We thought everybody had already been divided into voters and vessels. The voters got to pass restrictions, and the vessels got to sit there and smile! It’s an easy mistake to make when you are running around the country wildly stripping people’s rights https://t.co/Dd9W7TIJZR
— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) August 3, 2022
Alexandra Petri, national treasure:
So this is a little embarrassing, but we may have gotten so carried away trying to pass abortion restrictions that we sort of forgot women could still vote! A mind-fart, for sure! When you are sitting there legislating about someone as though they are not there at all — a someone with no rights the state is bound to respect, neither to control what occurs within the bounds of their own body nor, necessarily, to life, even — you can be forgiven for thinking, “Well, this cannot possibly apply to a large swath of the voting population! This isn’t the kind of law you pass about fellow voters! They would say something, probably!”…
It really gives you pause: Can you actually force significant life choices down fellow voters’ throats, as though they are not your peers under law? And have it be a successful strategy?
Apparently not like this!
But don’t worry. We are chastened, and we won’t repeat this error: We are working very hard on tightening the voting process. Soon, only the ballots we believe in are going to count.
Yes, we did our best to make the messaging as confusing as we could, and, sure, we’ve been working to make it harder to register to vote, but we can always do better. No, not at realizing that this isn’t a winning approach and we should stop trying to take our fellow citizens’ rights away. Certainly not at treating those affected by abortion restrictions as people whose rights deserve respect. But just at fixing this voting oversight.
It seems too clear. People with the ability to choose won’t choose us, so there’s only one solution to securing less choice: less choice.
Meanwhile, at the FTFNYTimes…
if i were a state or federal republican, i could not have asked for a more complimentary, sympathetic article through which to launder and obfuscate my well-documented and on-the-record views about the subject of abortion. https://t.co/amF2Fcjjs4
— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) August 5, 2022
Just hours apart. Getting played is a choice. pic.twitter.com/glKJ71I4ED
— Susan J. Demas ?? (@sjdemas) August 6, 2022
It looks like a library book drop, but it’s really a place for parents to surrender newborns. These safe havens began as a way to prevent the most extreme cases of child abuse, but after Roe, conservative groups are looking to expand them. https://t.co/tpaUMKX4hr pic.twitter.com/KdnxhOIYb2
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 6, 2022
… But the safe haven movement has become much more prominent, in part because of a boost from a charismatic activist with roots in anti-abortion activism, Monica Kelsey, founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes.
With Ms. Kelsey and allies lobbying across the country, states like Indiana, Iowa and Virginia have sought to make safe haven surrenders easier, faster and more anonymous — allowing older babies to be dropped off, or allowing relinquishing parents to leave the scene without speaking to another adult or sharing any medical history…
She first encountered a baby “safe” — a concept dating back to medieval Europe — on a 2013 trip to a church in Cape Town, South Africa, where she was on a pro-abstinence speaking tour.
She returned home to Indiana to found a nonprofit, Safe Haven Baby Boxes, and installed her first baby box in 2016.
To use one of Ms. Kelsey’s boxes, a parent pulls open a metal drawer to reveal a temperature-controlled hospital bassinet. Once the baby is inside and the drawer is closed, it locks automatically; the parent cannot reopen it. An alarm is triggered and the facility’s staff members can access the bassinet. The box also sends out a 911 call. Twenty-one babies have been left in the boxes since 2017, and the average amount of time a child is inside the box is less than two minutes, Ms. Kelsey said…
On Friday, the Indiana governor signed legislation banning most abortions, with slim exceptions.
And the safe haven movement continues apace…
Suzanne
I have designed multiple baby drop boxes. I see them as a valid harm reduction strategy. A last line of defense. By no means a thing to rely on.
HumboldtBlue
Drop boxes for forcing ill-prepared women to give birth, but no drop boxes for voting?
Sounds like the GOP.
Baud
They need to make those boxes big enough to hold teenagers.
Splitting Image
It’s been said before, but one of the reasons for the push to ban abortion is precisely to limit women’s right to vote. Making abortion a felony is an excellent way of striking women who need one at some point in their lives from the voter rolls.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Yeah, I’m not offended by them per se. Even if reproductive rights were still protected, you’d need some mechanism for giving up unwanted babies.
