Apologize if someone has already noted this. From Mz Magazine:
On Thursday, April 7, Texas police arrested a woman and charged her with murder for allegedly self-inducing an abortion using pills. The woman, 26-year old Lizelle Herrera who lives near the Texas-Mexico border, is being held in Starr County jail on a $500,000 bond.
When I first heard of this, my initial response was to think of an old quote that I hold dear:
How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.
From Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., in Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Before I go on — if you can spare it, Frontera Fund is on the ground protesting this horror-show, as they have been for all the Texas restrictions. I suspect they could use the assist.
So — why care?
When I was a Baby Pro-Choice Activist, one of the things that got me over my Maleness and listening (at least a bit!) was the stories people would tell about their experiences with Abortions. Espcially when those Abortions were, shall we say, proscribed and constrained via Dr. King’s “unjust laws.” So-called “back alley abortions” were far from the only experience; coat-hangers, a useful symbol of a far more complex, and historically deep, process.
This cemented in my mind that Abortion is Moral, is Ethical. To debate its rightness in the face of all that we inflict upon those society identifies as Female, is horrifically unjust and a perversion Especiallyall right to self-identity and freedom. It locks them away in invisible chains, forcing them to do more, just to make it by — and silences them from communicating this unjustness, in many ways.
In that light: I do not know Mz. Herrera’s story. I do know that being arrested for murder, via self-inducing an abortion, is on this society’s face an unjust law. I do not discount, for a moment, that they targeted a Woman of Color, and slapped a half-million dollar bail on her.
I also note this arrest happens, even though the already-horrific Texas Legislature has been too cowardly to make taking the pills she took, a direct crime:
Texas does not have a law that makes self-inducing an abortion a crime (three states do—Oklahoma, South Carolina and Nevada).
So it would not shock me to find at this was a purely political move, designed to promote fear in people who’s biology allows them to reproduce, and their allies. A move to present this kind of Reproductive Rights as a “clear and present danger,” spurring on media attention and allowing this shameful Texas GOP to fig-leaf it, to use it as a “story” to install future restrictions on those Rights.
And, of course, to make all the political hay they can around that activity, as they have for months now.
It is beyond shameful to use this person as a “test case” in this way.
This is yet another in a long series of signs that the anti-choice, anti-reproductive rights forces have decided that any moral failing, in pursuit of “saving babies’ lives,” is allowed. And that they echo the ethical black hole of Mitch McConnell and Ron DeSantis in this, as recently documented on this very site, is not a coincidence.
I don’t have a fancy end for this, mostly because I’m red with rage. But this must be marked, and most be acknowledged for the brutality it inflicts, and threatens more of.
Baud
It’s be nice if this overreach helped Beto, but I’m not holding my breath.
Citizen Alan
I stand by my belief that most fervently anti choice people feel that way because in their hearts they know they are awful disgusting people and that the world would be a demonstrably better place if their own mothers had aborted them.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
Maybe they’re not wrong.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Democrats win among the women of every minority demographic. So if white women did the same we would never have a R majority again.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Same story with men.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: True but at least one can argue that they are voting their self interest. R party’s crusade against abortion is going to kill women, yes even white women.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Everyone votes their self interest. It’s just that sometimes their self interest is evil.
H.E.Wolf
An article that is still relevant: “The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion: When the Anti-Choice Choose”.
https://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/anti-tales.shtml
Ken
@schrodingers_cat: Not until the 19th Amendment was repealed, anyway.
@Baud: Trickier, but when you look at the original intent of the Founders, they clearly meant to limit the franchise to property owners.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: White women are the more gettable group for Democrats, if only because as women they have more “social intelligence” than their x-chromosome deficient counterparts.
I think that Democrats already attract a majority of college educated white women.
Nicole
Men may think they’re voting their own self-interest, but gender inequality is bad for them, too:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/countries-where-men-hold-the-power-are-really-bad-for-men-s-health/
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodingers_cat: also, abortion will still be available to the affluent
I remember Susan Carpenter MacMillan, the nutty rich lady who was one of Paula Jones’ promoters, claimed to be a ‘pro-life’ activist. It somehow came out that she had had an abortion after years of anti-choice campaigning. She said it was a “therapeutic miscarriage”.
(I saw this post and thought, someone will blame Democrats before the twelfth comment)
Mike in NC
Who will ever forget the infamous interview where somebody asked then-candidate Trump if women who had abortions needed to be punished? He obviously had never given it a moment’s thought, but had to pander to the nutjobs by saying “there has to be some form of punishment” (mumble mumble mumble). This from the guy who Michael Cohen said he routinely arranged for abortions for the undocumented women that Trump raped at his sordid properties.
The day that old white men make abortion illegal is the day the Republican Party finally dies.
Raoul Paste
You’d have to be a true sociopath to “make an example” out of this woman and put her through the hell of a murder trial. These people are monsters
Joe Falco
@Mike in NC:
As the kids say, “Huge, if true.”
If we’re talking about the Party of Lincoln and T. Roosevelt, that Party died a long time ago.
eversor
We are in a religious civil war, we have been for some time. Go look at comments on “Christian Intellectual” blogs and sites. The writers are openly calling for a Franco and saying they don’t want violence, but if they don’t get Traditional Christianity there will be violence and it will be the fault of their opponents. The commentators are openly calling for violence.
Furthermore all of these types are now flat out demanding the GOP finally deliver on their cultural issues or the country should fail and be destroyed. There were crosses, prayers, and Christian battle flags at the Jan 6 event and the run up to it was the Jerricoh event. Alito has stated that religious liberty should give Christians special treatment compared to the rest of it. Bill Barr openly admited he did what he did because of social issues and the loss of the faith.
We all keep skipping past the graveyard on this and blaming sexism, racism, inequality, education but religion is just as big of an issue as sexism and racism and it cannot be ignored. We are either going to have to confront that head on and seriously start to address how much of a tumor it is or we might as well give up because they will have their theocracy no matter what it takes or they will let the nation burn and start the fire.
guachi
I’m fairly confident abortion rights are doomed in large parts of the country because the people who will be harmed are poor women.
When middle class and the wealthy realize the bans don’t affect them then abortion rights won’t be an election winning platform. Combine that with most companies being run by men and states banning abortion will suffer no negative economic consequences either.
West of the Rockies
I’m not saying it’s easy for most people or businesses or even corporations, but people are going to have to start protesting with their feet. Evidently, by a percentage point or twenty, people in Texas and Idaho and Florida and other red states want these kinds of shitty laws.
You are down with the Texas law and general moral code? Stay and live it up. You don’t like it? Move. Go to a better place.
Is Texas purple? Parts, for sure, but like Florida, it appears 53 out of 100 people are assholes. That sucks for the other 47 people. The 47 have been and are fighting the good fight, but maybe it’s time to consider moving. That means Disney Florida, too.
