Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

You cannot shame the shameless.

“woke” is the new caravan.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

The lights are all blinking red.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

This really is a full service blog.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

“But what about the lurkers?”

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Let there be snark.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Open Thread: Our War Against the War on Women

Open Thread: Our War Against the War on Women

by | 99 Comments

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(Clay Jones via GoComics.com)

… In a Dear Colleague letter released on Monday, Pelosi writes that she intends to bring several abortion measures to the floor. First, she will bring legislation that “protects women’s most intimate and personal data stored in reproductive health apps” to address fears that such information “could be used against women by a sinister prosecutor in a state that criminalizes abortion.” Pelosi is certainly right that Americans are worried about the government or big business accumulating data on them. Will Republicans allow the government to seize such personal information?

Second, Pelosi will bring forward legislation that makes clear “Americans have the Constitutional right to travel freely and voluntarily throughout the United States.” The targets here, of course, are red states where antiabortion zealots aim to reach beyond their borders by punishing women who seek abortions in other states.

Third, Pelosi will once more force a vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, which she describes as the “landmark legislation to enshrine Roe v. Wade into the law of the land.” She might also consider bringing up legislation to correct some of the most egregious results of Republicans’ agenda. For example, how about a bill that ensures minors who are victims of rape and incest are guaranteed access to abortion? Or that allows a woman to end a pregnancy if it poses “serious health consequences”?

Pelosi is not stopping there. She writes: “In his disturbing concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas confirmed many of our deepest fears about where this decision might lead: taking aim at additional long-standing precedent and cherished privacy rights, from access to contraception and in-vitro fertilization to marriage equality. Legislation is being introduced to further codify freedoms which Americans currently enjoy.”…

We should resurrect a mantra from the early 1970s: A government that can force you to give birth is a government that can force you to have an abortion.

Some good news, while (if) it lasts:

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  1. 1.

    Dangerman

    Isn’t every one of them Catholic? That feels like a problem. I’m not anti-Catholic in the slightest (Presbyterian with some Buddhism sprinkled on top) but …

  2. 2.

    WereBear

    @Dangerman: The Catholics and Protestants uniting under the banner of fundamentalism is possibly the most surprising thing of my adult lifetime…

    but we all know how it ends.

  5. 5.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @WereBear: Fundamentalist Catholics and Protestants? Sounds like the 16th and 17th Century religious wars. Oh what fun. Won’t St. Bart’s Day be grand?

  6. 6.

    fancycwabs

    Tennessee’s trigger law stops 100% of abortions after conception–with the only exception being to save the life of the mother.

    BUT the doctor can still be charged with a felony, they’ll have to prove it was necessary in court.

    (Shameless self-promotion: I’m running for congress as a Democrat against John Rose in Tennessee. Early voting starts July 15 for the August 4 primary.)

  7. 7.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: But Gorsuch was a Catholic — he just switched to High Church Episcopalian, which we always called “Catholic with Beheadings.”

  8. 8.

    Baud

    @fancycwabs:

    (Shameless self-promotion: I’m running for congress as a Democrat against John Rose in Tennessee. Early voting starts July 15 for the August 4 primary.)

    Nothing shameless about that, especially in Tennessee.  Red state Dems are heroes in my book.

  9. 9.

    Dangerman

    @WereBear:Not well. Just to be clear, I would never disqualify someone from a job based on religious belief (or lack thereof), wouldn’t even ask so I wouldn’t know anyway. Still, USSC is different.

  14. 14.

    rikyrah

    So, in my neck of woods, Jesse Jackson’s son, Jonathan, won  the Dem Primary to replace Bobby Rush. Have to admit that I was sort of surprised. He wasn’t one of the top fundraisers. I guess it did help that there were so many candidates. Jackson won both the City of Chicago and Suburban Cook County.

     

    The other race that interested me was Congressman Danny Davis fight to retain his seat. He won , because of the City of Chicago. The West Side came through for him. He lost the Suburban Cook County part of his district.

