Hi from Texas. The so-called abortion clinics once provided medical care for women in regions of this state that otherwise were lacking. Although I understand the dangers you present in the article, those dangers are part of the current national landscape every provider must be ready to navigate. I beg you not to contribute to my state’s crisis in healthcare for women by showcasing Texas as a place for doctors to avoid.
Off topic (sort of): Move On has a petition to the Nebraska state govt asking for a pardon for the young woman who was imprisoned on bogus chargesfor self-managing her abortion. She was sentenced to 90 days, her mom to 5 years in prison.
Do sign the petition, if you can, but here's an idea: also write to the state and offer to replace the young woman or her mom in jail/prison for a day, two days, a week, whatever you can. I'm 71 and in poor health, but I'd be willing to borrow money for my plane fare from Calif to Nebraska and serve a day in jail in either of their stead. That's how unjust these prison sentences are--and they must be seen by everyone to be unjust. Putting a totally innocent person in jail for even a day would underline that. Also, it would overwhelm the state government if enough of us did it.
Many readers here live in Texas, so they have a better sense of this than I do. I've only done events in different cities and towns.
But I was shocked by the degree of "Texas is its own country" sentiment I got as I traveled around. How the Texas flag was bigger than the American flag in many places. How people (usually white men of a certain age) would come up and "educate" me on how Texas has always been its own country and has the right to leave the United States at any time. (This was their opinion, but I heard it enough to believe maybe it's a thing in certain circles there.)
I really think Abbott and his blood-red minions are drunk on their own power and unstable enough to try to secede. This border stand-off over river buoys is both dangerous and ludicrous, but it's laying the groundwork. So was their willingness to let people freeze rather than take power from the national grid.
I have dear friends in TX. I love the Dallas/Ft Worth/Houston/Austin museums and the food. I enjoyed every single trip I ever took to speak at companies/groups/libraries and promote my work. And unless something changes, I don't want to set foot in that state again.
How is it the doctors have no say in this? It's a damned-if-you-do / damned-if-you-don't situation for the doctors and I can't help but think there's something quite sinister in this decision by ABOG. Not just a financial decision but a calculated one where they are seeking to diminish the number of doctors who provide complete OBGYN care, through persistent uncertainty and fear for ones life and livelihood. The organization should be dissolved and a new one established.
This board needs to relocate but sadly it sounds like they won’t since they just spent $$MM on their new building. Shame on them, disgusting; the exams need to be offered remotely; I can’t imagine any ob/gyn wanting to travel to Texas -- for any reason. the board’s financial losses are the cost of doing business in Texas. forced-birthers will show up to protest and harass anyone stepping foot into that new $$MM building. No one is safe from this utter madness.
I have to say, I am underwhelmed by the reaction of doctors to the overturning of Roe. This is their livelihood and calling - they should care more about how the state is interfering with patient care. They should be doing more.
As an Ob/Gyn, I am very interested to hear your suggestions. We all could do more, but there is a lot being done and it certainly doesn’t get media attention. Those of us who can provide abortion care continue to do so. Many of us lobby and testify at hearings for reproductive rights bills and against abortion ban bills. We sign petitions to legislators and call and write them. We write op-eds in our local newspapers. We try to make sure our hospitals and healthcare systems aren’t the reason we can’t provide this care. Many speak up when they can, but are limited sometimes in what we can say due to HIPPA laws. And frankly, what Indiana’s Medical Board did to Dr. Bernard is frightening. Certainly always more can be done, but I think the work many of us do is work that no one sees or notices. And the media attention always goes to the minority anti-choice fanatic physicians who in my opinion have no business to be practicing medicine.
Chiming in to say thank you for the job you do. Part of the problem with our entire media environment is how it elevates certain stories over others, no matter how much we put out there. Legacy media could do a much better job of covering this issue, in my opinion. And it drives me insane every time I see one of these fanatic physicians who do not deserve attention.
I don't mean to trivialize the risk that you take with regards to your livelihood and career. Ty for all you do. I wish there was more attention on what the doctors are doing - people in health care have so much credibility when they actually get some attention.
I'm conflicted because on one hand I think OBGYNs need to put a lot more pressure on their employers, their professional organizations, and the health care system in general. On the other hand, the enemy would like nothing better than divide and conquer. The problem is what if they've already succeeded in dividing, for example having successfully won over an entity such as ABOG to care more about money and making nice with Texas than about women's lives. I just don't know whether when push comes to shove, the higher ups have your backs, and that's deeply concerning. The public really needs to find ways to demonstrate to the powers that be whose side we're on, and that they'll feel our wrath if they don't support the OBGYNs. Everyone needs to be treating this like the health care emergency that it is. Also, thank you for posting here. Your perspective is more valuable than 99% of ours here.
