what kind of counseling she has been given. The thought of someone trying to pressure or shame her when she is facing this tragedy absolutely ENRAGES me. My great-niece-to-be ISN'T a "disabled child;" she is a baby that is going to be lucky to survive her birth and (at most) live a week with ZERO quality of life. If my niece had wanted to end her pregnancy when she first found out, she was already passed the period our red state would allow; she would have needed to go out of state for care that would have been her absolute RIGHT to have and to choose. Dear goddess, I HATE these anti-women zealots.
And one other fury-inducing thing: my brother (my niece's father), and her mom, and many of her siblings voted for trump. They voted for him for reasons other than the anti-choice crap, but voted nonetheless, and his shitty judges ultimately stripped my niece of her choices. Makes me want to SCREAM.
It is really cruel. I'm so sorry.
SHIT news that I just came across good and bad:
Democratic State Sen. Eva Burch catalogued in detail to colleagues the tedious steps Arizona state law required her to go through to have the abortion.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QEnA5DLWG5XYL7LjYrDwvPnjFnF5GIwo/view?ts=65f8b31b&for-guid=5a3a3b90-3b64-4b59-bb7f-fcbf8b0d6584&pli=1
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/03/19/an-arizona-lawmaker-shared-why-she-is-getting-an-abortion/73029095007/
This quote stood out to me: “All that the legislature has done is to nurture distrust and confusion in the relationship between patients and providers,” Burch said.
“If doctors and political leaders and advocacy organizations, religious organizations, faith groups and science groups have not been able to come to any consensus about the answers to these complicated questions, then I think we can all agree the right people for that job are not here in the Arizona legislature,” she said."
So, do these people believe they get some special place in heaven if they make these women martyrs? Are the women going to be sainted if they suffer from depression and neglect their other children and lose their job due to depression while they carry a dying baby for several months? Or if the baby is born and lives, but is severely disabled, is the woman going to be sainted if she gives up her entire life and forces her other children to suffer by devoting all her time to this child? Or, if she decides she cannot do it because her other children need her, then the disabled child will go to an institution or to one of the multitude of adoptive parents waiting for a disabled child. Women are aware of the situation they are in and they make choices that are best for them, their children, and their families. Nobody else, no matter what their religion is, should be able to decide for these women what is the right thing to do.
Quite often they believe that 'God' is sending the woman this trial to gain her attention and persuade her to repent, etc. I wish I were making this up.
Do you know what I never hear from these people? I never hear that women who can't have children are spared the pain and danger of pregnancy because they are pure and beloved by God. God spares them the suffering of childbirth out of love because they are that good. They never say that. You have to wonder why?
Screaming. Again.
Quit it Jan. The neighbors are talking 👄 🙄.
The Christian Taliban need to leave the rest of us the fuck alone, if a person doesn't think abortion is the right decision, then don't get one. they need to let us manage our own bodies.
I fucking hate the 5 SCOTUS for what they did.
Wasn’t the Dobbs decision a 6/3 vote? Or did Roberts join with the liberals?
I had thought Robert sat that one out, because technically his vote wouldn't have mattered either way at that point.....given the other 5, but Zach explains it better below.
Roberts tried to have it both ways. He said Roe shouldn't be overturned, but he ruled with Mississippi on the judgement. Essentially he would have restricted Roe to protecting only abortions before 15 weeks, I think. He said both sides were more certain of themselves than he thought one should be. Something like that.
While normally I admire compromise and efforts at peacemaking, not everything is subject to negotiation, and the midpoint between two positions is not always reasonable. This felt like him sticking his head in the sand, and I expect it earned him the respect of exactly no one.
Warning: this video in the tweet is disturbing but we are in a place as a country that we need to see these to learn how evil these mfers are and how NOT TO ELECT THEM.
This is a Nebraska R legislator (apparently the pig's name is Halloran) interjecting another (Dem) female legislator's name into a rape scene while reading from a book that is a memoir of a rape survivor. Cruelty in many forms and these are the fucking men who are also legislating on abortion.
https://twitter.com/NebraskaMegan/status/1769902307670474856
Omg 😳 what a piece of filth that slimy old man is. He should be immediately expelled from the State Senate for sexual harassment & creating a hostile work environment. Just cruel & disgusting
Outrageous!
These are some SICK people! He read that out loud and inserted a colleague's name! How is that even legal? How was he not booted out of the chamber for lack of decorum? What the hell is wrong with these people? We have to fight fire with fire. We need to find the worst pregnancy experiences and read them in detail into the record so that these sick mfers can hear what they require of women.
