'Abortion Industry' that is the same phrase used by antis here in the UK.
Even though abortion is free via the NHS its still this shady conglomerate luring innocent women to have a free abortion, because we don't know our own minds and really want every pregnancy
They are so heavily influenced by the US, I wish I was an academic, as a sociology PHD in US influence on UK antis would be fascinating
Looking at post election coverage I heard that the Democrats have been loathe to use the term abortion and campaign on it before Tuesday. Hopefully that has changed. Most politicians and other grifters do not recognize or acknowledge the affront of these bans from the Rs on ordinary people. Have you looked at the old white male politicians in hinterlands talking about these bans? They are beyond loathsome. This country has attracted the best and the brightest from the world over throughout history but more so in the recent decades with its higher ed and other intellectual incentives. Most of the immigrants in the last few decades and before too are here running away from the very restrictions that these old white toothless hillbilly mfers from the boonies are imposing. Abortion is choice and freedom because women should do what they want with their body (but within limits as Roe/viability found). People accept that. The fact that Roe was overturned in the wealthiest, most 'sophisticated' democracy and now all these bans is galling. Something is wrong with the Republican party, not just their white male dominant ideology and other usual shenanigans but it seems like there is an invisible hand from subversive outside entities helping them to bring this country down and they are OK with that. I mean how a guy like trump can even run not just lead after what he did and after everything that is happening with the Rs? Media is complicit and not helping the country to shed light on any of this and that is the other side of this emergency.
Absolutely we need to savor our wins this week. I think we all are over-the-moon ecstatic and relieved . Excited about next steps.
In preparation for what is coming, I wonder about the reaction to David Leonhardt’s piece in the NYT yesterday. I will include the link below. He too is super pleased with this week’s results but makes an argument about something he feels needs to be dealt with given that winning the next presidential election is the goal.
An excerpt “ Most Americans support widespread abortion access and will vote for ballot initiatives that protect or establish abortion rights. Yet in an election between two candidates, only a tiny slice of people is likely to vote differently because of any one issue, including abortion.”
"Abortion industry"! The anti-choice movement will resort to every possible lie to deprive women of their rights and they have been exposed. Watching the video of the Issue 1 proponents celebrate the win was exhilarating but also heartbreaking. It is sad that we have to work so hard to claw back our human rights. But we will continue to do whatever it takes. Thank you, Jessica and Grace, for your essential contributions to this battle.
"voters aren’t looking for a middle ground!" I am not sure about that. I think that many voters are looking for a middle ground, and that this middle ground is more or less a codification of Roe v. Wade, i.e. a rule basically along the lines of Ohio's Issue 1. Namely one that allows state restrictions on abortion only after viability, and even then not if a physician determines that the woman's health is in danger. To me, the language of Issue 1 is pretty good and should be used as a model in other states.
Depending on how you determine viability (is a fetus with a condition that is doomed to die outside the womb 'viable'?) and assuming you could actually get physician exceptions, that should pretty much legalize all abortions (all the real ones, anyway; the imaginary ones might stay illegal). I think you're right that voters instinctively want a middle ground (conflict averse) but what happens is the more facts they learn the more the middle ground moves to something that's essentially almost always legal. Perhaps it needs to be sold as though it's a 'compromise'? I'd rather have the voters just realize that the other side are fanatics who only lie and not feel the need to find any 'middle ground' with them, but whatever gets us the policy we need for women to keep full bodily autonomy.
Yes. I do think people want a middle ground but I am with you that a lot of that is ignorance.
Banning or restricting second or third trimester abortions begins to sound crazy once you realize:
(1) People who don’t want to be pregnant seek out abortion as early as they can. There isn’t some group of women who LOVE pregnancy **so much** they just want to be preggers **as long as possible** but still not have babies so they are holding out as long as possible. <-- Since this group doesn’t exist we don’t need regulation or laws to stop them.
(2) there are a ton of reasons for later abortions **which is why people get them** <-- And half baked regulation will hurt this group
Viability, (by my medical training) refers to ability of said creature to survive outside the womb. It gets sticky with the improved medical care, but 23 weeks would be roughly the earliest.
A doomed to die is called "Incompatible with life."
ah, here, have the Gyn definition..."Later in pregnancy, a clinician may use the term “viable” to indicate the chance for survival that a fetus has if delivered before it can fully develop in the uterus. Clinicians most commonly focus on the periviable period, which refers to weeks 20 through 25 and 6 days of a pregnancy.
