This is my protest speed today:
Protesters shouting “Fuck you SCOTUS! Fuck you Alito! Fuck you Thomas! Fuck you Gorsuch! Fuck you Kavanaugh!” pic.twitter.com/lJyBTbRqxV
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) June 24, 2022
(I lost who in the comments first posted this; thank you!)
If you, like me, aren’t near enough to shout at the SCOTUS Six, but have a few pennies to spare? Please consider your local/regional Abortion Fund for giving, along with Clinics like the Red River Women’s that Betty wisely recommended.
While we’ve been staring at the Court for years, these tough orgs have been doing the work, in many cases, well below-the-radar. They connect people who need this right, with the places that can provide Abortions, even if it’s states away.
Their work just got tougher, so it’s time we make it as easy as we can. And yes, giving to groups like the National Network of Abortion Funds, or Planned Parenthood (and it’s regional orgs), or the ACLU (who also has regional orgs) is fine
Yet these local groups matter. Their flexibility and understanding of the local situation can be crucial in these situations! Thus, they deserve our support and respect.
I contribute to several of them, aligned to where I live, right now on a Monthly basis. Be it one-time, or once a Month, I urge you to help if you can.
Finally: I don’t think, this time, we’re alone in this fight. From a comment I made earlier:
Emily Seife, Senior Editor at Scholastic Press, the biggest publisher of comic books in America[…] tweeted; “I’ll mention now that my colleagues and I absolutely do want your YA books with or about abortions. There aren’t enough of them and these stories need to be told and normalized, and that’s not going to change.”
So if you know someone who has the spoons and energy to write their YA Abortion story? You know who to go to.
And our culture, for once in a damned long time, might actually listen.
Open thread.
[EDIT: I was informed that a joke that was meant to be scatalogical, had a homophobia reading I had not considered. I have updated the post to remove that reference, and credit the commentator for asking my consideration in making this a good space to engage in. ]
WV Blondie
I had MSNBC on earlier this afternoon (of course), and they had a split screen with Halle Jackson, I think, on the left and a live shot of the demonstration outside the SC on the right. And the biggest sign visible at the demonstration said, “FUCK YOU CLARENCE THOMAS.”
MSNBC left it like that for a good 90 seconds …
trollhattan
My kid was in that rabble, somewhere. Sometimes life delivers you to history’s proscenium. Kids of the oughts are not amused, not even a little.
Also, too, twenty quatloos for “Scrotum-Bottom Boys.”
MisterDancer
Personal Note, so y’all can skip: two things got my Southern-bred head outta my ass around Reproductive Rights:
This is why the Right wants silence in the library, on these issues. They know they can only hold the ground they have, if they enforce censorship and drive hate around these issues.
My mission, should I decide to accept it, is to break that down, and help others, when I can. My wee part in making the world spin for us all.
I hope hearing all this, helps you, in this Day of Days.
AxelFoley
It’s…I don’t know the word I should choose, but it’s messed up that in the last two years, terrible events have happened on the birthdays of three of my immediate relatives:
January 6th (Capitol insurrection) – my younger sister’s birthday
May 24th (Uvalde mass shooting) – my daughter’s birthday
June 24th (end of Roe v. Wade) – my dad’s birthday
Alison Rose
@WV Blondie: Some producer decided to get in good trouble.
I will echo the call to donate to abortion funds, and if you’re able to, make it a recurring monthly donation. Being able to count on those funds is super important for them.
Alison Rose
@AxelFoley: There’s gotta be a German word for that.
Felanius Kootea
Thank you for this. I gave to the National Network of Abortion Funds but I feel like I should be doing more than that and venting on Balloon Juice and Twitter
trollhattan
@AxelFoley: Yoikes! Can we ask you to kindly warn us when your birthday is approaching? Some may want to go into hiding.
trollhattan
@Alison Rose : Probably, and it will raise hell with the character count limit of a single text row.
AxelFoley
@Alison Rose : Right? The Germans have a word for everything.
AxelFoley
@trollhattan: May 3rd, so we’re safe until at least next year.
Jim Appleton
Sucks to be a woman in a red state who does not want to be pregnant.
Thanks McConnell.
Mike in NC
Here’s hoping Kavanaugh drinks himself into a stupor.
trollhattan
@AxelFoley: Whew, thanks, that one slid right past!
trollhattan
@Mike in NC: Day ending in “y”?
RaflW
Calling people Bottom Boys is not actually a cool insult. It’s homophobic.
The Supreme Court Shitstains deserve all our scorn, but let’s make rude noises that don’t throw our fellows away in the process. Thank you.
trollhattan
Meanwhile,
Next time, wood stake through that purported heart. It’s the only way.
trollhattan
@RaflW: Sure it’s not a riff on Foggy Bottom?
Kent
My middle daughter was born on the actual day that Bush invaded Iraq. March 20, 2003. I watched the tanks rolling across the border on CNN from my wife’s hospital room while we were waiting for her scheduled C-section.
We still had troops in Iraq when she graduated from high school.
HeleninEire
Only today did this occur to me. My Dad is 88. He won’t see the worst. I have money (not gazillions but enough) and Irish citizenship. My sister who has been through hell and back with Alex’s death is financially OK. But what about Mary, my developmentally challenged sister who is happily in a group home. Paid for by Medicaid. Hitler killed them first.
Sorry if I’m being overly dramatic. Having a bad day.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mike in NC: I’m hoping for alcohol poisoning
OzarkHillbilly
@trollhattan: It’s gonna take more than one stake. His heart has never been in the right place.