Obviously, YMMV.
Martin
My first thought on this is ‘how did they find out?’ There’s another angle to this story that isn’t being told, probably because it involves a different violation of Herreras rights.
I haven’t mentioned this here in a long time, but its about one of my sort of charities and something that people might consider if they have the means.
I live in a planned community, which means that you can reasonably get around here without a car. In the center of this neighborhood of 30,000 people is a generic medical office where my dentist is. And on the ground floor is a husband/wife run clinic/pharmacy (he’s the GP, and she’s the pharmacist). The practice is also the word of mouth place where teen girls know they can go and get an abortion on the down low. It’s within walking/biking distance of about 3000 girls age 12-18 (adjoining neighborhoods are comparably large). Age of medical consent here in CA is 12, and abortions are of course hella legal in this state (and are required to be covered by insurance), but there’s almost no situation where a teen is benefitted by advertising the fact, and kids don’t get to choose their parents. So I have an agreement with the couple – if they get a young person in who can’t pay, or is without their parents or whatever, I don’t give a shit – I will pay. They don’t need to ask ahead of time, just give me a call and I’ll come over after the fact and hand them the cash. I give them a wave every time I go to the dentist so they know I haven’t gone anywhere. It’s a small and relatively cheap bit of advocacy I can do, and we’ve had that arrangement in place for just over 20 years now.
HIPAA protects patent information in a lot of cases, but financial records aren’t nearly as well protected. Simply disconnecting the payment of the procedure from the individual should go a long way to helping protect people like Herrera. It’s why California is gearing up to provide chemical abortion medication via USPS, and why Biden made it legal to use USPS for abortion medication. USPS provides a lot of federal protection for individuals which would help prevent local LEO from being able to do this.
Aside from helping locally, consider making a donation to an abortion fund. These do more or less what I do locally with my nearby clinic. Online medical abortion providers like HeyJane tap into those funds.
ian
@West of the Rockies:
Somehow I suspect this isn’t going to cause us to win back those state legislatures.
This is also not an option for poor people.
West of the Rockies
@schrodingers_cat:
A fair number of white women dig the white patriarchy.
West of the Rockies
@ian:
True on both counts. Absolutely, and it sucks.
I think a new Handmaid’s Tale work of art might help. Art, literature, song, film… they do influence people. It’s not an overnight fix, but it’s part of the formula.
Soprano2
They want to be the pregnancy police. How long until they start demanding that women of childbearing age prove every month that they aren’t pregnant? It’s a huge new bureaucracy they are envisioning to monitor women. I’m telling you, the anti-abortionists don’t care about “life” or “babies”, they want to control the sex lives of young women.
Kay
@Martin:
I think we need more information than this to get all the facts, but major (adequately funded and staffed) media outlets don’t cover the impact of banning abortion in Texas and other states. They’re not interested.
I don’t think the deaths, arrests, etc are even going to be reported or counted. They’ll be spread over perhaps 23 states. It’s going to take a lot of private funding to even properly investigate these stories and put them out online.
Damien
@eversor: Religion is a cancer. Sometimes benign, often malignant, and the number one cause of death among democracies.
MisterDancer
I’m confused. Where is anyone discounting Religion in all of this?
I’ve talked before on how this whole anti-Roe/Griswold fight came from Evangelicals. But in doing so, you cannot just point to “Religion,” or even Christianity, and say they are “the problem”.
Moch of the reason the Evangelical movement exists and holds power, is their long-standing ties to Racism. It’s been documented that (arguably) the entire reason this fight started, was because a religious institution, Bob Jones University, was upset the Nixon-era IRS revoked their tax-exempt status because they would not desegregate their school, citing some perverse readings of the Bible to justify the hate.
But in that, I would blame White Supremacy directly, not Christianity, or even evangelicals.
Why? Religion has long been used to justify all manner of hate. But so, too, has Science — I recently referenced the famous scientist Professor Louis Agassiz, who is critical to the development of Natural sciences, but who ideas were so damn racism in ways that echo to THE BELL CURVE and beyond, that his Harvard page basically has to say “oops, sorry about all the damn racism!” A lot of the “our slaves are like children” bullshit that then fed into the Lost Cause, was informed by work like his.
So: it’s not a direct correlation, else groups like the Proud Boys would be far more explicitly religious. Hell, there’s many hate groups that infect Pagan and aligned groups, which is its own damn thing that I don’t have the patience to break down, right now. But no, White Supremacy may use the trappings of Christianity, but it’s critical to religion trappings for what they are — excuses to hide and protect prejudice, just as they were when the KKK did it, way back in the day.
And, of course, there is a deep irony in decrying the impact of Religion in an article that uses one of the most positive examples of Christians — Dr. King, — in it’s post. Or, in a very recent example, the Mass Catholic school that is standing up to a Bishop, in defending it’s flying of the Pride and BLM flags, and support of those groups on campus.
Hell, even the 50 year existence of Catholics for Choice, should be a big pointing sign that your assertions are way off, in not presenting your argument with nuance and care.
I ask you deeply reconsider this approach to raising your concerns to the community, here.
Thank you.
eclare
@Martin: What a wonderful thing to do.
Cameron
@Kay: I guess the hospital staff member (s) who reported this want that sweet TX payday for abortion rats.
Martin
@guachi: There’s another angle to this though. Chemical abortions can be used in almost all cases up through 11 weeks, so it covers the majority of abortion needs. Right now, the only remaining local restriction on accessing the medication from out of state is whether your state has a restriction on interstate telemedicine.
The state level controls at least around chemical abortions are hanging by a thread, and the FDA could approve these for over the counter use (they meet the FDA criteria now, they just haven’t been approved). That would eliminate the prescription need, and therefore the telemedicine restrictions. Then any online provider located in California could mail abortion medication anywhere in the country without the state having any say in the matter. This is also why Texas crafted their law the way they did.
I’m willing to bet that if RvW falls, the FDA will immediately announce that it’s now an over the counter medication. It still leaves a LOT of abortion needs unmet, particularly all of the lifesaving ones, but it essentially federalizes it a right through 11 weeks. It’s not everything, but it’s still quite a lot.
And for the record, Kamala Harris was outstanding on abortion issues as AG in CA. Big part of why I supported her.
Kropacetic
Some people have a poorly prioritized set of interests.
Kay
@Cameron:
The next one will just die at home rather than risking arrest. No one will even find out about it.
bjacques
@West of the Rockies: Unfortunately, people voting with their feet is also how Orban got a 4th term. The EU’s eastern and southeastern countries have lost a lot of their best, brightest, and most entrepreneurial people to western European countries, while those who stay behind get angrier at the lack of economic progress there, and are easy prey to demagogues. Hungary is like the Alabama of Europe.
Of course it’s hard to ask people to stay in those countries/states, while living in relatively more progressive ones. The rest of us hope to one day benefit from the courage and cussedness of Adam, Betty, etc., and their European counterparts.