What can we do? Please, anyone who has suggestions weigh in. I’m not an MD and not a TX citizen. Do the “big” media follow this (NYT, WaPo, Guardian, USA Today)? The tv news? How to pressure them?
As I sit and think more I guess that some people, lots of people, who are supposed to be on our side, still aren't taking this seriously. This is not a fucking game. I guess that's why there always have to be the deaths and the imprisonments and god knows what other atrocities, because people do not take it seriously until there is.
You know I spent over forty years screaming about this issue before Dobbs - and if felt a lot like this. No one took the threat seriously. No one *did* anything. I was one person, without a platform, screaming into the void, and hearing nothing but the echo of my own voice.
It’s incredibly frustrating, I know. But we have to keep screaming anyway. The good news is that post-Dobbs, at least more of us are screaming.
Idk. Most of the time I just have to accept that this country may go through a fascist dictatorship phase before we can have a democracy. Check back on Wednesday November 6th of next year.
This isn’t meant as criticism - I know you’re feeling frustrated, and you’re venting. But I can’t accept living in a fascist dictatorship, so I can’t throw up my hands and say “screw it.”
It’s really terrifying for people to accept how close we are to the edge. In many ways, America is founded on optimism - one could have made a good argument for the Founders being utterly insane to think they could take on the British Empire and win, and yet they did. There’s a long history of American always managing to right it’s ship before it goes too far (admittedly, the ship is righted by those who benefit the least, and touted by those who benefit the most).
Many people are still in shock over 2016, and they’re writing it off as an aberration. 2020 reassured them that they were right about that. They really don’t understand what is happening behind the scenes - how long this has been planned, and who is behind it, how they’ve come this far. Trump isn’t the problem, he’s a symptom of the problem. If he disappeared tomorrow (please gods and little green fishes), the problem would still exist.
It gets back to messaging - and if we can’t shout loud enough to be heard, then we have to either find a way to amplify our voices, or take apart the methodology used by the right in how they message, and turn it against them.
My particular frustration with messaging is that many of our messages are complex, and hard to turn into sound bites. We have to find a way to do that, because the average voter isn’t a policy wonk. The right has turned all of the complexities around abortion into “Democrats are killing ‘innocent baybeez’ until birth.” It’s a lie, but an effective, easily understood lie. I’ve been thinking more and more that concentrating our messages around liberty and freedom might help, but I’m not 100% sure how effective that will be.
I came out of the Barbie movie with a whole ad campaign for the left. Nameless, faceless people in red suits do things like push humans into the Rio Grande, stand to the side taking money while a mass shooting happens right in front of them, scream and protest while a pregnant woman denied an abortion lies septic and possibly dying, harass a woman being shown an ultrasound of a fetus with no head, throw human beings in cages...you get the idea, but there's a lot more imagery. And we'd set it all to the Matchbox Twenty song "Push."
And it drives me absolutely insane that the left refuses to do punchy ads like this. I want to scream when I see ads like Joe Biden's using the insane congresswoman from Georgia as a mouthpiece. She takes that back to her base and says, "See how stupid they think you are? See how they disrespect and persecute you? See how much I'm fighting for you?" Turn them all into a faceless sea of red doing bad things and set it to a catchy tune.
Honestly in this day and age citizens probably need to create their own messages, like this one you've described here, put them on the internet, and get them to go viral. I don't have the skills to do that, but there are others who do. Because this needs to be a video. Make sure to put in stuff about the schools (maybe grabbing books from young people's hands while they're reading them, disrupting classroom lessons on certain topics, etc.)
We do better with voters with more education; they do better with voters with less education. If they pick up more nonwhite voters, that's trouble. They're unlikely to improve with Black voters, but they're looking to sell their 'cultural' 'working-class' conservatism beyond their White base to other groups.
Messaging is hard, because lies and authoritarianism can be easier to sell than truth and democracy. We're going to find out if we have enough to hang on. It could go either way; this country either muddles through or it slips up. It makes us all ill to think about it. I hope that my worst fears do not come to pass.
