The case of Purvi Patel is a very sad one. The Indiana woman, who was convicted of illegally inducing her own abortion and then allowing the fetus to die was sentenced to a whopping 20 years in prison. The case shows our country heading in a very scary direction:
It’s tempting to simply look away from Patel’s case on the grounds that it is an outlier, however tragic. But it demonstrates how unsparing the criminal-justice system can be to women whose pregnancies end in (or otherwise involve) suspicious circumstances. If one lesson of the case is about the legal risk of inducing your own late-term abortion, another is about the peril of trying to get medical help when you are bleeding and in pain.
Patel got 20 years for an abortion and George Zimmerman is walking free.
Team Blackness discussed Patel’s case in great detail, followed up on Isaiah Washington’s questionable views on racial profiling, and even more on Indiana.
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Mino
Of course the prosecutor misapplied the law. It was never intended to be used against the mother. Except that it really was, but it was impolitic to say so at the time.
Goblue72
Right-wingers are sociopaths. Full stop.
aimai
This story has me so enraged I can hardly speak about it. It also shows that much of the injustice we see happens long before a case becomes a case–while the police and prosecutors are deciding how to treat the individual who comes to their attention. Situations like Michale Brown’s death in Ferguson, or Tamir Rice’s shooting, simply don’t happen to white people in majority white neighborhoods. Before the police begin shooting or arrest someone for an act (or looking suspicious, or causing trouble) they have already made the decision to treat the person like a criminal, with suspicion.
Similarly, in this case, does anyone think for a moment that an upper class woman who has a miscarriage and whose doctor clears the way for her at the hospital is ever going to come under suspicion of having aborted herself or, if she does, that she will be charged and overcharged like Patel was? As Richard Mayhew said below about the ACA there is a problem of diffuse affect and concentrated venom here. All women and heir families are affected by these draconian, anti woman, laws but only some women and their families will become aware of these laws because of the disparate impact of money, medical care, and law on different kinds of women.
Frankly I think all women’s organizations and businesses should be urging a boycott of Indiana on women’s behalf and no woman should be encouraged by her business or her employer to move to Indiana. She is literally risking her life and freedom, at this point.
Roger Moore
FTFY. As far as I can see, there’s no credible evidence for the theory that she tried to induce an abortion.
MomSense
A “lung float test”? Apparently the only science these people accept is medieval and disproved. This whole case is just terrible. Women should be able to go to their physicians in peace and privacy and get the medical care they choose.
Corner Stone
Speaking of awesome Republicans:
Missouri Republicans are trying to ban food stamp recipients from buying steak and seafood
This quote from an R rep sums it all up:
“I have seen people purchasing filet mignons and crab legs with their EBT cards,” he said. “When I can’t afford it on my pay, I don’t want people on the taxpayer’s dime to afford those kinds of foods either.”
…
“The intention of the bill is to get the food stamp program back to it’s original intent, which is nutrition assistance,” said Rick Brattin, the representative who is sponsoring the proposed legislation.
Mino
@Corner Stone: Government cheese.
Amir Khalid
@Corner Stone:
That filet mignon is probably meant to be stretched out over several days rather than eaten by one person in one meal. The same is true for the crab legs, I would guess.
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid: I think we all know he has never actually seen a purchase like this by a person using EBT. It’s bullshit mythology.
But my response is, and? I’m not going to waste effort rationalizing all the viable scenarios a person receiving assistance may purchase a “luxury” item.
It’s just poor shaming. They want to punish the poors for their poordom. Bills like this will lead to the next effort which will obviously be a reduction in either amount or who qualifies for the program.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: It’s the same as drug testng welfare recipients in Florida. Wing nuts are convinced it happens all the time when it rarely does.
Hal
@Corner Stone: Why is it that every person complaining about food stamp recipients has personally seen someone buying steak, lobster and cartons of cigarettes?