Kent
Honestly. Every woman of child-bearing age who lives in a red state should be stocking up on mifepristone and misoprostol. As well as emergency contraception such as “Plan B”
I, for sure as hell, would be.
trollhattan
@Kent:
I’m mortified these presently legal and safe drugs will end up distributed via the dark web with no QA/QC and rampant counterfeiting. No good can come of that.
RaflW
@trollhattan: The gay & trans communities are in the crosshairs. Thomas has made that literally clear.
If a person in a marginalized community asks that we not use terms that land with hurtful impact (no matter if the intent was snark or referential to something something), try respecting that.
I am in a MOOD. And probably logging off of here for a while.
germy shoemangler
schrodingers_cat
How many women will still continue to vote for Republicans or not vote at all is the question.
Suzanne
@Kent: 100%.
As for (in)auspicious birthdays, mine is January 7. So the insurrection happened, and then, due to the delay, the actual certification of the election happened on my birthday. So I got what I really wanted for my birthday.
So. I think I have noted in the past about my father, aka SuzBioDad. I dub him as such because my parents divorced when I was a year old, and SuzBioDad was deeply concerned about protecting his personal wealth. He did not want to pay child support or alimony. (And in fact, he did not, in defiance of court order, to his previous ex-wives and children.) So, in accordance with family law in the 1980s, he elected to sever his parental rights and thereby avoid any and all child support obligations. (In later years, he tried to hook up with my mother while married to his fourth wife. He also committed to paying for my graduate school, and then reneged on that commitment once I actually got accepted.) Other than my half-sibling, anyone who knew any of this history on his side of the family is dead and gone. His project to protect his wealth has been very successful.
So he has been very vocal today on Facebook about being very anti-choice. Lots of sharing of memes about “personal responsibility” and being “pro-baby” and “pro-family”. I am very tempted to post on his page about how he forced my mother to get an abortion and about how he did not support his own children. Only thing stopping me is not wanting to spread SuzMom’s personal business out there.
VOR
Someone referred to this as the “Calvinball Court” and that seems to fit.
Old Man Shadow
If the fundamentalists keep pushing, folks are gonna get of a mind to give them some of that persecution they’re always whining about.
MisterDancer
Hi. I will edit the post.
To explain: the band Soggy Bottom Boys was the riff I was building on. But I get the concern and will update accordingly.
Thank you for the insight.
HumboldtBlue
@schrodingers_cat:
The same women who vote for them now. Their access to abortions won’t be stopped, that’s just for the poors and browns.
germy shoemangler
dexwood
@OzarkHillbilly: Beat me to it. My hope, too.
OzarkHillbilly
A scientist weighs up the five main anti-abortion arguments
Ifns a person is silly enough to argue with the idiots.
Suzanne
@germy shoemangler: You beat me to it, I just saw that shit on Twitter and howled.
So glad to be out of AZ.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jim Appleton: Sucks to be a woman anywhere in the States now that the SCOTUS has declared her to be officially a second-class citizen.
schrodingers_cat
@HumboldtBlue: Medical emergencies that make an abortion necessary don’t just visit poors and the browns as you put it.
Alison Rose
@trollhattan: THIS FUCKIN GUY
trollhattan
Don’t know what may come of this, but good for the three Pacific Coast govs.
Suzanne
@Sister Golden Bear: “Citizen”? If only.
HumboldtBlue
@schrodingers_cat:
And you don’t think the wives, mistresses and daughters of the GOP won’t still have access to the necessary medical care? Of course they will, this decision doesn’t stop abortions, it just makes them much more dangerous for women who can’t access quality care.
The women who support this will be the last to suffer its ill effects. It’s aimed at the poor and the brown, not the good christian white girl.
trollhattan
The Onion is on it today:
Supreme Court Votes 5-4 to Reclassify Women as Service Animals
Supreme Court Votes 5-4 to Throw Beer Bottle at Slut
Supreme Court Votes 5-4 to Take Child Bride
Supreme Court Votes 5-4 to Reopen Japanese Internment Camps
.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@germy shoemangler:
Somebody call the police. There’s been a murder….
Suzanne
@HumboldtBlue: Oh no, it’s aimed at Christian white girls, too. They want more white babies.
All of this is happening in the face of Great Replacement Theory and a falling birth rate. One of the things that pisses off social conservatives to no end is that, by and large, the people getting married and having children within the bonds of marriage…. are non-religious college-educated liberals. They absolutely want to force white Christian women into marriage and childbearing. 100%.
Alison Rose
@trollhattan: Why 5-4?
Gvg
@Jim Appleton: Sucks tone a woman who does want to but who has medical issues that make it risky. My pro choice cousin was fertile and lucky for 3 pregnancies but then had a string of miscarriages and gave up on a last child. Another cousin had fertility problems and multiple miscarriages and used hormone treatments and artificial insemination to finally have a pregnancy which still had a lot of risk. Emergency premature delivery. so people want to harass them? Make it risky for doctors to help them? My grandmothers first pregnancy died in the womb. First doctor waited for the fetus to deliver and she almost died of septic conditions. 2nd doc saved her by doing an abortion and she lived to have 3 more living children including my father.
That is also not getting into the moral fact that women are people and not slaves to have their choices made for them. Including to have recreational sex if they want to. I know of lots of extreme situations why this law will kill women, including some that think it’s a good idea. But the moral center to me is it’s nobodies business but the woman and it doesn’t matter if you wouldn’t make the same choices. Honestly I am kind of a prude and uptight in my own choices, but it gives me the creeps or heeby jeebies thinking of anyone else even knowing what I or other women do. They are slimy.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@VOR:
The main rule of Calvinball being “there are no rules”.
