Susan Rinkunas has an insightful piece at The New Republic on the 14th Amendment and how MAGA world intends to make use of it. She echoes Jessica's warnings about language re fetal "personhood."
"The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to extend full citizenship to formerly enslaved Black people, and it undergirds the right of all Americans to be treated equally under the law, no matter who they are or in which state they reside. Yet over the past year, conservatives have been increasingly open in their beliefs that pregnant women, transgender adolescents, affirming parents of trans kids, and immigrants are not legally entitled to the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections—all while arguing that fertilized eggs are. Republicans are using strategic litigation to effectively rewrite the Fourteenth Amendment to prioritize conservative white men and embryos above and beyond everyone else. They are warping something used to grant rights into a bludgeon to take them away, and are redefining who counts as a person in the United States."
A pregnant woman caries a fetus until she gives birth, right? When it breathes it is alive and is a baby or child. Is this splitting hairs? As you always say
The antiabortionists are constantly pressuring language to bear the load of its convictions. "Preborn children", "unborn babies", "pro-life". Certainly this is a common political practice, but where we might have hope is where it stumbles into law. Babies and children are real legal terms that have the burden of a lot of history that will not bear the load of trying to dress up a woman's pregnancy, gestating tissue, into something it cannot legally be.
"An Indiana Republican has proposed legislation that would ban abortion medication entirely in the state, and require rape victims to sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury before being allowed care."
"Requires a woman who is pregnant as a result of rape or incest to provide to her physician an affidavit attesting to the rape or incest before the physician performs the abortion."
Actually, there is no mention of penalty of perjury, maybe this applies to the nature of an affidavit.
This whole rape exception thing is very weird. It really illustrates why abortions need to be elective in all cases and that nobody has any interest in a woman's decision in all this.
Rape is a crime. If a woman says she has been raped, then we might assume that she has filed a police report. Why isn't this mentioned as qualifying in the legislation? On the other hand, maybe she feels like she was raped, but doesn't want to report it. Maybe there were circumstances that made such an accusation hard or impossible. Maybe she had invited him for sexual intercourse and he had raped her anyway. Even worse, imagine she had not been raped, but was willing to declare that she had been raped in order to get the abortion. Some man had sex with her, it had not been rape and suddenly he risked being accused of rape. What good is an affidavit, if there is not a criminal investigation into this sexual partner? Does an investigation follow from the affidavit? If not, why not?
It goes on and on like that, I'm sure. The rape and incest exception is an old moral dodge of no real sympathy to women or the public.
At least the police arrested the guy. What the anti-abortion terrorists want is for the police to be too afraid to intervene. Even if laws protecting patients and clinics survive, they won't do much if they're not enforced. Law enforcement skew conservative and already don't want to help out more often than not.
"Growing threats to pro-life advocates" as though abortion providers haven't literally been murdered in their offices for providing (what was, at the time) a legally-protected medical procedure. These clowns have been salivating for this since the 1970s. I cannot be the only one who remembers all the abortion clinic bombings of yesteryear.
Found on UK yahoo. "From 1977 to 2020 in America, anti-abortion activists committed at least 11 murders, 26 attempted murders, 956 threats of harm or death, 624 stalking incidents and four kidnappings, according to data collected by the National Abortion Federation. They have bombed 42 abortion clinics, set 194 on fire, attempted to bomb or burn an additional 104 and made 667 bomb threats." https://uk.news.yahoo.com/anti-abortion-movement-killed-people-094505241.html?
I’m 54 and I live in Massachusetts. I remember vividly and also when Dr. Slepian was assassinated in his home in NY a few years later. I also remember zealot religious leaders saying of course we don’t condone the action but we understand it.
This is an escalation because to accept to we live in a pluralistic society that values equality and respect means they’ve lost once and for all.
Sometimes I am detached about the onslaught and sometimes I feel the weight of still not being seen as worthy enough to allow us full agency and participation and they are fine letting us suffer and die.
The ONLY time conservatives believe women who have been raped is when white women name black men or immigrants of color. When they finally processed all those rape kits in, I think, Chicago, they uncovered a number of serial rapists who had repeatedly gone free or never been charged and a number of their victims who had been threatened with jail time & one who was actually convicted and jailed for filing a false report. We’re coming into a time where it will be very dangerous for women to report sexual assault.
