Following up on. my prior comment, how are these actions/laws not in violation of the following federal statute?:
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, which amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq., prohibits discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.
In reading it, it appears to be related to employment but there has to be more extrapolated from the conditions of this Act. Would love to hear feedback from someone who has a legal background.
I keep hearing and reading comments like “Someday a woman is going to die..” or a mention of Savita Halappanavar and how the shock of her death led to change in Ireland. But in our non-communitarian and individualistic society, it’s easy for the misogynists to lay the blame on each individual woman rather than the system. Whenever I can, I point out that women ARE dying here. Women are 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy & childbirth in states with abortion bans. I like to post this link with my responses: https://thegepi.org/state-of-reproductive-health-united-states/
This is a heartbreaking story on multiple levels. As a primary care NP, I can’t help but think about how the entire health system failed Yeni. How is it that there are way too many hospitals with no L&D and counties with NO access to OBGYN care, in the United States of America?! If her basic needs had been met then we wouldn’t be reading about her death- she deserved to have insurance, to have access to a continuous supply of insulin and anti hypertension medications, and access to the necessary education that could have empowered her to properly take care of herself.
I am far from being a lawyer but there is a golden nugget in this article that should get more attention: "Our job is to get both through the pregnancy safely, but that’s not always possible. And it’s very frustrating to have your hands tied because the patient who you need to save is not the one that’s protected by law.” How does it happen that woman's personhood is lessened when she becomes pregnant? This is an undeniable example of discrimination.
I subscribe the The New Yorker, and I saw that article and had the exact same thought--Why not say "Abortion Ban Killed Young Texas Woman"?
If we're going to fight this fight, we need help from the media. We have to demand harder-hitting, unvarnished headlines. WaPo and the NYT are doing readers a great disservice these days with disingenuous headlines. Sometimes they change the headlines if enough people have complained within the comments section, but often it's after the article has been up for hours or days.
Since we can't count on the media to give an honest accounting in its headlines, Democrats will need to spend a lot of money to buy ads that say killed, died, septic and suffered brain damage, left her sterile...it has to be real, graphic and in your face.
Jessica— do you know for a fact that there have been more deaths, or is this speculation? And do you know that families do not want these deaths reported as being due to denial of abortion services? Can you devote a newsletter to this— anonymizing if necessary, but I, for one, would like to get the lay of the land. I’ve been wondering why in so many months there have been no deaths reported—it seemed obvious to me that these bans would result in deaths, especially given the number of close calls we do know about
My suspicion is they are not counting the deaths. There's a coding system for deaths and if there's no code for "died for lack of a medically necessary abortion," the hospital will pick a different code.
That’s why it will take intrepid reporters and investigators to ferret out the truth. These things may not get coded, but someone close knows what happened and can reach out, which is how Jessica gets a lot of her stories, or hospital records can be looked at more carefully and suspicious pregnancy-related deaths flagged for further investigation.
Oh, for sure reporting will bring to light individual cases like this one. And that's great!
I was more talking about getting a data set. In fact, I'd be surprised if there aren't med school academics or similar somewhere trying to pull the numbers together.
I just read The New Yorker article which is detailed and well written. Where to begin? As a former nurse practitioner I am appalled that Yeni died, because it was a preventable death. I suppose I should not be surprised that, in the state of Texas, Yeni was unable to access health insurance (Medicaid). Her lack of insurance is just the start of this horrendous story because, not having insurance led to her to receive erratic and insufficient medical care during the early stages of her pregnancy. This quickly escalated to Yeni being treated in blatantly unethical ways. The fact that she was never counseled to know that her high risk pregnancy held the high probability of death for both she and her fetus is unthinkable. She should have been told that an elective abortion would both stop the decline of her health (due to hypertension and diabetes) and save her life. I could go on and on, but here is the bottom line- the health care system failed Yeni from start to finish. Those who allowed her to die due to their unethical care should be sued for medical malpractice. Health professionals who won’t do their job according to ethical standards and who are breaching the standards of care- either due to Texas abortion restrictions or because they work for a Catholic hospital- need to stop practicing. Allowing women like Yeni to die is simply unacceptable.
