Again, it was never about just abortion:
The Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, appears to have thwarted an attempt to stop law enforcement obtaining menstrual histories of women in the state.
A bill passed in the Democratic-led state senate, and supported by half the chamber’s Republicans, would have banned search warrants for menstrual data stored in tracking apps on mobile phones or other electronic devices.
Advocates feared private health information could be used in prosecutions for abortion law violations, after a US supreme court ruling last summer overturned federal protections for the procedure.
But Youngkin, who has pushed for a 15-week abortion ban to mirror similar measures in several Republican-controlled states, essentially killed the bill through a procedural move in a subcommittee of the Republican-controlled House.
It is and always has been about control and keeping women as second class citizens to the fucking christofascists.
Heads Up: President Biden Screens the Movie ‘Till” at the White House
Ohio Mom
Yes, extremely creepy and very wrong in every way.
However there is an easy grassroots counter: Someone needs to print up and distribute little (fits in purse) cardboard calendars so everyone can track their cycles the old fashioned way, with a pencil.
On the back on the calendar, an exhortation to delete your app and why. And an invitation for everyone to send their used menstrual hygiene products to the governor (whether or not anonymously, I leave to lawyers).
cain
@Ohio Mom: I like it.
Funny, how we are going to end up usurping all the ‘small govt’ messaging from the so called conservatives. They’ve revealed themselves a lot more than just women’s control. Their entire shtick about small govt is also revealed as bullshit.
Mingobat (f/k/a Karen in GA)
I wonder if there are any… um… used items young women can send him? I mean, for documentation purposes.
ETA: I see Ohio Mom had the same idea. I hope plenty of other women do too.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m a good 35 years past my own menopause, and I have no daughters or granddaughters, so this should be merely theoretical to me. But it isn’t. I’m as angry about these kinds of moves as anything I can think of. I may be 80 years old, but this shit makes me feel personally violated. I can only imagine what it must be like for young women who are pregnant, or not pregnant, or wanting to be pregnant, or wanting to not be pregnant, or dealing with wildly erratic menstrual cycles, or possibly battling STDs or ovarian or uterine cancers.
My contempt for Youngkin and these other cruel, craven cretins knows no bounds.
cmorenc
It’s fundamentally more about an extreme religion-infused belief that full human rights inhere at the biological moment of conception, superior to the mother carrying it (unless perhaps it’s ironclad certain that if the pregnancy continues, the mother will die before the fetus can survive without her) – but your point is well- taken in that it’s perfectly ok with them if the inevitable collateral effect of this view is to greatly handicap a majority of still-fertile women from equal participation in society beyond traditional roles. Of course for some, this collateral effect is a desired feature, but for many others in the forced-birth movement, this is an unavoidable bug that has to be endured and coped with because “life begins at conception” is a value paramount to any othet consideration..
trollhattan
Guessing the next Charlottsville nazi march will have fleece vests replacing the Hawaiian shirts?
Hook, line and stinker, Virginia–you swallowed the entire rig voting this ghoul into office. Nice work.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: What the fuck were they thinking when they voted for this creep?
Hopefully this will be a teachable moment for Virginia.
patrick II
Alito, Dobbs, right- to – privacy. Gone.
UncleEbeneezer
It is and always has been about control and keeping women and LGB(&especially)TQ people as second class citizens to the fucking christofascists.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Jesus Christ. I live in Virginia, and I hadn’t heard about this yet. This is horrifying. We need to fight this shit, but I don’t know quite what to do about something like this.
Frankensteinbeck
@cmorenc:
They say that, but their positions about reproduction universally focus on punishing sluts. The human rights of the fetus other than forcing the mother to carry it are the vast majority of the time ignored. Measures to make sure the fetuses being carried are healthier are ignored or fought against. Meanwhile, the activists have said they want to outlaw contraception. The cruelty is the point.
Nelle
What are the penalties for lying about the dates of a period? How are they going to check for honesty? The mind shudders at how far they will go.
FastEdD
Yes, just horrible and creepy and wrong.
I used to get solicitations for money from the NRA, and the CA GOP, for what reason I have no idea. They came with postage paid return envelopes and that was their mistake. I would walk the dog and pick up after him, and both of those fine organizations would receive regular donations. From the dog. And they would pay the postage.
Suzanne
@cmorenc:
I think that “life begins at conception” is actually a second-order belief for them (many of them can’t even define conception). The first-order belief is that the natural and proper role of women is to be subservient to men and to bear and care for their children.