     

    The Trumper won the GOP Nomination for Governor. The $50 million dollar buckdancer Mayor from Aurora came in THIRD….BWA HA HA HA HA HA HAHA

  15. 15.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: Jackson said in the hearings that she was a non-denominational Protestant, which I believe is the biggest growing religious segment in the country?

  16. 16.

    MisterDancer

    @Dangerman: Isn’t every one of them Catholic?

    They are Authoritarian.

    That’s the real issue; religion is just a fig leaf for their actions.

  17. 17.

    Scout211

    @WereBear:

    IIRC, we had Catholics and Mormons banding together to pass proposition 8 in California in 2008. It was very strange.

  19. 19.

    jnfr

    Here in Colorado, the entire Dem primary slate, every office, ran unopposed. I’ve never seen such a united party.

  21. 21.

    Layer8Problem

    @Dangerman: As a recovering lapsed Catholic I’ve got issues with Opus Dei/Federalist Society types maybe not just calling balls and strikes.

  23. 23.

    Immanentize

    @rikyrah: Don’t you think Mr. Jackson still had access to his father’s loyal friends and PUSH network? That’s worth a ton of money!

  24. 24.

    Layer8Problem

    Around here Kathy Hochul sailed past Jumaane Williams and Thomas Suozzi in the New York State Democratic gubernatorial primary, in a race unvexed by the name of Andrew Cuomo. For the Republicans, Long Island’s execrable Lee Zeldin overcame the comic stylings of Andrew Giuliani, Westchester’s self-impressed former county executive Rob Astorino, and some business non-entity willing to burn $12 million of his own money in the street. Maybe Zeldin can get that Trump magic to turn New York State red, but I doubt it.

  27. 27.

    narya

    @rikyrah: That Guy from Aurora . . . oof. His ads were causing me to wear out the “mute” button on my remote. JB has done a much better job during the pandemic, and more generally, than I expected, so I hope he gets re-elected (and of course will vote for him).

  29. 29.

    Gin & Tonic

    My daughter, her husband, and both their children, all fully vaccinated and exceedingly careful, have Covid. It started with my grand-daughter, probably in school, and the rest was inevitable.

  30. 30.

    WereBear

    @Layer8Problem: I’m pleased with Kathy Hochul. She has a lot of experience to bring to the big looming problems as other states lose their minds…

    Because it is going to drag all of us down. What fertile woman will want to vacation in Texas or Florida, once they go blood red? Knowing any health problem will be skewed by unknown factors there. So do you calculate the distance from the border?

    Some unlucky woman is going to be the first one to die because of this. She doesn’t even have to be pregnant.

    It could be as simple as a health condition they don’t treat properly or in time because all these restrictive laws keep doctors from doctoring, too.

  32. 32.

    HinTN

    @fancycwabs:

    I’m running for congress as a Democrat against John Rose in Tennessee.

    Congratulations and good luck. We’ve had two good candidates against the odious DesJarlais but gotten no traction.

  33. 33.

    narya

    @Gin & Tonic: Blegh. That sucks. I want to visit my parents, preferably around my dad’s 92nd birthday in September, but I am super afraid of unknowingly bring an infection into the house. If we go, there will be a lot of testing beforehand. But given their wide assortment of pre-existing conditions, Covid could easily kill them.

  37. 37.

    Layer8Problem

    @Immanentize:  When you’ve lost the New York Post’s Editorial Board (no I will not link) . . .

    Buffalo wingnut Carl Paladino is wrong for Western NY (and everywhere else, too) By Post Editorial Board

    Saying approving things about Hitler’s political skills is never a good look.

  38. 38.