If you need something to lift your mood after that downer, here’s 10 minutes of my sister slapping the shit out of Cliffy the “sidewalk counselor” in front of Planned Parenthood this past Saturday. Includes a lovely rendition of “Mind Your Own Business!” as well as a hilarious segment where Cliffy is forced to deny the existence of Wonko.
This is horrific. I’m thankful to practice Ob/Gyn in a state that allows abortion. I’m certainly not naive to think that the healthcare system isn’t also broken in an abortion allowed state, but at least we don’t have that brokenness to add to our problems, at least for now.
I do want to make one correction to the article regarding a c-section after cardiac arrest. The medical term is “resuscitative hysterotomy” and the primary purpose is to improve survival chances for the mother (with the potential side benefit of improving the outcomes for the fetus). This is done for the mother, not for the feuts.
I bet your state allows Catholic hospitals to withhold life-saving care. And when you’re most vulnerable and in an ambulance you can’t always choose what hospital they deliver you to. Please, we need doctors to protest this two-tier system.
That definitely happens in catholic hospitals - I worked for one for a time and left because I couldn’t provide the care I needed to for my patients and the hospital cared more about the money they received from the Catholics than what members of their OB/GYN department thought.
Many of us are working to try and change things - within our own hospital systems as well as at our state level and nationally. More can and needs to be done. I agree - the system fails everyone when it fails anyone and change does not happen quickly enough.
I, an atheist, was forced to give birth to both my kids in a Catholic hospital. I don't think Catholic hospitals should be allowed to provide ob/gyn care. In my town, the Catholic hospital bought and then closed a nearby non-catholic hospital, forcing everyone in the area to go to Dominican. Fortunately, a new surgical center has been built and women here now have the choice I did not have.
We aren’t even TALKING about this. It’s as if it’s nit polite to tell women they won’t receive proper care at a Catholic hospital. I found out the hard way when my second pregnancy was ectopic and they wouldn’t treat me. I had NO IDEA about this and now their lousy subpar “care” is the standard of care in half of this nation PLUS the blue states where there are Catholic hospitals. And our Catholic “leaders” seem just fine with this. Imagine if Joe Biden were to say that this isn’t right…
So basically, the deadly states that ban abortion care are following the Catholic Church.... and what they have always done... which is nowhere near the separation of church and state- the church is ruling more and more on our society and the evangelicals are all for it...including those on the Supreme Court. I think the only hope is for democrats to gain control of congress and the presidency and then immediately reverse all of this insanity and reinstate roe and codify it. It won't be won in the rigged court system....even though to me, I see violations of constitutional rights all over the place...
I agree completely. I got tired of telling patients about the care I was trained to provide but couldn’t. It was dishonest and against my ethical and moral responsibility as a physician. And it is horrible and quite possibly deadly for patients when there are no other options and they are forced to receive religious based care instead of evidence based medicine.
Sadly we will see more of this. It will keep happening while the legislators, judges and DA continue to practice medicine without a license. They have no right. I pray there there is some underground emerging if it hasn't already that is helping people. Good people...I know this is risky but it happened before with the Jane's it will happen again especially if Mife is taken off the market.
I was around for the era of the Janes and this is not a comparable situation. In that previous era, there were prosecutors and others who had wives, sisters, daughters, mistresses, could empathize and were sometimes willing to look the other way. Also, the penalties were not as harsh. Today we have zealots who just want to prosecute women, period, even if, like Brittany Watts, they did nothing wrong. And legislative zealots imposing 99-year prison sentences, even the death penalty. Also, there is and will be some continued access to abortion medication, even if it’s only the 2nd pill, which works, just not as well. So we will have abortion funds and medication and underground railroads and private flights, but I doubt we will have citizen providers of surgical abortion, as in the era of the Janes.