Repugs who pass abortion bans should face DIRE CONSEQUENCES. This shit they're doing to girls and women is unconscionable and people who love women should do whatever they can stop this.
They wish to be permitted to refuse to hire a woman who has had an abortion. How do they know? Do they expect women to behave as Hester Prynne was required to do?
Men absolutely dominate these reports. I’m not a babe in the woods, but I’m always astonished by how far some men will go, how deeply they’ll dedicate their time and resources, to control and confine people whose actions don’t remotely affect them - or, really, anyone. Congress is now filled with these hateful monsters, and their cruelty appears to be boundless.
So glad I live in Oregon & I haven't dwelled in Indiana since the 1980s. News like this makes me baffled that I actually was born in and grew up there. It's not embarassment, because I don’t feel connected to it, never mind that I remember hiking in the Indiana Dunes (Lake Michigan).
Now I take pride in the fact that I was a social pariah: I was the least popular kid in school.
I was so oblivious to politics as a teen that I didn't even know I was surounded by Republifascists. My parents are buried in NW Indiana, but I won't be visiting their graves any time soon.
Indiana here..I feel so hopeless in this red hell hole. I got my tubes removed back in July but I feel so bad for all the women that have been suffering here and will suffer. I'm raising 2 daughters and it seems like it won't ever get better for them. Thanks for reporting on my state.
I really want to know WHY the forced birth movement is so enthusiastic about wanting women to suffer. I can only think that they really, really hate women.
Demanding that women carry nonviable pregnancies to term and deliver dying or dead is horrible. It is inhumane.
Susan Rinkunas has an insightful piece at The New Republic on the 14th Amendment and how MAGA world intends to make use of it. She echoes Jessica's warnings about language re fetal "personhood."
"The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to extend full citizenship to formerly enslaved Black people, and it undergirds the right of all Americans to be treated equally under the law, no matter who they are or in which state they reside. Yet over the past year, conservatives have been increasingly open in their beliefs that pregnant women, transgender adolescents, affirming parents of trans kids, and immigrants are not legally entitled to the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections—all while arguing that fertilized eggs are. Republicans are using strategic litigation to effectively rewrite the Fourteenth Amendment to prioritize conservative white men and embryos above and beyond everyone else. They are warping something used to grant rights into a bludgeon to take them away, and are redefining who counts as a person in the United States."
https://newrepublic.com/article/189651/gop-supreme-court-citizenship-attack?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SF_TNR&utm_source=Twitter
Preborn children is not a thing, right?
A pregnant woman caries a fetus until she gives birth, right? When it breathes it is alive and is a baby or child. Is this splitting hairs? As you always say
The antiabortionists are constantly pressuring language to bear the load of its convictions. "Preborn children", "unborn babies", "pro-life". Certainly this is a common political practice, but where we might have hope is where it stumbles into law. Babies and children are real legal terms that have the burden of a lot of history that will not bear the load of trying to dress up a woman's pregnancy, gestating tissue, into something it cannot legally be.
Thank you. Well said.
Language is so important
"An Indiana Republican has proposed legislation that would ban abortion medication entirely in the state, and require rape victims to sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury before being allowed care."
Here is that part of the bill:
https://iga.in.gov/pdf-documents/124/2025/senate/bills/SB0171/SB0171.01.INTR.pdf
"Requires a woman who is pregnant as a result of rape or incest to provide to her physician an affidavit attesting to the rape or incest before the physician performs the abortion."
Actually, there is no mention of penalty of perjury, maybe this applies to the nature of an affidavit.
This whole rape exception thing is very weird. It really illustrates why abortions need to be elective in all cases and that nobody has any interest in a woman's decision in all this.
Rape is a crime. If a woman says she has been raped, then we might assume that she has filed a police report. Why isn't this mentioned as qualifying in the legislation? On the other hand, maybe she feels like she was raped, but doesn't want to report it. Maybe there were circumstances that made such an accusation hard or impossible. Maybe she had invited him for sexual intercourse and he had raped her anyway. Even worse, imagine she had not been raped, but was willing to declare that she had been raped in order to get the abortion. Some man had sex with her, it had not been rape and suddenly he risked being accused of rape. What good is an affidavit, if there is not a criminal investigation into this sexual partner? Does an investigation follow from the affidavit? If not, why not?