CaseyL
@West of the Rockies: People have been voting with their feet: that’s actually part of the problem. Young people in particular have been stampeding away from the places of their birth for the past 30 years.
Many of those states are horror pits today because there’s no reason to stay there if you are gay, a person of color, have any ambition, intelligence, or want to live somewhere that isn’t stuck in the 1950s.
And now those places are seeing an influx of people who quite like living in a human rights wasteland as long as the housing is cheap. A lot of RWNJs are leaving Washington and California for Texas and Idaho, or leaving New York for Florida, and making them even worse.
How to reverse this? I have no idea. Any planned migration of liberals would require tens of thousands at a time moving to (say) a single Congressional district in Nebraska or Oklahoma or Kentucky to reverse the red tide.
Starfish
Thank you for posting this, MisterDance. I had not seen a post from you in a while, and I was hoping you would write something. I am glad that you picked such an important issue.
Cameron
@Kay: Dammit, that sounds like exactly what will happen. If it hasn’t already.
Starfish
@CaseyL: With housing as expensive as it has gotten, I think that some of these areas that are cool and not quite extremely expensive may see an influx of people.
We shall see because the tech companies are now trying to nudge the employees back into the offices, so we will see if people jump ship for fully remote jobs.
Radford
Just for the record — The Bible is NOT anti-abortion. In Numbers 5:11-31, God gives Moses instructions on how Priests are to perform abortions in the Temple. If a man’s wife becomes pregnant and he is convinced he is not the father, he is to take her to a Priest and make his case. If the Priest believes the man, he is to mix a potion that includes dust from the floor of the temple and force the woman to drink it, thereby bringing on the “curse” (aka the menstrual cycle). It is abortion on demand for a man whose wife is unfaithful.
Also for the record — before desegregation became an issue and the churches wanted taxpayers money to fund their all white schools, this is how Genesis 2:7 was preached: God formed man from a lump of clay and breathed into his nostrils the BREATH OF LIFE and man became a living being. To say that life begins when a sperm touches an egg is to say man, not God, has created life. And that is vanity. And vanity is a mortal sin. A fetus in the womb has never drawn the BREATH OF LIFE. It can not be murdered because it has never lived. But, the racist churches needed an issue to bring Catholics and Evangelicals together for political reasons. They first tried birth control, but too many husbands liked the idea of having sex with their wives without having 14 kids to put through college. So that talking point was quickly dropped. But abortion was something all the good ol’ boys could agree on. And here we are.
Kay
@Cameron:
The story isn’t complete enough. The Texas law (you know, supposedly, as written) targets the physician who prescribed the pills. They’re using some other law, or, perhaps more likely, none of them know what the law does or is supposed to do so they’re just ratting everyone out to cover their asses.
Anti-abortion crusaders put very little thought or work into these laws. None of them have any idea how any of it will play out, real world. Forcing women to carry the child of their rapist is a radical change in US law, for example. There’s no discussion at all about it. They can’t be bothered to sort through the details. The women are just not important to them.
Suzanne
@CaseyL: Honestly, there’s a lot of people moving to those red places who are not shitty RWNJs because of the affordability of housing. That’s how Salt Lake City ended up a blue dot with a gay mayor.
Making housing and especially homeownership affordable would sand the edges off a lot of this.
Nancy
@Martin: I’m so impressed and inspired by your efforts.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Radford: I forget if it was Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson (or someone else) about whom it was said, I think by a Republican, “He couldn’t even spell abortion until 1973”
Kay
@Cameron:
Of course it will happen. They know it will happen. There’s no “safe harbor” provision in any of these laws and they’re fucking drafting them- they could have put one in.
They don’t give a shit. They’re on a sanctimonious crusade. Don’t bother them with practical details.
Chetan Murthy
@ian:
This is absolutely true, and also absolutely irrelevant. Please let me explain. There is a certain … “American birthright” that we all take for granted: our freedoms, and at some level, our standard of living. That birthright is not one shared with immigrants, and so I for one don’t share it, even though I’ve lived here since age 4: I know, deep down, that I have to *earn it* in a way that no American does, and it has colored my entire life.
So my response as an immigrant is: “welcome to
our worldreality, gringo”. That is to say: there are many, many immigrants in California who do work that no native-born would do, in order to make better lives for their children. Will they live poorer, shorter, less-healthy lives? *yes*. But it’s a price they pay for their children’s future lives. And so, this will be the choice offered to those poor people.And why? Because it’s becoming more and more clear that there is no other choice on offer: the Red States are becoming more and more Red, more and more inhospitable for decent people, women, gender minorities, people of color. And there’s nothing the Federal Government, or the rest of us, can do about it.
Think like an immigrant, not like the native-born. Nothing is your *birthright*. Nothing.
Cameron
@Kay: I think the vagueness is intentional. It’s a lot easier to generate fear if people don’t know what these laws really do. Like the “Don’t Say Gay” down here in FL, where everybody from Ronnie D. down to the oaf at the other end of the bar are making claims that they either know are false or don’t know whether true or not (and, as you say, don’t care).
Kay
@Cameron:
Ohio has a safe habor law for drug overdoses. If you seek or are given emergency medical care in the course of an overdose AND seek drug treatment when you are released you can raise it as an defense from a drug charge and they have to drop the charges. People kept dying of overdoses because they were afraid of a felony drug charge.
Anti-abortion crusaders didn’t consider anything like that in their laws. Nope. Too busy fast tracking them to their justices on the supreme court.
Geminid
@CaseyL: Republican held districts in both Oklahoma and Nebraska are flippable if Democrats find good candidates and support them. Democrat Kendra Horn won an Oklahoma seat in 2018, then lost it in 2020. And although Republican Don Bacon won reelection to his Nebraska seat in 2020, Joe Biden carried Bacon’s district and won the Electoral vote that Nebraska awarded for that (like Maine, Nebraska awards an electoral vote for each Congressional District carried). Democrats don’t need to immigrate to those districts so much as pay attention to them.
Rusty
Roe is going, but so is Griswold. Ultimately the 6 reactionaries on the court want to eliminate any right of privacy so the state can fully regulate all sexual activity and the consequences thereof. Sadly there are enough people that won’t care as long as they get their tax cuts since they know the laws will never be enforced against them. They are for those other people. I don’t think even the most draconian laws will substantially move the voting dial.
Suzanne
@West of the Rockies:
Well, yes. But that’s hard if you’re broke. And if you haven’t noticed, most of the places that are not-shitty to live in are more expensive. I do think moving people out of shifty red states is the best way forward, so now we have to figure out how to do that.