If they genuinely believed that life started at conception, as a first-order belief….they would be all in favor of methods like the birth control pill, condoms, sterilization, etc. And yet they are not. Which leads me to the conclusion that other considerations come before this for them.
Old School
@Ohio Mom:
IANAL, but wouldn’t those also be subject to search warrants?
The Moar You Know
@WaterGirl: it was. They’ve learned that if you put a well-spoken white guy in decent casual clothes and keep him from acting or speaking like a third grader on meth, you can flip a blue state back to red.
Jeffro
@trollhattan:
@WaterGirl:
could we qualify that “Virginia” part a bit? It wasn’t us Virginia Democrats who elected Smilin’ Glenn.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Jeffro: Virginia’s Republicans and lesser independents.
matt
50% of GOP – christofascists.
cain
Lying about a period is jail time – fucking bullshit. Imagine having your life ruined because your criminal record is about your reproductive system.
Apparently when applied to this – otherwise, men are not remotely interested in anything that happens to a women during her period or their struggles when it happens.
Geminid
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): I don’t think anyone is going around Virginia checking menstrual data. This law would have guarded against potential intrusive behavior.
The time to straighten this mess out is this November, when all 100 House of Delegates seats and all 40 State Senate seats are up for election.
cain
@Suzanne: They also don’t acknowledge that sex programs actually reduce things like teenage birth. They don’t want their kids to know all that – only that they’ll be punished with a baby, and there won’t be any help – because how dare you do pleasurable things outside of a marriage.
trollhattan
@Jeffro: Enough of our California Dems voted for Arnold to 1. put him into office after yanking our Dem governor and 2. reelect him.
Y’all have the same problem.
matt
@cmorenc: Generally what I’ve seen of religious thinking about health exceptions is that it’s possible a scientific breakthrough or other miracle could happen during the pregnancy so you can never really say that it’s not going to go to term or will harm the mother.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@matt: Might be low-balling it there, chief.
Then again, Republican atheists appear to want all the same things and with at least as much zeal.
RaflW
Relatedly, the only maternity hospital in the Durango region of Colorado is now refusing to do any tubal ligation for women who wish to have surgical, long term contraception. No surprise, the hospital is Catholic.
I wonder how much government aid this hospital receives. It’s a god damned scandal that we’ve let “charity” hospitals dictate religious terms to their non-religious and differently-faithful patients.
And to be clear, ‘another hospital’ for the separate tubal ligation – in this context around Durango – could mean a looooong drive to a city large enough not to have busybody Catholic interference in their healthcare!
Jeffro
@trollhattan: oh we sure don’t. We had a turnout problem, not a crossover voter problem.
matt
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Recent poll result. Of course many of them lie to polls to make GOP look less shitty.
Qrop Non Sequitur
I have introduced a bill requiring the tracking of all boners in Massachusetts.
Geminid
@Nelle: I don’t think there are any penalties for lying about periods because there is no Virginia law banning abortion, much less legislation enabling law enforcement to collect data. The law that Republican Delegates killed addressed potential intrusive behavior, not current practices.
Jeffro
@Qrop Non Sequitur: many thanks!
I like “lesser independents” and might have to borrow that here n’ there. =)
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
They say that, but their positions about reproduction universally focus on punishing sluts. The human rights of the fetus other than forcing the mother to carry it are the vast majority of the time ignored. Measures to make sure the fetuses being carried are healthier are ignored or fought against. Meanwhile, the activists have said they want to outlaw contraception. The cruelty is the point.
THIS. A billion times this.
The cruelty IS the point.
Control is the point. Men used to be at the top of the pecking order, but that’s not right. Equality is. To be equal there has to be choice, because when there was a top and a bottom there was no choice. Equality did not take the choice away, but it absolutely meant that EVERYONE has choice. An EQUAL choice. Men, get the hell over yourselves, you have no more choice than the rest of humanity. And yes I am an old man. And yes I DO NOT want the choice over women. I want EQUALITY. Actual equality, actual responsibility of each of us to be actually equal, to have choice to actually control our own selves, our own bodies.
Qrop Non Sequitur
All yours. Words are free.
pat
Wait a minute, you can keep track of your period on your phone and it is subject to a subpoena?
Good lord, what kind of country would want to do that?? Creepy, disgusting. I just can’t imagine what kind of psychopath would want to do that. And would allow it.