Jeffro
Petri had a good take on Senator Vibes Dilettante (ie, Sinema) today, too. 😊
Suzanne
I will note that many hospital emergency departments have baby drop boxes, and have had them long before 2016. And they are not those goofy janky things seen in the pictures above. Usually they are in dark corners with no cameras on the exterior, so that if interaction with a staff member (or any witness) represents an obstacle to a surrender, the person surrendering can do so without it. Again, they are a valid last resort in terrible circumstances.
The GOP is now trying to create those terrible circumstances.
Sure Lurkalot
@HumboldtBlue:
Too funny, this was EXACTLY my reaction when I saw the tweet.
Suzanne
@Baud: I actually talked to that Monica Kelsey lady a few years ago. I was evaluating the product she’s hawking. It is not very good and so every safe haven drop box I’ve put in since is a custom design.
Anne Laurie
@Suzanne: One of the things I love about this blog: We get to hear from people who actually know about the things ‘everybody’ is discussing!
Spanky
@Anne Laurie: For sure! Mrs S was reading about Kelsey’s drop boxes, and I was able to peel her off the ceiling just now by reading Suzanne’s comments verbatim.
prostratedragon
@Anne Laurie: Ditto!
Cacti
The goal of the GOP in present form is fundamentalist minority rule. Dem politicians need to shout this from the housetops at every opportunity.
Winning message for any Dem:
“I oppose forcing 4th graders to carry rape pregnancies.”
Spanky
@Baud: Unfortunately, if they’re big enough for teenagers, they’re big enough for Granny.
Suzanne
@Baud: I think of them the way I think about needle exchanges or safe injection sites.
The hospitals that I have worked with that have these have said that they get a surrender approximately once every two to three years.
Cacti
@Spanky: So, what’s the unfortunate part?
SpaceUnit
It should operate like the penny jar at the liquor store. Got a baby? Leave a baby. Need a baby? Take a baby.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Yeah, the problem comes when Big Dropbox starts lobbying for abortion restrictions in order to increase demand.
Suzanne
@Baud: When I was looking for a prefab one of these, I actually tried calling QuikServ, which is a company that makes a lot of transaction drawers, drive-thru windows, package transfer boxes, etc. I asked the rep if they ever did safe haven boxes as custom items. She didn’t know what it was, so I described it. DEAD SILENCE. Then she said, “Oh my GOD….”
One of the funnier days at work.
HumboldtBlue
Spanky
@Suzanne:
Granted, I’m an over the hill guy who’s never heard of such a thing, so I’m wondering if knowledge of these things get passed around to “Vessels” on the down low, or what.
Baud
@Suzanne:
“Think Moses and a basket of reeds, but without the Nile.”
MisterDancer
That’s one of many effects I’ve been considering.
Another: Later-stage pregnancies don’t get along with lining up outside your polling place, for sometimes hours. This matters when States cut polling places in poor/marginalized areas.
Another: Who has time to check on your voting registration while you’re trying to get ready to have a kid?
Another: Multiple kids make it that much harder to organize getting to, and again standing in line at, your polling place.
And we Men rarely think of these things, in this way. We’ve traditionally just danced away from the real day-to-day burden of parenting — it’s a Choice for the “sperm contributor”, but rarely one for those who actually give birth.
Baud
Now that I’ve heard of safe haven boxes, I’m going to start seeing them everywhere.
I think there’s a name of that.
Suzanne
@Spanky: In Arizona, which is a state that allows surrenders without direct interaction, the locations are published on the hospital websites, the state department of health website, and probably other places like doctor’s offices and churches and homeless shelters. They really want to make them easy to find. Facilities like hospitals that accept surrenders are also required to have a large sign posted at conspicuous locations near the public entries. I don’t know about every state.
Alison Rose 💙🌻💛
@HumboldtBlue: “The Vice President votes in the affirmative and the motion to proceed is agreed to, bitches.”
At least, that’s how it went in MY head.
bbleh
And really, nothing says Christian love like forcing a woman — a young teenager, say, or a rape victim, or, yeah, a young teenaged rape victim — to (1) carry an unwanted pregnancy to term and then (2) deposit a living infant in a box like some library book or video rental. I mean, it shows how much Republicans care about actual babies as opposed to their own weird fetishistic delusions.
