34 Comments

Feeling really proud to have been one of the nearly 500 volunteers in Montana gathering those signatures! Fuck Greg Gianforte, Austin Knudsen and Christi Jacobsen for attempting to stop the ballot initiative!

Expand full comment

❤️❤️❤️

Expand full comment

Ugh, Texas. But thank you for a great newsletter – dare I have hope??

Expand full comment

At heart, anti-choice anti-reproductive health laws are Christo-fascist. That's not inflammatory, it is simply accurate. A minority Christian group forcing their religious beliefs upon the entire population in a country that purports for now to value the separation of church and state.

And yes, dead babies are a feature, not a bug to them. If you believe that each dead baby is a soul that goes directly to "heaven," you can discount the devastating impact this has on the "vessel."

My sincere apologies to all offended by the horrifyingly dehumanizing language I just used (and we all should be horrified by the blunt reality it conveys).

This is a holy war to many, if not most, conservatives. There is only one way that this ends in anything other than disaster for us all. These people need to be thrown from office and barred from influence forever.

Expand full comment

We mostly refer to those fundamentalist, anti science, bronze age thinkers as "Forced-Birthers" they want to force pregnant people to deliver even dead babies, because they don't think women are anything other than walking incubators. They also will never support any funding going to help any destitute people who need help, unless they can preach their hate at them.

Expand full comment

I would like to know how Brenna Bird can look at herself in the mirror. In fact, I 'd like to know hoe ANY forced birth woman lives with the knowledge that they materially contribute to subjecting women to unnecessary stress and risks to their health, all so that these forced birthers can crow about how many babies they've "saved".

I truly wish that we could force Bird and other women like her to physically witness the suffering of an infant who is born to live a short, pain-filled life, and to witness the pain the parents feel as thy watch their child suffer needlessly.

Expand full comment

Because they are sadists, who have their wiring in their brain crossed. May they indeed experience that which they force upon others, times ten.

Expand full comment
founding

I’ll go further: I wish it would happen to them. Some people have no ability to feel other people’s pain. They only learn when they experience the pain. I hope these folks suffer. Greatly.

Expand full comment

🎯Republicans lack empathy, they only learn when "the leopard eats their face."

Expand full comment

Not sure sociopaths and cultists will ever learn to fear the leopard. Abbott IS disabled. The man is in a wheelchair and doesn’t care about disabled people in the way we do. Granted there are levels and types of disability. Disordered people will rise and dominate unless nice people find a way to dominate them. I don’t know the answer, only that perhaps most who wind up in power have a will to it which means they are hiding (or not) a disordered self, be it sadist, sociopathic, or otherwise, and they will craftily politic their way into subjugating others unless nice people get craftier. I don’t like it, but I finally see it. Nice people have been rolled over for decades to get rid of the social safety net, anti-trust law, slowly dismantling civil rights, etc., and frankly I’m mad at myself for finally saying wow, we should’ve been cutthroat all this time. They were and got everything they wanted. I feel duped.

Expand full comment

We need to stop their horseshit and wake people the hell up!

Expand full comment

I think the issue is that they don't even feel their own pain. They are able to stay emotionally dissociated by constantly transferring their pain onto others.

Expand full comment

Agree. Also, cult psychology. We are not talking about things that make sense and empathy.

Expand full comment

That is an interesting theory and it makes sense, abused people abusing others...

Expand full comment

“Also in Texas, the Texas Tribune looks at the incredible 99.89% decline in abortions in the state.”

Also if I understand this right, this doesn’t include self-managed abortions. The government is just dumber and less knowing now. Like reporting that because PornHub has an age requirement that no one in a state is watching porn.

Either way though it works more in their favor. They get fear and frustration from their opposition who is less and less visible, they can pretend to their base they’ve did what they said, government sucks a little more, and everyone is a little more cynical about it.

Expand full comment

I read those stats to prove “exceptions” are essentially non-existent in the state.

Expand full comment

Excellent point.

Expand full comment

A Human baby is born to human parents of the Human Race. The human baby may be born healthy, sick, deformed, or dead; "it should not matter how we adult humans care for the baby." The human baby may be black, red, yellow, brown, white, or any combination of those colors, and "it should not matter how we adult humans care for the baby." The human baby may be born male, female, or transgender, and "it should not matter to how we adult humans care for the baby."

We adult humans need to love, hold, care for, clothe, feed, nurture, and protect all human babies so they may grow and live healthy, happy, productive lives.

Expand full comment

Your point is?

Expand full comment

Where the Republicans want all children to be born no matter what, and when those babies are in elementary, middle, and maybe even in High School, The Republicans refuse to help feed the poor babies, now children, to survive by refusing to use the National School Lunch Program. So, in the long term, what do Republicans want from these babies?