The stories absolutely need to keep coming. That said, and I hate to even post this, it's cruel but when we have a patient who is unhealthy independent of being pregnant, and a broken health care / health insurance / immigration law system, it's much easier for abortion bans to shirk responsibility. There's too much else going on. Americans have to believe this can happen to them or someone they know, and too many of them won't if they think it's preventable, if they think the circumstances are something that only affect other people. And if they don't see it happening to them, too many of them won't care, at least not enough for it to matter. This country has been letting the poor and particularly people of color die for its entire history. Dobbs is new, but that most definitely isn't. Of course these factors all add to each other, but if achieving reproductive rights is going to depend on greater social and economic justice, then I don't think it's going to happen. It has to be something that can be advocated for and advanced independently; otherwise we're waiting for voters to care about the sick and the poor, and history shows they don't. It's cruel, but the other side gets away with it if Americans can think the victims are not 'people like me'. I wish I were wrong about this, but I don't think I am. But the stories absolutely have to keep coming, because every one still needs to be told, if only to validate the humanity of those who are suffering (and dying). There's always a chance of making a difference, and I would argue that tempered expectations of the impact they will have actually make it more urgent to keep telling them.
Many of the women who almost died that are suing Texas are white, blonde, middle/upper middle class... I am pretty certain that this evil act of overturning Roe is effecting all kinds of women- but I'll bet that there's much more atrocities happening with poorer women that are not in the news....
I wonder how much of it is that many of the women in the Texas suit have the social capital to fight this battle and have the worst days of their lives publicized. As Jessica said, antis will pick apart Yeni's death and somehow find ways to blame her for being "noncompliant". They aren't a representative sample of people harmed by abortion bans, but they show how bans harm everyone.
I'm feeling so many emotions at once it's hard to describe. My hypertension was why I got sterilized after the Dobbs decision. Texas is officially and undeniably killing women exactly like me.
A lot of people have gotten really snotty with me over the years, poo-pooing politics as "it's just politics, why do you care so much?" Or "why do you get so upset about politics." It's been part of the Republican agenda to make politics a bad word so people disengage. There's also this cynicism about politics that people think make them sound above it all and sophisticated. I think it makes them sound lazy and misguided. Politics is just life. It's the vehicle by which we exert our will on the rest of society. When you have a minority that wants to literally take your rights away, when you have a minority that wants to KILL you, you can't afford to disengage. It's why we're all here struggling through this together.
In my jumble of emotions there's one more that stands out. I just want to say that I'm so grateful for all of you, Jessica, and this community for being brave enough and strong enough to keep caring. Even when it's devastating. Thank you <3
People thought I was overreacting or just plain nuts when I got sterilized because Trump got elected. It's bad when politics forces us to make permanent choices on what to do with our bodies!
Right?! On top of that, it was hard! A 10 year effort. I didn't just get denied. The first time I had to go through this gauntlet of taking a class about alternative forms of birth control in a 90 degree room. I'm heat intolerant, I didn't make it. I got a totally useless ER visit instead, and they said I failed the class. Even 10 years later, trying to convince my cardiologist's PA to sign off on it was uhhhh funny but stupid.
"Your blood pressure is too high for general anesthesia."
Victoria - look at your name -or what you have chosen to call yourself. Victory!! Victory over the stupidity and ostrich behavior that is working in the United States now because we are literally under attack from within in. I have been told the same thing you are being told but I am 67. I remember not having rights. I remember when a woman could not get a safe abortion and up to 50,000 women were dying PER YEAR from botched abortions. Over 100,000 per year were left maimed for life. Ministers and Rabbis had the numbers because they had stepped in to start an Underground Railroad for safe abortions. President Gerald Ford supported safe abortions because the slaughter of American women was so great in the name of a religion (Catholic) that wasn’t the State Religion. That’s why we Do Not have a State Religion in the United States. Yesterday, that the gaslighting, lying, sack of putrid, trump boot licking,false prophet worshiping, excuse for a female Elise Stefanik told non journalist anchor of Meet the Press that the Democrats were after the Catholic Church. The Pope knows the Democrats aren’t after the Catholic Church. Why do you think he just made the major announcement regarding “same sex couples”. Fight on dear lady because the Maggots are coming for your rights. White men won’t lose much they think if trump wins but everyone else in this country will lose everything we gained. Keep fighting
Thank you so much! I really appreciate your perspective! I'm 35, and these modern horror stories are worse than I imagined.
We absolutely share the same rancor for bootlicking performance artist, Elise Stefanik. It's extra wild since she's running around being as insane as possible trying to get Trump's attention for VP when she clearly doesn't wear enough make-up for him to consider her.