Chetan Murthy
@CaseyL:
It’s easy enough, if we just had the will. We (e.g. the state of CA) pass laws that criminalize any participation in acts that curtail reproductive freedom — any participation whatsoever, including judges, prosecutors, po-po, all of it. And strips all assets from such persons, and any corps or shell companies they are beneficial owners of. All of them. And of course, strips assets from all shell companies whose beneficial owners are not public record in CA. Add bounty-hunter provisions so the state doesn’t have to do the legwork, just the judging. And then let ‘er rip. Impoverish the fuck out of them.
And this is similar to what needs (needed) to be done about Russia: we’ve been pussyfooting around, allowing these evil
fascistschristofascists to park their money in ourcountriesstates, visit their money, vacation here, etc, and look where it’s gotten us:Ukrainians dyingpoor women imprisoned for exercising their reproductive rights. We need to use the weapons we have, and we’re not willing to.And Amnesty International comes along and convinces the Feds that they shouldn’t impound and sell off Russian oligarchs’ assets, b/c it might be reversed by a court case in the future. Fuuuuuck. We’re
selling Putin the rope with which he’ll hang us. Same with the Christofascists.
Cameron
@Kay: The Ohio law is sensible and humane. I can’t recall hearing anything from anti-abortion folks with either of those qualities.
Citizen Alan
@MisterDancer: Agreed. You can’t blame blame the rise of ultra conservativism on religion when most of the conservative religious movements that hold power in this country got started because plantation owners wanted methodist and Baptist preachers who would reassure them that God was OK with chattel slavery.
mrmoshpotato
@Citizen Alan:
I’ve never heard this take before, and it made me laugh darkly.
catothedog
Not all of Christianity wants Franco – a particular strain of it, which is more or less a proxy for racism in the USA.
There is the “soft” Christians, who want a Christian ethics and liberal democracy, and then there is the “hard” Christians who want a Christian ethics and ethnocentricity. But both are united in terms of denying liberals political power. The hard faction wants to go back to the pre-civil rights era – liberal democracy, but only for whites. The rest of the populace live at the mercy of white magnanimity.
It is almost guaranteed that liberal democracy + social benefits just for whites, would be a winning political coalition.
FDR ruled with that.
Berniebros attempted it.
The next Trumpista will implement it.
@MisterDancer:
America became opposed to public investment when the law said that minorities were entitled to public services.
When the country desegregated schools, people suddenly wanted private schools. They wanted vouchers to put their kids in private schools, because public schools were suddenly no good.
Black people were legally entitled to public transportation, and immediately people opposed public transportation. Black people were allowed in public pools, and suddenly we didn’t want public pools. They needed to be shut down, and we needed private schools.
Black people were allowed to collect welfare and unemployment and food stamps, and suddenly they stopped being a safety net for the unfortunate and became a scam for the lazy.
Welfare was a “war on poverty” while it was just poor white Appalachian people getting it but when “urban people” got benefits suddenly it was the worst thing ever
Starfish
@Chetan Murthy: A lot of that sounds illegal.
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC:
It won’t be illegal for those well-connected or with means. Only illegal for “those people.”
Chetan Murthy
@Starfish: So what? Or more precisely, you mean: “it’s illegal by Federal law”. So be it: bring that fight, make them fight it. I mean, do you think these Christofascists care that their forced-birther laws are illegal? They go right ahead and pass them. And the Federal courts go right ahead and let ’em stand. What you really mean, what you really mean, is that the Federal courts would strike these laws down. And so what? Dare the Feds to invade CA to enforce those overturnings.
Because if we want a decent country, we’ll have to force this issue: we’ll have to make it clear that these Red Staters cannot live in the same country as us, enjoy the fruits of our states and our societies, without agreeing to certain basic rules, among them the rights of all Americans.
With respect, what you really mean by “those laws would be illegal” is “I’m not willing to risk what we have in (e.g.) CA, to fight for reproductive rights”. But if we don’t bring this fight on this ground (laws) now, we’ll be fighting a hot civil war eventually. That also is a lesson we can learn from the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Starfish
@Chetan Murthy: My thinking was that the right wing in California is particularly insane, and cleaning up their ability to fund overthrowing reproductive rights in other states would go a long way, but the whole “money = speech” thing lets them do this crap.
HalfAssedHomesteader
@West of the Rockies: Not easy AND ineffective. You know what would be effective (and not easy): More folks moving INTO these states. Speaking as a Georgian (ok, Atlantan).
Martin
@MisterDancer: Yeah, Catholics are basically split on abortion equal to the general population. Catholics pretty much ignore what the Vatican says, or take the stance that Biden and Pelosi do.
Starfish
@eversor: A lot of “Christian intellectual” stuff is run by white Christians. Christianity was very important in the civil rights movement. Southern Christian Leadership Conference, anyone? Christianity should not be abdicated to rightwingers.
The importance of Christianity is declining. However, it is going to be important to places like the South. A number of Democratic Southerners that I know are sharing things in Facebook from the various Religious Left communities.
One reason that religious screeds do not land on Joe Biden so easily is because he IS religious.
Martin
@eclare: It’s really not a big deal. It’s not a lot of money. But I believe a lot more in direct action causes than broader political action ones (nothing against them, but I always ran up against the reality of what my proposed policies intended to do, and what actually happened). There’s no middle administrative layer here. The money goes directly to the clinic to help stay in business and directly helps the people who need help. I never wonder if the money isn’t being well used. I know every penny is.
And I also know I’m not alone. A number of years after I started doing this I learned another independent clinic (no attached pharmacy) had opened up near the next closest high school and I went over to talk about the same deal with them, and they didn’t need me – they already had someone doing essentially the same thing and they said that among their social/professional circle, all of the other ones in the area had as well. The idea spread.
Mind you, this is a pretty affluent area, and I’m not poor so this is really not a burden, but its nice to see this kind of community support operating in relatively densely populated areas. You don’t normally get that.
But pay attention to the USPS. It’s going to increasingly become the focus of a political fight to block the ability to mail abortion medication as well as birth control. Expect lots of executive action with each president on this one.
Yutsano
Typing from new computer! Gonna take a bit to get things synced up.
The Supreme Court is about to kill Roe vs Wade. Once that happens, a ton of abortion laws will pass all over the South and Midwest. Will it make a difference? Not in time for the 2022 election. It’s going to have to be the stories of white women dying to move any kind of needle. It’s going to get so much worse. And I don’t know what can be done, other than save as many women as we can.
Anyway
Starfish
@Yutsano: Imani Gandy has already pointed out that Roe v Wade is already dead. That is why all these places feel so emboldened to pass all this garbage.
scav
If abortions were performed by bullets, they’d be mandatory in TX.
Suzanne
@Anyway: Corporations that need a lot of college-educated workers will be less inclined to go to shitty places because they will struggle to attract a workforce. The percentage of women and minorities in colleges is increasing by a lot. There’s a reason Amazon chose New York and DC.
Time to fund scholarships for women and minorities at universities in blue states to get them out of red states.
