Thanks Jessica! Another great article, as always. The pro-life agenda can only be anti-feminist, since it involves removing legal rights from women. Any action that reduces women's rights is axiomatically anti-feminist. Your article reminded me of the "love them both" language which I see on FB and on church bulletin boards. It's always been BS, and particularly rings hollow when women are dying due to abortion bans.
Thank you Jessica. Putting lipstick on a 🐷, it’s still a pig. They will trick low information voters those that are working 2 jobs trying to get by. They don’t fool us. I don’t believe anything coming from the GOP.
Thank you for this, Jessica!! You are a huge help in helping me understand the squirrelly language games the GOP plays with abortion. Everyone should read that Higgins Fox column cited here -- a four point summation of how we can expect the Republicans to talk. The title, "Republicans conquered abortion in 2024," is disgusting considering they have given us a nation where women are dying on operating tables. We feared a return to the coat hanger, but this is much worse -- women who might have received safe, simple, time-tested, life-saving care are being told that the laws forbid it. Everybody everywhere needs to be raising hell with their legislators about this.
Jessica, Because. my corneas were damaged several years ago by the wrong eye prescription, I have been enjoying the easy accessibility of Substack audio readings of yours and others postings. It is a great improvement over going cross eyed as I peer at my tablet screen from four inches away So please believe me when I say this is a question or a musing, not a complaint. I know how your voice sounds from when you had time to do your own audios. I find it disconcerting to hear your columns now read with a male timbred AI voice. The same with Joyce Vance and Heather Cox Richardson whom I have listened to on Vox Media podcasts. Maybe this would be impossible to fix or is some sort of gender issue I haven’t considered, but it would be lovely if posts written by women could be read by a voice that sounds more like a women. Even better if the writers could choose an AI voice that suits them. Or, if it isn’t possible to switch the audio setting from post to post, perhaps the voice could be male sounding one month and female sounding the next. I’m grateful with what I can get but just a thought.
@Rosalind, my computer has a "read aloud" function in the drop-down menu options, and I can choose the voice. For years I have used "Clara from Canada" for Heather Cox Richardson (before she began making her own audio versions this year) and Thomas from England for Dan Rather's Steady. Have you considered something similar? I agree, AI options should be available. When Nikki Giovanni passed, I saw a video tribute - of a man reciting her classic poem "Ego Tripping." Had to think about that one for a while. I did appreciate his effort.
Thank you, Beverly, for mentioning accessibility functions which allow us to choose our own voices to bring writing to life. These are a great boon to people with vision loss and I wish more people knew about them and could benefit. Listening to good writing being read aloud is such a pleasure My iPad has a varied selection of voices to choose from, although not, unfortunately, Clara from Canada:). It would be amusing to hear whether I sound like Clara.
So yes, but…I know I have options, I was just trying to express as gently as possible that whoever made this decision was perhaps being a little tone-deaf?
You are misconstruing the results of the Ipsos poll where you write, “… 81% of Americans believe that the government shouldn’t be involved in abortion at all…”. While 81% of survey respondents in question 5, summary 1, answered that they agreed with the statement, “Abortion issues should be managed between a woman and her doctor, not the government,” the survey also found in question 3, summary 1, that 43% of the respondents support a federal ban on abortion at 15 weeks, with limited exceptions. So it seems that a sizable portion of those surveyed felt that abortion should only be free of government interference when the government hasn’t banned it, which is a huge caveat. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2024-03/Axios%20Ipsos%20Abortion%20Pill%20Survey%20Final%20Topline%203.28.24%20PDF.pdf
Why are you here to tell a pretty prominent writer and activist that she’s wrong? Just curious.
But to your point. Jessica has addressed this. When the idea of restrictions is implanted in the question people do answer differently. But how questions are asked is crucial to getting accurate data. By asking a question that taps into people’s internalized rhetoric that “late term” abortions are happening willy nilly for elective reasons of course people say maybe that shouldn’t happen. But when you divorce it from the 40 years of rhetoric and internalized misogyny then the answer becomes clear.