SiubhanDuinne
This situation — and ultrasound legislation — may have additional company in the Pantheon of Stupid, Dangerous, and Downright Offensive Laws Against Women by tonight if the AZ governor signs this bill into law:
A piece of me wonders how any self-respecting doctor can go along with this bullshit, and another piece of me wonders how LEO are going to find out if the doctors don’t go along with it, but most of me remains in a state of mixed fury and despair that we even have legislators who dream up this stuff in the first place.
Josie
@Corner Stone: Yup. You can’t tell me that, with all the people retelling this same bullshit story, there hasn’t been one photo taken with a cell phone. People take pictures of everything around them. The fact that there are no photos proves to me that it never happened.
Matt McIrvin
@Corner Stone: Hey, it’s the same guy Ronald Reagan saw buying T-bones with his food stamps. He’s still around!
Gin & Tonic
@Josie: How can you even tell, anyway, that someone is using an EBT card as opposed to a debit card?
Brachiator
@aimai:
In the long run, yes. The war against women’s reproductive rights doesn’t have an income cut off point.
The Republicans have no shame and no problem in interfering in medical decisions when it comes to women. I am amazed that people are putting up with this shit and not voting these clowns out of office.
Josie
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t know about other states, but in Texas the card is called a Lone Star Card and is visibly different from a bank card. I must say, however, that in all my years of grocery shopping, I have never seen someone in line in front of me buying expensive steaks and crab legs. Maybe I am just shopping in the wrong places.
Corner Stone
@Josie:
I go to the store maybe 3 times a week and have never once noticed (item specific) what the people in front of me were buying, unless it was like 20 of the same thing and it stuck out. And by the time that person is paying, I had the little separator bar on the belt and am unloading my basket. So unless they write a check I could not tell you more than about 5% of the time what their card looked like.
Howlin Wolfe
@Corner Stone: Also, I think the a-hole Repub probably can afford and does buy filet mignon and crab legs, at restaurants where they’re even pricier.
japa21
Well, if he is hoping to require responsibility in how one uses their food stamps, that would be one thing. But he isn’t.
Does he realize that food stamps are legitimate for these kinds of purchases, but that it also limits the amount of money available for other things? Which is exactly why it would be quite rare for someone to use the programs debit card for those items.
Plus, perhaps a person wants to celebrate a special occasion, such as a birthday or anniversary. They shouldn’t be allowed to simply because Republican policies have reduced that person’s income to the point of needing food stamps?
If you want to reduce the use of food stamps, Representative Brattin, it might behoove you to support policies and programs that increase employment and wages.
Hawes
Indiana is Alabama with snow.
Mike in NC
This nugget of wingnut folklore goes back decades. They’ve always claimed people on food stamps are buying beer, vodka, tobacco products and filet mignon at taxpayer expense. Total bullshit, of course.
Violet
This case is appalling and terrifying. I can’t even begin to understand it. The horror of “The Handmaid’s Tale” coming alive in front of our eyes.
Emerald
@Amir Khalid: When I was an unpaid family caregiver for my 90-year old Dad with Parkinson’s Disease, I used to buy a package of four filet mignons for about $25 (at the time) at Costco. I cut them in half, vacuum sealed and froze them, then cooked one of the halves for Dad every Sunday . He loved them. That one package lasted two months.
Although we were on a very limited income we weren’t on food stamps, but yeah, people do buy expensive items and stretch them out.
And I strongly believe that those who say they’ve personally seen people buying expensive stuff with food stamps are, quite simply, lying through their whitened teeth.
japa21
The other aspect of the food stamp stupidity is that banning steaks and crab legs doesn’t reduce food stamp costs. That fact is always overlooked by these folks. It is shaming pure and simple.
Emerald
@Brachiator:
As Rachel said last night, they don’t care that the majority of the population opposes what they do, because most people don’t bother to vote at all.