When the first prong of 14th Amendment jurisprudence is whether a right was recognized by pre-Revolution Brits ever, it becomes a circus that is best represented by a soundtrack of Yackety Sax on decision days.
AxelFoley
@Kent: Yikes. And I can imagine for about 10 years or so, anyone with a birthday on September 11th felt some kinda way.
Villago Delenda Est
@AxelFoley: Like the French, except the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur.
MisterDancer
@Suzanne: one of my fears is that we (as a culture) have missed how far and wide this Replacement bullshit has spread in the last half-decade. Especially given you can use it to tie everything from denying racism to rolling back LBGTQIA+ rights to its insidious baseline.
I don’t have any data on that, to be clear. Just a gut reaction when I think about it for a bit (as loathe as I am to do that!)
VOR
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: No, Calvinball has rules. But they are never the same twice because the rules are arbitrary and made up as you go along.
schrodingers_cat
@HumboldtBlue: I am not going to argue with you but women’s reproductive choices are going to affected by this ruling no matter their demographic group or financial status.
HumboldtBlue
Marc Elias is correct again.
HumboldtBlue
@schrodingers_cat:
I am pretty sure we agree on this. You asked what of the women who support the GOP and its abortion bans, and they will still have access because of their social status.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: A lot of the mental-health arguments seem to me to be just like the ones against homosexuality, transgenderism, etc.: “thing invites persecution from haters like me, which leads to depression and suicide, therefore we must continue to ban thing and persecute people for it.” The heckler’s veto.
Cacti
Can anyone sincerely answer affirmatively that the United States feels like a country whose best days are still ahead?
VOR
@HumboldtBlue: They don’t think the leopards will eat their faces.
Spanky
@OzarkHillbilly:
Pretty much kills his argument right there.
HumboldtBlue
@VOR:
Exactly.
Elsewhere, here’s the EFF with some useful info.
Ruckus
@AxelFoley:
It is weird but with so many humans born and only 365 day/yr there are going to be times like this.
I once, not long ago looked up who was born on the same day or date as I was. There is no rhyme or reason to it. People have sex – kids are born, some of them are great, most are normal and some are absolute shit.
Steeplejack
@Suzanne:
Leave your mom’s abortion out of it but post away about his cowardly abandonment of his parental duties. I’m sure there are some people in his Facebook world who would love to see some dirt about him.
Ohio Mom
@HeleninEire: Nah, not overly dramatic, with an autistic son, I get it.
The social service safety net is all they have — Medicaid and Social Security, the programs Republicans are always itching to slash to smithereens.
Tazj
@schrodingers_cat: Yes. Fetal anomalies, twin to twin transfusion syndrome, preeclampsia and premature rupture of membranes can happen to anyone. Ignorance is not bliss. Rich white women usually have much better access to abortion than other people but it’s certainly not guaranteed anymore.
Suzanne
@MisterDancer:
Y’all know I read Dreher’s car crash of a blog to keep tabs on this shit, and you are 100% right.
Another theme that we have missed, or maybe just underestimated, is that the social conservatives-slash-tradpeople-slash-working class whites really feel humiliated. Partially by “cancel culture”, and Dreher feeds them a constant diet of stories of anonymous Christian people getting railroaded out of their jobs. (Of course, the veracity of any of this shit is highly questionable.) But they also feel humiliated by the drug use of their family members, by the fact that they cannot stay married or in functional relationships, by the fact that their values are not seen as normative. I will note that no one is entitled to respect and that all of this is self-inflicted and that they were happy to use their social power (when they had more of it) to punish those they hate, etc etc etc, but the fact remains that they all seem to feel like shit about themselves. It’s utterly psychotic. They have all the fucking power in the government, but they feel totally powerless and embarrassed and shit upon, and that makes them more dangerous. They do not just want to control, they want to punish those who make them feel bad about themselves.
That is much of why I find “Vote! Donate! Organize! March!” to be well-meaning but utterly insufficient and naive advice. Americans hate one another and that is dangerous.
MisterDancer
@Cacti: I’d not bother posting, much less correcting myself, if I thought this was all useless.
I get the despair. I just work to not give into it, because it’s not helping anyone, including myself.
UncleEbeneezer
@MisterDancer: I remember an angry dude calling into TWIB (this week in blackness podcast) and ranting about White Genocide in 2016. I confess I underestimated just how widespread that shit is in this country.
Cameron
@Ruckus: Indeed. I share a birthday with Matt Gaetz.
The Pale Scot
As a member of the childfree community, I believe that a way to challenge the forced birth fascists is to campaign for free on demand sterilization for males and females. Over a third of American and European women say that they do not want children, they are prevented from getting their tubes tied because doctors refuse to perform the procedure on women who are not married or have not had children. This is slavery. This is BS. Men get less push back but it still not easy.
The fucked up thing is that when I bring this up is all “but what if she changes her mind?” Everybody makes decisions they regret. Why is this the decision that everyone else gets to have a say in.
Starfish
@AxelFoley: Tomorrow is my birthday. It is also the birthday of Tamir Rice, shot at age 12 by the police for having a toy gun.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
Hey, you! I’m back. Thanks again for checking in on me — it was very much appreciated.
MisterDancer
To be certain. I think we differ on approaches and that is what it is, but I’d never say that any way out is easy.
Indeed, I’d say America has been trying the easy way ever since the Founders, and keeps finding out that said easy way is – – shock! – – mined.
sab
@Cameron: I have the same maiden name as Tucker Carlson’s wife. Life isn’t perfect
MagdaInBlack
@Mnemosyne: Welcome back. I was just thinking about you the other day, wondering where you had run off to.
