OT, but file in under "the cruelty is the point". ProPublica follows up on a story they did a year ago, about a woman in Tennessee, who was denied an abortion and then delivered her baby three months prematurely.
"In December 2022, when Mayron was 26 weeks and two days pregnant, she was rushed to the hospital after she began bleeding so heavily that her husband slipped in her blood. An emergency surgery saved her life. Her daughter, Elayna, was born three months early."
One might think that just the financial costs to care for people in such dire circumstances would make states reconsider their cruel policies. One would be mistaken.
It is sad to me that the people who would need digital privacy the most won’t be able to access it. Reading the privacy practices makes my head spin and I can’t imagine a person who has much less means (financial time education) being able to this. And the right will definitely attack the marginalized first, not the suburban moms.
What's 83 million plus $354.9 million? Numbers that make Mary Trump happy 😊. Jr and brother Dumbo are out 4 million each. Hopefully, there will be more good 👍 news in the months to come.
I keep saying that everything old is new again. I began college in 1970. I was 17. The age of majority was 21 then, not 18. Because I was a minor, the college stood "in loco parentis" to me--in other words they were sort of my legal guardians but everything--and I do mean *everything*--had to be reported to my parents. From whom I had fled when they attempted to forcibly marry me off. Who had neglected my health for *years.* Yeah, it was like being under surveillance 24/7. When I saw a doctor at the Student Health Center, she prescribed birth control pills--then illegal for minors, except if being used for non-contraceptive purposes, so I slipped under the wire there at least. The health center informed my parents, who were extremely conservative catholics. Long story short, when I came home for christmas, they threw me out of the family house like the criminal they believed me to be, into the coldest winter on record in the SF Bay Area. I practically died. This is what such surveillance, such lack of agency over my own body, did to me: it almost made me another nameless, dead teenager on the streets of San Francisco in December. That such a horror could happen to anyone else, adult or minor, gives me nightmares even now, 53 years later. If the anti-abortion nutcases have the their way, there will be more dead women, women who they will dehumanize, surveil and punish. Today they can use methods a lot easier than the surveillance I was subjected to so long ago. (Jessica, thank you so much for giving people like me a voice. Sometimes it feels like crying in the wilderness. You--and the community here--make it feel less so. I hope you get some good rest during your break!)
I am feeling your pain. Hugs from Austin. PTSD is a long lasting thing. All the women who have fallen victim to the handcuffs of government who are near death or seriously critical condition, and them cannot get health care will no doubt have PTSD. On top of the grief of losing their pregnancies.
Dianne, every time you share one of these stories, I want to give you a massive hug. I know you share them to remind us what's at stake for women who are impacted by this now. You've learned to give yourself what you need. But I appreciate your willingness to relive this trauma and share it with us. It's sometimes difficult for humans to imagine this cruelty when they don't know anyone who's experienced it.
Andra, my thanks to you. (I love hugs, including virtual ones, btw!) I don't think of myself as especially unusual, actually. Just kind of average. Yeah, there are plenty of people out there who haven't had the experiences I have, or maybe haven't thought about the implications of what they ,see on television or read in the news. No shame in that, truly there isn't. I did have these experiences, though, and they forced me to feel, umm, responsible, to use what resources I do have to show other people the same. (I'm not articulating this very well.) Maybe I'm trying to protect other people from the shock of learning the way I did? Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, my nephew was teasing me and he said, "Auntie Di, your words and your stories are your superpower, you know." And I thought, if I can tell my stories and reflect on what I've learned, maybe that'll help, not only on issues like abortion and reproductive rights but other stuff as well. Maybe make the world a little bit better for those who come after? Like in Brecht's poem "To Posterity", one of my favorites, where he says, "You who shall emerge from the flood in which we are sinking, think--when you speak of our weaknesses-- also of the dark times that brought them forth. For we went, changing our country more often than our shoes, despairing only when there was oppression and no resistance. For we knew only too well: even hatred of squalor makes the brow grow stern. Even anger against injustice makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we who wished to lay the foundations of human kindness could not ourselves be kind. But you--when at last it comes to pass that people can help one another--do not judge us too harshly." That's honestly the only thing that truly frightens me: the judgement of history, if I stand by silently and do nothing.