Suzanne
@cain:
Agreed.
If they genuinely — as a first-order belief, the most important aspect of this issue by which all other positions were taken — thought that life began at conception….their behavior would be much different. They seem to sacrifice everything on the altar of control.
Qrop Non Sequitur
Wait, this shouldn’t be Balloon Juice after dark yet. It’s yet another lovely spring morning.
You say it’s what month now?
RaflW
@WaterGirl: “Hopefully this will be a teachable moment for Virginia.”
One can hope. But I have zero expectation that the media-industrial complex that endlessly fluffed this guy as a “moderate Republican” will have even a nano-second of self-reflection, much less contrition.
Seriously. Editors and reporters who gaslighted their readers bear a heavy burden, though they’re oblivious to it.
delphinium
I suspect one of the reasons that so many of these creeps are such miserable shits is because nothing pleasurable occurs inside their marriage either.
Citizen Alan
@cain: I’ve seen reddit threads in which women repeat the most ridiculously ignorant thing a man has said about a woman’s period. It would be hilarious if those idiots weren’t also voters.
Steeplejack
Fuck that guy. 😠
Miss Bianca
@cmorenc: Here’s what I don’t get, and what none of these God-botherers has ever been able to explain: if a fetus has “full legal and human rights”, how do you enforce them without cancelling the rights of the fetus-bearer?
You can’t. You just fucking can’t. I guess female fetuses have rights, but girls and women of child-bearing age…don’t.
Yeah, good to know.
Miss Bianca
@RaflW: Ugh. Oh, Durango…you’re better than this, aren’t you? Really?
Ohio Mom
@Nelle: That’s another idea. After everyone transitions to pencil and paper, reset their apps to all be on the same cycle.
I know this won’t happen but it’s a fun fantasy.
A Ghost to Most
Well, duh, Cole. Abortion was NEVER about abortion. It’s ALWAYS been about christian supremacy.
RaflW
@cain: I’m not convinced many of these pinched, horrible people believe in pleasure during marriage either.
It’s really boggling how the stain of puritanism has not washed out of a noticeable fraction of the population after 400-500 years.
brendancalling
I hope Glenn Youngkin gets cancer in his shriveled little testicles, has to have them removed, and the cancer just gets worse anyway.
I don’t care if that’s mean. He’s a horrible person. I have nothing but ill will, invective, and curses for people like that. I hope he burns in Hell.
Qrop Non Sequitur
But how does cancer feel about this? Does no one consider cancers feelings?
dm
Isn’t this of a piece with their perverted fascination with children’s genitals?
One of Trump’s immigrations officials kept a spreadsheet of detained immigrant women’s periods — it was something supposedly tangled up with abortion, I think.
These people are creepy perverts.
Ohio Mom
@Old School: Easy enough to dispose of a piece of thin cardboard: shred it, burn it, follow Trump’s lead and flush it down the toilet (probably have to tear in into small pieces first for the plumbing’s sake). Then you can claim you don’t care to keep track or keep mental notes only.
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: Maybe I’m confused. It seems like some Dems must have voted for Youngkin because get got into office, and the previous Gov who was running got fewer votes. No?
OR
Did the Democratic candidate get as many votes as when he won he first time? Did he get about the same number of Democratic votes and Rs just had a far better turnout?
Or did most of the “Independents” just go the wrong way this time?
Serious questions. I am not on top of the details for VA, so perhaps I drew the wrong conclusion.
WaterGirl
@Old School: So call it “lunch with Harry” or some other code that only you know the meaning of.
“call mom” when your period starts and “mary’s bday” when it ends.
Baud
@pat:
All information is subject to a subpoena or search warrant, unless it’s legally privileged.
trollhattan
@Jeffro: Isn’t that like trying to distinguish whether a stroke is caused by a clot or a burst vessel? The outcome is the same.
ETA How does Youngkin do in approval polls?
delphinium
@RaflW: I don’t know how we take “religious beliefs” out of healthcare but it is high time we start thinking of ways to do so. That any hospital can tell any patient that they will not perform this procedure because ‘we don’t like it’ is such utter BS. There is no religious concept they can point to that states, Let’s continue to harm patients. Imagine being a woman in her 40s who already has 3 kids and doesn’t want any more since older age is an increased health risk. And then being told, no, you will have to undergo another surgery at a different hospital if you want your tubes tied.
