49 Comments

I’m excited to see you coming up on MSNBC after this commercial break!!

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It should be clear to anyone with a brain that a woman having a miscarriage before fetal viability should be helped immediately because the fetus WILL die. It makes no logical sense to wait for the fetus to actually die, or to wait until the woman’s life and/or organs are in danger! Just like we don’t prevent men from getting treatment for testicular cancer because it will ‘murder’ their sperm & a potential lives…

In fact a fetus is but a potential life. Anything can happen between conception and birth. And it often does. Many women have miscarriages in the first trimester. A friend’s DIL lost her first baby last week because she had a sudden onset of preeclampsia at 21 weeks. She lost the baby, she nearly died, is still sick and nobody knows if she’ll be able to try again. An absolute tragedy not related to abortion bans but proving that women are risking their lives in pregnancy without some ignorant bigot making it worse.

Also, bodily autonomy is a human right. If the pro life faction really believe in saving lives, why are they not fighting for the government to start a database of everybody in the country for kidney donation, bone marrow donation and part liver donation? All these things can be donated from a living person, to save the lives of people who are slowly dying in pain and need help. We know why. It’s not about saving lives; it’s about controlling women. It may also be about some screwed up religious judgment about sex and proving paternity of ‘heirs’ (like does anyone really care; if so do a DNA test🙄).

Women’s bodies have been controlled since the beginning of time. Women know it’s their baby cos they’re there for conception and birth. Men not so much. And they can’t fucking stand it can they? Which is why women who have active sex lives are demonized; they’re called sluts, whores, the village bike, the martini girl etc, and men are studs cos they have a right to spread their seed or some such nonsense. Give me a break.

Women give up so much to have children, their careers, their identity, their bodies and they should be revered and protected not treated like a disposable replaceable brainless walking womb.

Please, doctors everywhere, treat your patients. They can’t sue everyone…

If Trump wins, we’re all screwed (all rights will be forfeited). If Harris wins but doesn’t have a Senate and House majority, pregnant women will still be screwed. We need to send a message that the American experiment is alive and kicking and we will not go quietly into the night, wait that’s from ‘Independence Day’… we are spitting mad, we care about all persons who can get pregnant and we are not going back to the dark ages. We have the fucking technology to saves lives, lives who already have dreams, aspirations, partners, families, children and rights FFS!

Sorry, I know I’m preaching to the converted here, but man this sucks. Are we really gonna be monitoring every person born female’s mental cycle? As if periods don’t suck enough. As an aside, in some Jewish sects, women are ‘unclean’ on their period and need a ritual bath to cleanse themselves when their period ends. But if they’re not sure it’s finished yet, they have to give their underwear to the Rabbi for inspection so he can rule on the end of their menses. How messed up is that? Really, what kind of weirdo inspects women’s knickers on a regular basis? Talk about controlling women’s bodies…

Anyway, sorry about the rant, love Jessica and all you do, stay safe.

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I love your rant, every damned word of it; & you won’t be preaching just to this choir, because I am going to share your comment here on Substack, on FB, & Threads & will also be emailing it to my younger sister. She voted for DJT specifically because he promised to appoint those justices to overturn Roe!! 🤬 so your comment may travel far. 😊💙

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Several parts of the Tribune article struck me:

The doctors treating Barnica “absolutely didn’t do the right thing,” she said. But she understood why they would have felt “totally stuck,” especially if they worked at a hospital that hadn’t promised to defend them.

Even three years after Barnica’s death, HCA Healthcare, the hospital chain that treated Barnica, will not disclose whether it has a policy on how to treat miscarriages.

Some HCA shareholders have asked the company to prepare a report on the risks to the company related to the bans in states that restrict abortion, so patients would understand what services they could expect and doctors would know under what circumstances they would be protected. But the board of directors opposed the proposal, partly because it would create an “unnecessary expense and burdens with limited benefits to our stockholders.” The proposal was supported by 8% of shareholders who voted.

The company’s decision to abstain has repercussions far beyond Texas; the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain has said it delivers more babies than any other health care provider in America, and 70% of its hospitals are in states where abortion is restricted.

Abortion bans and how the laws are written bad enough, but you have for profit hospitals (HCA etc) who wont take a stand to back their physicians when they have to make a life or death decision. (if the doctor is willing to take that risk). The hospital administrators are also part of the problem.

I read somewhere ( I don't recall if it was here at AED) or another news article but there was mentioned a couple hospitals in Texas that will take cases such as this. The names were not disclosed. I wish I could remember more details regarding this issue. I remember being surprised and also confused. Clearly if there is are a couple of facilities it is on the down low.