Chetan Murthy
@Anyway:
I think this is like asking Germans to individually boycott Russian oil&gas, while Chancellor Scholz hems-and-haws, won’t even commit to a firm date by when they’ll be 100% off, pleads that legal wrangling over building new LNG terminals is delaying things. There’ll always be reasons why big corps want to locate in Texas. Wanna stop that? Ban such companies from operating in California, that’s how. Or better, make it a crime for anybody to run such a company. So you wanna put your factory in Texas, Elon? Don’t ever set foot in CA or you’ll spend a decade in San Quentin.
Martin
@Nancy: You learn a lot about the lives of young people reading college applications. A shocking number of stories of abuse, and if they don’t talk about their own teen pregnancies or abortions, they talk a LOT about helping their friend, sister, cousin, etc.
I estimate I’ve read over 50,000 applications. More than a few stories of getting pregnant from a family member. And that’s just the students willing to tell that story.
And I learned really quick just how many students roll into college with no access to a credit card. Neither they nor their parents have one. Simple things like ordering medication online becomes effectively impossible if they don’t have someone who can help them. Which of course is a big part of what SB8 is designed to stop.
I also am pre-wired to solve problems by negating the tools used to propagate the problem. I take a certain amount of joy in institutionalizing the loopholes. Bad policy actively pisses me off.
Another Scott
@Kay: I was just coming to post the same information from a tweet:
I have no doubt that the facts in this woman’s particular case are being muddled in the early reporting – that always happens.
But it’s clear that the GQP is trying to make all of these abortion restrictions Terri Schiavo 2.0 (or MoralMajority/OperationRescue 2.0) to increase their political power. Criminalizing health care. The GQP sticking its grubby short fingers in a person’s medical decisions and getting between them and their health care professionals. Demanding that individuals take on all the pain, risk, mental and financial responsibilities imposed by the state without any means of support.
They always recycle these tactics, because that’s all they have. I expect Ralph Reed to be showing up outside some courthouse in Texas, and broadcast live on Fox News, any minute now.
It’s horrible. And we can’t let it stand. The battle is never over with these monsters.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brit in Chicago
I’m wholly on board with the main point of the post, but I have to take issue with the qutoation that the poster holds dear:
“How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”
Without an agreed method of determining what the moral law of God is, that’s just a recipe for having armed camps, each convinced of its own righteousness. I’m an atheist, so I’m not too big on this kind of talk anyway, but at this stage in history surely even theists should accept that we’re not going to get agreement on what God’s law is, so we need to base our laws on human beings and their rights and needs and wishes, without bringing God into it.
I’m sure that plenty of people in Texas think that the way Mz. Herrera is being treated is in accordance with God’s moral law, or even that harsher treatment would be. You can’t win an argument on that ground.
zhena gogolia
@MisterDancer: THANK YOU!!!
lowtechcyclist
These people have shrugged as a million Americans, and many millions more around the world, have died of Covid-19. Not just shrugged, but actively opposed the simple means of saving lives: masks and vaccines. There’s nothing ‘pro-life’ about them. They are just anti-abortion.
I know the history of evangelicals’ having become anti-abortion, but I believe that’s incidental now: as has so often been the case, my assumption is that the cruelty is the point.
Splitting Image
@Martin:
I just wanted to highlight this and say thank you for doing this.
Martin
@CaseyL: Oh, planned migration has been going on for ages. It’s called ‘college’. You have any idea how many students out job hunting I’ve asked ‘have you been considering jobs in [names region with a big industry]?’ Only to get the response of ‘why do you think I went to college in California – so I wouldn’t have to go back to Florida/Alabama/Wyoming/Ohio/wherever. Also China/Iran.
Generally speaking red states have pretty piss-poor university options. It’s one of the only things that I’m tolerant of the Ivies over – they’re great gateways to getting young people out of states that are out to get them.
I actually learned this while I was in college. I unknowingly chose a college that was known as a safe campus for LGBTQ students (mid 80s). Not only was it a place where they could be safely out, it was also a way to escape their communities to they could move onto more tolerant regions after the graduated. Learned a lot there, which was good – I had a lot to learn.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: They are prioritizing being evil over their health. I see the same short sightedness among upper caste Indian women who vote for the BJP.
lowtechcyclist
@Brit in Chicago:
I’m a born-again Christian, and I endorse this message.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: A lot of things can go wrong with even a wanted pregnancy. And an immediate termination of pregnancy can become imperative for the survival of the mother. In that case even being wealthy is not going to save the woman.
sab
My mother got pregnant at age 40. Dad knew abortion doctors but wouldnt’t refer her. Mom never forgave him or the fetus. She is my favorite sister. I have very mixed feelings about abortion, but I am mostly pro-choice.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
IknowIknknowIknow! Pick me!
(repost) Jill Lepore at the NewYorker:
Abortion in the US since the 1970s has always, always been about politics. Specifically, about dividing natural Democratic coalitions.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Peale
@schrodingers_cat: We’ll see soon how well these laws that don’t even take into account the life of the mother do. I’m sure when the stats come out in a few years and we see a rise in those states in women dying during pregnancy from ectopic pregnancies, we’ll have to be shocked to find that the health of the mother is tied very closely to race and income. Somehow, once you get above a household income of a few hundred K, those kinds of pregnancies’ will appear not to happen as often. And the media will have to pretend to surprised by this.
sab
@Peale: Dead mothers don’t vote.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
On the list of election fantasies, this is second only to “The youth will come out this time!”
Brit in Chicago
@lowtechcyclist: Thanks! My hope is that resonable people can agree, regardless of their religious disagreements. There’s not as much evidence for this as I’d like (or maybe not as many reaonable people as I like), but you encourage my hope.
Kelly
Even here in blue Oregon where abortion is legal the procedure has been shunted of to clinics. Most doctors that could perform abortions are reluctant because they do not want screaming pickets out front of their clinics. Some will do it quietly for long standing patients. I watched a popular small town doctor’s OB/GYN practice evolve into an abortion only practice where he wore a ballistic vest and carried a 9mm. He dismissed a clumsy attempt to burn his clinic down as intimidation on the grounds that anyone serious about arson would have broken a window.
Mai Naem mobile
I drive by an abortion provider virtually everyday and at least once a week I see the prolifers waving their little signs. They don’t seem like the super aggressive ones. I want so bad to go up to them and tell them to get in line for adopting kids in the foster care system if they’re so pro-life. There’s a huge number of kids in the foster care system in this state – ofcourse they tend to be older, of color and possibly with medical/developmental issues.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy:
OTOH, Germany has a history of very bad things happening when the economy goes into a deep recession.
DW.com (opinion piece):
To be clear, it’s my view that Germany can and must do more to stop sending so much money to Putin. But it is going to take time and needs to be done smartly. Whether Scholz is doing enough, quickly enough, I can’t say.