    Another Scott

    Reposting from downstairs:

    Women are going to hospitals with a life-threatening nonviable ectopic pregnancy but the doctors can't do anything about it until her vitals start crashing, which the doctors hope is enough of a "medical emergency" to satisfy Missouri's Republican AG. https://t.co/KYTvdZcG5O https://t.co/PCwqr6WAsb pic.twitter.com/uUJOYxG9SQ

    — Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) June 29, 2022

    “Today we saw a patient in Dayton who has cancer. Her doctors told her she would have to terminate before she received chemotherapy treatment. She will have to travel to Indiana." https://t.co/hxKKOQfiA1

    — Josh Sweigart (@JoshSweigart) June 28, 2022

    (both via Popehat)

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  39. 39.

    fancycwabs

    @HinTN: If anything on this planet would lead me to believe voting machines in Tennessee are compromised, it would be Scott Desjarlais winning against anyone other than Scott Dejarlais, only naked in all of his campaign literature.

    If you know folks in the 6th district, please let them know (Cooper’s a pretty easy name to remember in Tennessee, although I’m not related to Jim or John.)

  40. 40.

    RedDirtGirl

    Fox News and OAN are all about how Pelosi “elbowed” a republican woman’s child on stage or something……

  41. 41.

    Immanentize

    @Layer8Problem: I like that people keep asking Stefanik if she agrees with or supports Paladino. Keep it up! Luckily my hometown (Endwell) has been taken out of the district of that horror show, Claudia Tenney.

  43. 43.

    Leslie

    Good morning. Since this is an open thread, I was wandering through a succession of Twitter threads re yesterday’s testimony and came across this. I’d seen a couple of references to it, but didn’t realize it was actually true:

    https://twitter.com/CarolLeonnig/status/1518325387683586048

    Tony Ornata, the deputy CoS who had Bobby Engel in his office while describing to Hutchinson TFG’s temper tantrum and subsequent assault on Engel? Is a senior USSS official who is now back in his former job.

    WTAF. No wonder Biden only trusts a hand-picked team of agents.

  48. 48.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic: The active variants are extremely infectious (am I remembering right that R is estimated at 10-15?), so it’s hard to avoid.  :-(

    https://www.ebgtz.org/resource/omicron-faqs/

    Is Omicron highly transmissible? Yes, Omicron is very contagious.

    * The Omicron BA2.12.1 sub-variant is estimated to be 25% more transmissible than BA.2, which was 30%+ more transmissible than Omicron BA.1, which was 50% more transmissible than Delta, which was 80-90% more transmissible than Alpha, which was 30-50% more transmissible than the original strain.

    * The original Omicron variant (BA1) is estimated to have an R0 of 4-8, which means each person who is infected with the BA1 variant is estimated to transmit the virus to 4-8 more people.

    Let’s see…

    6 (average of 4-8) x 1.3 x 1.25 = 9.75 :-(

    Fingers crossed! Hoping for a rapid and full recovery for all the G&Ts.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  49. 49.

    R-Jud

    @rikyrah: If I see a single one of my fellow liberal white women with a “CASSIDY!” t-shirt from Etsy I will be taking out kneecaps.

  51. 51.

    fancycwabs

    @Another Scott: Thanks–I’m working on getting that set up, but the FEC makes it onerous to set things up the first time, especially if you have a day job. Multiple forms across a number of organizations, trips to the bank, etc.

    At the end of the day though, that’s nobody’s fault but my own (with some help from Covid to lay me out during a critical week,) so I’m having to play catch-up to get everything in place.

  54. 54.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Ugh. Leaving for the dentist shortly. You know who to blame thank if I never return.

  55. 55.

    zhena gogolia

    Nobody is lionizing Hutchinson. She’s helping us get to the truth. That’s it.

  56. 56.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

    Yeah, I’m getting tired of the being told to be constantly afraid that Democrats will go head over heels for some Republican who happens to do the right thing for once.

  57. 57.

    MisterDancer

    In today’s “Fuck SCOTUS” news, the asshole majority decided that Federal trumps Tribal when it comes to crimes committed on their lands: https://twitter.com/SCOTUSblog/status/1542146404591800323

    The Supreme Court rules that states CAN prosecute crimes against Native American victims committed on Native American reservations if the defendant is non-Native. The decision limits the scope of the 2020 ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma (which involved a Native American defendant).

