I already got my iud, right when roe was overturned. They will not control me! But my iud kinda sucks, my period is really heavy and crampy, but it is the cost of freedom, and I will bear it 😃 by the time it is no good my fertility will be a fart in the breeze. 12 years it’s good for!
I *always* think of the scene in the show, where June can't get her birth control filled because she's just stuck on customer service hold forever. It feels so innocuous, except that's exactly how this will play out.
I just have to say, as a psychologist who works very very frequently with children who suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome disorders that not telling women about the dangers of drinking alcohol during pregnancy is totally different from the other kinds of things that are being warned warned about. I really really hope that you don’t see drinking alcohol in any amount as benign to anyone who would like to have a child, or have a child adopted. No child should should have to live with fetal alcohol syndrome for the rest of their lives.
Here is the difference between the two sides. Pro Choice or now known as Reproductive Health Rights advocates would talk about fetal alcohol syndrome as part of a healthy pregnancy and lifestyle, without using it to either ban contraceptives OR to put young women in jail for miscarriages because they drank alcohol: which is already happening.
OK, I understand misogyny. It’s been “The Year of ….”
Plus, I guess those extreme hetero male legislators must have partners who buy into it, because they certainly don’t intend to go without sex. Or maybe the partners aren’t hetero. Or are prepubertal.
But where are the rest of the men?
Speak up !! Please!!
Dating? Your pick-up line will have to change from “your place or mine” to “how about a fun game of pregnancy roulette.”
Married? You do have sisters, partners, and daughters, right??
Controlling reproduction is their chosen method. But I believe the goal is always cheap labor and higher profits. Controlling reproduction means a disempowered workforce. And a disempowered workforce is how they exploit, control and profit off of all the world's resources. Including human ones. Especially in the care economy.
"After all, what better way to force women back into the kitchen than by ensuring they’re forever pregnant?"
Who are they putting back in the kitchen? When I read that statement I inferred you mean rich women, and mostly white women? Historically all poor women particularly poor women of color have had to have their babies and work in menial low paying jobs. So are they trying to make poor women poorer and to have wealthy women have more babies? Controlling women is the goal, but are they trying to also make this a race issue and a class issue? Or is there just so many layers that all lead back to control?
I think it's inherently a race issue and a class issue. Conservatives haven't been shy that they don't like jobs going overseas and want to incentivize companies to keep operations in America. How can we stack the school to prison pipeline for cheap prison slave labor if there are less kids in school? Or worse, the same amount of kids, but with better funded schools so they can actually escape the cycles of poverty?
Wealthy white women are wanted to be back in the kitchen, and so are middle and upper middle class white women. Poor white women are barely thought about, and for everyone else, they want us back as slaves. I don't think they've really hidden that.
Another example of how right-wing media inserts false messaging which then gets picked up by ALL media is the pervasive lie behind “hearbeat bills.” No matter how many times OB/GYN’s say “There. Is. No. Heartbeat. At. Six. Weeks.”, the next coverage by NYT and ABC, etc, etc says “state X just passed a Heartbeat Bill”….as if there is a beating heart in a clump of cells the size of a grain of rice. On and on and on.
There’s a Gofundme page set up for this family to help them relocate out of MS to a place with other family who will help with child care and allow this child to get away from her rapist, who police do not seem inclined to prioritize arresting. A fresh start, which will continue to have its own challenges. What “Regina” wrote on the Gofundme will break your heart because we know she is 1 of so many with a similar story. The fund has been verified.
What breaks my heart is why this OB-Gyn didn’t help this family find the financial help it needed to get this child help at the 11-12 week time frame. Again, the mom’s words on the page are heart wrenching to read.
The intersection of poverty, race, and a broken health care system. The difference here is they couldn't make the trip to Chicago. And of course Americans have hearts of stone when it's people of color and the poor who are suffering. If they cross the threshold of someone Americans care about, they cross the threshold of those who can make a trip to Chicago :(
I was on birth control for years to manage PCOS. I remember the odyssey of trying to have consistency with the meds - insurance companies would switch me to different pills without telling me to save money (nevermind that they are *not* the same). One of the pills switched to a chewable version at one point - I assume simply so the drug company could re-patent and make money without immediate competition from the generics. Prices would go up and down. And there was really only one pill that wouldn’t make me puke. Once I left my pills at home while traveling and trying to get a replacement pack was a nightmare. All of this is to say that birth control has been a mess for a while now and it was always clear to me that my health never mattered to anyone - to the people making the drugs, to the insurance companies, to the pharmacists (one literally smirked at me when I picked up my prescription). From talking to friends who had similar situations happen to them, I’m pretty sure this is all just how it is for many of us. It is profoundly scary when you think about just how few people truly know about and want to promote women’s health. Thank you for writing this - looking forward to the rest of the series.