Ohio Mom
@Mnemosyne: Wow!!! So happy to see you again, I missed you.
Once when people were saying, What ever happened to (name of long lost Juicer), and your name came up, Ruckus assured us you were fine.
Mike E
@Kent: My daughter was born the day Jerry Garcia died, which was also the same day Pres Clinton visited our city, the 21st anniversary of Nixon resigning and the 50th of the Nagasaki atomic bombing.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cameron:
And to think I used to feel sorry for myself for sharing a birthday with Martha Stewart!
(ETA: Of course, the upside is that I am blessed and honoured to share a birthday with Omnes Omnibus!)
H.E.Wolf
@Mnemosyne: Very glad to see your ‘nym.
Starfish
@Suzanne: Journalism has been so afraid of Republicans that I am sure we would see very few stories like this one, about a woman on her babymoon having a miscarriage and not being able to get a D&C because Malta has banned abortion, if it was not this week.
Suzanne
@MisterDancer: I agree. None of this brings me pleasure. But I feel that counseling everyone to gear up for what may be a generation’s worth of work, to work within the system, is sort of glossing over the fact that we’re looking at essentially a generation of women/pregnant people being assaulted….because working within the system is more important strategically. That’s a big fucking sacrifice to make. And I’m not especially keen on it today.
It probably is the right course of action, but of course the burden doesn’t fall evenly, and I’m not really able to consider it at a well-reasoned remove.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike E:
And people say nothing ever happens in August!
Kristine
If you haven’t listened to Heather Cox Richardson’s FB talk today, I recommend it. She is alarmed, yes, but she’s not giving up yet. She draws parallels to events of 1854 and how forces banded together to push back.
Organize. Run for office. Vote.
HumboldtBlue
Cori Bush:
AxelFoley
@Villago Delenda Est:
Starfish
@UncleEbeneezer: People are running around with their Confederate flags in states that were not part of the Confederacy. By letting that racism slide, the doors open up to bigger racism.
On the Halloween before Trump became President, some man was handing out candy dressed as Hillary Clinton in an orange jumpsuit. The only people on the street who were like “Hey, let’s not do this house” were me and an Asian lady. Every white person was happy to let that slide.
Cameron
@Suzanne: I’m not sure if I’ve posted this here previously, but I think it ties in to what you’re saying.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/06/22/alienated-america-mass-shootings-up-1000/
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
Hi Mnem – I missed you.
The Pale Scot
That’s not true, way further down the road is the extermination or re-enslavery of those people. The nuts are concerned about the propagation of whitey. Young grad student gets preggers and has to leave school and get married to some git or be a single mom, that’s a win. The goal is to shutdown the aspirations of young white women and make them submit to the patriarchy. That’s it. After the fetus hits atmo it’s not their problem. They want to reverse the trend of women surpassing men in college. Smart educated women are kryptonite to bigoted, misogynistic RWNJs
Suzanne
Also, and I’m sure most people here get this….but I do think we (normal people) have underestimated how humiliated the socons feel by women making more money that ever before, by more women than men going to college, by women having careers and getting to positions of leadership or prominence. This is an opportunity not just to force women to have more babies, but also to get out of the realms of society that they used to dominate.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ohio Mom:
I’ve been wondering about DonnaH, the talented Juicer who hooks beautiful rugs. You might remember her gorgeous sepia-toned image of Christopher Robin and Pooh. She donated the finished rug as a wall hanging to the Children’s Room of her local public library, I believe.
@DonnaH, if you’re lurking, I for one would love to know that you’re well and still plying your magnificent craft.
Alison Rose
Dead & Company opening with Man Smart, Woman Smarter. Love it :D
Suzanne
@The Pale Scot: You are 100% correct.
There is a race lens to this, as there is to everything in this shithole country, but do not think ever for a moment that they do not want to force white women to have babies. Shit, those are the people they want the most.
Suzanne
@Cameron: That piece is really good.
James E Powell
@Kristine:
I agree with organize, run for office, vote, etc.
Feeling good because of parallels to 1854? Not so much.
Chbnna
I just attended a conference in Chicago where Pres. Obama was the keynote speaker today, when asked about the most challenging thing in the US today he was pretty gloomy and sober about the state of things, stating that the polarized nature of our politics and how hard things were right now, he didn’t give his usual optimistic view of things, he warned of tough days ahead and didn’t really have any more to add, I appreciated that he didn’t try to paint a rosy picture but it depressed me to hear that even he was feeling down about things too. Though he did add a story about not letting cynicism get the better of all of us, but man that is hard to do on a day like today.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat:
Sadly, there will still be (mostly white) women with internalized misogyny and who benefit from the patriarchy who will continue voting Republican. However, I hope that an increasing number will awaken to the reality that the leopards will eat their faces too.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I missed everyone! But I was very productive during my time off. I published my first novelette last year, and I’m in three more anthologies this year — there’s a Linktree with those as my website address below. Got a nibble from an agent on my novel but haven’t finished it yet.
The Pale Scot
As a Celt, I’m A OK with nuking England into oblivion if that would help /s
Kay
Roe abolition makes the US a global outlier.
We’re now in the Iran, North Korea and Russia group of countries for womens basic bodily autonomy and rights.
Leslie
A resource for the days ahead:
https://sevenstories.com/books/4280-the-new-handbook-for-a-post-roe-america
Kay
New York Times coverage has no interviews with or comments from ordinary women.
Women are so unimportant in the US they won’t even be speaking at all on this.
Let’s interview 10 more Federalist Society judicial ass kissers again, shall we?