I’m not much younger than you and this topic makes me more and more angry, every fucking day. I was living at home the year my Mom violated my privacy and found my BC pills. The aftermath of that discovery was utterly humiliating, but I wasn’t tossed out of the house. I’m so very sorry that happened to you.
Thank you. And I am very sorry what your mom did to you as well. Despite what I was told, none of us deserved *any of that.* I'm pleased to refer to myself now as an elder--or a crone, depending. We need to tell the younger folk: this has happened before. It can happen again. We need to tell our stories. We resisted before, and we can do so again.
My suggestion if this is actually happening???? Leave your phone at home. Then no body is gonna track anything. Return to analog days of yore - in a hurry.
Wait until you find out how much info new cars are programmed to retain. Every woman who buys a new car should research all the digital capabilities and learn how to deny location tracking when they need it. Google it. There are articles about it, but they don’t mention abortion. And to this point, I’m still thinking about the Uber driver from last week’s discussion. It’s truly amazing how much the geo tracking can be lifesaving and also life threatening.
You are so right, and it’s perfectly possible to do exactly what you’re saying. And if we’re going full on sci-fi, there’s also facial recognition, traffic cams, and cctv that can be used to track and locate unsuspecting people. I’d hope none of these things would be deployed against women seeking self care, but it would be naive to think that say someone in Texas (for example) hasn’t thought of it.
Unfortunately, it is really happening 😕. Tracking methodology keeps getting progressively more insidious. They're tracking in multiple ways: social posts, license plates, face scans, tattle tailing, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if finger prints or used kleenex are used to identify and target. One thing that I'd give them credit for is that they are willing to use any means to achieve their objectives. I don't mean that as a compliment, but as a warning.
This is what we used to use pay phones for. Anybody seen such a thing lately? (I thought not.) So, yeah, to second the comment above--I guess it's the modern equivalent, burner phones.
That (calling from a landline, eg) may not be as easy as it appears. I read a few days ago that AT&T, I think it was, is going to be getting rid of landlines, except in specific circumstances. Also, most medical offices are so fully committed to digital records that it's now next-to-impossible to get older paper records. I had a similar problem when requesting my dad's service records: Veterans Affairs can easily access more recent records, but for records older than the 1980s (my dad's were from WW2) they have to send somebody over in person to the National Archives to dig through paper records. If somebody's name is misspelled, like my dad's was, it takes a lot longer, over three years in my case. I was just lucky there hadn't been a fire or something that had destroyed the records. I wish there was some real alternative. Perhaps some bright young person can come up with something.
Just wanted to share—while visiting my daughter in Arizona, I went with her while she collected signatures for the ballot initiative to protect abortion access there (just want to be very clear—she collected the signatures, I kept her company—even though it is legal, out of an abundance of caution, the campaign does not want any signature collectors who are not Arizona residents). We got a page of signatures in about 45 minutes—folks are anxious to sign! The “nos” we got were polite. Because we were in a snowbird community, we had a lot of folks, mostly older, who were registered to vote in another (colder) state, but cheered us on and said they wished they could sign. So consider this my One Good Thing for this week.
You're a great mom. 😁. My mom is in Iowa.... I told her there may be pro choice ballot people out soon in Iowa..... told her to sign. She's is 74 and pro choice.....and catholic.
Last time. I checked, HIPPAA (sp?) protected health care information. Unless they’re going to argue that abortion isn’t health care? (Because of course they are)
Interesting. Not arguing, but I've had a pharmacy fight me over getting my own records (!) because they said it would violate HIPAA. Another layer of idiocy on their part, I guess.
Here's a good article on it. I can't find the other article a guy on substack posted
HIPPA does not protect people from the likes of Ken Paxton. He can get it with a subpoena. But often that's not even needed.... Too many pharmacies are easily giving it out to fascist procescutors. Plan B, oral contraceptives, etc.