Let’s take rape for instance. Data on attitudes about sexual assault have revealed when groups of men were asked if they had ever raped a woman a large majority said no. But in the same survey when asked if they had ever had sex with a woman without consent many of those same men said yes. This holds true for sexual harassment as well.
Q: Do you agree with late term abortion?
A: No
Q: Do you think women who find out their fetus has a fatal anomaly that will cause the infant suffering and death upon birth or soon after should be allowed an abortion.
A: Yes
Not everyone would answer yes but my point is that how you ask can skew the data. Also we have this weird moral thing going that decides which women and which conditions are valid enough to agree with termination. In other words sluts who are irresponsible shouldn’t be able to escape the consequences but some who are raped are innocent so it’s okay for them. The fetus is still terminated so it’s not the morality of the procedure as much as the morality of the women in the situation. They will sacrifice them too if it means one slut doesn’t get off easy.
Thanks for asking. I think one of our responsibilities as media consumers is to be circumspect about the reporting we see, and to look at sources when they are provided, to evaluate claims that may seem, as Jessica put it “incredible,” to ensure that we aren’t absorbing and sharing false narratives. I wouldn’t be a paid subscriber if I didn’t think that Jessica was an amazing journalist. But no journalist is immune from error. And Jessica straddles the worlds of opinion and objective journalism, making fact-checking a more fraught exercise.
The major error here is to take any particular small portion of a survey response, and give it too much weight. And personally, I worry that if we interpret surveys in such a way as to paint an unrealistically rosy image of our support, we’ll risk being unprepared to address the general public’s real concerns and ignorance about abortion. It also puts us in the position of appearing to be unreliable narrators, which is deadly for changing public opinion in this world of false equivalencies and growing nihilism.
This is spot on! When survey questions use loaded words like rape or terms like “late term”, people have strong visceral reactions that make them want to say NO, they don’t agree with those things. It’s good that surveyors ask the same questions in several different ways to get a sense of the nuances in people’s opinions on the matter and where discrepancies lie
Hi Justin. You got my attention! I don't think this misconstrues the data. I think that that one question and answer most likely captures how the vast majority of Americans feel about abortion. Is is 81%? Is it 75, or 90? Polls are polls, so there's that, but even in this one, there's overwhelming trust in the FDA (wh. plays to support for mifepristone, etc.), and as Lesley points out, massive trust in one's doctor for sound information. Also, the question you cite as a counter to Jessica's interpretation had only half the number or respondents, so half of 43% vs question 5. (And of the 54% on the other side of that question, 83% were Dems and 56% were Indies.) So, though I ain't no statistician, I would concur with how Jessica construes the poll. It's an interesting one, for sure.
I also would note that 89% of the people interviewed trust their personal doctors for medical information. That supports the idea that people prefer to make their very personal medical decisions with their doctors. I really resent having my medical care put up for a vote.
I think if it can be left up to the “will of the people” then it can be left up to the will of the individual in consultation with their doctor for medical expertise and safe resources. It makes no sense to put it up for a vote so the community can decide what individuals do but then argue individuals can’t make those decisions
Yea depending on how the question is worded, you get different percentages. The truth is that support for “elective abortions” (although tbf all scheduled medical procedures are recorded as “elective” by hospital/clinic staff, no matter how serious or dangerous they may be) drops significantly after the first trimester. And if you describe the procedure, meant to elicit a visceral emotional response, support drops even more. Never mind that medical procedures aren’t pretty.
I started really seeing/hearing lies, and understanding what they were used for, more than 60 years ago (I'm now 72). Recognizing propaganda and lies for what they were changed me profoundly. I couldn't un-see or un-hear any more, much as I would have liked to. I suppose I could say that that that drove me sane. What's particularly struck me over all these decades is the rather dreary similarity all that nonsense has: the same tricks, the same words, even. I guess the ones telling the lies have so little respect for us that they figure they can say anything, and we must be dumb enough to accept it. Thank you, Jessica, for focusing on this.
we need to educate people to recognize advertising/commercials tactics and help develop critical thinking skills. Ads are trying to sell you something. "Polls" are no longer gauging public opinion, they are "push polls" with the intention of shaping opinion. Strategically, they present a statement that sounds reasonable, even attractive. But in the warning words of the old saying, "if you don't have a seat at the table, you may be on the menu."