😂😂😂 She got a great makeup job for her interview on Meet the Press - but neither tfg nor the Maggots would ever allow a female VP. The 🍊is clearly deteriorating. His 2nd wife is/was involved in fighting LYME disease because she had it. Lyme disease affects thinking. The men behind the Maggot movement would never allow a woman to be the second in line for the Presidency. Their “Christian Nation” value system uses Ephesians 5 and other parts of the Bible to condone a hierarchy putting women below men - so a woman could Never “rule” over men by Christian Nationalist standards. JESUS never said this - Jesus told people to love each other as I have loved you and treat each other as you want to be treated. The Son of God did not put men over women or slaves under their masters. These “christian nationals” are the false prophets and false teachers we were warned about by Jesus and the Apostles 2000 years ago. Jesus healed people - what kind of Christian - what kind of “Good Shepard” would allow their pregnant women to die of a bad pregnancy??????
Oh wow! You're right, CNN did a really good job with her face. Too bad about everything else. Yeah, I like to say the Christofascists follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Venture Capitalist.
Following up on. my prior comment, how are these actions/laws not in violation of the following federal statute?:
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, which amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq., prohibits discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.
In reading it, it appears to be related to employment but there has to be more extrapolated from the conditions of this Act. Would love to hear feedback from someone who has a legal background.
I keep hearing and reading comments like “Someday a woman is going to die..” or a mention of Savita Halappanavar and how the shock of her death led to change in Ireland. But in our non-communitarian and individualistic society, it’s easy for the misogynists to lay the blame on each individual woman rather than the system. Whenever I can, I point out that women ARE dying here. Women are 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy & childbirth in states with abortion bans. I like to post this link with my responses: https://thegepi.org/state-of-reproductive-health-united-states/
This is a heartbreaking story on multiple levels. As a primary care NP, I can’t help but think about how the entire health system failed Yeni. How is it that there are way too many hospitals with no L&D and counties with NO access to OBGYN care, in the United States of America?! If her basic needs had been met then we wouldn’t be reading about her death- she deserved to have insurance, to have access to a continuous supply of insulin and anti hypertension medications, and access to the necessary education that could have empowered her to properly take care of herself.
That headline is unbearably frustrating. Anytime anyone shares this story, that “question” is front and center. I am so, so angry.
I am far from being a lawyer but there is a golden nugget in this article that should get more attention: "Our job is to get both through the pregnancy safely, but that’s not always possible. And it’s very frustrating to have your hands tied because the patient who you need to save is not the one that’s protected by law.” How does it happen that woman's personhood is lessened when she becomes pregnant? This is an undeniable example of discrimination.
Yes. Absolutely. That quote needs to be shared widely.
I subscribe the The New Yorker, and I saw that article and had the exact same thought--Why not say "Abortion Ban Killed Young Texas Woman"?
If we're going to fight this fight, we need help from the media. We have to demand harder-hitting, unvarnished headlines. WaPo and the NYT are doing readers a great disservice these days with disingenuous headlines. Sometimes they change the headlines if enough people have complained within the comments section, but often it's after the article has been up for hours or days.
Since we can't count on the media to give an honest accounting in its headlines, Democrats will need to spend a lot of money to buy ads that say killed, died, septic and suffered brain damage, left her sterile...it has to be real, graphic and in your face.
I'm reading this now and just so frustrated. Everything is understated.
For example, "her blood pressure, however, had spiked to a worrisome 185/98."
"Worrisome"?!
"Worrisome" is a low fever that lasts a week or more.
Worrisome is when your kid is an hour late home from school.
A BP of 185/98 is a hypertensive crisis that could be fatal all on its own.
It's deadly not worrisome.
I flinched, too, at the use of "worrisome". How about "alarming"?
Jessica— do you know for a fact that there have been more deaths, or is this speculation? And do you know that families do not want these deaths reported as being due to denial of abortion services? Can you devote a newsletter to this— anonymizing if necessary, but I, for one, would like to get the lay of the land. I’ve been wondering why in so many months there have been no deaths reported—it seemed obvious to me that these bans would result in deaths, especially given the number of close calls we do know about
My suspicion is they are not counting the deaths. There's a coding system for deaths and if there's no code for "died for lack of a medically necessary abortion," the hospital will pick a different code.