    And just like that, Tribal Sovereignty is shat upon. Also, too — this makes the “put Abortion clinics on Tribal Land” asshole ideas even more inane.

  59. 59.

    MisterDancer

    Oh, and Facebook/Instagram found the “block” button — when it comes to discussing Abortion:

    In a test, the @AP found that Facebook removed a post offering to mail abortion pills within one minute. It did not remove similar posts offering to mail a gun or marijuana.

    See the article here, or here on general keyword bans.

  60. 60.

    Ksmiami

    @rikyrah: it’s going to be all abortion all the time… we just need to unite and shove these north slavers into the dark holes from which they emerged

  62. 62.

    Baud

    @MisterDancer:

    Gorsuch is oddly strong on Indian rights.  I do take some evil pleasure in seeing the other GOP members of the court treat his seminal decision in McGirt the way he treated Roe and other liberal precedents.  But the outcome is a big loss for tribal sovereignty.

  63. 63.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @jnfr:

    Not every one at the state level.  House District 6 is too close to call.  A crapton of dark money poured into that race in order to make sure the not-a-tool-for-developer candidate, Elisabeth Epps, would loose to the aforementioned tool.

    And what rikyrah posted above about the GQP staffer who is a true believer (unless this entire process has changed her the way it did John Dean backintheday).

  64. 64.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: & @R-Jud: Agreed. Good for her for testifying, but anyone who thought Jim Jordan gave a “good speech” or who chose to work for Scalise, Meadows and in the Trump White House has seriously screwed up values.

    A friend raised an even more awful possibility that I am just about paranoid enough to entertain: that Hutchinson chose (or was prompted) to testify now to make Trump an object of ridicule (and potentially subject to prosecution) and clear the way for Ron DeSantis. Yikes if true…

  65. 65.

    Bupalos

    “We should resurrect a mantra from the early 1970s: A government that can force you to give birth is a government that can force you to have an abortion”

    No, we most definitely should not ressurect that kind of dopey structural anti-government framing. That’s the exact trope that is weaponized by the right to gum up and attack  everything from gun regulation to progressive taxation to social security to environmental action

    “A spoon rigid enough to eat a cup of yogurt is rigid enough to gouge out people’s eyeballs!”

    This kind of argument totally obscures and distorts the nature of the problem here.

  67. 67.

    Crimson Pimpernel

    @Another Scott:  Obviously individual doctors are scared of prosecution, but doesn’t it seem that the medical profession, which collectively has some power, is caving pretty easily on all the collateral damage to women?  They understand the ramifications beyond elective abortion.  Couldn’t they take a collective stand, first opposing the bans and then promising to support any doctor who (for example) ends an ectopic pregnancy before it reaches the entirely predictable imminent death phase?  Assuming they take their oath more seriously than certain justices and elected officials take theirs.

  68. 68.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I’m more of a “let justice be done though the heavens fall” kinda gal, but yeah, as a practical matter, taking Trump out would put DeSantis on a glidepath, and I am convinced he’d be a much stronger candidate vs. Biden. Not that such an outcome would be anyone’s fault but the Republican Party’s and its media enablers’ — they’re the ones who keep offering up scary fascists. If not DeSantis, they’d try to foist Cotton off on us…

  69. 69.

    MisterDancer

    @Crimson Pimpernel: doesn’t it seem that the medical profession, which collectively has some power, is caving pretty easily on all the collateral damage to women?

    I’d wager it’s about Money, same as why Facebook “suddenly” can find the ban button when it comes to talking about Abortion.

    Specifically — they are terrified, I’d suspect, of the threat of litigation.

  70. 70.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty Cracker:

    That’s one of the things that depresses me the most: that the post-Trump GQP landscape—if we ever somehow manage to get to it—looks even worse. Damn.