Josie
@Corner Stone: I can see that, but in deep South Texas things move a little more slowly than in the big city. Many times I find myself killing time while the person in front of me unloads their cart or waiting for the cashier to ring up some items on the card and others for cash, and I do notice. I don’t care what people buy; I am just an observer.
ETA: What I observe is that most people, like me, are trying to stretch their food money as far as possible.
dp
The courts are vigilant in testing and rejecting junk science when some corporation’s bank account is threatened. Not so much when it’s a woman’s right to control her own body, I guess.
shell
Indiana again! Are they in some sort of Dr. Who-ish worm hole dragging them into the 19 century?
Violet
@Gin & Tonic:
Well, sometimes they say it. Last year at some point a young woman in front of me at the checkout line at the supermarket was paying for her groceries. I don’t know if the clerk asked how she was going to pay or what, but the young woman said, “EBT” and then handed her something–a card I guess. I wasn’t paying that much attention, but heard the “EBT.”
Then there was an additional time lag because apparently the EBT card didn’t pay for everything so the woman had to hunt around in her purse for the spare change to pay the rest. That took awhile. At some point she looked at me apologetically because she was taking so long. I just smiled at her and hoped I wasn’t looking impatient. I was trying to figure out if I could offer to pay the rest of her bill and if that would be a nice gesture or an insult when she found the money to pay it. I felt bad for her because she looked really young–probably no more than 20 years old–and had a baby (the baby was with her) and clearly was struggling financially.
J R in WV
People making stupid remarks about other peoples’ groceries and eating habits need their head examined. Once we verify that there aren’t any brains in there, we’ll know they’re non-human, non-sapient parasites. Eventually there will be enough food to go around for everyone, once we get rid of the parasites.
The people “proving” that Ms Patel is guilty of a crime for having a medical emergency don’t need their heads examined; we know there isn’t anything in there but evil chancres that should be burned out of their brains. Should I let everyone know how I really feel about this issue, or can you tell already?
Never going to get caught over night in Indiana again if I can help it, which is a shame, as there are really good rock collecting locales in the southern end of the state.
WaterGirl
@Violet: Agreed. Paging a BJ attorney, paging a BJ attorney…
Baud? Omnes? Can someone explain how this travesty of justice could even have occurred? Can it be appealed?
Corner Stone
@Josie: I work in the big city but live in the deep dark heart of wingnutville. And over the last 10+ years here, I have yet to encounter anyone uttering, “crab legs?! Are you F’ng kidding me!”
These people just want to hurt the least of these among us. It’s all BS.
gvg
Its poor shaming.
In Florida a few years ago a stupid legislator wanted to require foster parents to buy all the children’s clothes at 2nd hand shops. At the time I was a foster mom so I paid attention. His reasoning was that when he was young, his family was poor and his mother bought all their clothes 2nd hand. I am guessing that bothered him a lot and now he wanted other kids to feel ashamed. It was so stupid it got no traction even from other Republican legislators thankfully.
First point is that foster parents come from all incomes and we don’t do it at a profit. All of us spend more on the kids than we are reimbursed and those of somewhat limited means stretch our dollars in what ever way actually saves money.
Second, we are supposed to maintain a facade of normal around the kids and not shame for what they didn’t control.
Third he doesn’t know that 2nd hand shops have found it more profitable to carry higher end stuff for resale because Walmart and other discounters can do cheap better than anyone. Whatever it was like when he was young, its not now. Furthermore the cheap stuff doesn’t hold up.
Forth 2nd hand shops have what they have which does not mean a large selection of all sizes nor are they open at midnight. ids get handed over very late sometimes with an immediate consequence of needing the right size diaper or school clothes for tomorrow. I have had to make emergency trips to Walmart at 2 am. I enjoy browsing the 2nd hand shops but they don’t always have what I need. If someone else with my size kid was just in there, they won’t have much if anything in his size. Walmart will.