(And yes for the record, I agree that they’re a positive good as a last resort, but FFS why should anything approaching such a last resort ever be necessary in the richest country in history? Thanks again, Republicans!)
HumboldtBlue
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛:
So what you’re saying is you wanna be Kamala’s anger translator?
Elsewhere, these people are just vile.
Dan B
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: AND the chorus of “You’re waaaaaasting money!!!” commences.
So sad…. /s
Wapiti
@Suzanne: I went through a temporary exhibit at the California Museum in Berkeley which covered Kaiser Industries, including Kaiser Permanente’s origins. One exhibit had a maternity room with a pass-through drawer so that the hospital staff could pass the baby to/from the mother’s room to, I guess, the baby holding area. Height of technology at some point.
bbleh
@Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: @HumboldtBlue: “Without objection, the Vice President’s motion is approved to amend the record to strike the subsequent remark ‘suck on THAT, McConnell.'”
Baud
@Wapiti:
Now I’m envisioning those pneumatic tubes like you used to see at drive thru banks but for babies.
Spanky
@Suzanne: Thanks. I just did a scan of our local hospital’s website and saw no trace. Not really a surprise out here in the Confederate countryside.
mvr
@bbleh: If it were up to me I would do this all without any breaks and make McConnell, Grasssley and all the old R men have to stay awake for it. OTOH, I know there are also D old men and old Women so I can’t be sure this wouldn’t backfire.
Suzanne
@Wapiti: The ones that I’ve worked on are somewhat more sophisticated. We have to plan them so that they are in an inconspicuous spot on the outside and a clinical-staff-access-only spot on the inside. The hatch itself is fairly simple, just an insulated door with a closer and it locks when closed. There’s a cabinet inside where we build a sliding drawer with a bassinet, and usually all the baby supplies below. The annoying part is the tie-in to the nurse call and security alarm systems so that clinical staff are alerted when a baby is present and the security team can make sure that it’s a baby and not a bomb or contraband or whatever. Then they have to immediately get the baby into the hospital’s infant protection system so no one else can kidnap it (like an angry dad who didn’t want the baby surrendered or whatever).
Shalimar
Only a matter of time before the drop boxes have a “white babies only” sign on them.
Emma from Miami
@Suzanne: I must say I always thought architecture to be a fascinating but mostly conventional field. You, however, have taught me otherwise. Drop boxes for newborns? Sweet Jesus.
And kudos to you for your care in designing them.
Suzanne
@Spanky: I know in AZ, when they first passed the safe haven law, the surrender-er had to directly interact with a person for the surrender to be legal. It could be outside the hospital (I think) but on the hospital’s grounds. But they found that the interaction itself was a deterrent for some people, so they changed it to allow for the drop box thing. Not all hospitals have them.
Baud
@Emma from Miami:
Agreed. Suzanne makes architecture fun.
bbleh
@mvr: yeah we need Leahy, DiFi, et al. around for the final vote.
Suzanne
@Baud: @Emma from Miami: Awww thanks. It’s not that fun.
Right now, my project is in budget hell, so ehhhhh.
Ken
You’ll be regarding every little library with suspicion.
Redshift
@Baud:
Yeah, the existence of these, and of safe surrender laws in general, isn’t offensive. It’s only the claims that they “solve the problem” so nobody needs abortion that are offensive.
prostratedragon
Illinois has had a Baby Safe Haven law for about 20 years, applying to infants at most 30 days old. They can be left without penalty at police or fire stations in Chicago, but as this sad story shows, either the public need to be better informed, or more anonymous means like the safe baby boxes need to be installed at such places.
HumboldtBlue
@Shalimar:
Yup.
sukabi
@Baud: need them big enough to hold your RW relatives or neighbors…
Starfish
@Spanky: They came out after numerous stories of dumpster babies.
Lyrebird
@Suzanne:
THANK YOU and FORK THEM.
Better designs: so good. Just not a replacement for reproductive rights. I know you get this 200%, don’t worry, I’m just mad!
These don’t help the gal who dies because some dipshit thinks ectopic “pregnancies” can be saved, the various grieving parents who are forced to carry a dying or dead fetus to term… I know. Y’all know. She should know better. UGH.