Yes. Although the law has never cared about using terminology in a medically accurate way. Abortion has to be allowed for 'incompatible with life'; it's incredibly cruel otherwise. And that reality of course needs to be explained to voters.
I think in this country at least we've gotten so far away from the idea that there exist facts or a reality that are independent from our opinions or feelings even. Not only do we not agree on what the facts are, we can't agree on a method by which we could establish a common set of facts which all of us could accept and base our decision making on. It's the ideal environment for lies to flourish.
That is a very insightful analysis. There are whole right-wing religious takes on keeping their flocks ignorant, through home-schooling. WaPo did a brilliant article on a pair of such adults, who realized how little they knew about anything, after they broke with tradition and sent their daughter to public school. (They couldn't help her with her homework, they knew so little.)
I am feeling relieved. I was nervous. Not so much about Ohio, but about VA and PA, the reason being you never know if turnout is going to be good enough. As it turns out, it was. I personally contacted hundreds of voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Isn’t it annoying that it’s taken this long for politicians to realize that abortion decides elections? JFC I just remember my (conservative) dad telling me that everyone will forget about abortion bc gas prices blah blah blah....
Yeah dude- that’s exactly why you assholes are losing.
I love my dad but he’s a clueless conservative asshole when it comes to women’s rights. He’s pro-choice but he continues to vote for idiots that aren’t. Squaring that circle makes my brain hurt.
My dad leans conservative but often it seems to me to be a gut feeling (he grew up in a rural area and didn't go to university and held blue-collar type jobs). When I actually talk about the facts of an issue with him, he's a lot more sensible and open minded. Honestly I think a lot of boomers need a 'reality check' person in their lives!
Especially when they don't like it and try several ways to cheat their constituents. Rick Santorum said the quiet parts out loud " thank goodness that most of the states in this country don't allow you to put everything on the ballot because pure democracies are not the way to run a country."!
They just don’t get it. The night after the election On hannity on Fox News they were preaching a national 15 week ban.... what? Did you idiots not learn anything??? JFC the lack of self awareness is a feature not a bug.
Thanks, Jessica, for your daily updates on all the abortion battlefronts. You maintained awareness, highlighted the anti-democratic attempts to prevent or subvert the voting, and deserve credit for your part in these electoral victories.
One pair of facts which really stood out for me was seeing that a solid majority of independent voters, along with 20% of Republicans, provided the margin of victory in Ohio. Some of us reject almost the entire Democrat agenda and still support abortion rights. Please try to maintain the very broad coalition of voters, left, right, and center, supporting women's reproductive rights.
If the right-leaning media want to broaden their audience and inform their politicians, I have an idea for them. Give Jessica Valenti one of those very lucrative "Fox News Contributor" on-air deals, so their coverage of abortion rights can be more "fair and balanced." (If you'd take it.) Brooklyn to their studio on 6th Avenue isn't too long of a subway ride. Their audience needs to hear the truth.
Yes, it's lonely where you are! I understand that many people are quite disturbed by the progressive / left ideologies and what they expect the outcome of those kinds of policies to be. Those who are liberal in the original sense of the word have to choose between two increasingly illiberal parties. For me the Democrats are still the safer of the two and it's not particularly close, but things can change over time. However it is very bad for democracy whenever you don't have a healthy opposition party, because it allows the governing party to drift off track. It shouldn't be too much to ask for (at least) two parties that believe in human rights, civil rights, the rule of law, and democracy, but sometimes it seems like you barely get one. Let's hope this country can still find a way out of our current situation without something breaking.
Less lonely than quiet. The numbers prove there are many others in my slice of the mix and as someone who worked with TV ratings for many years, I'm good at projecting groups from data. But the quiet -- both from the right's shunning and the left's acquiesance (until recently) to its extremists -- is annoying.
Point taken. Elections are almost always about voting for the lesser of two evils, and our own experiences in our own communities are going to influence how we choose. Ideally both parties would move towards the center but I'm not sure what it will take for that to happen. Maybe part of the problem is no one is sure where the center is anymore because so much has changed this century.
Their audience doesn't tune it to Fox for the truth, they tune in to be lied to. When Fox called the election for Biden, the viewers got angry,and went to the even further right lie-fest "Newsmax.