That's all I got today. sigh...

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Well we mustn't ever inconvenience the shareholders...

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Hospitals are totally fine with collateral damage......us dying.

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founding

This is valuable insight. Thanks for sharing it. I left a reply to another comment about providers before I got to this one, and I'd say the same thing: unfortunately, in this country, we can't always assume the institutions providing care have their patients' best interests at heart (and really we can just as often assume they don't :(

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Agreed. They have deep pockets. And during the Kate Cox case our DA Paxton threatened the hospitals. Fuckery indeed.

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I worked for HCA and the first I heard of the (P)Rick Scott welfare fraud suit, was in the cafeteria while fetching lunch. It was on CNN. We had recently changed our name and I then figured out why. My point being that fuckery is baked in to the institution.

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Anyone who can look at the photo of Josseli Barnica and her baby daughter without crying doesn’t have a heart. But (and I could be mistaken here) my understanding of SB8 pre-Dobbs is that it allowed citizens to sue each other for a $10,000 bounty, but did not contain draconian penalties for health care providers/institutions (like hospitals). If a medical care provider/institution feels his/her/its hands are tied because of the enormous risk of criminal prosecution ending in decades to life in prison and career suicide in the form of loss of license, these terrible consequences for women cannot be said to be the fault of doctors/medical facilities. But if there were no laws pre-Dobbs mandating these draconian penalties, or any penalties other than maybe the forfeiture of a $10,000 bounty, then the fault really does lie with the doctors/health care providers/medical institutions.

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I wouldn’t say the fault lies with them but I reiterate my stance on this as someone who has studied the history of civil rights, the women’s movement both suffrage and the second wave. Where are the courageous fighting within this system? I don’t expect all doctors to risk jail time to treat patients but I do think more would risk it when someone’s actual life was in their hands. And maybe that’s already happening and we don’t know about it. But when I think of the sacrifices that those who fought for dignity and human rights in the past, I wonder why aren’t more doctors standing up?

I know the answer and it makes me nauseous. Things aren’t bad enough yet. As bad as they are, until more people realize they are sue, attest, dehumanize and are going to kill us anyway, so we might as well go out swinging, we are still pawns in their game. Until the actual reality sets in about what they are complicit in, I don’t think we will see that type of defiance. I hope and pray that isn’t the cost, but I fear it will be.

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founding

Good point. While we don't seek to blame health care providers, we also in this country unfortunately cannot assume providers always have their patients' best interests at heart. Between for profit and religious institutions, there are a lot of bad eggs out there, and they can't be let off the hook either.

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The religious conviction that a woman's pregnancy is an infant, or a child and in some sense, actually superior to that of a child, even more precious and deserving of protection than even an infant is corrupting our society. It's as if we were all obliged to suffer to advance the belief that the sun and all the planets rotated around the earth as the center of the solar system. Or that we were all created by the hand of a Creator instead of being the product of evolution. No corner of human behavior or society in the world is safe from the sadistic fingers of depraved and absurd religious belief.

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Fascism fetishizes innocence. Look at the Catholic Church and the Virgin Mary for example. One which especially relates to our current situation.

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My son away in college: he is hiking through a nature preserve to hoof it to a post office in time to overnight me his absentee ballot application so I can be his surrogate and go get him his ballot to overnight back, in time, to vote for Kamala. Proud mama. My daughter already voted for her. All of her college mates did as well. She is in Ithaca, NY -- very liberal area. But wow. Kids are motivated.

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My son is also at school and this is his first presidential election. We are in Massachusetts so the president part will not have a direct impact but numbers matter and we also have some pretty important ballot questions. I have nagged him at least 5 times about getting his mail in ballot and making sure it’s post marked on time. He has sent me pics of the ballot arriving and assure me he’s on it. The kids are definitely motivated. I do think youth numbers are going to be high. These kids are more politically aware than I was at that age.

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Excellent article Jessica. This all calls to mind the fanaticism of the Spanish Inquisition in which sinners were burned at the stake. Here in the Unites States, those, whom our right-wing fanatics label as sinners, will just be allowed to die on their own, either in a hospital, at home, in their cars. or in prison for having violated the anti-abortion laws, such as a woman who sought an abortion after she was savagely raped by a repeat offender. We used to be able to look to our highest Court to vindicate our rights, but not only are they co-conspirators in suppressing them, they are openly and notoriously enriching themselves with lavish payments, gifts, vacations and other such benefits from stakeholders and de facto lobbyists on issues before them. They obviously must have theorized that our founding fathers wanted them to accept these pay-offs. The bottom line is that our country has become sick, and as the saying goes, " A fish stinks from the head down." And the last thing our country needs is for a rotted fish, which was thrown out of the bucket, to be tossed back in.