Antonius
@Baud: And me.
Suzanne
@Redshift: I am willing to bet significant sums of money that the people surrendering their newborns have not received good medical care. The idea that we should limit abortion healthcare because going through a pregnancy without prenatal care and giving birth in god-knows-where is a good option is….. offensive in the extreme.
Eric S.
@Baud: Baader-Meinhoff
Suzanne
I will note that my current project is in VA and it will not have a safe haven drop.
Starfish
OH MY GOD. Megan McArdle is being stupider than usual on Twitter today, and I can’t handle it.
You, a preborn soul cannot distinguish between body parts that are your own and those that are not. You, a preborn soul, may grab your own umbilical cord because coming into the world is scary, and drop your own heart rate.
She is trying to create intellectual nonsense out of this with BS about Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance, but she needs to stop.
Trollhattan
“Kids: open the shit out of the box.”
Raoul Paste
“Assume that you, pre-born soul…”
Stop
Stop right there. This is nonsense you create when you don’t have an actual argument
different-church-lady
Petri’s writing voice is amazing: she’s slicing people to shreds with a cheerful grin.
Chetan Murthy
@Starfish: Even taking her seriously (which nobody ever should) she’s an idiot. What is it? 1/3 of all fertilized eggs end in miscarriage? That’s a higher chance than of abortion. So that preborn soul should want to select for the world in which the putative mother will have the absolute best medical care, and that’ll be (haha) in the world where abortion is legal, as we all know, b/c that’s correlated with better prenatal care and health care for women overall.
She’s a moron. A moral idiot.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Augustus Gloop?
different-church-lady
@Starfish: Me, pre-born soul… CAN’T ASSUME A FUCKING THNG BECAUSE I DO NOT YET HAVE THE MENTAL FACILITY FOR HIGHER THOUGHTS SUCH AS ASSUMPTIONS.
Chetan Murthy
@Jeffro: Petri fillets the shitty Senator with a vibrating saw.
Tony G
@Splitting Image: That’s an excellent point that I hadn’t thought of. There’s probably a very high correlation — maybe 100% — between states with abortion bans and states that have a lifetime ban on voting for felons.
Ealbert
I have been seeing these understated calmly narrated commercials here in Wisconsin stating…”If MAGA Republicans get elected, blah, blah blah.” I want to see statements like the right to lifers use like: “Ron Johnson wants 10 year olds to give birth to their rapist’s baby!” And more generally “Republicans want 10 year olds to give birth to their rapist’s baby — so they can adopt it.” Let the Republicans argue “well really …” As they say — If you’re explaining , you’re losing.
Lyrebird
@Starfish: You are a brave soul, for reading that garbage.
Worse than that, I say, because she is catapulting the propaganda that people who consider getting abortions probably do so without any thought of the potential newborn who might come out of a pregnancy. This is sinister in my book. But you are probably right that moron is the kindest interpretation. What is that thing about not attributing things to malice that can be explained by stupidity?
or…
NAH.
Until we get Beerkeg McLiarPants and Bony Carrot Using Her Kids as a Moral Shield and Thomas The Insurrection Enabler off the Supreme Cort, I will assume this shit is malice.
Ken
@Starfish: In Asimov’s short story “The Last Trump” there’s a scene where people are trying to figure out what to do with all the resurrected infants. Stack them like cordwood, someone suggests — they don’t eat or need any care, and they can’t be killed. If every fertilized egg is ensouled, we’ll have drums full of the ones that never implanted.
On the other hand, there’s the “Left Behind” series, where all of them have grown up in heaven. There’s a horror plot lurking there — the failed-to-implant and miscarried would outnumber the humans who’ve lived a mortal life, and they would have absolutely no experience of Earth. Makes the Midwich cuckoos look normal.
Ohio Mom
@Starfish: I suppose that if you turn out to be one of those twins who absorbs the other (called vanishing twin syndrome) and forever after carries some cells with your twin’s DNA, then you have two souls?
The thing about McArgle is, as soon as I forget her existence, she says something stupid again and the blogosphere is up in arms and I’m back to remembering her.