  71. 71.

    Ksmiami

    @Steeplejack: we all have to become single issue voters… My single issue is that Republicans are the biggest danger to Americans. Spread the word

  73. 73.

    Betty Cracker

    @Steeplejack: Same. It won’t get better until voters tell Republicans to fuck off with these fascist creeps for a few election cycles, but can that even happen in such a polarized country? We’re about to find out.

  75. 75.

    cain

    @fancycwabs: ​
     
    We must getting popular here in this top 1000 political blog hellsite.

    Welcome – and thank you for running – as Baud says, y’alls heroes in our book.

  76. 76.

    cain

    @Ksmiami: ​
     
    It’ll go down like the drug war, entire for-profit ecosystem springing up around it.
    Except, it will be women of all stripes many who have done nothing wrong.
    The hate against them will hopefully propel getting these people out of there. But getting rid of the laws is going to be a bitch.

  78. 78.

    Another Scott

    @Crimson Pimpernel: Yes, one has to be careful about making generalizations, even about physicians.

    (Repost) NPR Throughline – Before Roe: The Physicians’ Crusade:

    Abortion wasn’t always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a fairly common practice: a private decision made by women, and aided mostly by midwives. But in the mid-1800s, a small group of physicians set out to change that. Obstetrics was a new field, and they wanted it to be their domain—meaning, the domain of men and medicine. Led by a zealous young doctor named Horatio Storer, they launched a campaign to make abortion illegal in every state, spreading a potent cloud of moral righteousness and racial panic that one historian later called “the physicians’ crusade.” And so began the century of criminalization.

    In the first episode of a two-part series, we’re telling the story of that century: how doctors put themselves at the center of legal battles over abortion, first to criminalize — and then to legalize.

    […]

    UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #9: Part 2 – A Century of Criminalization.

    UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Horatio Storer) The moral guilt of criminal abortion depends entirely upon the real and essential nature of the act. It is the intentional destruction of a child within its parent. And physicians have now agreed from actual and various proof that the child is alive from the moment of conception.

    ABDELFATAH: In 1860, governors of every single state in the U.S. received this letter from the recently established American Medical Association.

    UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Horatio Storer) The evil to society of this crime is evident from the fact that it’s instances in this country are now to be counted by hundreds of thousands.

    ABDELFATAH: But there was really only one guy holding the pen.

    HAUGEBERG: Horatio Storer.

    ABDELFATAH: Karissa Haugeberg, again, who studied the formation of the anti-abortion movement.

    HAUGEBERG: Basically, he ghost-wrote a letter from the president of the AMA – so it looked like it was coming from the president, but Storer was actually the one who wrote it – saying that the AMA opposes abortion. And he used the language of morality.

    […]

    It’s a fascinating, and infuriating, piece. Well worth a listen/read.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  80. 80.

    Geminid

    @Ksmiami:

       If anyone needs more of a plan than “crush and defeat the Klan”- they be asleep, oblivious, privileged, or racist.

    Denise Oliver-Velez, June 28 2022

  82. 82.

    Geminid

    @Baud: You probably know this, but Denise Oliver-Velez was a Black Panther in the 1960s. She is just as fierce 55 years later.

  86. 86.

    Geminid

    @Baud: I did not know who Ms. Oliver-Velez was until I saw Ragnarok Lobster retweeting her. I’ve encountered a lot of good voices through Mr. Lobster’s Twitter account (@eclectbrotha). Mangy Jay and Susan Vermazen are just two of them.

    Denise Oliver-Velez is also a Contributing Editor to the Daily Kos blog.

  87. 87.

    Kropacetic

    @Betty Cracker: I’m more of a “let justice be done though the heavens fall” kinda gal, but yeah, as a practical matter, taking Trump out would put DeSantis on a glidepath, and I am convinced he’d be a much stronger candidate vs. Biden.