RaflW
@Miss Bianca: Hideously misnamed right to life groups are open in their push to end ‘health of the mother’ and in some extreme states, to cancel ‘life of the mother’ anti-abortion exemptions.
That latter in particular is the ultimate cancellation of the rights of the fetus-bearer?
It would very much overturn my own theology for a pregnant woman to decide for herself to sacrifice her life to deliver her baby. But that might, in some traditions, be the way. IT ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT BE LEGISLATED OR FORCED ON ANYONE not in one of those sects, though.
ETA, also @Miss Bianca: This is one of the big civic costs of populations giving up public hospitals and letting religious institutions with private faith agendas control our care.
piratedan
there are times when I believe that the only mechanism that is available to us is to share the pain of intrusiveness. Gonna need an app that tracks male erections and does an update on sperm counts. After all, it takes two to tango (so to speak) and we’re completely missing the other side of the equation, all of those MEN who’re professed sluts and will sleep with anyone anywhere at the first opportunity.
think of the righteousness that this would bring to the unborn, every sperm is sacred indeed.
trollhattan
@RaflW: We had the same happen at a Catholic hospital in Redding, CA. A woman was scheduled to give birth after a difficult pregnancy and wanted a tubal ligation after the birth, to assure the problem could not happen again.
They refused.
She had to instead travel the several hours to Sacramento for a hospital with the skills and policies to handle both.
Mercy Health changed their name to Dignity Health, and I’m not convinced either name is apt.
Ruckus
@pat:
I just can’t imagine what kind of psychopath would want to do that. And would allow it.
Conservative psychopaths. Not just allow it, require it. What movie was it that everyone was under control, of a computer if I remember correctly? The computer watched your every move and every thought. The computer had control. That is the conservative ideal. I mean they want control because you and I are not capable of making PROPER decisions, because we don’t think the way conservatives/assholes do and think we should.
RaflW
@delphinium: Our health insurance and health-care delivery systems are both totally fucked by capitalism, racism and misogyny. Even (particularly) the Christian “charity” hospitals.*
Though the other main tool, publicly operated hospitals (by cities or states or perhaps even the feds) would of course be subject to political pressures. Imagine what Gov. Younkin might do to limit procedures in Virginia hospitals if he got the chance.
*Scare quotes because I’m sure we’d be furious if we saw what the salaries are for management of these places was.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Youngkin won by 2 points. An election that close turned on several factors. There clearly were Biden/Youngkin voters. But with Independents constituting about one third of the electorate, a swing in that group probably accounted for a lot of the difference between Biden’s 10 point win the year before and Youngkin’s 2 point win.
There was also a dropoff in Democratic turnout alongside a surge in Republican, very similar to the pattern we saw in New York last fall. I attribute this in part to campaign quality: Youngkin’s team ran a focused and efficient campaign that made the most of a narrow path to victory, but I could not say the same for McAuliffe. I thought he may have been complacent, and other Democrats I talked to were certain of this.
Kathleen
@Suzanne: They want to punish poor and middle class women for having sex.
On another note, I’m starting a betting pool on how long it will take the execrable Rethuglucan House Of Pain And Suffering to introduce a bill mandating that toxic waste from railroad disaster be shipped to “urban centers”.
scav
@trollhattan: From Dignity it’s such a short step to Dignitas. Trick is, they’re in charge of who dies so they’re all mightily in favor of it. At least they’re clear about having abandoned Mercy. Still, most bizarre and somehow least reassuring hospital name I ever saw was Resurrection.
Betty
@SiubhanDuinne: “Cruel, craven, cretins” should be used every time we refer to them.
Burnspbesq
Like father, like son. I knew Carroll Youngkin from joint participation in an online message group of Duke basketball supporters (Yunk was an outstanding player for Duke in the 1950s). His attitudes towards women’s sports were so far out there that they could only have come from a place of pervasive misogyny. Guess he passed it down.
delphinium
@trollhattan: Maybe time to take out large ads in the Sunday papers stating that this hospital will not perform the following services and that if pregnant, this hospital may put your life at risk because they will refuse life-saving actions if it goes against their ‘religious’ beliefs.
Also think that any pharmacy that employs pharmacists who refuse to prescribe birth control should be required to state that on a sign out front so people know not to waste their time going there.
trollhattan
@scav: “Resurrection” Jeez, had “Rapture Health” been taken already?
