43 Comments

Yeah, I love his work. You can read him on so many levels.

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Indeed. Nobody I knew trusted the guy as far as we could throw him. Uphill. With a boulder tied to his nuts. When he first ran for governor, his political platform consisted of "We're gonna clean up the mess at Berkeley." He was referring to the Free Speech Movement--in large part led by veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, some of whom had gone South to register Black people to vote. When Reagan ran for president in 1980, he made his announcement close to a town named Philadelphia, Mississippi. Just a few years before, three young civil rights workers had been abducted, tortured, and murdered by the Klan in that town. Some people (still) chalk Reagan's racism, and his hatred of youth, up to early dementia. Nope. The guy was quite aware of what he was doing, and willing to follow through. He was willing to justify imprisoning and even killing innocent people--and did. Office workers like me, and women dying from illegal abortions, would have just been more collateral damage, meaningless to Reagan and his ilk. As today we are, still, to his political heirs.

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Funny, I don't think of my life as wild, or unusual. I was just looking for a job at the time and there was a "Help Wanted Women" ad in the paper (yes, sex-segregated want ads for employment were still a thing) and I went in and filled out an application. Even working at that doctor's office was mostly routine. That's true for most people's lives, I think: years of routine and boredom, punctuated by moments of--well, shall we say, non-routine, when every second counts and you've got to be level-headed rather than freaking out. (Or, freaking out after it's all over.) It wasn't til *after* I got this particular job that I realized how, er, unusual it could be at times. The doctor I worked for died in 2000, and his obits never mentioned his involvement with doing abortions pre-Roe. Even then, thirty years later, there was such a stigma that either he never talked about that period of his life, or he didn't think of his work as being at all heroic or unusual or anything. I wasn't either. I was just an average person doing a job. It still surprises me that people think of that job as weird or different or noteworthy because it didn't seem so at the time. Now, sure, it has historical significance--but at the time, no. It was just people doing what people had to do. I agree that all of us who had those experiences need to talk, record them. Brings to mind the incredible work done in the 1930s where people went out and interviewed formerly enslaved people, most of them quite elderly by then. I have several books on my shelves that contain such stories. They would have been lost to us without the work done back then. Like Maimonides said, "In order to know where you are going, you must know from whence you came."

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Great Maimonides quote 👍

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I’m wondering if there is a chart somewhere showing each state with laws passed regarding abortion and laws being considered. I’ve been doubling down on not bringing/sending my dollars to states that limit abortion rights. Texas, Florida, and Idaho are no-brainers, but so many others seem to be in flux right now and it would helpful to have a reference.

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https://www.abortionfinder.org/ is for people trying to find providers, its regularly updated. I am not aware of anything that maps proposed bills

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And remember, I was only 20. The office I worked in was about a mile from UC Berkeley, probably the most liberal area in liberal California. The doctor I worked for was willing to take risks to do what he did. He had a supportive staff--three nurses, receptionists like me, and a medical records manager. We all knew where and how to hide records, in case the office got raided. (Yes, there were such cases.) The doc sat on panels that approved abortions under California law. So his patients had all that going for them. In other places, in the same state--not so much. Other people have much more horrific stories than I have, and much longer or much more direct experience than I ever did. When I say "carnage", I'm only talking about what I personally saw, in one office, near one hospital, during about a year and a half in that job, pre-Roe.

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Oh, and I forgot to add: on my first day on the job at that doctor's office, the office manager warned me to always bring 20 dollars, my ID, and a card with a contact phone number on it, and to secrete these items in my underwear "in case the office gets raided." I had no idea what she was talking about. A doctor's office in Berkeley? Raided? It never happened to my office, but all of us knew it *could.* I was also told that, if I was busted in a raid, the doc would bail me out. Even in Berkeley. I was told where the locked records cabinet was (where records of procedures like abortions were kept), and that only the doc and head nurse had keys. Every week, when I filed death certificates from the county, I had to go get that key, because some of those certificates were for the women who had died in that "abortion ward." We were close to UC Berkeley. Some of those dead women were so young...

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You bet there could be a raid. The governor at that time was a real reactionary s.o.b. by the name of Reagan.

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"Carnage" is a very good description. You've had a wild life. Surely there's a place you can send this story. People need to hear the horror of the days before Roe.

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Yes, I do know what pregnancy does to the body of a child--or a very small woman. My sister is 4'7" tall, because her medical condition was not caught until she was 20. After ten years of hormone therapy, she finally went through menarche and got pregnant. While she was in labor with her daughter, her husband and the doctors feared for her life because she was so tiny. Finally the surgeon was forced to perform a caesarean surgery. She had endless complications that eventually included a hysterectomy. And this was in another country, where medical care was nationalized. She's 65 now and still has many medical problems--some due to the pregnancy, some with other origins. *My sister was lucky!* Many children will not be.