Missouri is a much redder state than Ohio, so I do think it would be much closer there (the voters are pro-choice but that doesn't always translate into support for an amendment once the other side gets up to its tricks). Florida requires 60%, so I don't think it would be a sure thing there either. And of course who knows what courts would do once they pass. Still, as reprehensible as it is to have to vote on a basic human right, at least it's something. Nebraska has the ability to do a referendum; that would fill in a gap. Oklahoma and Arkansas can too, but those are VERY conservative states. Bottom line is it's possible we could just about survive for a few years this way - except in the South, where the situation is dire. What other period of American history does that sound like? 🤔
Here are my questions (to which I truly do not know the answer): What will the practical effect of the Ohio ballot measure be? Will abortion be "re-legalized" in the State? I am hoping that such is the case, obviously, and that what Ohioans did gives courage and motivation to voters in other red states.
That's the big question. Will the state government (completely controlled by Republicans) just ignore the amendment? And what recourse is there if they do? Ohio does elect its supreme court justices, so there's political risk if they do. But what interpretation of the law could a justice get away with in red Ohio without getting booted out? The cynical silver lining is if they do keep fighting it as hard as they did before it passed, it would be a big help to Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is probably an underdog in his re-election race next year.
I keep repeating myself, but the election next year is very likely to be decided by the tens of millions of voters for whom it hasn't been important enough to go out and vote since the last presidential election. We must not assume they will make up their minds the same way those who voted regularly have. It is its own new challenge.
'Abortion Industry' that is the same phrase used by antis here in the UK.
Even though abortion is free via the NHS its still this shady conglomerate luring innocent women to have a free abortion, because we don't know our own minds and really want every pregnancy
They are so heavily influenced by the US, I wish I was an academic, as a sociology PHD in US influence on UK antis would be fascinating
Looking at post election coverage I heard that the Democrats have been loathe to use the term abortion and campaign on it before Tuesday. Hopefully that has changed. Most politicians and other grifters do not recognize or acknowledge the affront of these bans from the Rs on ordinary people. Have you looked at the old white male politicians in hinterlands talking about these bans? They are beyond loathsome. This country has attracted the best and the brightest from the world over throughout history but more so in the recent decades with its higher ed and other intellectual incentives. Most of the immigrants in the last few decades and before too are here running away from the very restrictions that these old white toothless hillbilly mfers from the boonies are imposing. Abortion is choice and freedom because women should do what they want with their body (but within limits as Roe/viability found). People accept that. The fact that Roe was overturned in the wealthiest, most 'sophisticated' democracy and now all these bans is galling. Something is wrong with the Republican party, not just their white male dominant ideology and other usual shenanigans but it seems like there is an invisible hand from subversive outside entities helping them to bring this country down and they are OK with that. I mean how a guy like trump can even run not just lead after what he did and after everything that is happening with the Rs? Media is complicit and not helping the country to shed light on any of this and that is the other side of this emergency.
This one gives me sooo much glee. David Brody of Christian Broadcast News (CBN) reported that 24% of White Born Again Evangelicals voted FOR abortion in Ohio. He calls it disgusting, I call it wonderful! https://x.com/dbrodyreports/status/1722226901958500577?s=61&t=nyIWGvmiTkNoK-xTqjdGyg
That fits with the pew stats about religion and views on abortion https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/views-about-abortion/
Absolutely we need to savor our wins this week. I think we all are over-the-moon ecstatic and relieved . Excited about next steps.
In preparation for what is coming, I wonder about the reaction to David Leonhardt’s piece in the NYT yesterday. I will include the link below. He too is super pleased with this week’s results but makes an argument about something he feels needs to be dealt with given that winning the next presidential election is the goal.
An excerpt “ Most Americans support widespread abortion access and will vote for ballot initiatives that protect or establish abortion rights. Yet in an election between two candidates, only a tiny slice of people is likely to vote differently because of any one issue, including abortion.”
Here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/briefing/ohio-referendum-abortion-politics.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
"Abortion industry"! The anti-choice movement will resort to every possible lie to deprive women of their rights and they have been exposed. Watching the video of the Issue 1 proponents celebrate the win was exhilarating but also heartbreaking. It is sad that we have to work so hard to claw back our human rights. But we will continue to do whatever it takes. Thank you, Jessica and Grace, for your essential contributions to this battle.
Well done, Jessica and Grace! Well done everyone who worked towards these results! Stars all!
