I feel like we need someone for the front page to talk about women’s and reproductive rights. There is just so much going on and it is happening so fast.
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by John Cole| 45 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
I feel like we need someone for the front page to talk about women’s and reproductive rights. There is just so much going on and it is happening so fast.
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Cheryl Rofer
I suspect that John is inspired by my nightly retweetings and original outpourings on the subject. There’s a lot on Twitter right now. I am in a crabby mood for a variety of reasons and don’t want to carry it over to tomorrow, so I’ll do a thread. Might take a half hour or so.
debbie
Please yes. Bastards have really stepped up their game.
Sab
Thanks John . We need this. Pregnancy isn’t “A bun in the oven” like a lot of these nitwit men think it is. For many women it is life threatening.
Heart problems. Kidney problems. Blood sugar problems.
I am sixry five years old with a congenital heart defect. I know women with different heart problems. So we die so our fetus dies at six months instead of seven weeks.That’s nuts. I can’t get pregnant now, but for many years I knew a pregnancy would kill me, and effective birth control would also.
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
You probably aren’t following the goings on in Ohio, but after passing the Heartbeat Bill, they are now holding hearings on an abomination which will forbid insurers from covering anything related to abortions and, even better, require surgeons to relocate fertilized eggs from the Fallopian tube to the womb.
There’s audio and an article at the link. I’m so angry, I can’t even see straight. I wonder if Kay knows about these hearings.
joel hanes
You can donate to Planned Parenthood here :
https://www.weareplannedparenthoodaction.org/onlineactions/6iOI0_HnUUmPu_6_SRgayg2
MobiusKlein
@debbie: Ectopic. Pregnancy now needs an even more invasive cure?
Those fuckers are evil.
Suzanne
@Sab:
Even for those of us who are healthy, it is really, REALLY fucking hard, and we may need accommodations at work or at home that we won’t receive. I am incredibly fortunate that my employer is very understanding and flexible, but many are not.
Eljai
@debbie: There is no operation that can successfully relocate the egg from the fallopian tube. I mean, I know you know that, but apparently the mediocre white men who wrote the law couldn’t be bothered to do basic research. I’m beyond angry.
chopper
@MobiusKlein:
that’s just pants-on-head crazy. i mean, that procedure doesn’t fucking exist. they might as well be talking about head transplants.
Drunkehausfrau
I want an Equalizer. And crew. How do make one happen?
Harbison
Are the fetus freaks rushing to pass this legislation in hopes that it gets reviewed by the Supreme Court before the next D presidents (please jeebus let this happen) get to appoint some people to the Court.
That’s the only strategery I can come up with because it sure seems like bad politics to do something that is going to rile up the most reliable democratic votors …
And its probably far to charitable to imagine that there is any stratagery in place when pure, unadulterated hatred of women is their entire raison d’etre?
PaulWartenberg
Emily L Hauser: Read her.
https://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/i-had-an-abortion/
Mart
Amazes me that we will be fighting this, gay marriage, etc. forever. About 1/3 of American woman of child bearing age have had an abortion. Time to buy privatized prison stock. That’s a whole bunch woman gonna need be locked up.
I know a woman who had two abortions before getting married and having 5 kids. She has gotten very churchy and was yelling at my wife and I recently about the evils of abortion. I mentioned the two she had when she was unprepared to have children; and what the fuck, it seemed to have worked out the best for her. She told me I was crazy, she never had an abortion. My then girlfriend, current wife and she had abortions about a week apart, and spent a lot of time afterwards consoling each other on the phone. People is weird.
Major Major Major Major
It does seem like I only ever hear about these horrible new laws from a handful of twitter accounts I follow, most of which aren’t even political. Would definitely be good to give it a signal-boost.
debbie
@Eljai:
Some guy named Becker is the sponsor and in the interview, he says OUT LOUD that he has no expertise in these things. Gah!
stinger
They claim to be pro-life, but they don’t see even the fertilized egg as human. They think it’s some “thing” that can easily be governed and manipulated in response to their laws.
And the woman, of course, is just some oven.
PaulWartenberg
@Harbison:
I’m thinking it’s a combination of
A) realizing Kennedy is no longer on the Court to back his Casey ruling (which limited but protected Roe) and they can pass the harshest fetus bills without fear,
B) knowing that their time as rulers is demographically short: a combination of aging elder conservatives and an uptick in younger progressives will flip most of the GOP-leaning large population states (Texas and Florida, maybe even Georgia) by 2024 (if not sooner) to where no amount of gerrymandering or voter suppression can save them. So they’re hoping to codify these fetus bills in such a way they can’t get overturned, or else use these fetus bills to crush the future progressive waves…
chopper
@Mart:
doesn’t amaze me at all. they’re still trying to get rid of social security and that shit is almost a hundred, and popular. we’re gonna still be fighting them on it in 2100.
debbie
@PaulWartenberg:
The “battlefield” has moved beyond abortion to absolute subjugation.