And "ads" that offer something "for free"? YOU are the product for sale. They are collecting your information and data.
Maybe it comes with age. The more lies we hear the better we get at recognizing them. We may already know the truth or maybe there is a tone of voice, or lack of tone, a flicker of eyelids or a stare that is too unwavering. I don’t know the body language but my subconscious does.
Perhaps. I don't remember anybody ever saying, "Look at this", or "This is how you tell someone is lying to you", or anything like that. What I *do* remember is stories, I guess teaching stories, that I heard from my elders. I always say that I've never been all that good with people (I get along better with other living organisms than I do with people, and I honestly prefer not to be around people), but I can tell a lie coming a mile off. And I'm pretty good at predicting what large groups of people will do--social trends, if you will. It's just individual people that I find baffling.
This is excellent work but I would be remiss if I did not point out that Jessica's first example is about anti-trans attitudes and THEN she delves into the meat of the issue where she explains that "pro-life" Republicans openly argue that abortion is never necessary and instead prefer to catalog how many organs and limbs women need to lose before "life of the mother" should be considered.
If "pro-lifers" intend to use survivability as the only 🇺🇸 bench-mark I doubt that standard will improve maternal survival rates for black women & I'm positive it will increase the rate of death for all pregnant women.
Valenti is indeed correct when she states that there is no such thing as a pro-life feminist and then outlines exactly how men like JD Vance have been prepped by the truly horrific woman cited above. I'm disappointed that men's rights issues came first in this meticulous breakdown and although I believe race is a men's issue too, it's worth pointing out that Republican men & women have created false "life of the mother" exceptions to red state abortion bans as a way to bring an equalizing effect to the mortality rate among 🇺🇸 mothers. Black women survive childbirth more often when the fathers &/or their extended friends/family show up for the check-ups & birth. Women who are alone or isolated die from childbirth more often, unfortunately more black women lack patriarchy's support, it's not about race. I can confidentially say that because I studied mortality outcomes in central Harlem. irl.
Appreciate your perspectives and contributions to this discussion.
As a retired OB/GYN, a reminder that correlation is not causation.
An individual can have all the support in the world, and still suffer a life-threatening or fatal pregnancy complication.
And there have been numerous documented instances of Black women, in particular, being subject to disparities in access, diagnosis, treatment and outcomes, despite economic, professional, or celebrity status.
For anyone who needs citations, look up Dr. Susan Moore (not pregnancy-related, Covid victim), Serena Williams, Allyson Felix, Chrissy Teigen, and the women who have died since Dobbs in Texas and Georgia.
The documentary film "Aftershock" speaks of maternal mortality consequences from the surviving Black fathers' perspectives,
and Melaneyes Media has another documentary titled "High Risk" with additional background history.
These decisions should be left up to the person affected, in consultation with (her) health care team - not the government acting from a white supremacist patriarchal theocracy stance.
Of course, here in Texas, they’re not even pretending they care about women. After Ken Paxton’s recent shenanigans attempting to crown himself king of New York, I started the process to get him on record as to why he opposes first trimester abortion, or if he doesn’t, put him in the “I have no reason to oppose abortion. I just hate women” category.
So important to really listen to their language and go behind the mask; thank you for always pointing this out! And thanks to any Congress critter who zeroes in and digs down deep during hearings.
Thanks Jessica! Another great article, as always. The pro-life agenda can only be anti-feminist, since it involves removing legal rights from women. Any action that reduces women's rights is axiomatically anti-feminist. Your article reminded me of the "love them both" language which I see on FB and on church bulletin boards. It's always been BS, and particularly rings hollow when women are dying due to abortion bans.