Here are some of them:
https://platform.who.int/mortality/about/list-of-causes-and-corresponding-icd-10-codes
Maternal conditions O00-O99
Maternal haemorrhage O44-O46, O67, O72
Maternal sepsis O85-O86
Hypertensive disorders O10-O16
Obstructed labour O64-O66
Abortion O00-O07
Other maternal conditions O20-O43,O47-O63,O68-O71,O73-O75,O87-O99
That’s why it will take intrepid reporters and investigators to ferret out the truth. These things may not get coded, but someone close knows what happened and can reach out, which is how Jessica gets a lot of her stories, or hospital records can be looked at more carefully and suspicious pregnancy-related deaths flagged for further investigation.
Oh, for sure reporting will bring to light individual cases like this one. And that's great!
I was more talking about getting a data set. In fact, I'd be surprised if there aren't med school academics or similar somewhere trying to pull the numbers together.
I’ve been wondering as well. I thought by this time, surely, we would have data. We NEED the data.
Whoever has the jurisdiction to carry out a national investigation into deaths-by-abortion-ban should do so yesterday. I suspect there are more
I just read The New Yorker article which is detailed and well written. Where to begin? As a former nurse practitioner I am appalled that Yeni died, because it was a preventable death. I suppose I should not be surprised that, in the state of Texas, Yeni was unable to access health insurance (Medicaid). Her lack of insurance is just the start of this horrendous story because, not having insurance led to her to receive erratic and insufficient medical care during the early stages of her pregnancy. This quickly escalated to Yeni being treated in blatantly unethical ways. The fact that she was never counseled to know that her high risk pregnancy held the high probability of death for both she and her fetus is unthinkable. She should have been told that an elective abortion would both stop the decline of her health (due to hypertension and diabetes) and save her life. I could go on and on, but here is the bottom line- the health care system failed Yeni from start to finish. Those who allowed her to die due to their unethical care should be sued for medical malpractice. Health professionals who won’t do their job according to ethical standards and who are breaching the standards of care- either due to Texas abortion restrictions or because they work for a Catholic hospital- need to stop practicing. Allowing women like Yeni to die is simply unacceptable.
Texas refuses to expand Medicaid. All of the above is the result of the state. I do hope the family considers suing the state for this-
If you need something to lift your mood after that downer, here’s 10 minutes of my sister slapping the shit out of Cliffy the “sidewalk counselor” in front of Planned Parenthood this past Saturday. Includes a lovely rendition of “Mind Your Own Business!” as well as a hilarious segment where Cliffy is forced to deny the existence of Wonko.
https://youtu.be/CU2XgrpsNMA?si=QYVoYw6rMwTn2XuJ
The Gospel According To Wonko:
http://www.satori3.com/justdrew/wonko.html
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️👍
Your sister is not only a hoot but spot on.
Props to your sis. That video is lol!
Your sister just gets better and better. What is the deal with the wonko insanity?
This is horrific. I’m thankful to practice Ob/Gyn in a state that allows abortion. I’m certainly not naive to think that the healthcare system isn’t also broken in an abortion allowed state, but at least we don’t have that brokenness to add to our problems, at least for now.
I do want to make one correction to the article regarding a c-section after cardiac arrest. The medical term is “resuscitative hysterotomy” and the primary purpose is to improve survival chances for the mother (with the potential side benefit of improving the outcomes for the fetus). This is done for the mother, not for the feuts.
I bet your state allows Catholic hospitals to withhold life-saving care. And when you’re most vulnerable and in an ambulance you can’t always choose what hospital they deliver you to. Please, we need doctors to protest this two-tier system.
That definitely happens in catholic hospitals - I worked for one for a time and left because I couldn’t provide the care I needed to for my patients and the hospital cared more about the money they received from the Catholics than what members of their OB/GYN department thought.
Many of us are working to try and change things - within our own hospital systems as well as at our state level and nationally. More can and needs to be done. I agree - the system fails everyone when it fails anyone and change does not happen quickly enough.
I, an atheist, was forced to give birth to both my kids in a Catholic hospital. I don't think Catholic hospitals should be allowed to provide ob/gyn care. In my town, the Catholic hospital bought and then closed a nearby non-catholic hospital, forcing everyone in the area to go to Dominican. Fortunately, a new surgical center has been built and women here now have the choice I did not have.