PaulWartenberg
At what point does the American Medical Association or group of doctors say “Fuck it” and threaten every Republican male to make sure their balls get surgically removed? We’re in a war now between Scientific Fact and Political/Religious Bullshit, and the doctors need to fight back.
Ohio Mom
@debbie: Yes, that idea that you can legislate into being a medical procedure that doesn’t exist and could not exist — removing an ectopic pregnancy from the fallopian tube and implanting it into the uterus — leaves me speechless.
Though I suppose that particular requirement would be thrown out in court since it’s impossible.
And that story of the poor eleven year old who was raped, now pregnant, and can’t be given an abortion! Nauseating.
I’m embarrassed to live in Ohio but for many reasons, emigrating is not possible.
Sab
@Suzanne: Thank you . I have been following your posts and you seem so happy and yet so uncomfortable.
Pregnancy isn’t a bun in the oven. It is another person invading your body for nine months.
You may want it . You may not. But still the invasion.
Cheryl Rofer
My post is now up.
Emerald
Boycott. Protest in the street. Both of those approaches work if they’re done right.
Perhaps most important is for corporations and in Georgia, also film companies, to leave the states in order to protect their women employees.
The states require hospitals to simply let women die of ectopic pregnancies; they may very well put women who have miscarriages in jail for 30 years (of course, mostly they’ll put poor black and brown women in jail). There’s a 11-year old girl who was raped in Ohio and is now pregnant; her rapist isn’t going to jail but perhaps she will. She will be required to bear the child and cannot escape the state to terminate the pregnancy or she’ll be prosecuted.
They’re so pro-life they intend to execute women who defy them.
They’re certainly showing their entire hands, aren’t they? And you know they’ll go after birth control next.
Argiope
@debbie</a@debbie: Christ, what an asshole.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
I’m going to do some research over the weekend as to who the committee members are. I want to email or fax every single one of them. In this time of overall outrage, I’ve found a whole new level of outrage.
Ian R
@Emerald:
Serious question, what happens when the state she escapes to refuses extradition?
Ohio Mom
There is already an underground of women in states where abortions are hard to get who have trained themselves how to give others abortions — it’s something of throwback to the days of lay midwives (who also gave abortions). I saw that in Mother Jones I think.
It’s easy to imagine these networks growing in response to this flurry of antiabortion legislation.Then the question becomes for each of us, will we join up and support them?
I’m always snorting at the little Ohio towns that promote their historic houses that were part of the Underground Railroad. They’re proud of a history that they weren’t a part of and more importantly, wouldn’t have been a part of. They’re all Trumpers in those towns, they’d be turning the owner of the Railroad house in.
But do I think I am in a position to help an underground movement? I don’t know.
Mary G
The sheer intensity of what is quite obviously long planned out by people hoping to become the Commanders of our New Gilead is appalling. Ectopic pregnancies can just be moved to the uterus? Just a detail that no doctors do that and wouldn’t even try. 99 year sentences for women who have abortions? Criminal prosecutions for Texas women who go to a state where abortion is legal to have one?
It’s Pearl Harbor in the WAR AGAINST WOMEN and I am so fired up. I had been a little outraged-out lately, but this has me ready to take to the barricades. I used to have a comment by General Stuck bookmarked from I think 2012 when the “Sandra Fluke is a prostitute” thing had me furious. He said that he knew how infuriating it is to have to refight battles we won in the 1970s, but it’s the nature of Republicans to never give up, and we had to resign ourselves to eternal vigilance and remind them who’s boss every decade or so.
Many women are mortally pissed off at certain male liberals who are pooh-poohing this, and not just Wilmer Bros either. His drop in the polls has got to be young women and if Biden keeps up this “I am the greatest advocate of women because of VAWA” he’s gonna go down too. Gillibrand is doing some good things as well as Kamala and Liz, Hillary’s all over it. #StillWithHer.
Ohio Mom
@debbie: Can you have a front-pager post it? There are a good number of Ohioans here.
James E Powell
@Harbison:
For some, I’m sure they want to get this stuff before the most RW court since before the New Deal. But I think most of them are true believers who will always push for more. That’s why all those people who have argued for Dems to compromise with the anti-abortion movement were wrong and stupid. Whatever the Dems would agree to, the anti-abortion forces would be back in a week demanding more. If they end up making abortion a crime, they will then go for adultery and pre-marital sex.
Cheryl Rofer
@Ohio Mom: I’ll post it if debbie gets it to me.