JanieM
@Kay: We’ve been in that company for a while in terms of our rate of incarceration.
MisterDancer
@Suzanne: yeah. It’s hard, because so many of us are traumatized by them, and asking people to jump in to reach out to them — to risk more trauma in pulling them out of that spiral — that’s a hard ask.
Women and other marginalized folx shouldn’t have to be tip of the fuckin’ spear in retaining the rights they already fought and bled and died for! But that’s not how it’s looking to work out, and worse, as you imply, there’s an effort to bring these people back from the brink that the very people they shit upon will need to undertake.
It’s like what Dr. King once said to his jailors, one of the many times he was arrested – – that they were as poor as Black folx, and should be partnering with him and the Civil Rights Movement! There’s a Power there that so much of the Conservative Movement has tried to dismantle and hide from the public, that could be tapped back into to talk to those people, explain that there are other, better ways to live.
At some point, we gotta go back on the offense when it comes to a vision of America.
Emerald
I’m against violence, but would throwing rotten tomatoes at them really be violence? Rotten tomatoes are not lethal or even dangerous. They’re just unpleasant when they land on you. Or maybe mashed potatoes? Anyway, something squishy and messy. Especially if you see them in a restaurant or, say, anywhere in public.
(I already said this on my twitter feed.)
Cameron
@Kay: Hey, give them a chance – their reporter probably hasn’t gotten to that diner in rural Ohio yet.
Ramona
@The Pale Scot: THIS!
The Pale Scot
Eggactly
eclare
@SiubhanDuinne: What’s wrong with Martha Stewart? She did her time without complaining.
Suzanne
@MisterDancer: Honestly, this is part of why I don’t respond well to the accusations of, “What, you’re just going to give up? Other people fought for decades!” stuff. Fuck. No. Stop.
WHITE MEN should be out there fighting this battle. There is no way I’m going to shame anyone who reaches the end of what they can personally handle and decides to leave the country, or go off-grid, or whatever. Self-care being an act of political warfare, and all that. Protecting your children and family and loved ones is just as heroic an act.
We have to stop expecting the people who are most marginalized to do the most work to correct it. This is wrought on us by patriarchy and they need to fucking fix it.
Kay
@Cameron:
Imagine if this was a ban on assault rifles. They’d be putting up billboards looking for gun nuts to interview.
The only womens voices in this reporting is what I happen to hear in the brief clips of the protests. Disgusting, backward country.
Young women should leave the US move to modern countries where they have a full set of rights and opportunities.
eclare
@SiubhanDuinne: I have seen her on Twitter recently, responding to Ms. Cracker.
HinTN
@Mike E: But the important thing is that your daughter could be the reincarnated soul of Jerry Garcia!
Lymie
@AxelFoley: Yup, my daughter was 4 and asked why everyone kept talking about her birthday. For years.
Kropacetic
I’m doing my best. And I’m pretty sure most of my white male brethren are on the side of the devils so we need many people as possible. Yes, including white men.
O. Felix Culpa
@Suzanne:
QFT.
MisterDancer
@Suzanne: that is…food for thought, for me.
I’ll honestly admit the “leave America” discussion leaves me cold. It’s a Thing from seeing who bled for my rights, here. That said, you make a good point about the scope and intent of that approach.
Me being all feisty and “Fight the Power!” has limits. And it’s good and right for me to acknowledge that, in this time and place.
japa21
@Kay: In other words, just about any other country.
Baud
@Suzanne:
FWIW, I distinguish between people who need to take a break and people who affirmatively push others to stop fighting “because nothing changes.”
Kay
@japa21:
Apparently Poland is now our aspirational north star as a country.
SiubhanDuinne
You know what I keep thinking about? Any government that assumes the power to outlaw abortion also assumes the power to mandate abortion. I know that’s unlikely to happen here, at least in the near term, but just look at recent Chinese history. This country isn’t immune.
trollhattan
@Kay: What, not Hungary? Monster!
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Kay
@japa21:
That’s the pitch I’d use as a candidate. That they’re turning the US into a backward country that limits womens rights and opportunities and doesn’t allow them to reach their potential.
Backward v modern. Over and over and over.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Offer invalid in some states. Please check local laws.
japa21
@Kay:
Fine by Mrs. Japa. When you think about it, this is just one instance out of many where the US falls into the realm of uncivilized countries.
ETA: Base on the other comment of yours, yes, make it a campaign issue that the GOP (no exceptions) wants us to be a backward country like North Korea.
livewyre
@MisterDancer: First, I want to say how much I appreciate the post as well as your approach to it – both the sensitivity and the determination. For the work to fall on those of us who are most affected is just another part of what we’re working to change, I guess. Hopefully that makes it easier as we go.
Likewise, @Suzanne: I admit to being indignant at this sentiment earlier, but I’m actually coming around to it. Some of us are just… done. There shouldn’t be any shame or any other moral judgment in stepping away to take care of things. I can see now that it’s part of the fight. This struggle is for whoever can’t struggle – whether yet, anymore, or at all.
MagdaInBlack
@Kay: They didn’t listen to us when we told them this was coming, they certainly don’t want to listen to us say ” I told you so.”
Bex
@Mnemosyne: Welcome back!
Kay
I love the unsubtle “fuck you, actually we don’t care, lets change the subject” to women in these “don’t worry about the other more important rights!” posts.
We can’t go one fucking DAY in this country discussing a womans right to basic autonomy and agency without some pundit minimizing the importance of it. They couldn’t stick to the topic for 12 hours because it does not interest them.
Baud
@Kay:
Plus, there assurances have no credibility.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Populist left is out there blaming the Democrats.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
No surprise.