I had problems getting named brand birth control pills. Every month a fight. Every month I explained I have been on Loestrin since I was 19 I am not changing now. I had one male pharmacist and one female doctor tell me never use generic meds when it comes to heart or birth control or hormone pills. I had many female doctors tell me there is no difference - that is bs. Sometimes I wonder if women are our own worst enemies.
Ugh. As a man I get angry reading here every day, and I always have to remember that women might not be as angry just because they might be more used to it. Used to 'never matter[ing] to anyone', that it's 'all just how it is' when you're female, because yes it's all they've ever known. And that is so incredibly sad, but it also makes me more angry. And I think it would be really really helpful if it made more men more angry. Slavery didn't end either until enough white people cared.
I am a post-menopausal woman, and I am angry enough to spit nails. I so so so hate the idea of ending my life in a world where women and girls have fewer rights than I had. I makes me feel like a total failure that we were unable to protect the rights that we fought for. I hate living in a state (Texas) that has been gerrymandered to the point that the state legislature is no longer at all representative of the population's positions, not just on abortion, but on many other major issues. Only 38% support the state's position on abortion. Only 30% approve of the government's handling of gun violence. Only 30% support the government's (mis)handling of K-12 education in the state. Only 38% approve Abbott's shenanigans on the border.
We don't have democracy in Texas; we have a carefully engineered oligarchy. The state government has so effectively drawn bullet-proof Republican districts that it will be almost impossible to get us out of this situation.
Same here. It is really hard to accept that in our lifetimes this country has actually gone backwards for women. I live in downstate Illinois, so while the state is ok, my region is more like Texas. To avoid feeling like a failure, I remind myself that I fought for women’s right for decades. It helps.
I don't know your health but let's hope your life doesn't end before we change direction. I do think it can feel like failure but I really do believe roots have been laid down over the past fifty years and it won't be as easy to go back as the enemy hopes. Right now we are in a fierce backlash to everything liberal or progressive, basically all the advancements humanity has made since the '60s, and the other side is exploding like a dying star. If we can hang on there's light at the end of the tunnel eventually, but yes we don't know how bad it might have to get first.
With regard to Texas, and any other red state, yes, district based elections are the best for Republicans and the hardest for Democrats. It's not only gerrymandering; it's that geography has favored Republicans because our voters are more densely packed, so it's harder to not "waste votes". So Republican gerrymandering is easier and more effective than Democratic gerrymandering. (Also Democrats tend to favor 'good government' and so are often more opposed to gerrymandering on principle.)
Therefore in a red state we always have to work on winning statewide elections first. Districting doesn't affect those. My home state of Wisconsin is a really good example. We have zero chance at the legislature, but we've been able to win many statewide elections, including having finally flipped our state supreme court this year. The justices are likely to require fairer maps, but the state's geography makes me skeptical of Democrats being able to win the legislature. Still we're in a better position than we have been since the most recent political realignment.
I don't know how many years Texas is away from being able to elect a Democrat to statewide office, but that will happen long before the legislature becomes competitive, so that's where we should focus. Finding good statewide candidates is the challenge.
I’ve been thinking about this, and I think there are a couple of reasons why it seems women aren’t as angry. One of them, as you point out, is that this isn’t exactly new to any of us. But also, emotions in our culture are taught in a very gendered fashion. Men are only allowed two - anger, and lust. Since they’re taught the rest of the emotions are “girly” and that’s the worst thing a man can be, whenever they have a feeling, they have to filter it through one of those, and fast - without processing or examination, or they might have to recognize those other emotions. Women are allowed any emotion *except* for lust and anger. We are taught to suppress those, because they’re “unladylike.”
So we are taught that we *must* examine our emotions, to understand what is underneath them. Why are we feeling anger? What’s really going on under that? Why are we angry? And instead of focusing on the anger, we focus on the answer to that question.
Culturally, women’s anger is often dismissed or minimized as unjustified- we are making a big deal out of nothing, we are “too emotional,” or the great old standby - we must be having PMS. It’s never seen as a valid response or reaction to circumstance.