RaflW
@trollhattan: I’m sure it is happening in many towns and cities. Part of what’s nuts is that the OB-GYN in the linked article has been doing the procedure and is clearly frustrated that she can’t practice medicine as she and her patients want.
If the hospital wants to do some kabuki where individual nurses, anesthesiologists etc can opt out, while I think that’s a poor policy and caters to issues outside medical practice, it’d be at least tolerable.
But they are saying that for non-medical reasons, a routine procedure the hospital currently offers is – by the magic of a 2000 year old book and some rather motivated interpretations thereof – can’t be done any more.
It’s not medicine any more. It’s faith healing (…or the opposite of healing?).
trollhattan
@delphinium: Great idea. Hobby Lobby is always buying full-pagers thumping their particular version of the Bible (plus, funding those oddball “Jesus” teevee ads I’m seeing everywhere).
Joe Brandon is getting great mileage lately quoting Republican things and daring Republicans to deny those same things. It’s goddamn entertaining.
RaflW
@scav: Gotta wonder what the end-goal of Ascension Health is. Largest chain of (cough) nonprofit Catholic care.
It seems to me to be right in the name: Hurry up and Ascend. You’re taking up a lot of space in that hospital bed.
scav
@delphinium: Or, as more permanently available, a sort of Women’s Health Green Book with updated advice on where it is safe for women to be treated for different conditions and procedures in this new Jane Crow era.
Burnspbesq
@Old School:
Not if it’s in tiny pieces in some random dumpster before the search warrant is served.
Ruckus
@delphinium:
Some of this is that we’ve had religion for a lot of centuries. It has solidified itself into humanity. Tell someone you don’t believe in religion, in a higher power and see how many call you names or call your lack of intelligence into question. Religion, any of them, has structure and rules. And more often than not a big part of the religion is learning those rules and what disaster will befall you if you don’t obey those rules. And then. Watch the people who shout from the rooftops about how you have to obey the rules, just fucking ignore the rules. They may wear robes or sit in church (which has pews rather than benches – because pews are better than benches) but there is a part of them that ignore the rules. I can give examples if necessary but I think we are all capable of figuring out that it is very rare that humans follow all the rules of hundreds or thousands of years ago, that tell us to do/not to do things we really, really do not want to do or want to do. The cross was something people were tied or nailed upon to make them suffer and watch them die.
delphinium
@scav: Personally, would much rather make it public. If they are so damn proud of their religious beliefs, make them defend it in the public eye. Same for pharmacists, want to strut around with your ‘moral’ superiority? Great, here’s a picture we can put up in the drug store with a sign underneath stating you won’t prescribe birth control pills. Tired of these folks hiding behind God’s skirt while they harm people.
Lapassionara
@delphinium: Augustine’s ideas really suck, but they are the guiding principles of the Catholic Church, if I understand correctly. First, sexual activity is sinful. The only way sexual activity can be not sinful is if its purpose is for procreation. Hence, birth control is forbidden. Second, all humans are born with the taint of original sin, which can be “washed away” when the infant is baptized. If an infant dies before baptism, it goes to limbo.
I’m not sure when the church go the idea that life begins at conception. As I understand it, for some time, the idea was that life began at “quickening,” which is when the mother begins to feel the fetus moving. But because unbaptized infants cannot get into heaven, then the church’s emphasis is on the life of the fetus, even over the life of the mother (who has presumably been baptized and therefore eligible for entrance to heaven).
Cheryl from Maryland
The VA House of Delegates AND Senate are up for election this November. The Senate is barely Dem, and the House flipped to the Rs in 2021 with Youngkin’s election. Many VA counties, such as Loudon, now have buyer’s remorse. After emailing Watergirl, I’ve been researching grassroots organizations in VA (have some exciting leads) so Ds can keep the Senate, flip the House, and make Youngkin’s life complicated. Balloon-Juice made a big difference in specific areas in the 2022 election, we are coordinating work on the Wisconsin judge election, let’s get Virginia.
Chief Oshkosh
I think it would be a very good idea to kill off all the Catholic hospitals. I used to not think this, but US Catholicism has become so aligned with conservative politics that it’s becoming apparent that people cannot get proper healthcare at a Catholic hospital, nor can we trust them to participated in public health programs. For instance, I am convinced that Catholic hospitals severely underreported Covid-related deaths.