I like the article, but I think that it misses the power that LLMs have. Let's say that you are using a burner phone. The carrier is very likely collecting all the data it can. If you speak or type, that's out there. If it can be tied with facial recognition, they can mark you. You could be initially targeted simply being near a 'prohibited' location and be further targeted by having facial expressions of fear, elevated stress hormones, etc. This might sound like science fiction, but could be reality in the very near future. Dystopian, sure, but can we be certain that it won't come to pass 🤔
It's probably a good idea to watch what happens in China; they're further ahead on using technology for surveillance of all their citizens than we are. Social order is their number one priority so they'll probably also demonstrate uses of AI to that goal.
This is a chilling report on how in a matter of years a democracy can turn into a police state. Technology, like change, is neutral. What makes it dangerous is how humans choose to use it and abuse its use. The lesson is that a cell phone is not a best friend that you tell everything to. It is a tool that can be used by you, but also by others that do not put your best interests first. When in doubt, leave it at home.
In 2013 when Edward Snowden leaked intelligence documents, he did it on behalf of Americans, to warn them that their government was accessing their personal cellphone calls way outside the boundaries of legal search and seizure. He has been punished for it ever since,
The people who want a Christian Nationalist police state have full control of the Republican party. Americans need to understand that's who's pulling the strings, and they need to understand it before the election rather than after.
There's also a school of thought that they're fine with it affecting them because it's a fulfillment of God's will. I've been writing about that and have another post scheduled today.
Sharing an aligned blog from this platform. This is just so fukking wrong. https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/how-the-religious-anti-abortion-gop-db2?r=2xr16&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Google Alabama Supreme Court news. IVF news.
Heritage Foundation
TPUSA
GOP religious fanatics will go after birth control… just as Jessica keeps reporting.
Read /listen to the separate threads… receipts.
https://x.com/jennycohn1/status/1759358539494216165?s=46
OT, but file in under "the cruelty is the point". ProPublica follows up on a story they did a year ago, about a woman in Tennessee, who was denied an abortion and then delivered her baby three months prematurely.
"In December 2022, when Mayron was 26 weeks and two days pregnant, she was rushed to the hospital after she began bleeding so heavily that her husband slipped in her blood. An emergency surgery saved her life. Her daughter, Elayna, was born three months early."
https://projects.propublica.org/the-year-after-a-denied-abortion/
One might think that just the financial costs to care for people in such dire circumstances would make states reconsider their cruel policies. One would be mistaken.
That story is a perfect example of real consequences that GOP does not want to talk about. Where are the CPCs?
It is sad to me that the people who would need digital privacy the most won’t be able to access it. Reading the privacy practices makes my head spin and I can’t imagine a person who has much less means (financial time education) being able to this. And the right will definitely attack the marginalized first, not the suburban moms.
The guides listed at the end of the article have really good tech info for all of us. Grace & Jessica, thank you … every day.
MATH LESSON
What's 83 million plus $354.9 million? Numbers that make Mary Trump happy 😊. Jr and brother Dumbo are out 4 million each. Hopefully, there will be more good 👍 news in the months to come.
What can be done to stop this big brother madness from happening? It seems like a violation of constitutional rights. I miss RBG.
Burner phone time.....
Paid for w cash & incognito
I keep saying that everything old is new again. I began college in 1970. I was 17. The age of majority was 21 then, not 18. Because I was a minor, the college stood "in loco parentis" to me--in other words they were sort of my legal guardians but everything--and I do mean *everything*--had to be reported to my parents. From whom I had fled when they attempted to forcibly marry me off. Who had neglected my health for *years.* Yeah, it was like being under surveillance 24/7. When I saw a doctor at the Student Health Center, she prescribed birth control pills--then illegal for minors, except if being used for non-contraceptive purposes, so I slipped under the wire there at least. The health center informed my parents, who were extremely conservative catholics. Long story short, when I came home for christmas, they threw me out of the family house like the criminal they believed me to be, into the coldest winter on record in the SF Bay Area. I practically died. This is what such surveillance, such lack of agency over my own body, did to me: it almost made me another nameless, dead teenager on the streets of San Francisco in December. That such a horror could happen to anyone else, adult or minor, gives me nightmares even now, 53 years later. If the anti-abortion nutcases have the their way, there will be more dead women, women who they will dehumanize, surveil and punish. Today they can use methods a lot easier than the surveillance I was subjected to so long ago. (Jessica, thank you so much for giving people like me a voice. Sometimes it feels like crying in the wilderness. You--and the community here--make it feel less so. I hope you get some good rest during your break!)