I hope they don't come to pass as well. I think we have many reasons to be hopeful. Look at all the groups who are on strike or preparing to. The indictments piling up. The success they seem to be having in OH with countering the bullshit, gaslit lies the right is spewing about the ballot initiative. I try to find something to celebrate every day, some win for our side, because we have them. It helps counter the despair.
Really, it all goes back to honing in on what buzz words we need to appeal to different groups. And those buzz words cannot come from academia (ie Critical Race Theory - which absolutely must be taught but is an inaccessible name.)
I am concerned that if economic trouble brews up it will tip the election to their side. Because 'change'. Another concern would be what if they somehow end up with someone other than Trump, which would have the media fawning.
We just need to make sure voters everywhere else know what Republicans are doing in the states they control. That's what we need the election to be about.
Almost 15% of hospitals in the US are owned outright by the Catholic Church. So we know where their dollars and legal power are going. Almost 19% percent of hospitals are religiously affiliated, but I couldn't find a breakdown of which religious groups own the non-Catholic portion. I also wonder which side of the issue health insurance company lobbying dollars are going to. I would imagine it strongly skews Republican.
Hi from Texas. The so-called abortion clinics once provided medical care for women in regions of this state that otherwise were lacking. Although I understand the dangers you present in the article, those dangers are part of the current national landscape every provider must be ready to navigate. I beg you not to contribute to my state’s crisis in healthcare for women by showcasing Texas as a place for doctors to avoid.
This story was mentioned on the latest Hysteria podcast. I wish it would be more widely publicized. According to the ABOG, the new building was a 55 million dollar project, not 34 million. We really need to know where that money came from. https://www.abog.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/abog-executive-director-position-profile.pdf?Status=Master&sfvrsn=60b2690e_3/%20ABOG-Executive-Director-Position-Profile%20.pdf
Off topic (sort of): Move On has a petition to the Nebraska state govt asking for a pardon for the young woman who was imprisoned on bogus chargesfor self-managing her abortion. She was sentenced to 90 days, her mom to 5 years in prison.
Do sign the petition, if you can, but here's an idea: also write to the state and offer to replace the young woman or her mom in jail/prison for a day, two days, a week, whatever you can. I'm 71 and in poor health, but I'd be willing to borrow money for my plane fare from Calif to Nebraska and serve a day in jail in either of their stead. That's how unjust these prison sentences are--and they must be seen by everyone to be unjust. Putting a totally innocent person in jail for even a day would underline that. Also, it would overwhelm the state government if enough of us did it.
That is a brilliant idea. That's the kind of action we're going to need going forward in this fight.
Thoughts and prayers to the families of those sitting ducks who will be killed or injured as a result of this decision.
Build a wall....around Texas.
What do you think? Fly-over by the Texas Air National Guard at test time?
Make TX like the movie Escape from NY - build a wall around it.
Many readers here live in Texas, so they have a better sense of this than I do. I've only done events in different cities and towns.
But I was shocked by the degree of "Texas is its own country" sentiment I got as I traveled around. How the Texas flag was bigger than the American flag in many places. How people (usually white men of a certain age) would come up and "educate" me on how Texas has always been its own country and has the right to leave the United States at any time. (This was their opinion, but I heard it enough to believe maybe it's a thing in certain circles there.)
I really think Abbott and his blood-red minions are drunk on their own power and unstable enough to try to secede. This border stand-off over river buoys is both dangerous and ludicrous, but it's laying the groundwork. So was their willingness to let people freeze rather than take power from the national grid.
I have dear friends in TX. I love the Dallas/Ft Worth/Houston/Austin museums and the food. I enjoyed every single trip I ever took to speak at companies/groups/libraries and promote my work. And unless something changes, I don't want to set foot in that state again.
Sending an email now. Not hopeful it will make a difference, but we have to try.
How is it the doctors have no say in this? It's a damned-if-you-do / damned-if-you-don't situation for the doctors and I can't help but think there's something quite sinister in this decision by ABOG. Not just a financial decision but a calculated one where they are seeking to diminish the number of doctors who provide complete OBGYN care, through persistent uncertainty and fear for ones life and livelihood. The organization should be dissolved and a new one established.
This board needs to relocate but sadly it sounds like they won’t since they just spent $$MM on their new building. Shame on them, disgusting; the exams need to be offered remotely; I can’t imagine any ob/gyn wanting to travel to Texas -- for any reason. the board’s financial losses are the cost of doing business in Texas. forced-birthers will show up to protest and harass anyone stepping foot into that new $$MM building. No one is safe from this utter madness.