Mike in NC
This bullshit is nothing new to the Republican religious extremists in Virginia. Even before we moved away they were debating sticking probes into a woman’s genitals just because they thought they could get away with it.
scav
@delphinium: No, it was going to be public, and not incompatible with local ad campaigns. I just thought having it centralized and not isolated in an ad would help people make real-time decisions and planning about where to go — both in their advertising area and elsewhere when they needed that information. In so far as hitting hospitals with bad publicity, both media blasts and slow-burn bad “reviews” have their place to my mind.
oatler
Some societies have a virginity fetish that involves inspection, and of course there’s false hymen racket$.
delphinium
@Lapassionara: Except birth control is used for conditions other than just stopping a pregnancy and their are some women who shouldn’t get pregnant due to serious health concerns. And none of that covers not providing healthcare to women who become pregnant (eg, letting a complication become life-threatening before doing something to help the mother/fetus).
I was raised Roman Catholic and maybe it was just the services I attended but far more of the emphasis was on Christ and striving to be a decent person rather than focusing on sexual activity. Also, the sermons about “…he without sin casting the first stone”.
delphinium
@scav: Ah, got it : ). Yes that would be a helpful tool in this day and age, sad that we need it.
jonas
@WaterGirl: I normally don’t like term limits, but in this case thank fsm for Virginia’s one-term limit for governors.
Roger Moore
@cain:
Republicans want to shrink government until it’s small enough to fit into a woman’s uterus.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ruckus:
These days, not very many. Meanwhile, say that God has spoken to you and wants you to X, and quite a few will say you’re crazy. This is an absolute table turn from the 70s, and is only accelerating. It’s one of the big reasons the evangelicals are so frothing. They aren’t getting praised for their piety by anyone but themselves anymore. In fact, they’re often getting laughed at.
Redshift
This (h/t my good friend State Sen. Jennifer Boysko) should have been the end of it, but of course they are just completely shameless:
(Hmm, click through to see the embedded video.)
Jeffro
@WaterGirl: oh I’m sure some percentage of Ds voted for Youngkin and some percentage of Rs voted for McAuliffe
According to VPAP, 2021 turnout increased on both sides from previous gubernatorial elections but it increased even more on the R side. Another way to look at it, though, is that turnout fell off from 2020 more on the D side than the R side. Rs stayed fired up, Ds didn’t stay quite as fired up.
But I’ve seen and heard nothing (in reporting, or personally/anecdotally) that involved Ds crossing over to vote for Youngkin.
@trollhattan: I don’t think that’s the same thing, but ymmv. Youngkin’s most recent approval poll was at 50%, but as the Post notes, a majority of voters don’t like his policies. This is the thing Geminid and I have mentioned many times here on BJ: some not-insignificant percentage of voters were suckered by Youngkin’s folksy affect and a complete lack of reporting on his actual positions.
Jeffro
True. Youngkin’s team also later thanked McAuliffe for essentially vouching for Youngkin as a MAGA conservative with his constant “Youngkin = trump” lines, freeing the Rs up to go after independent/swing voters.
Very true.
Redshift
@WaterGirl:
Man, I hope so. I hope it gets the message across that there are no moderate Republicans any more, so if you want your government to focus on anything but right-wing conspiracy theories and whatever looks like it’ll be good for a presidential run, you better turn out for whatever Democrat is on the ballot.
He campaigned with a “nice guy” persona and had WaPo columnists saying he was a “better” sort that Republicans ought to turn to, and somehow the outrage-mongering and saying he wanted to make Virginia more like Florida (during the height of the pandemic!) didn’t sink in.
Paul in KY
@Nelle: I’m thinking that the trans girls would not have one, as they do not menestrate. I hope all trans girls start filling em out!
Citizen Alan
@jonas: I don’t know about that. Would Youngkin have let his freak flag fly so high if it weren’t for the fact that he was limited to 4 years and the only way to get higher is win the GOP presidential nomination?
Jeffro
@Jeffro:
from the Post article:
So, we have a Gov who is pretty well out of step with significant, but not huge, majorities of Virginia voters on a number of important issues. And yet, the national media point to him as someone who’s a “moderate” Republican. He’s not moderate – he just puts on that persona when speaking to the broader public.
Kay
Thanks for writing about this,John.
It’s surprising and really disappointing to me how little attention it gets. There’s another big court decision coming soon on the abortion pill- the far Right are attempting to ban it nationwide. There has been almost no coverage of it – the best article I saw about it was in the Guardian. I guess US outlets aren’t interested.