Tony G
@MisterDancer: The long lines to be endured in order to vote are a good way to screen out anyone who is not in perfect health or who has any kind of commitments that would prevent him or her from standing in line for hours, but in particular it would prevent pregnant women and mothers of infants or small children from voting. A feature not a bug, as the kids used to say. At this point I just hate the people who dishonestly call themselves “pro-life”.
Ohio Mom
I’m reminded of the Yiddish joke that takes place in Chelm, a village populated entirely by village idiots.
One says to another, “Life is so hard, I think it might be better to have never been born.” The other replies, “How many people are that lucky?”
Chetan Murthy
@Tony G: I’m surprised more people don’t bring camp chairs or stools.
hilts
@Ohio Mom:
You remind me of another joke
h/t https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/1115387338/remembering-alternative-radio-pioneer-larry-josephson
opiejeanne
@Wapiti: I had those pass through drawers when my two younger kids were born. Kaiser Permanente in Fontana, 1979 and 82.
It makes it easier for the nurse to take the baby for a test without waking up the mother, and feed it and care for it if the mother is incapable. The room on the other side is a changing station with a sink and diapers and all the supplies needed.
When my first was born I was a bit of a wreck, and I only saw the baby a couple of times a day, when he was brought from the nursery. I was there a week I was such a mess, couldn’t walk upright for a couple of weeks so I was in no shape to take care of a newborn, but they didn’t have those “rooming-in” boxes yet. It was the dark ages of treating patients like cattle, and I got a lot of funny reactions when I asked questions, as if I was the first patient who had ever asked any question.
HumboldtBlue
@Ohio Mom: @hilts:
Some well needed laughs on a Saturday night.
Krakow. Hah!
topclimber
Anne, here is a tardy comment on your earlier White Horse post. Rerun from down below.
Oh, so late with this, compliments of GK Chesterton and the Ballad of the White Horse:
Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.
Before the gods that made the gods
Had drunk at dawn their fill,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was hoary on the hill.
Age beyond age on British land,
Aeons on aeons gone,
Was peace and war in western hills,
And the White Horse looked on.
It goes on to spin the story of King Alfred and the days when Anglo-Saxons were
an endangered group. Vikings, you know. I read it in high school and liked it. Still do.
Lit3Bolt
@Starfish:
The husky fetuses should be trained to bum rush the mother before she can get a chance to abort them.
–Megan McArdle tomorrow on Twitter, probably
No wonder this woman thinks so much about the wishes of newborn souls, she has the reasoning capacity of one.
LeftCoastYankee
As someone who was adopted as a child, this is in no way amusing or OK. To me, it is utterly fucking horrifying.
Commodification of children is the inevitable side effect of forced birth these horrible people want.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Popehat same:
HumboldtBlue
Gisele Barreto Fetterman — I thanked him and shared a little secret (we aren’t supposed to hate each other). But really, it made my day.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
Coming late to the thread. Totally agree with you, and commend your work in this area.
I thought I read that in some places in Southern California, infants could be dropped off at fire stations.
Also, it seems to me that any state that has forced pregnancies should pay for the mother’s health care during the pregnancy and for at least 90 days after delivery. This should be available to all women, and separate from any health insurance they might have.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: I think there should be a box that fires Monica Kelsey into the Sun.
sab
In my mispent youth I was a divorce lawyer. A common tactic of disgruntled husbands was to rape and impregnate the wife to tie her to him when he suspected she was trying to escape.
These drop off places are a godsend, to get both the woman and the child away from the monster. Without them woman and child would be tied to the monster for at least the next 18 years. With the drop offs the woman can get free and the child has a good chance of normal parents in a healthy relationship.
mardam
I’m sure this has been said.
Drop boxes for babies? Yes, of course.
Drop boxes for ballots?
matt
@Starfish: She’s just having a conversation with some sperm, as one does.
artem1s
@bbleh:
apparently you aren’t familiar with the Xtianity origin story.
Tony G
@Suzanne: The Real Republicans (not the RINOs) will eventually pass laws to force those abandoned babies to work as unpaid factory or farm labor as soon as they’re old enough to walk. The kids will get a daily ration of gruel and a floor to sleep on, and they’ll be in debt for their first couple of years when when they were too young to work. Giving those kids free food and lodging would be socialism. Make them work for their gruel!