Many Republicans want to MAKE MONEY from them, where they use the now mixed population of babies, children, teenagers, and adults like Roman Gladiators, fighting in an arena for prostitution, female and male, for human trafficking, or enslaved people. All big money makers for the Republicans WORLDWIDE.

Are the Republicans running their own baby factory right here in America? Let us find the answers. We will have to dig deep.

Expand full comment

I think it is an AI bot it says "Human" way too much, as opposed to what chickens? Real people don't talk like that.

Expand full comment
founding

From WBUR in Boston reporting on Gov. Healey’s executive order: “Massachusetts hospitals could also lose their licenses if they do not provide emergency care outlined in state and federal law, and insurers should cover emergency abortion care, Healey's office said.”

I wonder if this includes Catholic hospitals?

Expand full comment

I fucking hope so, there are almost always good doctors working in those institutions, who aren't chistofascists, who want to give best standard of care.

Expand full comment

The link to the order is below. It doesn't exclude any hospitals. I suspect any religious based institutions will fight the order in court, as may some doctors. Note the reference to EMTALA as well. https://www.mass.gov/executive-orders/no-633-protecting-access-to-emergency-abortion-care-in-massachusetts

Expand full comment
founding

Yeah, I had seen that as well, thanks for including the link. I really want it spelled out so everyone is clear. I didn’t know Catholic hospitals denied care until it happened to me (even though Roe and EMTALA existed), and I feel like I have to do what I can to warn others, as well as try to help change this exclusion.

Expand full comment

You aren't the only one here they have tried to kill. Thank you for warning others.

Expand full comment

I would like to see women who are refused care at Catholic hospitals to fill lawsuits against the hospitals for medical malpractice or negligence.

Make them spend money on legal counsel.

Start doxxing the board members and doctors who refuse care. Picket their homes, country clubs, houses of" worship".

Expand full comment

🎯❤️There is no excuse for not giving best medical practice care, and if they can't do that, keep them out of healthcare altogether.

Expand full comment

Yes, and pitting healthcare against patients creates another problem. Healthcare providers are fleeing OB-GYN. Medical boards throw them under the bus. Professional orgs don’t do enough, though they have LOBBYISTS, and I suspect they could do much more about the issue if they weren’t infiltrated with fascists. Just like if you have a painful condition and you need a new primary care doctor, even if you don’t want them to handle your pain, you now can’t get a primary to see you at all. And pain clinics closed. And oncologists no longer treat pain, nor do surgeons post op, they say “get a pain doc” knowing there aren’t any. And if you die or have a terrible complication, good luck getting legal help. This is a worse problem for people with chronic issues, but that’s a lot of people. I’m not defending healthcare, just saying we need healthcare providers, and I don’t know what the answer to that is either. The fascists have really done a number on everybody.

Expand full comment

And journalistic malpractice abounds. Did anyone see the debate last night and despair?

Expand full comment

Thans for your piece offering hope because I find today a very sad day for me. I came of age before Roe and gave birth to a child I had to surrender for adoption. It was a pain that I have carried for all of years since. That is why I was so happy when the Roe decision came down because I believed that women like me would never have to be forced into such a difficult choice.

Living in Texas is like living in hell. As an activist I have had to sit through city and county meetings where Mark Lee Dickson called us "murderers" and called those who help women get health care "traffickers." As I've said before, Mark Lee Dickson struts around with his backward ball cap looking like an aging incel that can't get a date. If there is any doubt he hates women, just look at his writings when he brags he has never had sex.

These data are stark. The increase in teen pregnancy, the number of rape victims who had to endure a pregnancy and the strategy to make mothers carry nonviable pregnancies are patently cruel. I don't think it is that they don't care about us, they want to punish us for wanting to control our own lives.

Thanks to all of you for the work you do. The money being raised is a reason for hope. Let's hope our biggest hope will come on November 4.

Expand full comment

He is an aging Incel. He probably has multiple victims buried in shallow graves somewhere. He has that sadistic serial killer vibe, like Stephen Miller.

Expand full comment

I am one of those surrendered babies born before Roe. My heart goes out to you and all the women who did not have a legal choice. Whatever right to life I may have in no way entitled me to inhabit another person's body against her will. The pain of both birth mothers and adoptees is silenced to some degree by the shame that is wrongly attached to it.

Expand full comment

There are no easy answers for any of this. Because there are no easy answers, the government has no business imposing a decision on women and their families. Bless you, hope you are having a happy and fulfilling life full of love.

Expand full comment