The federal response has been terrible, IMO, even (and maybe especially) the rhetorical response which is mostly silence.
There are really stand out Dems at the state level though, on this. Pritkzer in IL, Newsom in CA, Whitmer in MI, Shapiro in PA, Grisham in NM. Love them and am hugely grateful for their advocacy and action. Also there’s an active grassroots volunteer effort to help women, but it’s secret and it should be- none of these douchebags in media can be trusted.
Citizen Alan
@Frankensteinbeck: I have told evangelicals straight-out that I still believe in God and I still believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ as I understand them. And that is why I firmly believe that most evangelicals worship Satan and don’t even realize it.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
We seriously need a modernized stance on exo-memory devices like phones. It’s silly to privilege meat memory[1]; why for instance should people be forced to remember their address book/contact list? Some could do this if forced, but not all.
[1] fMRI + EEGs can be used to decode peoples’ inner verbal monologues. Thinking without an internal verbal monologue may end up being an important skill, and perhaps a forbidden skill.
geg6
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
See Ohio Mom at #1. That’s exactly what you do.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl from Maryland: Yes on Virginia!
Paul in KY
@Ohio Mom: You can rip it into little pieces, then put them in a blender with water and puree it. Then taking puree and pour in commode & flush.
Back when I was in military, that was an approved way of destroying crypto keycards.
Redshift
@Geminid: I think McAuliffe thought that having been a popular governor was going to do him a lot more good than it did, but honestly, I think most of it was that we have elections the year after the presidential election, which motivates more turnout from the side opposing the current president.
I was hopeful we might be blue enough to finally overcome that, but apparently not yet.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: McAuliffe did not run the best campaign. I think he may have misunderestimated his opponent.
Ruckus
@RaflW:
It’s not 400-500 yrs ago. That’s part of the problem. It is a lot more recent than that. It still exists today but is only marginally noticeable. But it absolutely existed when I was born and noticeably hung around for about another 15 yrs. IOW till about 1960-65. It took better communications for people to see that the past was not all that long ago. And no it wasn’t a light switch off either. It’s why I said that it still exists today, it’s just a lot harder to find. But we are still (and always will be) growing, evolving, trying to make things better for all. (OK some people will be doing that.) It takes eons to make massive change, because some will not be willing to change – they just put one foot after the other. And some will fight change, because they think how it was – was great. We see nazis and hate groups in various places, people who are wishing/hoping/demanding that we go backwards to a worse time because they have their heads up someone’s outlet orifice, possibly their own, looking for something/something, who the hell knows what, possibly that they might be on to something.
WaterGirl
@Citizen Alan: Two excellent points.
Redshift
@Kay:
I know it gets no respect relative to the NYT and WaPo, but USA Today has had an entire Abortion News subsection for a while now.
Redshift
@Citizen Alan:
Probably not, but the AG definitely would have.
Ruckus
@dm:
These people are creepy perverts.
Well yes they are. I mean who else would support SFB? Started adult life by stealing millions from his siblings, got worse as time wore on, and with about a half step turned/slid/slithered into being his real self – Shit For Brains.
RaflW
@Ruckus: I’m not sure i can find it, but there was a great thread online the other day about how the Hayes Code in Hollywood was a significant contributor to post-WWII neopuritanism.
Kent
They want to be able to subpoena data from menstrual monitoring apps that girls and women might be using for their own purposes. Apparently such things exist. So if you have a phone app that you use to track your cycle, they want to be able to get that data if they want it.
The bill he blocked would have prevented that from happening.
Kay
Tim Walz in Minnesota is also on my list of great state Dems on this. So, CA, MI, MN, PA, IL and NM. Also- NJ!
NY is..bad. No idea WTF happened there. Trainwreck.
Kay
@Redshift:
Thank you. I don’t read it but I will. I try to reward outlets that cover this and pols who advocate and act on it. NPR is above average on coverage also – like a “B” grade to the NYT and WaPo C or D.
gvg
@A Ghost to Most: It was also always about male supremacy. Which is why I never understood how any woman was fool enough to go along with it. I have had a few try to explain to me. One really nice lady was unable to respond when I explained that is was still misogyny when the bible said women were supposed to submit to men, not just when a jerk boss said something like that. She really thought the definition changed or something, just because she thought it was in the bible. She was a nice person and I may have made her think a little that time.
gvg
@Kathleen: They also want the women of their class who are competing for their jobs and promotions to stay home taking care of the kids and have more kids like them. Don’t forget those stories about we can’t find babies to adopt…..which means healthy white American and also why are they adopting instead of having them? Well a lot of the moms have careers I guess. They would like to adopt. Some of the men would rather have less job competition and more potential wives maybe. I suspect they aren’t sharing that info with the other demographic set.