We aren’t even TALKING about this. It’s as if it’s nit polite to tell women they won’t receive proper care at a Catholic hospital. I found out the hard way when my second pregnancy was ectopic and they wouldn’t treat me. I had NO IDEA about this and now their lousy subpar “care” is the standard of care in half of this nation PLUS the blue states where there are Catholic hospitals. And our Catholic “leaders” seem just fine with this. Imagine if Joe Biden were to say that this isn’t right…
So basically, the deadly states that ban abortion care are following the Catholic Church.... and what they have always done... which is nowhere near the separation of church and state- the church is ruling more and more on our society and the evangelicals are all for it...including those on the Supreme Court. I think the only hope is for democrats to gain control of congress and the presidency and then immediately reverse all of this insanity and reinstate roe and codify it. It won't be won in the rigged court system....even though to me, I see violations of constitutional rights all over the place...
The funny thing is the hardcore evangelicals think the Catholics are all going to hell anyway, even though they work together to attack women.
😄😁🤗
Yes!
I agree completely. I got tired of telling patients about the care I was trained to provide but couldn’t. It was dishonest and against my ethical and moral responsibility as a physician. And it is horrible and quite possibly deadly for patients when there are no other options and they are forced to receive religious based care instead of evidence based medicine.
Sadly we will see more of this. It will keep happening while the legislators, judges and DA continue to practice medicine without a license. They have no right. I pray there there is some underground emerging if it hasn't already that is helping people. Good people...I know this is risky but it happened before with the Jane's it will happen again especially if Mife is taken off the market.
I was around for the era of the Janes and this is not a comparable situation. In that previous era, there were prosecutors and others who had wives, sisters, daughters, mistresses, could empathize and were sometimes willing to look the other way. Also, the penalties were not as harsh. Today we have zealots who just want to prosecute women, period, even if, like Brittany Watts, they did nothing wrong. And legislative zealots imposing 99-year prison sentences, even the death penalty. Also, there is and will be some continued access to abortion medication, even if it’s only the 2nd pill, which works, just not as well. So we will have abortion funds and medication and underground railroads and private flights, but I doubt we will have citizen providers of surgical abortion, as in the era of the Janes.
That's the horror of it, that what's going on now is much worse than it was then. That's a really important point.
Yes there is an Underground Railroad already forming to get women safely to an abortion care state....
The stories absolutely need to keep coming. That said, and I hate to even post this, it's cruel but when we have a patient who is unhealthy independent of being pregnant, and a broken health care / health insurance / immigration law system, it's much easier for abortion bans to shirk responsibility. There's too much else going on. Americans have to believe this can happen to them or someone they know, and too many of them won't if they think it's preventable, if they think the circumstances are something that only affect other people. And if they don't see it happening to them, too many of them won't care, at least not enough for it to matter. This country has been letting the poor and particularly people of color die for its entire history. Dobbs is new, but that most definitely isn't. Of course these factors all add to each other, but if achieving reproductive rights is going to depend on greater social and economic justice, then I don't think it's going to happen. It has to be something that can be advocated for and advanced independently; otherwise we're waiting for voters to care about the sick and the poor, and history shows they don't. It's cruel, but the other side gets away with it if Americans can think the victims are not 'people like me'. I wish I were wrong about this, but I don't think I am. But the stories absolutely have to keep coming, because every one still needs to be told, if only to validate the humanity of those who are suffering (and dying). There's always a chance of making a difference, and I would argue that tempered expectations of the impact they will have actually make it more urgent to keep telling them.
Many of the women who almost died that are suing Texas are white, blonde, middle/upper middle class... I am pretty certain that this evil act of overturning Roe is effecting all kinds of women- but I'll bet that there's much more atrocities happening with poorer women that are not in the news....
I wonder how much of it is that many of the women in the Texas suit have the social capital to fight this battle and have the worst days of their lives publicized. As Jessica said, antis will pick apart Yeni's death and somehow find ways to blame her for being "noncompliant". They aren't a representative sample of people harmed by abortion bans, but they show how bans harm everyone.
Exactly. It's just that everyone needs to believe it could happen to them or someone they love, not just to those 'other' poor unfortunate souls.
Heartbreaking and enraging. This must stop 🛑 We need to stop the bans. And hold GOP accountable for this deplorable cruelty.