I don’t actually like Walmart nor Target etc but I have to use them or what ever big discounter replaces them….in my lifetime there were other stores that were that niche before and the way Walmart stores are looking with too many empty shelves I suspect I will live to see someone replace them. Fool legislator needs to stay out of our business because he doesn’t know any real foster families.
Other variations on poor shamers are just as full of it.
SiubhanDuinne
@shell:
Yup, Indiana again and Indiana still. Here’s a case from several years ago:
This poor woman. In a rational and compassionate society, she’d be getting the help she needs — not “years of legal fights” and 435 days in jail.
Calouste
@shell: Dragging Indiana into the 19th century would be an advancement!
Corner Stone
@japa21:
Exactly. The principle of “substitution” would come into play and the banning of steak or cookies (cookies!) would have people using EBT just buying more boxes of Hamburger Helper and ground meat, or the dented cans of vegetables. They aren’t going to say, “Huh! No crab legs? Then I guess Jeeves and I shall just go back to our family compound!”
A Humble Lurker
@SiubhanDuinne:
Bullshit.
schrodinger's cat
Poor Purvi, she needs counseling not prison. I wonder whether she has any support from her family.
aimai
@Brachiator: Yes, the war against women definitely has an income cut off point. I’m not arguing that a middle class woman will never fall afoul of these laws–or that these laws haven’t made it much harder for even middle class women to gain access to abortions. But there is simply no way that a middle class woman, with any kind of legal or medical protection, would ever be charged with trying to procure an abortion using pills or any other non obvious means. No.Way.In.Hell. The entire thing would be quashed before the prosecutor ever tried to bring it to trial.
aimai
@japa21: Its not meant to reduce food stamp costs–they don’t even make that claim. It has the same moral force as drug testing the poors does. The implication is that if a poor person has money to spend on luxuries, then they shouldn’t have been afforded the food stamps in the first place. Drugs, steak, crab legs, nice clothes–all these are imagined to be luxuries that your tax dollars are paying for because the poor are being given food stamps or assistance and squandering it or their stolen money on the good stuff.
Tenar Darell
@Amir Khalid: Or it’s discounted because it’s the butcher’s special on expiring meat.
Steeplejack (phone)
Somebody needs to get an open thread up for a brother. I’m chillaxin’ at the gate before leaving LAS in an hour. Another Air Steep evening ahead with the Tanq drip and the sky-high wi-fi.
Trip went well. No police calls, no mayhem. I did almost sit on my RWNJ brother’s Glock, which was tastefully deployed under a throw pillow on the couch. Good times.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack (phone):
You sound like an old school late night radio DJ with that rhyme.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: I read all the South Bend Tribune articles on the case, and I’m not sure the prosecution was able to prove she took the abortion drugs she ordered. At least as reported.
Didn’t show up in the bloodwork, but not sure how thorough or comprehensive the testing lab was. Lab employee seemed unsure of how quickly the drugs would metabolize.
Therefore, it would seem the state cannot prove this was not a miscarriage; the problem for Purvi was she ordered the drugs and told a friend (by phone text) she took them. Nor can anyone prove if the infant was stillborn or not. Gruesome detail that the baby’s body contained no or very little blood.
It’s a horrible case, all around. The pregnancy was right at or very close to the cusp of viability, which seems to be about 24-25 weeks gestation. Indiana cuts off later-term abortion at 20 weeks post-conception; neighboring states Michigan (very close to her home), Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky all say “viability.”
You have a woman of color from a strict religious family (and her 90-year old grandparents also lived in the house!), probably in denial about her pregnancy. Purvi mislead a close female friend to believe she was two months pregnant, and told that friend she had taken the abortion drugs.
Mess all around. A 40-year sentence is absurd and unjust, but I’m not sure any state wants to allow pregnant women to perform their own late term abortions. Which is possibly what happened here. But it does not seem proven, as reported by the South Bend paper.