It goes on and on like that, I'm sure. The rape and incest exception is an old moral dodge of no real sympathy to women or the public.
At least the police arrested the guy. What the anti-abortion terrorists want is for the police to be too afraid to intervene. Even if laws protecting patients and clinics survive, they won't do much if they're not enforced. Law enforcement skew conservative and already don't want to help out more often than not.
"Growing threats to pro-life advocates" as though abortion providers haven't literally been murdered in their offices for providing (what was, at the time) a legally-protected medical procedure. These clowns have been salivating for this since the 1970s. I cannot be the only one who remembers all the abortion clinic bombings of yesteryear.
Found on UK yahoo. "From 1977 to 2020 in America, anti-abortion activists committed at least 11 murders, 26 attempted murders, 956 threats of harm or death, 624 stalking incidents and four kidnappings, according to data collected by the National Abortion Federation. They have bombed 42 abortion clinics, set 194 on fire, attempted to bomb or burn an additional 104 and made 667 bomb threats." https://uk.news.yahoo.com/anti-abortion-movement-killed-people-094505241.html?
I’m 54 and I live in Massachusetts. I remember vividly and also when Dr. Slepian was assassinated in his home in NY a few years later. I also remember zealot religious leaders saying of course we don’t condone the action but we understand it.
This is an escalation because to accept to we live in a pluralistic society that values equality and respect means they’ve lost once and for all.
Sometimes I am detached about the onslaught and sometimes I feel the weight of still not being seen as worthy enough to allow us full agency and participation and they are fine letting us suffer and die.
The ONLY time conservatives believe women who have been raped is when white women name black men or immigrants of color. When they finally processed all those rape kits in, I think, Chicago, they uncovered a number of serial rapists who had repeatedly gone free or never been charged and a number of their victims who had been threatened with jail time & one who was actually convicted and jailed for filing a false report. We’re coming into a time where it will be very dangerous for women to report sexual assault.
Repugs who pass abortion bans should face DIRE CONSEQUENCES. This shit they're doing to girls and women is unconscionable and people who love women should do whatever they can stop this.
They wish to be permitted to refuse to hire a woman who has had an abortion. How do they know? Do they expect women to behave as Hester Prynne was required to do?
Yeah, it's not like we wear t-shirts announcing it or anything. Do they think it leaves visible signs on our face?
Men absolutely dominate these reports. I’m not a babe in the woods, but I’m always astonished by how far some men will go, how deeply they’ll dedicate their time and resources, to control and confine people whose actions don’t remotely affect them - or, really, anyone. Congress is now filled with these hateful monsters, and their cruelty appears to be boundless.
Gods. I knew IN was bad when I left. I wish I could say I was surprised at what's going on there now, but I'm not.
So glad I live in Oregon & I haven't dwelled in Indiana since the 1980s. News like this makes me baffled that I actually was born in and grew up there. It's not embarassment, because I don’t feel connected to it, never mind that I remember hiking in the Indiana Dunes (Lake Michigan).
Now I take pride in the fact that I was a social pariah: I was the least popular kid in school.
I was so oblivious to politics as a teen that I didn't even know I was surounded by Republifascists. My parents are buried in NW Indiana, but I won't be visiting their graves any time soon.
Indiana here..I feel so hopeless in this red hell hole. I got my tubes removed back in July but I feel so bad for all the women that have been suffering here and will suffer. I'm raising 2 daughters and it seems like it won't ever get better for them. Thanks for reporting on my state.
I live in Indiana. 20 years of Republican rule. And you’re right about our AG 😡
I really want to know WHY the forced birth movement is so enthusiastic about wanting women to suffer. I can only think that they really, really hate women.
Demanding that women carry nonviable pregnancies to term and deliver dying or dead is horrible. It is inhumane.
Fanatical, patriarchal, primitive, superstition, often referred to as religion.
Religion.
I know. It's another glaring reminder of why separation of church and state needs to be reestablish.