They have always hated women, they just generally kept it to themselves - but they are brazen and emboldened now given all the hateful rhetoric coming out of Donald's mouth.
Not clicking through but I am taking your word for it and liking the comment for making us aware.
We can't change them and the only recourse is not vote for them. At this point, we have to shame and embarrass the people who vote for this excrement. Take their jobs away. Elect people who are decent, civil, smart, and humane.
A big part of why we're in this mess is that shame and embarrassment have long ago ceased to perform their important social functions.
I clicked. I just saw a much worse story about abortion an hour ago. , so I have temporary immunity. Picture the Billy Bush interview and extrapolate with increased X rated verbiage.
It pains my husband to think that this side of America even exists (yeah, naive) but I grit my teeth and want to know so we can do something about it.
A big part of it is the social media which has created this cacophony and has served as an excellent vehicle for corrupt grifters. It seems like a majority of deplorables have found their home in the Republican party. But we have to try. If we start from that assertion that everything is futile, there is no path forward.
Also this country was not built for people like trump to come into prominence, who makes a mockery of its very existence in the way it was constructed. Founders gave voters, electors, the other two co-equal branches, political parties too much credit that they would do the right thing and whatever barriers that would be there are all gone or weakened by trump and his people. Even if voters vote in large majorities for Biden, we are not out of the woods. We will be fighting this phenomenon for decades and more.
Yes I wouldn't say it's futile. But I would say we are not in 'normal' times, and have not been since 2016, and that we should recognize that, and that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Everyone on our side needs to understand that pretending it is normal will not make it so. (Definitely not saying you were doing this, but there's too much complacency out there.)
Agree, there is no use pretending this is normal and my comment is a bit clobbered as I reread it but I was saying that we have to try to convert voters and for some it may be futile but for others, (at least some of Haley voters), they can be made to feel embarrassed or educated about their choice for trump.
CNN has a story, "First Over-the-Counter Birth Control Pill in U.S. Goes on Sale Online Today," (Mar. 18, 2024), https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/health/otc-birth-control-opill-online-orders. The pills can be ordered at Opill.com or Amazon.com, and orders sent in plain boxes. Retail pharmacies are waiting for their orders to get through the supply chain.
I just wish that there was a Repro Rights Central that could set up a pharmacy to sell all sorts of contraceptives at slightly above cost, and use the "slightly" to fund other projects. Of course it would be VERY important to make sure that shipments of mifi/miso NEVER got directed to a state where they are illegal. Because that would be TERRIBLE. Must be the fault of the AI.
Yep, good news. Those will be the next thing that the Christian Taliban goes after. And if Rump-roast getsinto the White House they will be pulled off the market.
These have been available in Europe for 10+ years, that's how regressive for United States is. And of course there is a barrier to access for these, you have to be 18 years old. We have an obligation to keep teenagers safe, even if we don't think they should have sex - not telling them about it has never prevented them from having it.
They’ve been available in the U.S. for at least 20 yrs, available in UE for probably a decade longer
Hat-tip to the Society of Family Planning March 14 weekly newsletter:
Academy Health and the Commonwealth Fund had a webinar on March 6, “Understanding the Impact of the Dobbs Decision—How Can health Services Research Contribute?”
https://academyhealth.org/events/2024-03/webinar-understanding-impact-dobbs-decision-how-can-health-services-research-contribute (registration for the portal required).
They also published a brief, by Alwyn Cassil et al., “Documenting the Ripple Effects of Dobbs on Health, Equity, and Health Services Research," available at https://academyhealth.org/publications/2024-03/documenting-ripple-effects-dobbs-health-equity-and-health-services-research
It really has nothing to do with cruelty, it's all about the myth of the personhood of the pregnancy. To these people, a pregnant woman is nothing more than an unreliable container for a child, a person deserving rights subsuming her own. Knowledge of gestation and its universal role in the ancient march of all animal life is the nuclear weapon against the anti-abortionists and their superstitious hysteria.
But what about birth defects that are survivable at birth? When a woman chooses to abort a pregnancy because of some failure in gestation or looming defect, is this discriminating against the disabled? Ask anyone who has lived their lives with birth defects, and I'm sure they would assure a woman that nobody is offended or injured if a woman makes that decision. Life is tough enough to have to endure living it with no limbs, no face, a crippled brain and the rest of the horrors that such birth defects impose on their living victims.