Good insight. I've thought of the gist before, but not the specific segregation of anger and lust and the assignment.
It is good if anger prompts one to examine the reason for it, but I think the anger still has to be part of the process. I understand anger to specifically be the (correct) response to injustice. So, considering that, women really ought to be angry all the time. Likewise, people in a position of privilege really shouldn't ever be getting angry at all, at least not on behalf of themselves.
And yes, gendering emotions is a really really bad cultural practice.
We definitely shouldn’t have to think/feel that way - thank you for pointing it out - I don’t stop to think about that enough! I think it’s just self-preservation. There is only so much anger (and cortisol!) the body can take. And so we accept things - way more than we should. I seriously hope we never accept what is happening now post-Roe, but I also need to find ways to stay vigilant without just becoming anger.
Oh, it is self-preservation, and yes, it has to be that way. That's why the onus is on men to do something, to be vigilant, which is a very good choice of word. We don't have that same burden of self-preservation, we don't bear that same risk, so we have more freedom to act. And women shouldn't have to do all the fight for equality themselves (but of course you always do), and can't do it all themselves, not when men make themselves an obstacle instead of making themselves helpful. Not to even mention that anytime we're talking about something related to pregnancy there's sperm involved. It's all clear as a bell but unfortunately many people suck, the defenders of sexism and patriarchy (and laziness), both male and female.
today a client of mine told me that some boys at her children’s high school are yelling “your body; my choice” at girls https://substack.com/home/post/p-151352227?source=queue&autoPlay=false
Such a very important article/series. Thank you.
good point!
Yep. And how she is sent home from her job....
I already got my iud, right when roe was overturned. They will not control me! But my iud kinda sucks, my period is really heavy and crampy, but it is the cost of freedom, and I will bear it 😃 by the time it is no good my fertility will be a fart in the breeze. 12 years it’s good for!
And, I will say, for the 8000th time that Margaret Atwood’s handmaid‘s tale is just completely fucking prophetic
I *always* think of the scene in the show, where June can't get her birth control filled because she's just stuck on customer service hold forever. It feels so innocuous, except that's exactly how this will play out.
.....Which the Pro-Compulsory-Pregnancy and Who-Gives-a-FatF%#@-If-You-Die Crowd use as an Incel's Wet Dream Procedure Manual.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Love that comparison!
I just have to say, as a psychologist who works very very frequently with children who suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome disorders that not telling women about the dangers of drinking alcohol during pregnancy is totally different from the other kinds of things that are being warned warned about. I really really hope that you don’t see drinking alcohol in any amount as benign to anyone who would like to have a child, or have a child adopted. No child should should have to live with fetal alcohol syndrome for the rest of their lives.
Here is the difference between the two sides. Pro Choice or now known as Reproductive Health Rights advocates would talk about fetal alcohol syndrome as part of a healthy pregnancy and lifestyle, without using it to either ban contraceptives OR to put young women in jail for miscarriages because they drank alcohol: which is already happening.
OK, I understand misogyny. It’s been “The Year of ….”
Plus, I guess those extreme hetero male legislators must have partners who buy into it, because they certainly don’t intend to go without sex. Or maybe the partners aren’t hetero. Or are prepubertal.
But where are the rest of the men?
Speak up !! Please!!
Dating? Your pick-up line will have to change from “your place or mine” to “how about a fun game of pregnancy roulette.”
Married? You do have sisters, partners, and daughters, right??
Plenty of women (unfortunately) aren’t just okay with it, they’re the orchestrators. Look at Ginny Thomas.
Controlling reproduction is their chosen method. But I believe the goal is always cheap labor and higher profits. Controlling reproduction means a disempowered workforce. And a disempowered workforce is how they exploit, control and profit off of all the world's resources. Including human ones. Especially in the care economy.
The Fifth Circuit has decide against the 2016 FDA expansion of mifepristone. Not unexpected, but still deeply infuriating.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/16/abortion-pill-mifepristone-court-ruling-appeal/?commentID=d490afe2-4ecf-43c9-8de7-1c070d5c7c4f
Next stop is Brett Kavanaugh, where these things are always decided. To quote Depeche Mode, "I think that God's got a sick sense of humor".
"After all, what better way to force women back into the kitchen than by ensuring they’re forever pregnant?"
Who are they putting back in the kitchen? When I read that statement I inferred you mean rich women, and mostly white women? Historically all poor women particularly poor women of color have had to have their babies and work in menial low paying jobs. So are they trying to make poor women poorer and to have wealthy women have more babies? Controlling women is the goal, but are they trying to also make this a race issue and a class issue? Or is there just so many layers that all lead back to control?