Ahhhh, thanks
I have to say, I am underwhelmed by the reaction of doctors to the overturning of Roe. This is their livelihood and calling - they should care more about how the state is interfering with patient care. They should be doing more.
As an Ob/Gyn, I am very interested to hear your suggestions. We all could do more, but there is a lot being done and it certainly doesn’t get media attention. Those of us who can provide abortion care continue to do so. Many of us lobby and testify at hearings for reproductive rights bills and against abortion ban bills. We sign petitions to legislators and call and write them. We write op-eds in our local newspapers. We try to make sure our hospitals and healthcare systems aren’t the reason we can’t provide this care. Many speak up when they can, but are limited sometimes in what we can say due to HIPPA laws. And frankly, what Indiana’s Medical Board did to Dr. Bernard is frightening. Certainly always more can be done, but I think the work many of us do is work that no one sees or notices. And the media attention always goes to the minority anti-choice fanatic physicians who in my opinion have no business to be practicing medicine.
Chiming in to say thank you for the job you do. Part of the problem with our entire media environment is how it elevates certain stories over others, no matter how much we put out there. Legacy media could do a much better job of covering this issue, in my opinion. And it drives me insane every time I see one of these fanatic physicians who do not deserve attention.
I don't mean to trivialize the risk that you take with regards to your livelihood and career. Ty for all you do. I wish there was more attention on what the doctors are doing - people in health care have so much credibility when they actually get some attention.
I didn’t think that you were trivializing. I often ask myself what more can I do and encourage my colleagues to do. So I’m always open to new ideas.
I'm conflicted because on one hand I think OBGYNs need to put a lot more pressure on their employers, their professional organizations, and the health care system in general. On the other hand, the enemy would like nothing better than divide and conquer. The problem is what if they've already succeeded in dividing, for example having successfully won over an entity such as ABOG to care more about money and making nice with Texas than about women's lives. I just don't know whether when push comes to shove, the higher ups have your backs, and that's deeply concerning. The public really needs to find ways to demonstrate to the powers that be whose side we're on, and that they'll feel our wrath if they don't support the OBGYNs. Everyone needs to be treating this like the health care emergency that it is. Also, thank you for posting here. Your perspective is more valuable than 99% of ours here.
They don’t care about their own members is the summary of what I just read.
“Trained on active shooters” means *only* a few people die instead of dozens. For shame.
What can we do? Please, anyone who has suggestions weigh in. I’m not an MD and not a TX citizen. Do the “big” media follow this (NYT, WaPo, Guardian, USA Today)? The tv news? How to pressure them?
Ridiculous! They absolutely should move their organization OUT of that reproductive hell hole.
They should be located in NY or CA.
On a stupid side note who the hell wants a conference in Dallas?
NYC or San Diego would be fun with lots to do.
Horrifying and incomprehensibly stupid.
what the actual FUCK
As I sit and think more I guess that some people, lots of people, who are supposed to be on our side, still aren't taking this seriously. This is not a fucking game. I guess that's why there always have to be the deaths and the imprisonments and god knows what other atrocities, because people do not take it seriously until there is.
Zach,
You know I spent over forty years screaming about this issue before Dobbs - and if felt a lot like this. No one took the threat seriously. No one *did* anything. I was one person, without a platform, screaming into the void, and hearing nothing but the echo of my own voice.
It’s incredibly frustrating, I know. But we have to keep screaming anyway. The good news is that post-Dobbs, at least more of us are screaming.
Idk. Most of the time I just have to accept that this country may go through a fascist dictatorship phase before we can have a democracy. Check back on Wednesday November 6th of next year.
Zach,
This isn’t meant as criticism - I know you’re feeling frustrated, and you’re venting. But I can’t accept living in a fascist dictatorship, so I can’t throw up my hands and say “screw it.”
It’s really terrifying for people to accept how close we are to the edge. In many ways, America is founded on optimism - one could have made a good argument for the Founders being utterly insane to think they could take on the British Empire and win, and yet they did. There’s a long history of American always managing to right it’s ship before it goes too far (admittedly, the ship is righted by those who benefit the least, and touted by those who benefit the most).
Many people are still in shock over 2016, and they’re writing it off as an aberration. 2020 reassured them that they were right about that. They really don’t understand what is happening behind the scenes - how long this has been planned, and who is behind it, how they’ve come this far. Trump isn’t the problem, he’s a symptom of the problem. If he disappeared tomorrow (please gods and little green fishes), the problem would still exist.