Appears prosecutor offered Patel a plea on the more serious and only initial charge, neglect of a dependent (ie not caring for an infant once born) and stuck on the feticide when she chose to go to trial. Also that her defense attorney was running for St. Josephs County prosector in the months shortly after her arrest.
The judge (female) chastised Patel for not getting an abortion earlier. Don’t know if this is true, but one of the NY Times reader comments says there are 12 abortion providers in Indiana, 93 of its counties don’t have one (no clue re St. Joseph’s; suspect it might). And we have a pregnant woman who seems to have been desperate and in denial, who possibly made up her mind too late to have a legal abortion. Perhaps could not afford one.
Or she had a miscarriage. But none of it is clear-cut.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Corner Stone:
My show is called “The Quiet Storm.” Let’s ease into the late afternoon.
Violet
@Steeplejack (phone):
Good Lord. Loaded, I assume. Safety first.
On the topic off gun safety, this bit by an Australian comic on how ridiculous the American relationship with guns is is worth a look. I liked this part:
“Padlock Monthly.” Heh.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack (phone): Hopefully the glock wasn’t loaded!!
Brutusettu
@Roger Moore:
Her computer was used to stw for abortion drugs from Hong Kong.
But there are no records of her buying any, nor records of any getting shipped to her, nor any test that showed she used those drugs.
Then later there was an abortion, possibly a spontaneous abortion (colloquially called a miscarriage) .
The evidence used to lock her up for a 20 year term shouldn’t even be enough to lose a civil case.
Then there’s the junk science used to “show” that it was a live birth.
mtiffany
Which is essentially the point Patricia Arquette was getting at in her acceptance speech, but TWiB spent almost an entire episode jumping up and down on her throat for it because she was inarticulate about it.
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack (phone): Done!
Old Dan and Little Ann
I’ve been defriended by several people on the book of faces. Two of them once bitched about witnessing people buy stuff they disapproved of with EBT cards. My response was what kind of a raging fucking douchebag does one have to be to spy on what people are using to make purchases? I only give a shit if someone whips out a check and takes time filling it out.
Elizabelle
OK, Indiana has 92 counties total, and a quick internet search turned up 2 abortion providers in Indianapolis, with additional clinics in Ohio and Illinois. I’m sure there are a few more.
Indiana U/Bloomington info. Indiana only allows first trimester abortions in outpatient facilities (surgical or medical). Medical cut off is 56 days.
Elizabelle
@Brutusettu: There actually seem to be records of her purchasing the drugs. However, taking delivery: didn’t see that. Nor did they find any packaging.
[Detective] Goben also found an email receipt from InternationalDrugMart.com to Patel, but prosecution could only show information about who the email came from, and not the contents of the email. [That was disallowed in pretrial motions.]
Brachiator
@Corner Stone:
Steeplejack (phone)
@Betty Cracker:
Thanks!
Did you see my butter lamb link in earlier threads?
Goin’ out, coming back sky-high wi-fi soon.
PurpleGirl
I have a friend who uses an EBT card from California. When he was visiting recently we went shopping together. In most chain markets the cash register is networked and has a computer program which ‘tells’ it what food item can be bought with the EBT card. The program refuses its use for other items. So there will be some items my friend buys with cash money. I mention that the card is from California because their card looks like any other credit-type card — no weird color or logo or design to make it stand out. (Points to California for that.) IIRC, some states wanted to make their cards bright orange so everyone could tell the card was an EBT. Shaming indeed.
Monala
@mtiffany: Do we have to re-argue this issue? Countless people have very articulately explained why Arquette’s remarks were offensive, especially the ones she made backstage. Furthermore, nothing in Arquette’s speech was about abortion or reproductive rights. She was talking about the wage gap between men and women (which is really a wage gap between white men and white women; there is very little wage gap between black men and women, or between Latino men and women, and both black men and Latino men earn less than white women).