"voters aren’t looking for a middle ground!" I am not sure about that. I think that many voters are looking for a middle ground, and that this middle ground is more or less a codification of Roe v. Wade, i.e. a rule basically along the lines of Ohio's Issue 1. Namely one that allows state restrictions on abortion only after viability, and even then not if a physician determines that the woman's health is in danger. To me, the language of Issue 1 is pretty good and should be used as a model in other states.
Depending on how you determine viability (is a fetus with a condition that is doomed to die outside the womb 'viable'?) and assuming you could actually get physician exceptions, that should pretty much legalize all abortions (all the real ones, anyway; the imaginary ones might stay illegal). I think you're right that voters instinctively want a middle ground (conflict averse) but what happens is the more facts they learn the more the middle ground moves to something that's essentially almost always legal. Perhaps it needs to be sold as though it's a 'compromise'? I'd rather have the voters just realize that the other side are fanatics who only lie and not feel the need to find any 'middle ground' with them, but whatever gets us the policy we need for women to keep full bodily autonomy.
Yes. I do think people want a middle ground but I am with you that a lot of that is ignorance.
Banning or restricting second or third trimester abortions begins to sound crazy once you realize:
(1) People who don’t want to be pregnant seek out abortion as early as they can. There isn’t some group of women who LOVE pregnancy **so much** they just want to be preggers **as long as possible** but still not have babies so they are holding out as long as possible. <-- Since this group doesn’t exist we don’t need regulation or laws to stop them.
(2) there are a ton of reasons for later abortions **which is why people get them** <-- And half baked regulation will hurt this group
Viability, (by my medical training) refers to ability of said creature to survive outside the womb. It gets sticky with the improved medical care, but 23 weeks would be roughly the earliest.
A doomed to die is called "Incompatible with life."
ah, here, have the Gyn definition..."Later in pregnancy, a clinician may use the term “viable” to indicate the chance for survival that a fetus has if delivered before it can fully develop in the uterus. Clinicians most commonly focus on the periviable period, which refers to weeks 20 through 25 and 6 days of a pregnancy.
https://www.acog.org/advocacy/facts-are-important/understanding-and-navigating-viability#:~:text=Later%20in%20pregnancy%2C%20a%20clinician,6%20days%20of%20a%20pregnancy.
Yes. Although the law has never cared about using terminology in a medically accurate way. Abortion has to be allowed for 'incompatible with life'; it's incredibly cruel otherwise. And that reality of course needs to be explained to voters.
Yes, they prefer lies. I don't know how they aren't called on it.
I think in this country at least we've gotten so far away from the idea that there exist facts or a reality that are independent from our opinions or feelings even. Not only do we not agree on what the facts are, we can't agree on a method by which we could establish a common set of facts which all of us could accept and base our decision making on. It's the ideal environment for lies to flourish.
That is a very insightful analysis. There are whole right-wing religious takes on keeping their flocks ignorant, through home-schooling. WaPo did a brilliant article on a pair of such adults, who realized how little they knew about anything, after they broke with tradition and sent their daughter to public school. (They couldn't help her with her homework, they knew so little.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/2023/christian-home-schoolers-revolt/
I am feeling relieved. I was nervous. Not so much about Ohio, but about VA and PA, the reason being you never know if turnout is going to be good enough. As it turns out, it was. I personally contacted hundreds of voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Isn’t it annoying that it’s taken this long for politicians to realize that abortion decides elections? JFC I just remember my (conservative) dad telling me that everyone will forget about abortion bc gas prices blah blah blah....
Yeah dude- that’s exactly why you assholes are losing.
Yeah "everyone" always means 'men'. Also, love that you're calling your dad an a-hole! ;)
I love my dad but he’s a clueless conservative asshole when it comes to women’s rights. He’s pro-choice but he continues to vote for idiots that aren’t. Squaring that circle makes my brain hurt.
My dad leans conservative but often it seems to me to be a gut feeling (he grew up in a rural area and didn't go to university and held blue-collar type jobs). When I actually talk about the facts of an issue with him, he's a lot more sensible and open minded. Honestly I think a lot of boomers need a 'reality check' person in their lives!
It is so great to make the government work for the people even if the legislators of these states don't like it.
Especially when they don't like it and try several ways to cheat their constituents. Rick Santorum said the quiet parts out loud " thank goodness that most of the states in this country don't allow you to put everything on the ballot because pure democracies are not the way to run a country."!