It gets back to messaging - and if we can’t shout loud enough to be heard, then we have to either find a way to amplify our voices, or take apart the methodology used by the right in how they message, and turn it against them.
My particular frustration with messaging is that many of our messages are complex, and hard to turn into sound bites. We have to find a way to do that, because the average voter isn’t a policy wonk. The right has turned all of the complexities around abortion into “Democrats are killing ‘innocent baybeez’ until birth.” It’s a lie, but an effective, easily understood lie. I’ve been thinking more and more that concentrating our messages around liberty and freedom might help, but I’m not 100% sure how effective that will be.
(I did find some hope in this article. One of the things it outlines is how Colorado went from a red/slightly purple state in 2000 to pretty solidly blue - our entire state government is now controlled by Democrats. It points out other states where the same thing is starting to happen https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/21/gop-college-towns-00106974?fbclid=IwAR1pBbS9muE5EmiKmdukk4xhN2_0XD1Kv6gIiRgzVcKDvx_1C1dZKeNG45c_aem_AY_Hi4pTVHMAt-bldUPJnJ4TsJTBEvr2BRMak7YLujbDCypkxX492MUHiUZ599rzcoQ )
One of my biggest complaints about the left is messaging. It drives me insane.
I came out of the Barbie movie with a whole ad campaign for the left. Nameless, faceless people in red suits do things like push humans into the Rio Grande, stand to the side taking money while a mass shooting happens right in front of them, scream and protest while a pregnant woman denied an abortion lies septic and possibly dying, harass a woman being shown an ultrasound of a fetus with no head, throw human beings in cages...you get the idea, but there's a lot more imagery. And we'd set it all to the Matchbox Twenty song "Push."
And it drives me absolutely insane that the left refuses to do punchy ads like this. I want to scream when I see ads like Joe Biden's using the insane congresswoman from Georgia as a mouthpiece. She takes that back to her base and says, "See how stupid they think you are? See how they disrespect and persecute you? See how much I'm fighting for you?" Turn them all into a faceless sea of red doing bad things and set it to a catchy tune.
Honestly in this day and age citizens probably need to create their own messages, like this one you've described here, put them on the internet, and get them to go viral. I don't have the skills to do that, but there are others who do. Because this needs to be a video. Make sure to put in stuff about the schools (maybe grabbing books from young people's hands while they're reading them, disrupting classroom lessons on certain topics, etc.)
Me, too, Andra. It has been driving me insane for decades.
We do better with voters with more education; they do better with voters with less education. If they pick up more nonwhite voters, that's trouble. They're unlikely to improve with Black voters, but they're looking to sell their 'cultural' 'working-class' conservatism beyond their White base to other groups.
Messaging is hard, because lies and authoritarianism can be easier to sell than truth and democracy. We're going to find out if we have enough to hang on. It could go either way; this country either muddles through or it slips up. It makes us all ill to think about it. I hope that my worst fears do not come to pass.
I hope they don't come to pass as well. I think we have many reasons to be hopeful. Look at all the groups who are on strike or preparing to. The indictments piling up. The success they seem to be having in OH with countering the bullshit, gaslit lies the right is spewing about the ballot initiative. I try to find something to celebrate every day, some win for our side, because we have them. It helps counter the despair.
Really, it all goes back to honing in on what buzz words we need to appeal to different groups. And those buzz words cannot come from academia (ie Critical Race Theory - which absolutely must be taught but is an inaccessible name.)
I am concerned that if economic trouble brews up it will tip the election to their side. Because 'change'. Another concern would be what if they somehow end up with someone other than Trump, which would have the media fawning.
We just need to make sure voters everywhere else know what Republicans are doing in the states they control. That's what we need the election to be about.
Okay, so I sent a letter. Tried to be sorta nice. From the contact page I chose this address for my email:
exams@abog.org
The hospitals that employee the OBGYNs that provide abortions should be putting a stop to this. They have the money and legal team behind them.
Almost 15% of hospitals in the US are owned outright by the Catholic Church. So we know where their dollars and legal power are going. Almost 19% percent of hospitals are religiously affiliated, but I couldn't find a breakdown of which religious groups own the non-Catholic portion. I also wonder which side of the issue health insurance company lobbying dollars are going to. I would imagine it strongly skews Republican.
Following this sewer of money is another good story for Jessica. I'll bet you're right.
Thank you. Just sent a message.
Thanks for the template to work from. I have emailed them as well and sent out a request to all my friends to do the same.