Citizen Alan
@gvg: A percentage of women think they benefit from living under the Patriarchy in a way they would not in a world with sexual equality. Consider all the women who make millions working at Fox News. Would any of them have achieved that level of financial security and national status if they openly supported feminist ideals?
Geminid
@Redshift: Also, Youngkin was a good retail campaigner who traveled all over the state speaking to people in groups from 30 to 300. He got Republicans united and motivated like they haven’t in years.
With no public record, Youngkin had a “blank canvas,” as Jeff Shapiro of the Richmond Times-Dispatch put it, and the money to fill it in to his advantage early in the campaign. And I will give the devil his due: the guy was very plausible.
I thought until the end that McAuliffe would win, even though he was making the race closer than it needed to be. But I could see how Youngkin had appeal not just to Republicans but Independents as well, and he tailored his messaging to that end.
Youngkin still could not have won had he not succeeded in keeping abortion rights and gun safety in the background. Here is where centering the “menace” of Critical Race Theory worked. It motivated the Republican base, but left other people scratching their heads and Terry McAuliffe complaining about “dog whistles.”
But even though Youngkin will not be on the ballot again, his record will be this fall. His slender House of Delegates majority keeps handing Democrats good campaign issues in areas of firearms safety, education and women’s rights, and now it just handed them another. This fall we’ll see what Democrats can do with them.
Ksmiami
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): March on the governors mansion with extremely sharp objects and flame throwers
Suzanne
@Citizen Alan:
Some women are correct. There are lots of women who are good at living under patriarchy. Liberation has never promised ease, being an active agent of your life is a big responsibility and the rewards are uncertain.
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne: Indeed. I’m a white nominally Christian male with a law degree living in the Deep South. My life would have been immeasurably better in terms of material success if I were a sociopath incapable of caring for others.
Geminid
@Kay: At least Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the New York Senate Majority Leader, has filled some of the leadership void left by Governor Hochul. The Senator pulled a real power move yesterday when she sank the LaSalle nomination once and for all.
VOR
@delphinium: Ah yes, that used to be the case. Sadly, the heady days of Vatican II are far behind us. The current heads of the US church are quite comfortable with the Republican party. All 6 of the Supreme Court justices nominated by Republicans are Catholic, counting Gorsuch as Catholic. I still remember in 2012 how our Bishop mandated a sermon talking about that good Christian man, Mitt Romney (a Mormon).
Kay
@Citizen Alan:
That isn’t really it though. It’s about what they think of other women. Other women are bad, other woman are liars, other women are irresponsible. The biggest predictor of an antichoice vote is not gender, it’s negative views of women. Thus, men who are political “independents” are more supportive of choice and agency for women than Republican woman are.
Elizabelle
CRT Youngkin is a jerk, tis true.
but must give him his props for helping to drive Democratic turnout in next week’s congressional election in Virginia’s 4th. Jennifer McClellan, protector of health and voting rights, running to replace the late and beloved Donald McEachin, who died suddenly shortly after the midterms.
A good example of what is at stake, and that we can’t afford to elect these ridiculous culture warriors.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Kay: It’s not anything new, sometimes the worst enforcers of societal rules and punishments on women and girls are other women.
Ohio Mom
@Paul in KY: Every day, this blog teaches me something new.
The first part of destroying crypto keycards, blending shredded paper and water together, is the recipe public school art teachers use for their paper making unit. Add pressed flowers or glitter or threads or whatever, spread the mixture in a thin layer on a screen, wait for it to dry, and presto — handmade paper. Perfect for making Mother’s Day cards from.
I
StringOnAStick
@RaflW: The closest big hospital to Durango, CO is St. Mary’s in Grand Junction, another Catholic hospital. There was an alternative, though smaller hospital there, but I’m not sure if they haven’t been absorbed by St Marys.
Glidwrith
@RaflW: I found out a while ago why all the secular hospitals were allowing the religious fanatics to take over: because they get a effing tax break!
rikyrah
Of course, it was never about abortion
Paul in KY
@Ohio Mom: We truly are a full service blog :-)