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Have you seen the ads for shirts saying ‘they didn’t burn witches, they burnt women’…

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No, I haven’t but I will look for one, because that is the truth.

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6 hrs ago·edited 5 hrs ago

I have lit a candle. It's outrageous. Outrageous! These politicians have no business meddling where they don't belong! What a beautiful woman and what a preventable tragedy. Disgusting.

How many more is right? She died in 2021. How many more have died since?

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Many more have died. It is outrageous that a state the size of Texas, with the wealth that Texas has at it’s disposal, would take 3 YEARS to review a maternal death!!!

As Jessica made plain in her appearance on MSNBC tonight, & in this article; they KNEW that women & girls would die!! They knew & they made plans to deal with the blowback by blaming the Drs, the hospital lawyers, & us - the pro choice people.

Texas put Skop on that maternal mortality review board for the express purpose of trying to cover up the number of deaths related to abortion bans. I hate those people, I despise them, they are evil. I’m going to go donate some more $$ to Colin Allred, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Lucas Kunce, Dan Osborn, & several other Democrats running for House & Senate. Harris must win, but she also must have a Congress to be able to get anything done.

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After reading this post I began thinking about thr columnists praising women who would refuse chemo or radiation, or a termination. You know what sick f*cks like that want to do? Here's my hypothesis: a young woman, already a mother, has cancer or a life-threatening pregnancy. She forges treatment or is denied treatment and dies. Forced birth zealots approach thr grieving father and suggest that, to help him, that THEY take the children, just til he gets ba k on his feet, you know, and he never gets them back, because they are adopted by forced birth zealots.

Crazy? Paranoid? I don't think so.

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I am sure I am not alone, but I have cried today. More than once. For this mother and for past and future moms.

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Yes, I have too; and I have also been so angry that it is making me sick at my stomach. I am just enraged.

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Track the Early Voting GENDER GAP in 2024 ABORTION ELECTION with this free dashboard

https://thedemlabs.org/2024/10/30/track-early-voting-gender-gap-abortion-election-free-dashboard/

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Great info. Seems like the group lining up the most in PA and NC is older white women who are married and have some decent income. Don't know what to make of that. I think Harris is winning only 45% of white women in general , in polls mind you. Maybe these are women who remember life before Roe and are like 'Nope. Not again."

Or they could be like the 70-year-old white women who hang at the bar in our lovely restaurant down the road wearing "Trump girl" shirts and making sure Fox is on the TV.

Or a mix.

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Excellent column! Thank you for the work you are doing, exposing these travesties. I remember when, as child, my psychiatrist father had to testify in court in favor of an abortion for an 11 year old patient impregnated by her father. In NY.

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Oh one question I would like to know- has there been a single doctor who has stood up to this madness and done the correct and ethical thing in Texas? Like they do in the free states? I doubt I should say that but I do literally see this as women free states and women slave states. I live in Texas. ( Austin).

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Yes. The doctors need to practice civil disobedience. But unfortunately, they aren't in a groundswell movement yet like the civil rights movement was in the '60s. We have to work towards that. At this point, there is too much isolation.

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I doubt that many, if any doctors want to risk prosecution and the loss of their medical license.

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I’m thinking that if every doctor with the backing of their hospital did the right thing and testified as such; yes we gave her an abortion, it was medically necessary, the fetus wouldn’t survive and our hippocratic oath demands we save the lives we can save; we are the experts in this field and you are not, we are right and you are wrong, we have done our job to the best of our ability. Unlike you…

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Yes. There are but they mostly haven’t been reported on which is good because I suspect most doctors doing this are doing it in the down low for obvious reasons. But I wish for a statement the way some marches during the 60s were. Like when Doctor Spock marched with Martin Luther King against the war in Vietnam. In many ways we were bolder back then because we weren’t complacent in the status quo. We were fucked already so why not do something?

Stevie Nicks just published her abortion story and connected it to her career. Yes, Yes, and more of this please. Having the full right of self determination is a reason that is worthy and valid and we were cowed into shame and expecting less. No matter what happens next I am glad for that. No more hedging. Women’s lives have value and we have a right to assert that.