The Pale Scot
@MisterDancer:
Fight The Power that be!
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
I came back specifically to tell those assholes that I was right and they were wrong.
Kay
@MagdaInBlack:
It’s worse than I thought. I never thought they’d get rid of rape,incest and health of the mother.
They’re going to kill pregnant women. Rape victims will be FORCED, by the state (and far Right religious non state actors who assume the power of the state) to carry the rapist’s baby and then co-parent with the rapist.
A rapist could target a 12 year old, groom her for 2 years, rape her with an intent to impregnate at 14 and he’s got her- she’s shackled to him for the next 18 years until the child is raised unless she abandons the child which she will not do. Child rape will go up. They are encouraging and incentivizing grown men raping middle schoolers.
Kropacetic
@Mnemosyne: Internecine warfare is definitely what our side needs right now!
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud:
I am in the “need a break” and possibly leaving the country category. I’ve been an activist since my teens and no longer have the energy to fight and absorb the blows as I once did.
I worked 10-12 hour days seven days a week as a volunteer in the years leading up to the 2020 elections. Plenty of time put in before that too. I wish I had the wherewithal to do more beyond voting, donating, writing postcards, and showing up to the occasional rally, but I just don’t. I wore myself out and don’t have any more gas in the tank for now. It’s time for others to carry the baton forward.
Baud
@O. Felix Culpa:
You’ve earned your self-care.
Bex
@Tazj: Remember when former Sen. Santorum’s wife had a difficult pregnancy and had to have an abortion? But it wasn’t REALLY an abortion because it was called something else. Of course the procedure was legal then. What happens now when there’s an emergency and some red state senator’s wife can’t get care in time?
Baud
@Kropacetic:
Yeah, I’m not completely sure I would describe that particular war as internecine.
Calouste
@Baud: That’s a very polite way of saying Alito and Kavanaugh are fucking liars. They’re just there to fool the idiots like the one Kay quoted while Thomas tells the hate-wingers what’s going to happen next.
Kropacetic
@Baud: Several times over from the sound of it.
@Baud: Oh we’ve been wrecking each other (ourselves that is) pretty bad.
But internal internecine? Big D Democratic Bugaloo?
Eta: And it’s all kidding until a fight breaks out anyway.
Baud
@Calouste:
I’m very tactful.
Ksmiami
@Kay: the 13th century really fucking sucked and that’s where the GOP wants to go…
@Kay: Everyone on our side needs to Arm up. Sorry but every red state woman is at risk
The Moar You Know
@Bex: Please. Our Betters get whatever care they like, whenever they want it.
Mnemosyne
@Kropacetic:
If you don’t want people to point out when you’re publicly, vocally, and embarrassingly wrong, try not to blame them when you were the one who was publicly, vocally, and embarrassingly wrong, Kropadope.
Hello to you, too.
schrodingers_cat
British India had a very messy partition, it produced millions of casualties and displaced people. It split the Muslim demographic in 3 separate political units. Partitions are messy and bloody. It has left the Muslim population in India vulnerable to the whims of the proto-fascist BJP government.
Kalakal talks about the Irish example in a previous thread.
It is not a solution to our current predicament. It will make it worse.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Good we need you here!
Kropacetic
@Mnemosyne: I was not wrong to vote, donate, and advocate for Hillary Clinton. And I’m not here to fight.
I read threads from the end often. Welcome back.
Eolirin
@Mnemosyne: Good to have you back Mnem.
Gvg
@HumboldtBlue: actually these rulings are so biologically stupid and mean that I think the rich Republican women are now actually going to have their rights restricted. I think these nutters actually intend to enforce their insane laws even on their own. I also think the rich still had abortions back when, because the public was actually trending against abortion being illegal. That is why the courts were ready to allow it then. Right now, when they fought for it for 50 years no raised generations under brainwashing that all fetuses were special and free women were monsters….I think they will try to live down to their professed ethos. Time and sad experience will erode that and then the rich will be the first to get back to our rights….but not right now, other than the majority including the rich don’t want this.
the actual religious and political supporters of this will try to make everyone including their own families live and die with this.
Tazj
@Bex: Yes, I do remember that. I think she went into premature labor, ruptured membranes and became septic with one pregnancy. I have a feeling Senator’s wives would get proper care not matter what but who knows now.
Too many people think that if they do all the right things, have money, or are white nothing bad will happen to them. I saw one man on Twitter say “Why would I ever want my wife to get an abortion?” And of course you might not want to get one but you might need one to save your life or your pregnancy. And what if you or your daughter are raped?
FelonyGovt
@Kay: Thank you! I picked up the same flavor from a lot of the commentary.
debbie
Apparently, some asshole ran over two women at the Cedar Rapids protest.
https://twitter.com/lyzl/status/1540490191080771586?s=21&t=VoCZyVq6NNYgFLlvzILLiw
Immanentize
@O. Felix Culpa: I am more of a task master than Baud. Take a break, have a nice trip, enjoy the people you love.
For a bit.
Then you and I are going back to the front. Deal?
ETA Together with some others here
Suzanne
@Baud:
I absolutely believe that we should all (continue to) vote, donate, march, organize, etc. But I think it is vital to the health of marginalized women to recognize that there is a chance that this will not be sufficient and to be willing to at least consider that other alternatives may be in order. And we should not expect women to have any allegiance to this country when they are not in fact equal under its laws. Women who want to fight are admirable, but so are women who say FUCK THIS SHIT and GTFO.
schrodingers_cat
@O. Felix Culpa: Take a break for as long as you need. Sometimes it does feel overwhelming.