I think it's inherently a race issue and a class issue. Conservatives haven't been shy that they don't like jobs going overseas and want to incentivize companies to keep operations in America. How can we stack the school to prison pipeline for cheap prison slave labor if there are less kids in school? Or worse, the same amount of kids, but with better funded schools so they can actually escape the cycles of poverty?
Wealthy white women are wanted to be back in the kitchen, and so are middle and upper middle class white women. Poor white women are barely thought about, and for everyone else, they want us back as slaves. I don't think they've really hidden that.
brilliant as always, Jessica. Thanks!
Another example of how right-wing media inserts false messaging which then gets picked up by ALL media is the pervasive lie behind “hearbeat bills.” No matter how many times OB/GYN’s say “There. Is. No. Heartbeat. At. Six. Weeks.”, the next coverage by NYT and ABC, etc, etc says “state X just passed a Heartbeat Bill”….as if there is a beating heart in a clump of cells the size of a grain of rice. On and on and on.
I get angry over Heartbeat bull crap too. Damn ultrasounds.
FYI today from The Guardian
https://apple.news/Aie6OGK_sRg2EJ_wVDRjOOw
This is not about birth control but it is heartbreaking.
https://time.com/6303701/a-rape-in-mississippi/
There’s a Gofundme page set up for this family to help them relocate out of MS to a place with other family who will help with child care and allow this child to get away from her rapist, who police do not seem inclined to prioritize arresting. A fresh start, which will continue to have its own challenges. What “Regina” wrote on the Gofundme will break your heart because we know she is 1 of so many with a similar story. The fund has been verified.
What breaks my heart is why this OB-Gyn didn’t help this family find the financial help it needed to get this child help at the 11-12 week time frame. Again, the mom’s words on the page are heart wrenching to read.
Thanks Alison. This link was copied from the Jezebel article today: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-ashley-the-time-article
Leslie,
I just came here to post that. Thank you for beating me to it! It’s a horribly tragic story.
The intersection of poverty, race, and a broken health care system. The difference here is they couldn't make the trip to Chicago. And of course Americans have hearts of stone when it's people of color and the poor who are suffering. If they cross the threshold of someone Americans care about, they cross the threshold of those who can make a trip to Chicago :(
I was on birth control for years to manage PCOS. I remember the odyssey of trying to have consistency with the meds - insurance companies would switch me to different pills without telling me to save money (nevermind that they are *not* the same). One of the pills switched to a chewable version at one point - I assume simply so the drug company could re-patent and make money without immediate competition from the generics. Prices would go up and down. And there was really only one pill that wouldn’t make me puke. Once I left my pills at home while traveling and trying to get a replacement pack was a nightmare. All of this is to say that birth control has been a mess for a while now and it was always clear to me that my health never mattered to anyone - to the people making the drugs, to the insurance companies, to the pharmacists (one literally smirked at me when I picked up my prescription). From talking to friends who had similar situations happen to them, I’m pretty sure this is all just how it is for many of us. It is profoundly scary when you think about just how few people truly know about and want to promote women’s health. Thank you for writing this - looking forward to the rest of the series.
I didn't realize how lucky I was. I always got my pap and bc pills from family planning clinics from 1975 to 1996. Cheap and no hassle.
I had problems getting named brand birth control pills. Every month a fight. Every month I explained I have been on Loestrin since I was 19 I am not changing now. I had one male pharmacist and one female doctor tell me never use generic meds when it comes to heart or birth control or hormone pills. I had many female doctors tell me there is no difference - that is bs. Sometimes I wonder if women are our own worst enemies.
Ugh. As a man I get angry reading here every day, and I always have to remember that women might not be as angry just because they might be more used to it. Used to 'never matter[ing] to anyone', that it's 'all just how it is' when you're female, because yes it's all they've ever known. And that is so incredibly sad, but it also makes me more angry. And I think it would be really really helpful if it made more men more angry. Slavery didn't end either until enough white people cared.
I am a post-menopausal woman, and I am angry enough to spit nails. I so so so hate the idea of ending my life in a world where women and girls have fewer rights than I had. I makes me feel like a total failure that we were unable to protect the rights that we fought for. I hate living in a state (Texas) that has been gerrymandered to the point that the state legislature is no longer at all representative of the population's positions, not just on abortion, but on many other major issues. Only 38% support the state's position on abortion. Only 30% approve of the government's handling of gun violence. Only 30% support the government's (mis)handling of K-12 education in the state. Only 38% approve Abbott's shenanigans on the border.