AfD gaining political power would do immense damage to Germany and to Europe.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott:
I take your point, but maybe in a direction you did not intend. I’ve noted that in CA, lots of ostensible liberals are fed up with CA taxes and such: at literally the moment when high taxes and a robust state delivered the promised benefits (and saved lives). I often think that American support for liberalism is …. millimeters-thin and liable to be washed-away with the first storm. Like, a kerfuffle over Beloved. Honestly, I think most white liberals are just unwilling to actually sacrifice anything — not even one iota — for their freedoms. Not a thing.
scav
@Peale: It’ll be interesting — is interesting, in so far as it’s already observable — to see the Red-Blue divide reflected in death and health statistics. White life expectancy continued to drop last year (no vaccine rebound) and the US continues to not perform as well as our supposed peers, so there are likely all sorts of factors complicating things but there is a probable signal. (WaPo article). US has generally had sub-par maternity stats, so we’ll likely just have to see if anyone notices the next bounces down the charts. (stats example).
Geminid
@James E Powell: So are you saying that white women are not more gettable than white men? Empirical evidence, not fantasy, shows they are.
Chetan Murthy
@Geminid: I don’t know what @James E Powell: means, but yeah, I don’t think waiting for white women to arrive and save us is … such a winning strategy: https://www.thecut.com/2020/11/many-white-women-still-voted-for-trump-in-2020.html
“Of Course White Women Voted for Trump Again”
Omnes Omnibus
@Geminid: I tend to be of the mind that effort are better spent on pushing turn out among those who agree with us rather than trying to get people to switch.
ETA: I also think that there are a number of people on the left side of the aisle who are losing faith in liberal democracy. You can even see here on Balloon Juice threads. That, I think, is a very dangerous trend.
Geminid
@Chetan Murthy: I did not say waiting for white women to come save us is a winning strategy. That would be ridiculous. I just said they were more gettable. There is a difference.
Brachiator
@Chetan Murthy:
California was helped by a strong economy that continued through the pandemic and an unexpectedly large budget surplus, not high taxes. And high taxation was offset by unemployment benefits and various rebates and stimulus payments.
However, you still had an increase in homelessness and the problem of younger people moving out of the state because the cost of living is not sustainable.
People are willing to pay taxes and want the wealthy to pay their fair share. But many people do not buy into the vision of some (not all, by any means) liberals of a state built on high taxes and permanent sacrifice.
The Democrats try to promise no increased taxes on middle income workers. No one is yet ready to pitch a message of permanently high taxes on everyone in return for government services.
MisterDancer
@Brit in Chicago: Dr. King put an “or” in there for a damned good reason. That “or” means he’s acknowledging, in a period where damn near no-one admitted to not being Christian, that the precepts he’s laying out are applicable outside of his specific vision of Christianity.
We know this because he spoke about it. He openly acknowledged pulling a serious portion of his theory of non-violence from a non-Christian, Ghandi. We also know this because one of his most critical allies was the openly atheist Bayard Rustin. Dr. King was not perfect, yet I think this is a thin reed to be pointing out, especially if the point is that saying “God” is not useful.
I refuse to play a game where speaking of morals/ethics in a religious framework — or even out — automatically means some kind of War. Just as it is currently possible for a host of countries of various religious background to recognize genocide when they see it in Ukraine, so too can we say something is immoral in our religious framework, without auto-invoking a Nicene Council, or Vatican II, on what the hell that means.
If people of faith cannot speak to that faith in how they shape opinion, then we’re asking people to lie. And the issue around the Right is that they lie on their faith all the damn time. They have developed multiple public and private networks to amplify and indoctrinate those lies. As I said in my post, they actually have no moral core at all, save “power for power’s sake.”
It should be the easiest thing in the world for Christians of any real moral standing, to stand up against these amoral asshats. That it is not the case, is far more an issue than trying to placate some fear of “armed camps” around religion. It shows that Dr. King’s dream — a dream shared by many who fought tooth-and-nail for Civil Rights — of a broad colition of social justice, is stuck in this regard.
That should be worrying. We won’t all agree on everything, religion among many. But we should, like Dr. King, be able to at least agree to fight for the most basic rights, no matter how you personally derived those rights as “real”.
These “Christians” claim to speak for everyone. As I tallied in my other comment, they do not, and we cannot pretend to let them; indeed, arguments like that have allowed them, in my opinion, to shape public opinion. I don’t think ahead-on collision is useful, esp. given the mis-match in resources, yet I also don’t think walking away from that discussion is at all helpful — it sure as heck hasn’t worked out, to date.
And although I’m not here to talk about my personal religious alignment, I can say that I grew up in two very different visions of what Christianity can be. I can say that I’m here talking to you because people of a host of faiths, and none at all, joined forces under an agreed moral and ethical core to fight for what would be my freedom.
I have my serious disagreement with some of how that played out, to be sure. Yet: Why the heck would you think I’d elide all that, just so I can claim some “neutrality” around religion that would be a lie, as well?
I don’t much care what you believe. I care, really deeply, how you express and utilize those beliefs. And yes, I think that’s the key metric here — not the use of “God” in and of itself.
germy
Here are some good questions:
Chetan Murthy
@MisterDancer: First, let me just say that I’m a child of the Western Enlightment (in a potted way) and as such, my intellectual worldview is deeply informed by the inheritance from Western Christianity. It’s a fact, and I can acknowledge it even as I’m a committed atheist. *committed* atheist.
But: I have often read that “good Christians” cannot denounce “bad Christians” because they’re all Christians — they all sign up for (what is apparently the bare minimum) the creed of “believe that Jesus is the Son of God, etc, etc”. And that’s enough for them to be Christian.
And to my mind, if you’re willing to say “yeah, Jerry Falwell is a Christian”, then you can’t very well take umbrage at people saying that religion is a pox on the human species.
Again: my entire intellectual worldview is inherited in great part from Western Christianity. I know from reading Kant’s Foundations of Metaphysics of Morals, that his morality was informed by Christianity. And I’m a Kantian. So it’s not like I’m opposed to the role of religion in forming morality. But … you Christians really need to get your shit together and start excommunicating your bad actors.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: Do you excommunicate Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot from atheism? Or is their atheism irrelevant to the fact that they are mass murdering assholes?
MisterDancer
Dr. King did. The entire point of the letter I pulled that quote from, is him putting in their places a bunch of Christian and Jewish civil right leaders who though he was, basically, uppity and rabble-rousing. He was more than willing to point out their moral failings, in that regard.
He didn’t stay silent on this topic, either, throughout his life; that letter was towards the beginning of his work.
So no, I 1000% do not get this argument. “Hey, doing X is bad, stop it,” isn’t just about religion, and to hide behind “we’re all Christians here” is, at some point, itself immoral.
And it’s clearly not aligned to what any Christian should be asking, which is “What Would Jesus Do?” Jesus got up in the face of supine and abusive authority, time and again. Jesus stood up for marginalized people, over and again. Jesus inflicted violence when necessary, at least once.