Thank you Jessica. Putting lipstick on a 🐷, it’s still a pig. They will trick low information voters those that are working 2 jobs trying to get by. They don’t fool us. I don’t believe anything coming from the GOP.
Thank you for this, Jessica!! You are a huge help in helping me understand the squirrelly language games the GOP plays with abortion. Everyone should read that Higgins Fox column cited here -- a four point summation of how we can expect the Republicans to talk. The title, "Republicans conquered abortion in 2024," is disgusting considering they have given us a nation where women are dying on operating tables. We feared a return to the coat hanger, but this is much worse -- women who might have received safe, simple, time-tested, life-saving care are being told that the laws forbid it. Everybody everywhere needs to be raising hell with their legislators about this.
Is there a way to pm Jessica?
New anti abortion tactics still = dead and injured women.
Jessica, Because. my corneas were damaged several years ago by the wrong eye prescription, I have been enjoying the easy accessibility of Substack audio readings of yours and others postings. It is a great improvement over going cross eyed as I peer at my tablet screen from four inches away So please believe me when I say this is a question or a musing, not a complaint. I know how your voice sounds from when you had time to do your own audios. I find it disconcerting to hear your columns now read with a male timbred AI voice. The same with Joyce Vance and Heather Cox Richardson whom I have listened to on Vox Media podcasts. Maybe this would be impossible to fix or is some sort of gender issue I haven’t considered, but it would be lovely if posts written by women could be read by a voice that sounds more like a women. Even better if the writers could choose an AI voice that suits them. Or, if it isn’t possible to switch the audio setting from post to post, perhaps the voice could be male sounding one month and female sounding the next. I’m grateful with what I can get but just a thought.
@Rosalind, my computer has a "read aloud" function in the drop-down menu options, and I can choose the voice. For years I have used "Clara from Canada" for Heather Cox Richardson (before she began making her own audio versions this year) and Thomas from England for Dan Rather's Steady. Have you considered something similar? I agree, AI options should be available. When Nikki Giovanni passed, I saw a video tribute - of a man reciting her classic poem "Ego Tripping." Had to think about that one for a while. I did appreciate his effort.
Thank you, Beverly, for mentioning accessibility functions which allow us to choose our own voices to bring writing to life. These are a great boon to people with vision loss and I wish more people knew about them and could benefit. Listening to good writing being read aloud is such a pleasure My iPad has a varied selection of voices to choose from, although not, unfortunately, Clara from Canada:). It would be amusing to hear whether I sound like Clara.
So yes, but…I know I have options, I was just trying to express as gently as possible that whoever made this decision was perhaps being a little tone-deaf?
You are misconstruing the results of the Ipsos poll where you write, “… 81% of Americans believe that the government shouldn’t be involved in abortion at all…”. While 81% of survey respondents in question 5, summary 1, answered that they agreed with the statement, “Abortion issues should be managed between a woman and her doctor, not the government,” the survey also found in question 3, summary 1, that 43% of the respondents support a federal ban on abortion at 15 weeks, with limited exceptions. So it seems that a sizable portion of those surveyed felt that abortion should only be free of government interference when the government hasn’t banned it, which is a huge caveat. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2024-03/Axios%20Ipsos%20Abortion%20Pill%20Survey%20Final%20Topline%203.28.24%20PDF.pdf
Why are you here to tell a pretty prominent writer and activist that she’s wrong? Just curious.
But to your point. Jessica has addressed this. When the idea of restrictions is implanted in the question people do answer differently. But how questions are asked is crucial to getting accurate data. By asking a question that taps into people’s internalized rhetoric that “late term” abortions are happening willy nilly for elective reasons of course people say maybe that shouldn’t happen. But when you divorce it from the 40 years of rhetoric and internalized misogyny then the answer becomes clear.
Let’s take rape for instance. Data on attitudes about sexual assault have revealed when groups of men were asked if they had ever raped a woman a large majority said no. But in the same survey when asked if they had ever had sex with a woman without consent many of those same men said yes. This holds true for sexual harassment as well.