We don't have democracy in Texas; we have a carefully engineered oligarchy. The state government has so effectively drawn bullet-proof Republican districts that it will be almost impossible to get us out of this situation.
Same here. It is really hard to accept that in our lifetimes this country has actually gone backwards for women. I live in downstate Illinois, so while the state is ok, my region is more like Texas. To avoid feeling like a failure, I remind myself that I fought for women’s right for decades. It helps.
I don't know your health but let's hope your life doesn't end before we change direction. I do think it can feel like failure but I really do believe roots have been laid down over the past fifty years and it won't be as easy to go back as the enemy hopes. Right now we are in a fierce backlash to everything liberal or progressive, basically all the advancements humanity has made since the '60s, and the other side is exploding like a dying star. If we can hang on there's light at the end of the tunnel eventually, but yes we don't know how bad it might have to get first.
With regard to Texas, and any other red state, yes, district based elections are the best for Republicans and the hardest for Democrats. It's not only gerrymandering; it's that geography has favored Republicans because our voters are more densely packed, so it's harder to not "waste votes". So Republican gerrymandering is easier and more effective than Democratic gerrymandering. (Also Democrats tend to favor 'good government' and so are often more opposed to gerrymandering on principle.)
Therefore in a red state we always have to work on winning statewide elections first. Districting doesn't affect those. My home state of Wisconsin is a really good example. We have zero chance at the legislature, but we've been able to win many statewide elections, including having finally flipped our state supreme court this year. The justices are likely to require fairer maps, but the state's geography makes me skeptical of Democrats being able to win the legislature. Still we're in a better position than we have been since the most recent political realignment.
I don't know how many years Texas is away from being able to elect a Democrat to statewide office, but that will happen long before the legislature becomes competitive, so that's where we should focus. Finding good statewide candidates is the challenge.
Zach,
I’ve been thinking about this, and I think there are a couple of reasons why it seems women aren’t as angry. One of them, as you point out, is that this isn’t exactly new to any of us. But also, emotions in our culture are taught in a very gendered fashion. Men are only allowed two - anger, and lust. Since they’re taught the rest of the emotions are “girly” and that’s the worst thing a man can be, whenever they have a feeling, they have to filter it through one of those, and fast - without processing or examination, or they might have to recognize those other emotions. Women are allowed any emotion *except* for lust and anger. We are taught to suppress those, because they’re “unladylike.”
So we are taught that we *must* examine our emotions, to understand what is underneath them. Why are we feeling anger? What’s really going on under that? Why are we angry? And instead of focusing on the anger, we focus on the answer to that question.
Culturally, women’s anger is often dismissed or minimized as unjustified- we are making a big deal out of nothing, we are “too emotional,” or the great old standby - we must be having PMS. It’s never seen as a valid response or reaction to circumstance.
Good insight. I've thought of the gist before, but not the specific segregation of anger and lust and the assignment.
It is good if anger prompts one to examine the reason for it, but I think the anger still has to be part of the process. I understand anger to specifically be the (correct) response to injustice. So, considering that, women really ought to be angry all the time. Likewise, people in a position of privilege really shouldn't ever be getting angry at all, at least not on behalf of themselves.
And yes, gendering emotions is a really really bad cultural practice.
We definitely shouldn’t have to think/feel that way - thank you for pointing it out - I don’t stop to think about that enough! I think it’s just self-preservation. There is only so much anger (and cortisol!) the body can take. And so we accept things - way more than we should. I seriously hope we never accept what is happening now post-Roe, but I also need to find ways to stay vigilant without just becoming anger.
Oh, it is self-preservation, and yes, it has to be that way. That's why the onus is on men to do something, to be vigilant, which is a very good choice of word. We don't have that same burden of self-preservation, we don't bear that same risk, so we have more freedom to act. And women shouldn't have to do all the fight for equality themselves (but of course you always do), and can't do it all themselves, not when men make themselves an obstacle instead of making themselves helpful. Not to even mention that anytime we're talking about something related to pregnancy there's sperm involved. It's all clear as a bell but unfortunately many people suck, the defenders of sexism and patriarchy (and laziness), both male and female.
Well stated, Zach.
Meant to say - this was the situation *without* the current attacks. It’s obviously even scarier now.