MisterDancer
@livewyre: thank you. As much as I wanna yell, I also have to stand up and learn.
Immanentize
@debbie: This is the Alito world.
Suzanne
@O. Felix Culpa: I have two daughters and a trans son. There is absolutely zero chance that I will allow them to live in a red-state shithole to be assaulted by the theocrats, who see them as contemptible. I 100% love them more than I love this country.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Pale Scot: The woman is supposed to give birth. Tying tubes is contraception, it’s contrary to the invisible sky buddy’s law according to these people projecting their derangement on to him. The woman is supposed to be punished by giving birth for her having sex.
Ella in New Mexico
Having worked in the domestic violence field, I did a whole lot of helping women leave their abusive partners and relocate to places–usually other states–where, at least back then before the internet they could start safe new lives.
Welcome to the new Underground Railroad Era.
MisterDancer
@schrodingers_cat: and thank you for pointing out there are real examples where this idea failed badly.
As a side note: It’s interesting that 2 Science Fantasy stories in the last few years have set stories around the Partition (DOCTOR WHO and MS MARVEL). That seems…new. At least to me.
Immanentize
@MisterDancer: Ms. Marvel is the bomb.
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
@schrodingers_cat: It’s pretty hard to laser off a face tattoo stating “No Difference Btwn Bush and Gore”
HumboldtBlue
Here’s a frightening thread.
Feathers
@Gvg: This. Pre-Roe there were health of the mother exemptions and hospitals had review boards that voted on if a specific woman could have an abortion. Emergency rooms worked to save the life of the mother if a pregnant person showed up with a dangerously failed pregnancy. That is all gone.
I really blame the media here. They just went full “respectability” and took the anti-abortion version of everything as the truth. People lied about how pregnancies could go wrong, who had abortions, non existent dangers of abortion, and just about everything else. There was no fact checking. They didn’t have people with a firm grasp of the facts on their shows or quote them in stories, because it would reveal how blatant the lies had become. They ignored the violence that fueled the anti abortion movement. Movement leaders were allowed to denounce violence, and without any follow up questions about their ties to groups which espoused violence.
There was a terrible article in FTFNYT about trans issues recently. The author said that she showed no bias, just followed the truth. But as someone pointed out, why does the conservative side of these issues always get to be the “truth”? Why are scientists who have devoted their lives to an issue and studied it deeply, doing peer reviewed research considered “activists,” while writers who jumped in on a hot topic a few years ago or conservative politicians aren’t. They are just as surely trying to shape public opinion, but with only their own beliefs and feelings to back it up.
O. Felix Culpa
@Immanentize: @schrodingers_cat: @Baud:
Thank you for your kind words. I’m surprised by my exhaustion. Maybe a function of age; maybe other contributing factors too. I’m usually a fighter, but I also need to pay attention to what my body and spirit are telling me. I’ll do my best to rejoin the fray as soon as I can.
@Suzanne:
I hear you. My thirty-something sons are mixed-race, and I worry for them as targets too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: Also, they’re paid very well not to be interested and write about those things.
TriassicSands
I started giving the day the leaked draft decision appeared. I’ve always felt that the leakers were on the right, since that would spark an early but not conclusive response from the left, allow it time to quiet down a bit, and then when the hammer actually dropped (today) the response would be less dramatic. That’s exactly what I heard reported today on devoutly bothsiderist All Things Considered. After 49 years, women are officially declared non compos mentis by the SCOTUS SIX and the response, which I hope will grow, is not explosive.
I live in Washington State, one of the more protective states. But local groups/clinics will need more money to help handle the health care refugees coming from fascist America.
This is easily the most disastrous week of SCOTUS decisions in my lifetime. Three major horrendous decisions. The irony is that in a week that the Senate seems to have agreed to make the country a tiny bit safer, the SCOTUS has acted to make it much more dangerous, first for everyone by guaranteeing more armed gun freaks in our public spaces, and then, specifically for women.
Villago Delenda Est
@Feathers: The Vichy Times needs to be nuked from orbit. Only way to be sure.
CaseyL
I have no kids (for which I am grateful, multiple times per day), and while I hope for the best, my heart’s not really in it anymore.
It’s one thing to fight steadily, for generations, for progress, when you do achieve some, steadily: as POC and women and LGBT’s have done.
It’s something else when everything you and your forebears fought for, and achieved, can be taken away with a single vote.
This country was built on the backs and the bones of the people who’ve fought for generations to make progress, only to see it all wiped away with a single SCOTUS decision.
I can’t ask them to do it all over again. I certainly can’t expect it of them.
If they can leave, if they want to leave, I wish them blue skies and calm seas… and a much better life elsewhere than they could get here.
Sally
I don’t suppose this is the government tyranny from which the second amendment is supposed to save us.
prostratedragon
@Suzanne: I’m sure you’ll figure out a way. As well you should!
A neighbor was freaked out by the Koresh incident on her birthday. She’d moved away by the Murrah bombing so I don’t know, but suspect it convinced her. I have another top-tier inauspicious birthday (Jan 30), complete with a tragedy of two friends with whom I’d earlier been out celebrating. The late former SO was a Harlemite born on September 11. After 2001, I concluded that that was the problem; too much in one place.
raven
@Sally: Too soon to tell.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: And as you have read, we’re delighted to see you active again and giving those in error what for.
Wolvesvalley
@Mnemosyne: I’m glad to see you back, too! I hope you stick around. And congratulations on your literary success!
mali muso
@Suzanne:
@O. Felix Culpa:
With you both here. I don’t think that it’s giving up to do your best to take care of your immediate family in the face of existential adversity. My loyalty is to my daughter first.