I am feeling your pain. Hugs from Austin. PTSD is a long lasting thing. All the women who have fallen victim to the handcuffs of government who are near death or seriously critical condition, and them cannot get health care will no doubt have PTSD. On top of the grief of losing their pregnancies.
Thank you.
Dianne, every time you share one of these stories, I want to give you a massive hug. I know you share them to remind us what's at stake for women who are impacted by this now. You've learned to give yourself what you need. But I appreciate your willingness to relive this trauma and share it with us. It's sometimes difficult for humans to imagine this cruelty when they don't know anyone who's experienced it.
Andra, my thanks to you. (I love hugs, including virtual ones, btw!) I don't think of myself as especially unusual, actually. Just kind of average. Yeah, there are plenty of people out there who haven't had the experiences I have, or maybe haven't thought about the implications of what they ,see on television or read in the news. No shame in that, truly there isn't. I did have these experiences, though, and they forced me to feel, umm, responsible, to use what resources I do have to show other people the same. (I'm not articulating this very well.) Maybe I'm trying to protect other people from the shock of learning the way I did? Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, my nephew was teasing me and he said, "Auntie Di, your words and your stories are your superpower, you know." And I thought, if I can tell my stories and reflect on what I've learned, maybe that'll help, not only on issues like abortion and reproductive rights but other stuff as well. Maybe make the world a little bit better for those who come after? Like in Brecht's poem "To Posterity", one of my favorites, where he says, "You who shall emerge from the flood in which we are sinking, think--when you speak of our weaknesses-- also of the dark times that brought them forth. For we went, changing our country more often than our shoes, despairing only when there was oppression and no resistance. For we knew only too well: even hatred of squalor makes the brow grow stern. Even anger against injustice makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we who wished to lay the foundations of human kindness could not ourselves be kind. But you--when at last it comes to pass that people can help one another--do not judge us too harshly." That's honestly the only thing that truly frightens me: the judgement of history, if I stand by silently and do nothing.
Hugs if you want them, I have no words.
Oh, my, how lovely! I can always use hugs! Thank you! (You know, sometimes words are all I've got--my resistance superpower, if you will...)
🤗
I’m not much younger than you and this topic makes me more and more angry, every fucking day. I was living at home the year my Mom violated my privacy and found my BC pills. The aftermath of that discovery was utterly humiliating, but I wasn’t tossed out of the house. I’m so very sorry that happened to you.
Thank you. And I am very sorry what your mom did to you as well. Despite what I was told, none of us deserved *any of that.* I'm pleased to refer to myself now as an elder--or a crone, depending. We need to tell the younger folk: this has happened before. It can happen again. We need to tell our stories. We resisted before, and we can do so again.
You betcha we need to share. Often and Loudly.
My suggestion if this is actually happening???? Leave your phone at home. Then no body is gonna track anything. Return to analog days of yore - in a hurry.
Wait until you find out how much info new cars are programmed to retain. Every woman who buys a new car should research all the digital capabilities and learn how to deny location tracking when they need it. Google it. There are articles about it, but they don’t mention abortion. And to this point, I’m still thinking about the Uber driver from last week’s discussion. It’s truly amazing how much the geo tracking can be lifesaving and also life threatening.
You are so right, and it’s perfectly possible to do exactly what you’re saying. And if we’re going full on sci-fi, there’s also facial recognition, traffic cams, and cctv that can be used to track and locate unsuspecting people. I’d hope none of these things would be deployed against women seeking self care, but it would be naive to think that say someone in Texas (for example) hasn’t thought of it.
Unfortunately, it is really happening 😕. Tracking methodology keeps getting progressively more insidious. They're tracking in multiple ways: social posts, license plates, face scans, tattle tailing, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if finger prints or used kleenex are used to identify and target. One thing that I'd give them credit for is that they are willing to use any means to achieve their objectives. I don't mean that as a compliment, but as a warning.