ETA: I am going to make this point again. White women voting for anti-choice candidates is a much bigger reason why there are so many rollbacks in reproductive rights. In the 2014 midterm elections for the U.S. House, black men voted 90%+ for Democratic candidates, and Latino men 60%+ (black women voted similarly to black men, and Latina women voted Democratic at even higher rates than Latino men). Meanwhile, about 55% of white women voted for the GOP. In Wendy Davis’ race for TX governor, the vast majority of black and Latinx men and women voted for her. Only 36% of white women did. So yes, it’s very, very offensive for a white women to point fingers at people of color and say that they need to support women’s issues.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
Pregnant forced birthers are going to do sting operations in an attempt to shut the clinics down. They’ll go in claiming they want an abortion, secretly record the whole conversation, and then back out at the last minute. If the doctor deviates from the script by one iota, they’ll take the recording to the local forced birther LEO and go after the doctor as hard as possible.
Violet
@Roger Moore: Is there anything in the law that says the doctor can’t also say that the statement the doctor is required by law to say is medically incorrect and that the doctor feels it is unfair to and potentially medically unsafe for the patient that the doctor has to say it, but yet they have to so here it is?
Brachiator
@Monala:
I got no problems with Arquette’s remarks, and many people who claim that they are “offensive” seem to want to engage in a weird kind of self-defeat. Women and people of color suffer from a wage gap. Pitting one group against another, or asserting that Arquette only cares about white women won’t get it done. Hell, some people feel that anyone who does something as pointless as acting shouldn’t be complaining about anything anyway.
BTW, there are lots of ways to look at the Texas election. According to the CNN exit polling, voting by Latino men was almost evenly split, 48% for Davis and 49% for Abbott. On the other hand, white people who identified themselves as Evangelical or Born Again voted overwhelmingly for Abbott, 84% to 13%. Strangely, while 94% of Democratic women voted for Davis, only 89% of Democratic men did so. Why the gap? People with money, people with higher education, Independents all voted in high numbers for Abbott.
http://www.cnn.com/election/2014/results/state/TX/governor
In short, there is no point in singling out white women here. It’s as wrong-headed as people who try to single out black people as being responsible for California’s anti-gay measure, Prop 8.
Elizabelle
@Violet: That Jim Jeffries bit was brilliant. Thank you.
Elizabelle
@Brachiator: Thank you.
Monala
@Brachiator: I wouldn’t normally single out white women, I was just frustrated by the fact that so many white women were singling out men of color. A commenter on this site actually made the remark, “The reason why we can’t have nice things is because black and Latino men won’t get off their asses to vote in the midterms.” Really? Because as long as white people are voting GOP (and that includes white women) at the rates that they do, even if 100% of black and Latino men voted in every single election and voted straight Dem, they still don’t have big enough numbers to overcome the conservative white vote (at least that’s true nationwide. Given how large the Latino population is in Texas, it might be less true there). And yes, a lot of white folks in Texas are evangelical, so that accounts in large part for their conservatism. But you know what? A lot of black folks and Latinos are also evangelical, and a lot more of them are Democrats than white evangelicals.
It would be nice to hear more white women really make the point that they need to do so much more heavy lifting themselves, rather than simply jumping to the “not all white women!” stance (or worse, blaming men of color) that they object to when it comes from white men. When the issue of the white conservative vote is addressed by liberals, it’s almost always framed as a problem of white men, but that’s simply not true. A majority of white women also vote GOP. I appreciated the TWIB post recently in which Gloria Steinem talked about how many of the early feminists were black women, and how since the beginning of the feminist movement to today, greater numbers of black women have identified as feminists than white women. That’s a truth that too few people seem to recognize.
Patricia Kayden
@SiubhanDuinne: Why are Republicans telling Doctors what to tell their patients? Shouldn’t that be left up to the Doctors, who are medical experts and should know what to say to their patients about medical procedures?