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Which brings to mind, Abraham Lincoln's statement about whether free states and slave states could coexist.

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The parallels to the case of the woman who died in Ireland are eerie (almost identical circumstances, also 17 wks) -and that galvanized a country to make historic changes. I'm so grateful that ProPublica is doing this reporting and I hope it breaks through. I worry it will not in the face of all the misinformation, right wing spin, and racism. I just keep thinking about her daughter, motherless.

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Unfortunately I don't think that this will matter to some people until they or their wives and daughters are the women carrying a non-viable pregnancy, or have a life-threatening condition.

Sadly more women will die or have their health compromised because too many Americans don't care.

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I got off of Twitter for that reason. The hate on there for women is sickening. The insults. The objectification. I don't miss Twitter at all.

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7 hrs ago·edited 6 hrs ago

In the years after reading the "Gate to Women's Country" I recall, in the most maddening fashion insofar as all I can recall is the denouement, I read a novel, possibly a short story. In any event, the tale was about a country where the misogyny was so extreme that the women organized, and, in the course of a night, they departed for sanctuary in a neighboring land. From the oldest to the youngest, every female left. Fantasy of course. Imagine the logistics? Still...........

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I loved that book! I have it on my shelf. If you ever remember the other one, please let everyone know. There's (as noted below) truth, even in scenarios where writers let their imaginations run wild.

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I have been trying to locate the work for decades.

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Have you tried that thing called “The Wayback Machine?” or the online library that a couple of people are trying to put together? I heard about it on a podcast. They are trying to digitize & make available everything ever written.

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I have. A lot of the stuff that is rattling around in my head (70+ years now, is a looooong time!) that I can remember reading at some point likely appeared in pamphlets, alternative newspapers, limited circulation magazines, that sort of thing--where there were few copies made, publications went belly-up a while ago, and the like. Oh, and sometimes slide presentations, small circulation indie films. That's why big libraries with special collections, local collections, people's personal papers, and so on are so very valuable. Will all that output ever end up in some on-line library? Perhaps; we can hope. That's where some of the most valuable writing etc could be found. It's sort of like when archaeologists sift through the town dump at a site: gives them a window into ordinary people's lives, what they were thinking and doing--a very different picture than what they get when they open the carefully preserved tomb of a member of the elite, or read the much-reprinted writings of an elite person. Ordinary people, and their communications are fascinating, and very revealing--but often don't get preserved. (Because who wants to read some peasant's grocery list? Or read an article written by a high school drop-out for a low-circulation local 'zine from the late 60s. I can hear all the archaeology students in a hundred years' time, jumping up and down, tearing out their hair, and yelling, "Why didn't you keep that?")

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Sigh. I've got books/short stories/articles/films/etc like that on my list, too. People keep saying that The Internet Is All, but I'm living proof it isn't. I was just complaining about that exact situation on a different thread last week.

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Fantasy yes but there is a bit of truth in this. My friend lived abroad for 6 yrs. Her daughter is in college in France. She had no interest in coming back to America. Her mom said good stay there it’s safer than here. I ponder how many other people old and young are residing elsewhere

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I will be moving back to England if Trump wins and gets the House and the Senate. I’ll run for office there to prevent it happening there & will be an advocate for any American who wants to escape a crazy authoritarian dictator asshole…

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Lots. My sister lived in France, England, and Canada, over a period of 30 years. Her daughter was born in Switzerland. Sticker shock about the disgusting cost of health care here in the US was the first thing her family noticed upon coming back here about 9 years ago, even with Obamacare. If they could leave again, this time permanently, they've said they'd do it in a New York moment.

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I made sure this ended up in Greg Abbot's inbox. Probably he could care less. But I feel better about it, and making sure I told him he is a murderer.

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founding

Sometimes I think I'm really naive and privileged. Because I'm outraged too; I've been outraged for more than a few years here. I have to remind myself that I'm a man, and that I have this silly idea that human lives - that women's lives - matter. And how dare they. But that if I had been born female, I would have grown up learning and living the truth that they do not, that women are abused and harassed and assaulted and murdered, that it's been that way for millennia and that no one really cares all that much because it's just. the way. it is. I can sit here upset and saddened, and for most of you it's just another day. To echo Jessica because there's nothing else to say, I'm just so, so sorry. 💔

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I also have that same silly idea and yes I may experience that differently from you but I will not stay in that place for long. I will grieve for my loss of humanity and then I’m coming for these assholes with all the fury that I and women from the ages have gifted me with.

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