To say that their intent is not to be cruel focuses on them rather that the person subjected to their treatment. Who is suffering? Not they. You are saying that because they don't see women as more than a container, they don't intend to be cruel. But they know that women suffer. They CHOOSE to discount and ignore it. They CHOOSE to discount and ignore the suffering that severe birth defects inflict. To know these things and choose to discount and ignore them is cruelty, and whether or not that is their primary goal is a distinction without a difference. In effect, cruelty is the point.
I should clarify. When I say the cruelty is not the point; the cruelty is beside the point, there's a specific reason for that. Americans really don't understand why these people are so cruel, and so they seem to be repeatedly surprised by the new depths they go to. People think they just don't understand, or there must be some kind of mistake, that if they realized what was really happening, they would modify their position or their demands.
But that is not true at all. There are very specific reasons for the cruelty, and I don't think we can defeat it if we don't understand it. It all comes from a specific worldview informed by a specific interpretation of a specific religion. That is the only thing these people care about. They do not consider that their positions are extraordinarily cruel and unreasonable, because they believe they are obeying God, and that's the only thing that matters to them.
If Americans understood that is what we are up against, rather than mere cruelty or ignorance, maybe we would react differently. Or maybe not, idk, but we have to stop being surprised and shocked. This is all very predictable.
And who told them that this was God’s will? I am usually a patient person but I have ZERO patience for their misogynistic beliefs. I’m left handed and they used to burn folk like me at the stake for being of the devil. I’m neither shocked nor surprised. I’m furious.
We definitely should not be patient. I'm just not sure enough Americans understand why they won't stop, that there's no compromise, that this has to be excluded from our politics. Too many people think we can make peace with them.
You’re right. They still think there can be a compromise. The same thinking had people suggesting Fani Willis step aside to remove the “doubts” from the GA case but they are making the same mistake. It doesn’t matter what the GA Justice department does, they will cry foul. These people already have decided what the truth is and nothing will change their minds. This is why evangelicals are the perfect demographic for the Fascists. They believe blindly anything their leaders tell them. It’s terrifying.
They are the core base of this fascism. They are using Trump to get what they want. If Republicans win it will definitely be clear in 2025 how dangerous this is. But we desperately want to find a way to make it clear before the election. Too many people don't like the status quo and have the false belief that it's 'safe' to vote for the opposition, just because it always has been before. This time is different. Everything points to that.
Agree - control and cruelty are indeed their aims. Just read Twitter or comments in any social media platform like that from the forced birthers and you'll see all sorts of "close your legs" and "take responsibility" insults there. I've had men say to me that the problem is women's "psychological" issues and that they're sluts and all that. So I say back okay make sex education less taboo, make birth control universally available and affordable, etc., but that's not what they vote for. They're all conservatives. It's an ideological war and that's it. But when *they* have a pregnancy that's in trouble well then - they get a pass.
I hear Paul's point too that women are just vessels, but the lack of caring when the vessel becomes, as Jessica says, a "walking coffin" reveals their true lack of compassion. The woman is invisible to them.
To be sure, there are garden variety misogynists involved here too. But the push for these policies is all coming from groups with a specific worldview informed by a specific interpretation of a specific religion. That's what we're fighting, and they don't think in terms of cruelty; their only concern is establishing 'God's law' on earth. If it's cruel, it's coming from 'God', not them. I think they keep staying one step ahead of us because not enough Americans understand that, so we are repeatedly wrong-footed by what they do.
You are so correct Zach, if terrible, horrific things happen as a result of their laws or religious rules…well it is just “god’s will” & that absolves them from any & all responsibility or guilt
I usually respond with, "Keep your sperm to yourself." Agreeing to sex is not agreeing to pregnancy, just as agreeing to dinner isn't agreeing to eat something you don't like or are allergic to. And calling women vessels is dehumanizing as hell.
I meant to write " I hear Paul's point that *they think of* women as just vessels, which is horrific enough...
I knew that you and Paul were not saying women were vessels. I’m just emphasizing that their beliefs are dehumanizing. I should have made that clear.
Ugh, I am so sick of the deference the media gives the Charlotte Lozier Institute! They do usually now refer to them as anti-abortion but they almost never fact check their quotes. It’s a tax exempt religious propaganda and medical misinformation machine.
Thank you for not citing the crazy-talk. It is still hard to comprehend the cruelty, especially from other people with uteruses. Carry on, sending energy.