This has gotten scary. Talk about Big Government.
As to Ms. Patel being jailed for 20 years for “inducing an abortion”, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of an uproar. Republicans really hate women, don’t they? They love fetuses, though.
WaterGirl
@Violet: @Elizabelle: That video was brilliant, and I would have missed it completely if it hadn’t been for Elizabelle’s comment.
So funny and so smart and he made such great points with his humor. I would pay money to see him perform live. Hell, I’d marry him. Smart and funny is so sexy.
Brachiator
@Monala:
A dumb ass remark that is easily demolished without reacting by singling out white women.
And the myopia of some white women goes back at least to the days of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. And the struggles of black women in America pre-dates the feminist movement, and the tragedy here was that too many early white feminists and suffragettes did not recognize that they were part of a larger women’s movement. Quick example: after slavery, black men and women were thrown more into the labor market than, say, middle class and upper class white women, who were expected to see marriage as their first option. Black men and black women were thrown immediately into battles for pay parity. Black women went into teaching, but black teachers typically were paid less than white teachers, regardless of gender. And some black men absorbed sexism and patriarchy, and did not fight as hard for black women as they did for other black men.
When the modern feminist movement began, women of color had already been there for years, but had been seen as invisible. There is no reason in contemporary politics for invisibility, or for one group to disparage or take another group for granted. When it comes to the battle against retrograde politics, as that old white man, Ben Franklin once said, “if we don’t hang together, we will all hang separately.”
Monala
@Brachiator:
I agree, but with a few caveats. First, I’ll point out that this post is by a black man, supporting reproductive justice and decrying a woman not receiving it. And instead of cheering that on, a commenter, mtiffany, brought up the Patricia Arquette post. Now, I don’t know mtiffany’s race or gender, but who is being divisive here?
Second, I honestly think we do need to single out white women more, because they are a huge part of the U.S. population and they vote GOP far too often. Virtually all the articles and discussion I see about the white conservative vote and what Democrats/liberals need to do to try to win it or reduce it, imply or outright state that the issue is white men. How many articles have there been about white working class men voting against their economic interests, or how to appeal to white working class men? Where are the articles about how do we get white women of whatever class to vote their gender interests? Why isn’t that a topic of discussion? Why is it that so many white women get so defensive the second anyone implies that white women may be undercutting their own interests?
rikyrah
@Monala:
Tell the truth.
Brachiator
@Monala:
I see this as an area of discussion all the time. At the state and local level, the reasonable question is, how can you be a woman and vote Republican? How can you be gay and vote Republican (and asked double for any Log Cabin Republican). These questions go along with the one that asks how some liberals can swoon over Glenn Greenwald and his talk about civil liberties and not see women’s reproductive rights as a civil liberties issue? How can you, for example, force a woman to have an ultrasound procedure done and not see that as a violation of privacy and an illegal search and seizure of her body?
I got lots of topics of discussion. Nobody’s got time to get defensive.
Monala
@Brachiator: yes, the question is asked, but it is usually asked in a rhetorical way. The assumption seems to be that a majority of white women are liberal, and if Democrats want to improve at the polls, we have to either get more of the base out to vote, or appeal more to white men. White women are presumed to be part of the base, who only need to be warned that reproductive rights are threatened to vote for Dems. That’s simply not true. But to bring it up at all is to be met with defensiveness, or accusations of divisiveness.
So what do we do? How do we talk about the fact that Democrats are losing white women and try to address why?
Cain
we start a gofundme campaign for her legal defense.
WaterGirl
@Cain: I wondered about that, myself. Did this woman have a terrible, terribly attorney?
Cain
@WaterGirl:
I dont’ know.. it seems bizarre. She should appeal as clearly that was not what was intended in the first place. There is nothing worse than a crusading DA. Those guys are all assholes.
WaterGirl
@Cain:
Could not agree more. Prosecutorial overreach ought to be a crime in itself.