Q: Do you agree with late term abortion?
A: No
Q: Do you think women who find out their fetus has a fatal anomaly that will cause the infant suffering and death upon birth or soon after should be allowed an abortion.
A: Yes
Not everyone would answer yes but my point is that how you ask can skew the data. Also we have this weird moral thing going that decides which women and which conditions are valid enough to agree with termination. In other words sluts who are irresponsible shouldn’t be able to escape the consequences but some who are raped are innocent so it’s okay for them. The fetus is still terminated so it’s not the morality of the procedure as much as the morality of the women in the situation. They will sacrifice them too if it means one slut doesn’t get off easy.
Thanks for asking. I think one of our responsibilities as media consumers is to be circumspect about the reporting we see, and to look at sources when they are provided, to evaluate claims that may seem, as Jessica put it “incredible,” to ensure that we aren’t absorbing and sharing false narratives. I wouldn’t be a paid subscriber if I didn’t think that Jessica was an amazing journalist. But no journalist is immune from error. And Jessica straddles the worlds of opinion and objective journalism, making fact-checking a more fraught exercise.
The major error here is to take any particular small portion of a survey response, and give it too much weight. And personally, I worry that if we interpret surveys in such a way as to paint an unrealistically rosy image of our support, we’ll risk being unprepared to address the general public’s real concerns and ignorance about abortion. It also puts us in the position of appearing to be unreliable narrators, which is deadly for changing public opinion in this world of false equivalencies and growing nihilism.
This is spot on! When survey questions use loaded words like rape or terms like “late term”, people have strong visceral reactions that make them want to say NO, they don’t agree with those things. It’s good that surveyors ask the same questions in several different ways to get a sense of the nuances in people’s opinions on the matter and where discrepancies lie
Hi Justin. You got my attention! I don't think this misconstrues the data. I think that that one question and answer most likely captures how the vast majority of Americans feel about abortion. Is is 81%? Is it 75, or 90? Polls are polls, so there's that, but even in this one, there's overwhelming trust in the FDA (wh. plays to support for mifepristone, etc.), and as Lesley points out, massive trust in one's doctor for sound information. Also, the question you cite as a counter to Jessica's interpretation had only half the number or respondents, so half of 43% vs question 5. (And of the 54% on the other side of that question, 83% were Dems and 56% were Indies.) So, though I ain't no statistician, I would concur with how Jessica construes the poll. It's an interesting one, for sure.
I also would note that 89% of the people interviewed trust their personal doctors for medical information. That supports the idea that people prefer to make their very personal medical decisions with their doctors. I really resent having my medical care put up for a vote.
I think if it can be left up to the “will of the people” then it can be left up to the will of the individual in consultation with their doctor for medical expertise and safe resources. It makes no sense to put it up for a vote so the community can decide what individuals do but then argue individuals can’t make those decisions
Yea depending on how the question is worded, you get different percentages. The truth is that support for “elective abortions” (although tbf all scheduled medical procedures are recorded as “elective” by hospital/clinic staff, no matter how serious or dangerous they may be) drops significantly after the first trimester. And if you describe the procedure, meant to elicit a visceral emotional response, support drops even more. Never mind that medical procedures aren’t pretty.
15 weeks doesn’t allow time for important tests like amniocentesis which occur from 16-20 weeks.
I started really seeing/hearing lies, and understanding what they were used for, more than 60 years ago (I'm now 72). Recognizing propaganda and lies for what they were changed me profoundly. I couldn't un-see or un-hear any more, much as I would have liked to. I suppose I could say that that that drove me sane. What's particularly struck me over all these decades is the rather dreary similarity all that nonsense has: the same tricks, the same words, even. I guess the ones telling the lies have so little respect for us that they figure they can say anything, and we must be dumb enough to accept it. Thank you, Jessica, for focusing on this.