I’m not saying “go be a Christian.” I am saying anyone who is a Christian, and hides behinds the skirts of authorities like these asshats in the Evangelical movement to do their thinking for them, who accepts these waves of authoritarian and immoral behavior to “save babies and children” — why the hell would you listen to them? Why the hell would you not want to step to them?
And that those who are not Christian, should not just accept that that’s how Christians act. Because there’s a duty outside religion, going back to Enlightenment values — to one’s community and society and humanity as a whole. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a damn civil society, if joining a religion allow you to bypass the most basic moral/ethical frameworks?
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: We atheists do not claims that atheism gives us moral standing. Christians *do* make such claims about being Christian.
I note with care that there are tons of for-shit atheists: Hitchens, Dawkins, Sam what’s-his-name (that hates Muslims), etc.
Kropacetic
@Chetan Murthy: Sam Harris I believe and let’s add Bill Maher.
WendyBinFL
@Martin:
I know many other jackals have already expressed their appreciation for your Good Work, but I want to add my own as well. You are an inspiring example of Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is! You may never know how many lives you have saved. Thank you!
Chetan Murthy
@MisterDancer:
And yet, I am told (both at LG&M and here, but esp. at LG&M) that a fundamental tenet of Christianity is that you do not have to believe in the Gospels, in order to be Christian. That you literally don’t need to believe “what you do to the littlest of these, you do to me”, in order to be Christian.
Christians claim a mantle of moral superiority. They need to be vociferously denouncing these faux Christians (with their evil beliefs and actions), and teaching their flocks to regard them as apostates and unbelievers, as evil. Otherwise, they can’t claim that mantle.
Omnes Omnibus
This is not necessarily so. Many would argue that all men are sinners. As a matter of fact, that is kind of central to the religion.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: Omnes, surely you jest. Everywhere we look, we see “Christians” arguing for the moral superiority of their religion. Everywhere. You argue that they misquote and misinterpret scripture, and surely you are correct. You are also irrelevant. And every priest who is actually a good Christian, who doesn’t call out these hypocrites and educate their flocks thusly, is allowing this hypocrisy to flourish.
I mean, c’mon ……
MisterDancer
@Chetan Murthy/@Kropacetic: Who’s shitty opinions informed the nascent Alt-Right, giving them an early target to collect their hate around — since it was “cool” at one point to just be Islamphobic as fuck, and still is in too many areas.
It’s a really sore topic for me; I’m “MisterDancer” because of decades studying dance from Arabic/Persian/Turkish areas. I watched as one of the scholars I used to reference, Benard Lewis, sold out to the Right in churning out book after book promoting hate of the people and cultures of those regions. It was stomach-churning to see his hate referenced by some of the very people you mention, building it up — and then to see that hate pissing into the mouths of these Right-Wing asshats, esp. on YouTube.
I actually have been watching a series by Steve Shines, who’s an atheist I’ve come to really respect (even if I think he’s way too hard on this season of PICARD…eh, no one’s perfect :). Anyway, he did a series of responses to one of those “Islam sux!” books that got churned out from the 2000s that’s been an on-off listen for me over the last month or so, coincidentally. It’s a reminder that the atheism community is, well, diverse and has it’s own problems, too — sadly. :(
MisterDancer
@Chetan Murthy: Man, I ain’t here to explain/defend what any other people on the Internet say. I’m just one fool, on same.
I can only speak for myself, and what I’ve read/studied. If you want to touch on that, I can look into explaining. But other people’s opinions on what makes a Christian, in detail? Pah.
If you hear different than my opinion, which I think you share? You might want to take it up direct with them.
Cool?
Chetan Murthy
@MisterDancer:
Fair enough. Peace.
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: Traditionally, maybe this was so. Increasingly, it seems like flashing the JC-believer card is all that is required to get past the bouncers into Evangelical heaven. Known breakers of their own moral codes stand on their hind legs and announce that it’s a private matter and they’ve already been forgiven by Their Lord and Savior as if they know the very mind of God. They’re certainly equally fast to announce other people’s behaviors are unforgiven, if not the cause of hurricanes. Any personal fear of the Last Judgement seems to have disappeared from the locally loudly devout.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: Indeed. I always hate the complaint that red state whites are voting against their interests, because it ignores the possibility that white supremacy itself is an interest that drives their voting patterns.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: You do you, man. Don’t worry about the souls to polls campaigns that brought Ds unexpected victories in places like Georgia. Fuck them, amirite?
phdesmond
good metaphor!
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: What’s the relevant attribute? Christianity? Or “social organization among people of color” ? I’d argue the latter, not the former.
catothedog
@Chetan Murthy:
There are enough Christians who call this shit out. The only problem is that they do not have their voices heard far and wide, because there are no rich plutocrats funding their views.
Here is a well-argued piece about why the Christian integrationist view is bullshit and basically Christian blasphemy. I doubt anyone outside of a small circle of thinkers know about this.
One More Lifeless Idol
what he and his allies seem to pine for is a kind of fantasy Catholicism, a dreamlike amalgamation of the Holy Roman and Eastern Roman Empires in which all rulers bow to Rome, the Spanish Inquisition is fondly remembered, and nobody would dare suggest that abducting a secretly baptized Jewish child from his parents might be wrong. This is a dream of unchecked imperial might as a substitute for politics, of bypassing the work of democracy and the unruly world of actual human beings via blunt use of the police and the army.
The term for this that St. Augustine coined is libido dominandi, the lust for ruling……We abstract our desires and make little idols of them, because if we dress them in sufficiently regal and impersonal costumes, they will not look so much like us. Such tutelary spirits keep us comfortable, but idolatry is the first prohibition of the Decalogue for a reason: to fashion images and ideals for veneration is both to domesticate and tame the God who gives us our every breath and to reject the image of God already given to us in other people, to whom we owe all the care and attention that the most dazzling icon would command….
There are Christians who are calling out the bullshit Christians are doing. But they don’t have a big enough microphone
Chetan Murthy
@catothedog:
There are microphones in every church in America. Ostensibly many of those churches are run by “good Christians”. They seem to spend their time not calling out their evil Christofascist non-brethren. And yet somehow every Muslim-American has to call out “radical Islamic terrorism” or they’re un-American.
Citizen Alan
@scav: My position is this. There are two types if Christians in America. Type one consists of people who have accepted Jesus into their hearts and allowed him to work a change in them such that they strive to become better people . Type 2 consists of people who got dumked in a bathtub when they were little kids after being pressured into it by family and friends. And after getting dunked in the magic bathtub, they were then told that they were better than other people and could be as hateful as they wanted to be and still get into heaven. I have always believed that these 2 types of christians existed, but until the 2016 election, I had not imagined the extent to which the actually decent christians were outnumbered by the asshoes who got dumked in the bathtub.