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They're making great progress in artificial womb technology. It will be life saving for women like your sister and their children. I've heard horror stories of children becoming pregnant by predators and their parents not knowing until they're twenty-five, twenty six weeks into pregnancy. There was a massive protest in Brazil over such a case. I think in these cases, children should have a right to a C-section and to place the child for adoption. I'm pretty queezy about an abortion this late.

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You do realize that 25 or 26 weeks is right on the lower end of viability, do you not? Many babies who are born at 6 or 6-1/2 months (that's what we are talking about here) simply do not survive because they are so premature. Those that do survive are only in "artificial wombs" if you consider facilities in NICUs to be "wombs." Before 25 weeks, survival is rare. Not to mention lifelong health deficits that people born prematurely have. So, maybe at some point there will be the equivalent of "artificial wombs" for the under-25 weeks that actually work better than chance, but that time is not now. Oh, BTW, no technology I'm aware of can take a fetus of 6 or 15 weeks gestation to birth at 39 or 40 weeks--and that's where the bans are happening now. Finally, I refer you to the internet for pictures of what caesarean scars look like on an 11-year-old. I assure you the photos are there. As are photos of what hysterectomy scars look like on post-partum children that age. Suggesting a c-section for an 11-year-old, so their baby can be put up for adoption, is just plain cruel. I know. All this happened to my sister, who was 4'7" tall and weighed about 89 pounds--and in her case the pregnancy was wanted and voluntary.

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I support abortion up to 24 weeks except for the case of fetal abnormalities but beyond that I don't see what the purpose of an abortion is if it can survive on its own. A C-section seems just as invasive as a late-term abortion. And I'm not talking about the current technology at NICUs. They're developing literal artificial wombs that work just like a real one. But you're right. It would probably be better to give them an abortion if there's no quality-of-life for the infant that early with the current technology.

An extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extreme premature lamb

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112

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I really just can’t anymore! Every day the news becomes more depressing.

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I suggest we call all Republicans Women Killers, members of the Party to Murder Women. I'm sure there are those who will have better names.

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The pro-death party.

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"...if both states banned abortion, the South’s access to care would be decimated."

It is not a coincidence that all the former slave states are now anti-abortion. Same story. New generation.

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Yeah Virginia is the only member of the confederacy that's been redeemed, and that's only because of the DC suburbs, and even so the state almost went full red in 2021. Long term though it's a blue state now. Can Georgia and North Carolina ever get to that status with growth in jobs requiring education? Idk.

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I thought it was West Virginia that was pro-slavery. It's why they broke away from the rest of Virginia. I think North Carolina is the only state from the original union that's a non-slave state that's now anti-abortion. But that's only because of gerrymandering.

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The terrain suitable for slavery didn't include the mountain areas that became West Virginia; Appalachian areas were pro-Union. North Carolina was in the confederacy so it was a slave state, like Virginia. Gerrymandering can elect a legislature that's much more Republican than a state, but it doesn't have any impact on statewide races so that's what I look at first. North Carolina has a Democratic governor and AG, but Republicans have won other races (Trump twice, both U.S. Senate seats, the most recent supreme court elections). Georgia voted for Biden and has two Democratic senators, but all the elected state officials are Republican. Every other confederate state (save Virginia) is solid red.

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Seems like because of the work of Stacey Abrams, Georgia won't be a Republican stronghold much longer due to their sizable Black population. Mississippi has an even larger share of the Black population. If they could do what Stacey Abrams did for Georgia, I think Mississippi could be turned around. Texas is also a majority minority state and I think it will be inevitable that it will become democratic. Two thirds of Florida's population aren't even from Florida and Christian nationalism seems to be spreading through the Latino churches. Not sure what can be done about that.

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If Georgia continues to attract business and professionals it will trend blue, because those are relatively more educated voters. If those voters leave because there's no women's health care in Georgia, who knows. That ought to hit the state's economy though. The problem in Mississippi is the white voters are some of the most conservative in the country, and there's no growth to change that. North Carolina ought to be targeted because of the growth and education of the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham) especially. Florida is growing in the wrong way. Texas depends a lot on the nature of the growth; education levels of voters will matter. Republicans know they need Latino voters so that's the group to fight over. The relative youth of the population is a plus, but less educated voters are targets for Trumpy appeals so that calls for caution.

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"The problem in Mississippi is the white voters are some of the most conservative in the country, and there's no growth to change that."

I think if Black people start moving into white majority areas, it will change the politics enough to flip it. It will undoubtedly incur white flight but that might be a good thing.

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It's very hard to understand why Democrats would ever be talking about anything else right now. Is there anything else Republicans are doing, or could do, that would be as remotely unpopular or toxic as what I read in this newsletter every day? I don't know how it could be more obvious. If Democrats can't do anything with this then we can officially declare democracy dead in this country and focus on a revolution.