Tenar Arha
@Mart: It might be that she’s been made ashamed over time. It’s not like there’s a lot of popular representations of women frankly saying things like “of course I’m having an abortion. I can’t afford the money/time/health risk/don’t ever want a child/another child/a child now.” It’s like there’s sociocultural gaslighting by the entire entertainment industry making it hard for your friend to feel good about her choice to wait until she was ready.
During just my lifetime we’ve gone from blasé acceptance of abortion being legal & apparently cheaply available to young women in NYC in movies like An Unmarried Woman, to Grandma (w Lily Tomlinson) spending a day helping her teenaged granddaughter find enough money for an abortion & running into multiple roadblocks.
There was a two parter on the podcast Citations Needed called Shifting Media Representations of Abortion, Part 1 on how the popular media has massively changed how it portrayed abortion over time.
ETA it’s worth listening to both episodes bc at least there’s a glimpse of hope recently in a movie like Obvious Child.
Urza
@Emerald: Some of the bills already do go after birth control. Anything that can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine lining. While i’m not a doctor, i’m gonna guess that covers nearly anything other than a condom.
Aleta
@Major Major Major Major: Try Rewire:
Emerald
@Ian R: Very good question! I guess she escapes.
Of course, she’ll have to uproot her entire family to gain asylum in the new state, won’t she?
Aleta
@Major Major Major Major:
Jessica Mason Pieklo @Hegemommy
and Imani Gandy @AngryBlackLady
are two lawyers who switched to journalism for Rewire. They cover repro rights in the courts, developments by state, LGBTQ rights and politics. They also host a podcast.
Mart
@Tenar Arha: I did not literally say abortion “worked out the best for you”, trying to condense our conversation. I worked on being kind to her. The abortion was really hard on my future wife, and she still worries if we did the right thing. Abortion is not easy.
CatFacts
A commenter on LGM pointed out that one of the main Right to Life supporters in Ohio, a guy named Mike Gonidakis, is also a major lobbyist for Petland. I’ll leave connecting the dots to those commenters who know more about the politics of regulating Ohio puppy mills than I do, but this raises… concerns, shall we say, about his opinions on gestation and humane treatment.
debbie
@CatFacts:
He is a horrible, horrible human being. I’ve seen him on many local reporter roundtables. He’s a real fast talker, like a used car salesman, so right away, you know he’s slime.
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
I will, Cheryl. Thanks.
Tenar Arha
@Mart: I’m sure you didn’t. But apparently for your friend, denial works for her. For whatever reason, she doesn’t want to acknowledge her experience, and perhaps she makes herself feel better about lying about the past by judging others for their choices.
But I would say that it’s wrong that she’s gaslighting you/your wife. She’d seems to prefer to say negative things to make you both feel bad about your choice rather than admit she made the same one. If that’s hurting you or your wife’s feelings, you & she may have to draw the line on your mutual friend criticizing abortion in front of both of you. (IOW your friend doesn’t have to talk about her abortions with you, but she has no right to talk about anyone else’s. No matter how you guys feel about your experience, she has no right to inflict her own feelings & fears on you guys).
Ruckus
@Tenar Arha:
Right wingers, evangelicals, doing their damndest to turn back the clock to a time that never actually existed. A time where there was never an abortion. And in religious terms, it’s not mentioned in the bible. There’s plenty of things that one is not supposed to do, plenty that one is supposed to do, but no mention of abortion. Now of course the book was written by men, so the concept that a woman might not want to have children or more children probably never entered their minds.
Many humans have worked for a long time to create equality among us, gender equality, racial equality, the concept that every human is a free person, has the same rights as any other human being, that laws can not be made to restrict except in the case that you are harming someone, murder, even non intentional injury or death is not right. And these assclowns want to be able to apply their crappy religious bullshit upon half the population.
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
Actually, I’m pretty sure that there is mention of terminating pregnancy in the Bible… but it isn’t prohibited in the Bible, it’s required in cases of adultery, which doesn’t go very well with the Theocratic Patriarchy, do it?
But the xtianists have no problem with inconsistency, do they? Love thy neighbor? Nope!
J R in WV
My parents were socially liberal “Rockefeller” republicans, which required some magical thinking in my opinion. It didn’t matter much because in WV back then Democratic candidates won all the general elections.
But on her death bed (which lingered for several years, as mom defied medical predictions and lived several years past their expectations) she told me that for years she had cancelled my dad’s vote in the general elections, because she couldn’t vote for a (Republican) candidate that didn’t support women’s right to choose an abortion. She also told me to never tell dad, which I didn’t feel any need to do anyway.
In talking with my mom, I became convinced that she had a close friend or relative who had a terrible outcome from an illegal abortion, and that affected her in a strong way. Personal experience is one way we learn about things, of course.