Karen
@Citizen Alan: I think that white supremacy is their main motivator. They need to feel superior and stop “others” from getting what is “rightfully” theirs. It’s not an accident that many poorer Red staters who would benefit more with Dem policies would rather let their health and money suffer than to have someone who isn’t white move into their neighborhood. That’s what it’s all about.
Matt McIrvin
@West of the Rockies:
What “voting with your feet” means, though, is that we lose at the federal level, permanently, because if we’re sorted into a minority of blue states we have no power even if we’re a majority of the population.
Which ultimately means the United States probably has to break up.
Which means a civil war that will physically destroy the country and kill a large fraction of its population. Ukraine today is our future.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Matt McIrvin:
yeah, it’s probably a fantasy, but I’d love to see an organized move to take over a couple of red states. As someone mentioned above, there’s probably a lot affordable housing in South Dakota. Laramie’s a nice town. I stopped in Omaha on a road trip a couple of years ago. I quite liked the downtown….
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: Ah, you get to define who is a Christian? I bet if you asked those people, they would call themselves Christians.
KMG
@eversor:
@MisterDancer:
@MisterDancer:
@MisterDancer: I agree, and I’m not a believer. Bigotry and tribal fear are universal to human populations. “Conservative” Christians, Muslims, and right wing Jewish people, and even some atheist libertarian types who are misogynist, all look pretty much the same to me. The ideology or religion just provides cover for the hate. There are rich and poor “believers” of all types who just really need somebody to look down on, and status to protect. And we know who is threatening violence and who is not.
Stacy
@Soprano2: Exactly this.They would love to have every girl at around 12 will have to register and prove every month that she’s not pregnant. It goes along with their idea that every pregnant person could be a murderer up till the day of birth. They really hate women.
lowtechcyclist
@Another Scott:
Also, the awareness was gradually catching up with evangelicals that, at least from the standpoint of public perception, they’d been on the wrong side of the segregation/integration issue. They needed a new moral crusade to make people forget about all that, that they would seemingly be on the more moral side of. Abortion filled the bill.
@Brit in Chicago:
Thank you, but you probably shouldn’t get your hopes too high based on the occasional outlier like me!
The way I see it, the Lord leaves the biggest *personal* choice of all in my hands: whether or not to let him into my heart. Who are we Christians, then, to deny lesser personal choices to others? That makes no sense to me at all.
lowtechcyclist
And many of those who argue that would then go, “yeah, but we’re saved sinners. We know what God wants for us, and for you too. So we’re gonna pass laws to make you do what we say God wants.”
AM in NC
@Martin: Thank you. Thank you.
catothedog
@Chetan Murthy:
That’s a very simplistic view of the world. Many Christian churches are calling these things out. Many did oppose Trump’s policies. I can think of the Pope Francis and Russel Moore of SBC from the top of my head as heavy hitters who did so.
This idea that Christianity is an autocratic dictatorship, that’s there is one Christianity is bullshit. Only naive people think this – especially now, when half of Catholics think the Pope need not be heard as he is an impostor. leave alone all the other Christians, including the thug who back Putin.
Really?
Some a$$hole Christians say all Muslims have to call out “radical Islamic terrorism” . So now all Christians have to call out “radical Christian terrorism” ? Because of some a$$hole Christians, all Christians have to do something?
This sort of collective guilt and blaming a group for the mundane doings of individuals who happened to hold the same identity – Jews, blacks, Muslims, Christians whatever – is a recipe for extremism. It’s the dream of thugs everywhere. There is a reason Trump, Xi, Putin, Modi, Orban, Le Pen, MBS etc all help each other. So that they can rule over their petty hells, rather than serve in a greater heaven.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
(via gavmacn)
Cheers,
Scott.
karen marie
What puts this over the top for me is the fact that she was arrested while at the hospital. Women will die because they’re afraid to seek medical care during or after a miscarriage.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
@Chetan Murthy:
I meant what Chetan Murthy said, only I didn’t say it as well.
Our path to victory is and always has been identifying our people, making sure they can vote, then making sure they do vote.
Trying to convince people who hate us or regard us with suspicion is a waste of time & money. And it sometimes undermines our efforts to get our own people to vote.
Geminid
@karen marie: There is reporting that Lizelle Herrera has been released on bail from the Starr County jail. At least, that is what Rio Grande Valley reporter Carolyn Cuellar Colmenares has tweeted at @Wizard_of_Lnlynss.
Geminid
@James E Powell: I was making a simple observation, not being prescriptive. Like the other commenter, you are trying to put words in my mouth.
This is a poor way to argue. An honest argument is a better argument.
Martin
@Another Scott: Falwell couldn’t spell abortion, but he could sure as shit spell segregation.
Abortion was about providing cover for segregation to be supported under ‘religious freedom’. The GOP knew they couldn’t keep the laws on the books that allowed religious schools to remain segregated, so they tried to shift the courts to this new doctrine of ‘religious freedom’ but needed some new stuff to put in that bag. Abortion was one of the things they added. They also added gay marriage and a bunch of other stuff over time, and in time they shifted the courts into at least not laughing when ‘religious freedom’ was invoked. Now of course, there are 5 ‘religious freedom’ advocates on the court, so mission accomplished.
Green v. Kennedy (1970) was the catalyst for the movement, which stripped non-profit status from segregated schools.
Abortion also fit nicely into the GOP opposition to the ERA. It was proof that you couldn’t give women equal rights because they’d just run off and kill babies. It gave additional concreteness to the opposition to ERA.
But segregation was legal in the US until the 80s when Bob Jones University lost at the Supreme Court. Rehnquists sole opposition in that decision earned him a promotion to Chief Justice by Reagan.
Did it divide Democrats? Yes, but I think that was because Democrats were already making that transition due to the party shift after civil rights. Abortion was mostly a made-up issue to galvanize the right around a new campaign of religious grievance in order to protect segregation. By the 90s that transition was mostly compete, so the issue died down for a while. It’s coming back up again because the GOP is now fully defined by that religious grievance issue and they need to rally voters to turn out because they don’t have the numbers to win any more. There at least used to be neocons and Norquist low-tax wings to the GOP. They have no sway in the party any longer. The GOP is Gods Army and nothing more.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, I meant that the relevant attribute that leads to them doing these good works, is not that they are Christian, but that they are a social service org among people of color. As I understand it, Souls to the Polls was founded by and run by Black churches.
Procopius
Every anti-abortion law is an attempt to impose a religion on the rest of us. Against the First Amendment. The laws should be challenged as such.
Procopius
@Chetan Murthy:
Well, really, until the last year or two, the courts have routinely struck down all the anti-abortion laws. They’ve produced opinions that narrowed the “right to privacy,” but the right still stands. I’m waiting to see what happens this year, with the Republican/conservative majority running wild and openly making their arguments up on the fly.