This is what we used to use pay phones for. Anybody seen such a thing lately? (I thought not.) So, yeah, to second the comment above--I guess it's the modern equivalent, burner phones.
I think a full return to paper is in order. No freaking digital records. Period. Call for an appointment from a landline. Not a cell phone.
That (calling from a landline, eg) may not be as easy as it appears. I read a few days ago that AT&T, I think it was, is going to be getting rid of landlines, except in specific circumstances. Also, most medical offices are so fully committed to digital records that it's now next-to-impossible to get older paper records. I had a similar problem when requesting my dad's service records: Veterans Affairs can easily access more recent records, but for records older than the 1980s (my dad's were from WW2) they have to send somebody over in person to the National Archives to dig through paper records. If somebody's name is misspelled, like my dad's was, it takes a lot longer, over three years in my case. I was just lucky there hadn't been a fire or something that had destroyed the records. I wish there was some real alternative. Perhaps some bright young person can come up with something.
Terrifying.
Just wanted to share—while visiting my daughter in Arizona, I went with her while she collected signatures for the ballot initiative to protect abortion access there (just want to be very clear—she collected the signatures, I kept her company—even though it is legal, out of an abundance of caution, the campaign does not want any signature collectors who are not Arizona residents). We got a page of signatures in about 45 minutes—folks are anxious to sign! The “nos” we got were polite. Because we were in a snowbird community, we had a lot of folks, mostly older, who were registered to vote in another (colder) state, but cheered us on and said they wished they could sign. So consider this my One Good Thing for this week.
You're a great mom. 😁. My mom is in Iowa.... I told her there may be pro choice ballot people out soon in Iowa..... told her to sign. She's is 74 and pro choice.....and catholic.
Good for your Mom! And good for you!
Last time. I checked, HIPPAA (sp?) protected health care information. Unless they’re going to argue that abortion isn’t health care? (Because of course they are)
HIPPA does not protect prescriptions......total bullshit but it doesn't. This is what asshole fascist like Ken Paxton are going after
Interesting. Not arguing, but I've had a pharmacy fight me over getting my own records (!) because they said it would violate HIPAA. Another layer of idiocy on their part, I guess.
Here's a good article on it. I can't find the other article a guy on substack posted
HIPPA does not protect people from the likes of Ken Paxton. He can get it with a subpoena. But often that's not even needed.... Too many pharmacies are easily giving it out to fascist procescutors. Plan B, oral contraceptives, etc.
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/health-privacy/guess-what-hipaa-isnt-a-medical-privacy-law-a2469399940/
I like the article, but I think that it misses the power that LLMs have. Let's say that you are using a burner phone. The carrier is very likely collecting all the data it can. If you speak or type, that's out there. If it can be tied with facial recognition, they can mark you. You could be initially targeted simply being near a 'prohibited' location and be further targeted by having facial expressions of fear, elevated stress hormones, etc. This might sound like science fiction, but could be reality in the very near future. Dystopian, sure, but can we be certain that it won't come to pass 🤔
CYA.
It's probably a good idea to watch what happens in China; they're further ahead on using technology for surveillance of all their citizens than we are. Social order is their number one priority so they'll probably also demonstrate uses of AI to that goal.
Without doubt.
This is a chilling report on how in a matter of years a democracy can turn into a police state. Technology, like change, is neutral. What makes it dangerous is how humans choose to use it and abuse its use. The lesson is that a cell phone is not a best friend that you tell everything to. It is a tool that can be used by you, but also by others that do not put your best interests first. When in doubt, leave it at home.
In 2013 when Edward Snowden leaked intelligence documents, he did it on behalf of Americans, to warn them that their government was accessing their personal cellphone calls way outside the boundaries of legal search and seizure. He has been punished for it ever since,
The people who want a Christian Nationalist police state have full control of the Republican party. Americans need to understand that's who's pulling the strings, and they need to understand it before the election rather than after.
They'll understand it after if it goes the wrong way, and quickly.
But they think it won't affect them.
There's also a school of thought that they're fine with it affecting them because it's a fulfillment of God's will. I've been writing about that and have another post scheduled today.
Yes, that's not scary at all!