Villago Delenda Est
One thing is certain: the United States are divided just as Vlad wanted us to be, so TFG gets a “mission accomplished” attaboy from his puppetmaster.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suzanne: I share a birthday with Sarah Palin.
Pity me.
Mnemosyne
@mali muso:
Also, giving money and time from the safety of one’s own home and/or safe state counts, too, if one is burned out from being on the front lines.
Suzanne
@O. Felix Culpa:
I used to be out in the heat, in every election cycle, knocking on doors, helping people find their polling places, registering voters (in English and terrible broken Spanish), talking to strangers who were often hostile and trying to maintain positivity. When I was pregnant, I made phone calls instead. I was a PC in my LD for a while.
But I didn’t do any election work in 2020, due to the pandemic and having a new baby, and I am also just existentially exhausted. It’s not just politics…. I have an amazing job and yet I have never cared less about it. Ever since the combination of Trump and the pandemic, I feel utterly self-interested and “Fuck you, I only care about myself and my family” in a way that I have never felt before.
Suzanne
@Villago Delenda Est: So. I have been told multiple times that I look like Tina Fey. Brown hair, glasses, about the same skin tone. I realize that, via the transitive property, this means that I also don’t look unlike Sarah Palin. And that makes me upset.
Immanentize
@Sally: What @raven: said.
Who knows what will tip the bowl of chaos? Who will cry “havoc!”?
Annie
@The Pale Scot:
Gynecologists are deeply worried about getting sued if they do a tubal ligation and the woman later changes her mind. I used to work in a law firm that did medical malpractice and we were asked to represent a number of women who had had tubal ligations and were enraged with the doctor years later. I mean, spitting-fire angry they could not have kids. My firm turned them all down because the authorizations for the original operation were pretty ironclad, but two of the women found other attorneys who did take the cases. One of them went on to represent herself. They all lost but took a lot of effort for the defendant doctors and their insurers.
schrodingers_cat
@MisterDancer: You are welcome!
Kropacetic
@Suzanne: I honestly fear for trans people everywhere with this climate of guns. The antipathy of the law has to be an exponential factor.
O. Felix Culpa
@Suzanne:
The Phoenix heat is no joke! Good on you for doing that yeoman’s work.
This may just be the season for you to focus your energies on your family and your own well-being. Your children are young and they need their parents. I remember how much energy it took to get through the day when my guys were little. And I didn’t have to deal with a freakin’ pandemic! Things opened up for me when they both entered full-day school, and then even more when they went off to college. It’s ok to acknowledge life’s seasons. Forget that “Lean In” and “do it all” hooey.
My advice is worth exactly what you paid for and not a penny less.
Suzanne
@O. Felix Culpa: That’s what I’m telling myself…. it’s good to take time to come around my kids and actually take some time to care for myself. A thing I am historically bad at.
I am just surprised by the shift in my thinking. I used to be one of those “sleep when you’re dead” people. When I was in graduate school, I one time stayed up working so long (over 48 hours) that I developed seizures and was hospitalized twice. That Protestant work ethic thing got drilled into me, hard. And now, I’m like, “Eh, fuck it”.
Cameron
@Immanentize: Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of wank…uh, war!
prostratedragon
@Ruckus: The Pigeonhole Principle, which is surprisingly useful in counting problems.
O. Felix Culpa
@Suzanne:
There’s always something new to learn about oneself. I wish I had learned the “Eh, fuck it” thing earlier. :)
That said, Auntie Maxine is inspiring.
Sally
@Immanentize: As we well know, these are rights for me but not for thee. But it would be interesting to see thousands of women marching with (unloaded) long guns slung over their shoulders, where open carry is legal. The many cosplay, fancy dress “militias” certainly get away with it.
Spanky
@Immanentize:
The way I first read it.
Quiltingfool
@Suzanne: My, that Protestant work ethic! I hear you, sister! I am retired and sometimes feel guilty if I don’t want to do much of anything. Or, if all I want to do is sew and not clean house (you could write messages in the dust on my furniture, and I’m pretty sure there are life-size dust bunnies under the bed). And you know what? I now allow myself not to give a shit. This, I believe, is one of the benefits of being an old lady.
Trine
@Suzanne: Ever since the combination of Trump and the pandemic, I feel utterly self-interested and “Fuck you, I only care about myself and my family” in a way that I have never felt before.
You probably won’t see this, but thank you anyway for saying this. I’ve been feeling guilty for harboring the same feelings. I’ve blamed myself for not being “enough” somehow and rolling into a ball of self-care.
My youngest is a female presenting trans person and I’m terrified for their future. I told them today to get to work on obtaining their dual citizenship. History’s got a rhythm and I think we know which song is queued next.
RaflW
Just back from dinner with a group of social justice and international human rights activists (west coast time).
Thank you, Mister Dancer.
TriassicSands
Actually, yes you can and you should. Just because I’m going be checking out for good before long doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t expect every decent American to renew and redouble their efforts. Giving up is bullshit.
It’s understandable for people, especially women, to feel down, but the appropriate emotions tomorrow are anger and resolve, not resignation.
People fought and died to create this country (yes, our history is ugly) and gradually things improved. The high point has been during the past 60 years, but we are obviously headed in the opposite direction now. So? So, we have to turn that around. At least today women can vote to help change things. Will they come out in sufficient numbers in November? I don’t know, but what I do know is that the electorate is the true weakness in this country. People NOT VOTING is what keeps Republicans in power.
From now until November we have to do everything each of us can to get as many of the lazy, apathetic, and disengaged eligible voters to stop letting everyone else down and behave like true citizens and not just consumption machines.