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They're all old men and menopausal women. It no longer affects them personally so they don't really care.

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Laura- I am waaaaay past menopause and I care greatly. I care because of my daughter and her friends and for all women. You don’t know how painful it is for women of my generation to live through this. We grew up in a pre-Roe world where women died during and after back alley abortions. Then came Roe and we thought we were beyond that. We erroneously thought women would be treated as human beings who had a right to make their own health care decisions. Instead, we are back to being treated like chattel.

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Yes, I'm 70, so I grew up pre-Roe as well. By coincidence, I was working as a receptionist in a doctor's office in the SF Bay Area when Roe came down. Even in California, which had the most "liberal" abortion laws in the country in 1972, every single hospital had an "abortion ward" where women went to die after they tried to self-manage their abortions. The doctor I worked for was one of the few who would care for the women in that ward. I only saw the ward once, and I still have nightmares about it. I can still see the face of that doctor, as he came into the office on Roe Day. He looked his age (mid-30s) for once, rather than twenty years older, as he usually did. Doing semi-legal abortions and caring for those dying women took a horrible toll on him. That day, he had tears in his eyes. All of us, Dr D especially, understood that the carnage was going to end. And it did. Less than a month later, the hospital announced the closure of their abortion ward, effective immediately. As younger doctors and nurses are now finding out, there's stuff you can't un-see, even decades later. The dying women, the raped 13-year-old, my friend who was forced into a 24-week abortion--these are memories I will take with me to my dying breath.

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Wow. That was a harrowing read. That's wild that even California had an abortion ward even though it was legal. And to have it closed just a month after Roe? Makes me angry that there was so much unnecessary suffering because of its criminalization. There should be a place where you ladies can relay these stories. Have a museum dedicated to it or something. A literal war memorial. These stories should not be forgotten.

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It's hopeful to see so many older generations on here who are passionate but it seems like most of them are ones who still hold the collective memory of the pre-Roe days. My mother is among them. Seems like the ones who came of reproductive age after Roe aren't so much concerned about it.

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The women who were born after Roe was enacted grew up assuming they would always enjoy reproductive freedom. They couldn’t foresee that those freedoms could be stripped away. Because of that I don’t know if they fully appreciate the gravity of the situation. They haven’t known women who have become gravely ill or died after a botched abortion. They haven’t lived in a world where contraception was not legal.

I can only speak for my daughter and her friends who are outraged about what is happening. They protest and they vote. We live in a blue state with reproductive freedom so they have no first hand experience with anti abortion laws.

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It's sad that people have to have their rights taken away to realize how fragile rights are. Even the blue states aren't safe. If it were up to anti-abortion, abortion would be illegal across the globe.

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They being the politicians or the voters?

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I guess both. Seems like voters who are no longer in their reproductive years don't have an interest since it doesn't affect them anymore. They already got to exercise their rights so why should they care if future generations should have those same rights? Older generations are split 50/50 between pro-life and pro-choice but it seems like most of those who are pro-choice aren't as passionate. Though I've seen a few in the comment section here that certainly are.

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Yeah I'm just thinking for outrage factor this stuff is hard to beat. Sexual violence, including against children, women almost dying with doctors being threatened with life in prison if they help them. And Republicans are making these the issues with their policies; they could choose to even try to be less offensive and they don't. They're giving so much to work with that it's criminally negligent to not run hard on it.

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"They're giving so much to work with that it's criminally negligent to not run hard on it."

Yeah I don't understand it.

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My theory is that male politicians feel they lose status by discussing what is perceived as a women's issue. Given the patriarchal bias of our culture, women's issues are by definition low status. Also, opponents of reproductive rights have effectively associated the issue with primitive emotions of disgust toward female biology and sexuality. Disgust is useful because it overrides rationality and promotes a fear of contagion.

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Yeah that's why I don't think men make for very good elected officials. If half of your constituents are beneath you right from the start, you're worse than useless. Not to mention that 'women's issues' profoundly affect families too, and families include men. To your other point, yes we need to desensitize the population to that disgust and also be able to frame the issue of reproductive rights in multiple ways, because there's so much more than biology and sexuality involved here.

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Winston Churchill once said, "democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other ones we've tried from time to time." I don't think it's that men make poor elected officials. Our government is just not very representative of the real America. We need a new system of government that's more inclusive. I'm a fan of John Rawls property-owning democracy.

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Right on! There's a ton of research on the relationship between conservatism and disgust. I can't remember the specific publication I read about it but I think it might have been the Atlantic. It's also why they have such a creepy obsession with sexual purity. I think it also directly connects with contempt. The psychologist John Gottman is able to predict with 93% accuracy whether a couple will divorce in five years just by listening to a fifteen minute conversation. One of the primary things he listens for is contempt.

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The relationship between conservatism and disgust is that conservatives disgust me. :)

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