I'm feeling so many emotions at once it's hard to describe. My hypertension was why I got sterilized after the Dobbs decision. Texas is officially and undeniably killing women exactly like me.
A lot of people have gotten really snotty with me over the years, poo-pooing politics as "it's just politics, why do you care so much?" Or "why do you get so upset about politics." It's been part of the Republican agenda to make politics a bad word so people disengage. There's also this cynicism about politics that people think make them sound above it all and sophisticated. I think it makes them sound lazy and misguided. Politics is just life. It's the vehicle by which we exert our will on the rest of society. When you have a minority that wants to literally take your rights away, when you have a minority that wants to KILL you, you can't afford to disengage. It's why we're all here struggling through this together.
In my jumble of emotions there's one more that stands out. I just want to say that I'm so grateful for all of you, Jessica, and this community for being brave enough and strong enough to keep caring. Even when it's devastating. Thank you <3
People thought I was overreacting or just plain nuts when I got sterilized because Trump got elected. It's bad when politics forces us to make permanent choices on what to do with our bodies!
Right?! On top of that, it was hard! A 10 year effort. I didn't just get denied. The first time I had to go through this gauntlet of taking a class about alternative forms of birth control in a 90 degree room. I'm heat intolerant, I didn't make it. I got a totally useless ER visit instead, and they said I failed the class. Even 10 years later, trying to convince my cardiologist's PA to sign off on it was uhhhh funny but stupid.
"Your blood pressure is too high for general anesthesia."
"What about for pregnancy?"
The trainee next to her went "Jesus Christ!"
Thank you for sharing. Sending loving kindness and hugs to you Victoria 💜💜💜
Thank you so much <3 Sending them right back!
Victoria - look at your name -or what you have chosen to call yourself. Victory!! Victory over the stupidity and ostrich behavior that is working in the United States now because we are literally under attack from within in. I have been told the same thing you are being told but I am 67. I remember not having rights. I remember when a woman could not get a safe abortion and up to 50,000 women were dying PER YEAR from botched abortions. Over 100,000 per year were left maimed for life. Ministers and Rabbis had the numbers because they had stepped in to start an Underground Railroad for safe abortions. President Gerald Ford supported safe abortions because the slaughter of American women was so great in the name of a religion (Catholic) that wasn’t the State Religion. That’s why we Do Not have a State Religion in the United States. Yesterday, that the gaslighting, lying, sack of putrid, trump boot licking,false prophet worshiping, excuse for a female Elise Stefanik told non journalist anchor of Meet the Press that the Democrats were after the Catholic Church. The Pope knows the Democrats aren’t after the Catholic Church. Why do you think he just made the major announcement regarding “same sex couples”. Fight on dear lady because the Maggots are coming for your rights. White men won’t lose much they think if trump wins but everyone else in this country will lose everything we gained. Keep fighting
Thank you so much! I really appreciate your perspective! I'm 35, and these modern horror stories are worse than I imagined.
We absolutely share the same rancor for bootlicking performance artist, Elise Stefanik. It's extra wild since she's running around being as insane as possible trying to get Trump's attention for VP when she clearly doesn't wear enough make-up for him to consider her.
😂😂😂 She got a great makeup job for her interview on Meet the Press - but neither tfg nor the Maggots would ever allow a female VP. The 🍊is clearly deteriorating. His 2nd wife is/was involved in fighting LYME disease because she had it. Lyme disease affects thinking. The men behind the Maggot movement would never allow a woman to be the second in line for the Presidency. Their “Christian Nation” value system uses Ephesians 5 and other parts of the Bible to condone a hierarchy putting women below men - so a woman could Never “rule” over men by Christian Nationalist standards. JESUS never said this - Jesus told people to love each other as I have loved you and treat each other as you want to be treated. The Son of God did not put men over women or slaves under their masters. These “christian nationals” are the false prophets and false teachers we were warned about by Jesus and the Apostles 2000 years ago. Jesus healed people - what kind of Christian - what kind of “Good Shepard” would allow their pregnant women to die of a bad pregnancy??????
Oh wow! You're right, CNN did a really good job with her face. Too bad about everything else. Yeah, I like to say the Christofascists follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Venture Capitalist.