Yeah when he lost his seat it was a fun one. Incumbents, of any kind, don't usually lose by 20 points :)
I liked when the gay man got even with him, for equating homosexuality with bestiality! Santorum has quite the definition if googled.
They just don’t get it. The night after the election On hannity on Fox News they were preaching a national 15 week ban.... what? Did you idiots not learn anything??? JFC the lack of self awareness is a feature not a bug.
Thanks, Jessica, for your daily updates on all the abortion battlefronts. You maintained awareness, highlighted the anti-democratic attempts to prevent or subvert the voting, and deserve credit for your part in these electoral victories.
One pair of facts which really stood out for me was seeing that a solid majority of independent voters, along with 20% of Republicans, provided the margin of victory in Ohio. Some of us reject almost the entire Democrat agenda and still support abortion rights. Please try to maintain the very broad coalition of voters, left, right, and center, supporting women's reproductive rights.
If the right-leaning media want to broaden their audience and inform their politicians, I have an idea for them. Give Jessica Valenti one of those very lucrative "Fox News Contributor" on-air deals, so their coverage of abortion rights can be more "fair and balanced." (If you'd take it.) Brooklyn to their studio on 6th Avenue isn't too long of a subway ride. Their audience needs to hear the truth.
Yes, it's lonely where you are! I understand that many people are quite disturbed by the progressive / left ideologies and what they expect the outcome of those kinds of policies to be. Those who are liberal in the original sense of the word have to choose between two increasingly illiberal parties. For me the Democrats are still the safer of the two and it's not particularly close, but things can change over time. However it is very bad for democracy whenever you don't have a healthy opposition party, because it allows the governing party to drift off track. It shouldn't be too much to ask for (at least) two parties that believe in human rights, civil rights, the rule of law, and democracy, but sometimes it seems like you barely get one. Let's hope this country can still find a way out of our current situation without something breaking.
Less lonely than quiet. The numbers prove there are many others in my slice of the mix and as someone who worked with TV ratings for many years, I'm good at projecting groups from data. But the quiet -- both from the right's shunning and the left's acquiesance (until recently) to its extremists -- is annoying.
Point taken. Elections are almost always about voting for the lesser of two evils, and our own experiences in our own communities are going to influence how we choose. Ideally both parties would move towards the center but I'm not sure what it will take for that to happen. Maybe part of the problem is no one is sure where the center is anymore because so much has changed this century.
Their audience doesn't tune it to Fox for the truth, they tune in to be lied to. When Fox called the election for Biden, the viewers got angry,and went to the even further right lie-fest "Newsmax.
Missouri is a much redder state than Ohio, so I do think it would be much closer there (the voters are pro-choice but that doesn't always translate into support for an amendment once the other side gets up to its tricks). Florida requires 60%, so I don't think it would be a sure thing there either. And of course who knows what courts would do once they pass. Still, as reprehensible as it is to have to vote on a basic human right, at least it's something. Nebraska has the ability to do a referendum; that would fill in a gap. Oklahoma and Arkansas can too, but those are VERY conservative states. Bottom line is it's possible we could just about survive for a few years this way - except in the South, where the situation is dire. What other period of American history does that sound like? 🤔
Disappointed that Susanna Gibson lost in Virginia. Maybe the webcam site story had no effect but I kind of doubt it.
Here are my questions (to which I truly do not know the answer): What will the practical effect of the Ohio ballot measure be? Will abortion be "re-legalized" in the State? I am hoping that such is the case, obviously, and that what Ohioans did gives courage and motivation to voters in other red states.
That's the big question. Will the state government (completely controlled by Republicans) just ignore the amendment? And what recourse is there if they do? Ohio does elect its supreme court justices, so there's political risk if they do. But what interpretation of the law could a justice get away with in red Ohio without getting booted out? The cynical silver lining is if they do keep fighting it as hard as they did before it passed, it would be a big help to Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is probably an underdog in his re-election race next year.
As I predicted: https://www.meidastouch.com/news/ohio-republicans-refuse-to-accept-the-election-results
I keep repeating myself, but the election next year is very likely to be decided by the tens of millions of voters for whom it hasn't been important enough to go out and vote since the last presidential election. We must not assume they will make up their minds the same way those who voted regularly have. It is its own new challenge.