Sometimes you just have to shake your head in disbelief, as an old friend would say.
we need to educate people to recognize advertising/commercials tactics and help develop critical thinking skills. Ads are trying to sell you something. "Polls" are no longer gauging public opinion, they are "push polls" with the intention of shaping opinion. Strategically, they present a statement that sounds reasonable, even attractive. But in the warning words of the old saying, "if you don't have a seat at the table, you may be on the menu."
And "ads" that offer something "for free"? YOU are the product for sale. They are collecting your information and data.
Truly it is said. I was also very, very lucky to have good teachers and mentors, back in the day.
Maybe it comes with age. The more lies we hear the better we get at recognizing them. We may already know the truth or maybe there is a tone of voice, or lack of tone, a flicker of eyelids or a stare that is too unwavering. I don’t know the body language but my subconscious does.
Perhaps. I don't remember anybody ever saying, "Look at this", or "This is how you tell someone is lying to you", or anything like that. What I *do* remember is stories, I guess teaching stories, that I heard from my elders. I always say that I've never been all that good with people (I get along better with other living organisms than I do with people, and I honestly prefer not to be around people), but I can tell a lie coming a mile off. And I'm pretty good at predicting what large groups of people will do--social trends, if you will. It's just individual people that I find baffling.
It can be hard to understand when someone harms themselves or other people.
Restacked and shared. I wish everyone would read you.
This is excellent work but I would be remiss if I did not point out that Jessica's first example is about anti-trans attitudes and THEN she delves into the meat of the issue where she explains that "pro-life" Republicans openly argue that abortion is never necessary and instead prefer to catalog how many organs and limbs women need to lose before "life of the mother" should be considered.
If "pro-lifers" intend to use survivability as the only 🇺🇸 bench-mark I doubt that standard will improve maternal survival rates for black women & I'm positive it will increase the rate of death for all pregnant women.
Valenti is indeed correct when she states that there is no such thing as a pro-life feminist and then outlines exactly how men like JD Vance have been prepped by the truly horrific woman cited above. I'm disappointed that men's rights issues came first in this meticulous breakdown and although I believe race is a men's issue too, it's worth pointing out that Republican men & women have created false "life of the mother" exceptions to red state abortion bans as a way to bring an equalizing effect to the mortality rate among 🇺🇸 mothers. Black women survive childbirth more often when the fathers &/or their extended friends/family show up for the check-ups & birth. Women who are alone or isolated die from childbirth more often, unfortunately more black women lack patriarchy's support, it's not about race. I can confidentially say that because I studied mortality outcomes in central Harlem. irl.
Appreciate your perspectives and contributions to this discussion.
As a retired OB/GYN, a reminder that correlation is not causation.
An individual can have all the support in the world, and still suffer a life-threatening or fatal pregnancy complication.
And there have been numerous documented instances of Black women, in particular, being subject to disparities in access, diagnosis, treatment and outcomes, despite economic, professional, or celebrity status.
For anyone who needs citations, look up Dr. Susan Moore (not pregnancy-related, Covid victim), Serena Williams, Allyson Felix, Chrissy Teigen, and the women who have died since Dobbs in Texas and Georgia.
The documentary film "Aftershock" speaks of maternal mortality consequences from the surviving Black fathers' perspectives,
and Melaneyes Media has another documentary titled "High Risk" with additional background history.
These decisions should be left up to the person affected, in consultation with (her) health care team - not the government acting from a white supremacist patriarchal theocracy stance.
I’ve bought 10 copies to give as gifts! Everyone should read your book.
Of course, here in Texas, they’re not even pretending they care about women. After Ken Paxton’s recent shenanigans attempting to crown himself king of New York, I started the process to get him on record as to why he opposes first trimester abortion, or if he doesn’t, put him in the “I have no reason to oppose abortion. I just hate women” category.
So important to really listen to their language and go behind the mask; thank you for always pointing this out! And thanks to any Congress critter who zeroes in and digs down deep during hearings.
We need more of them to understand and dig in to their lies and propaganda.