    We can only hope, then, that the entire Republican party is tarnished by the actions of the Beerhall Putz and the party-wide aggressive attempts to regulate citizens’ intimate decisions.

  88. 88.

    Geminid

    @Kropacetic: It won’t be long before Republican politicians are saying, “Trump? Ya know, I didn’t really know that guy…”

    Not saying that’s gonna work very well.

  91. 91.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Geminid: My hope is that at least 10% of the GOP are hard core Trumpers who won’t trust anyone who distances themself from him. I am rooting for fractures in the party.. For Trump’s ego to tear it into pieces and turn them against each other. It may not happen, but I can hope.

  92. 92.

    glc

    https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/29/no-i-in-uter-us/#egged-on

    Take location data; this is harvested by many of the apps you routinely use, sometimes without the app-maker’s explicit knowledge – widely used, free app development kits are notorious for gathering and selling location data from their customers’ users. This data is then passed on to location brokers, who make it incredibly easy to discover who visited an abortion clinic, and who sell this data cheap to cops and anyone else who wants to snoop on you:

    https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

    Emphasis added.

  93. 93.

    ET the Librarian

    I am seeing some indication in some states that certain medication like Methotrexate for rheumatoid arthritis may not be available to women of childbearing years because supposedly it can be used as an abortifacient and some women may have already been denied their prescriptions. Don’t know how true/widespread this will be.

  94. 94.

    Geminid

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: This seems to have happened once already. A large dropoff in the Republican vote in the Georgia Senate runoffs helped put Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the Senate. Republicans typically do better than Georgia’s Democrats in runoffs, but in this case Ossoff’s vote dropped by ~110,000 while Perdue’s dropped by ~260,000. Many people believe that the hard core trumpers were punishing the party because it’s leaders did not stand up for their man and help steal Georgia for him.

    A vote comparison for Raphael Warnock is difficult because his November contest was a jungle primary, but Warnock ran about 20,000 votes ahead of Ossoff in the runoff.

    That January 5th Senate runoff was an interesting election. It never got the attention outside of Georgia that it deserved because of the events the next day.

  95. 95.

    ColoradoGuy

    The DeSantis worries might be a bit premature. He hasn’t (yet) developed the cult frenzy that grew around TFG. That appeared very quickly in 2015, presumably because TFG was already Birther #1 nationwide, along with name recognition from that wretched TV show.

    Millions of people watch these ritual-humiliation shows, God knows why, and that was TFG’s brand … his name itself. Everyone knew who the “rich asshole” was, and a lot of Republicans  really identify with abusers. That’s why the worse he acts, the more they love him, right down to the whiny, self-entitled voice.

    DeSantis is vicious, all right, but he doesn’t have the brand and the TV show that created it. He’s just another politician in a crowded field of gangsters and wannabes.

  96. 96.

    karen marie

    allows a woman to end a pregnancy if it poses “serious health consequences”

    I have issues with this.  “Allows”?  Really?  Let’s just infantilize women a little more, shall we?

    As for “poses serious health consequences,” how is this to be adjudicated?  Who determines whether those “health consequences” are serious enough?

    The whole thing is infuriating.

    It may all be moot because there are fewer and fewer doctors who are trained to perform abortions.  At least a decade ago I read that few medical schools teach abortion procedures.  That situation certainly can’t have gotten better.

    And then today’s wordle solution isn’t even a word.

    I can’t even with this shit.

  97. 97.

    karen marie

    @Betty Cracker: Given Hutchinson’s change of attorneys, my thinking is that it either became obvious to her or someone close to her that the advice her Trumpy lawyer was giving her was protecting Trump while exposing her to criminal charges.  Does anyone know when she was first deposed by the committee?

  98. 98.

    karen marie

    @Layer8Problem:

    I doubt this is what killed Andrew’s chances but it’s funny:

    “And then you basically get a position as the Chick-Fil-A runner at the White House outranked by the Easter Egg Bunny.”

    A pox on both Andrew and Zeldin.

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