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You are here: Home / Politics / Proud to Be A Democrat / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Reproductive Rights Are Human Rights

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Vice President Kamala Harris defended the abortion drug mifepristone on Friday, calling attacks against it another attempt to attack fundamental rights in the United States, as some activist groups work to end American sales of the pill…

Medication abortion has drawn increasing attention since the U.S. Supreme Court last year reversed its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which had guaranteed abortion rights nationwide.

Democratic President Joe Biden directed federal agencies to expand access to medication abortion in response to the decision, which has allowed more than a dozen Republican-led states to adopt new abortion bans.

Harris met with reproductive rights groups on the topic at the White House, and said attacking the drug is akin to going after the very foundation of the American public health system and is not just an attack on women’s fundamental freedoms…

Mifepristone is approved for medication abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy in combination with another drug, misoprostol. Medication abortion accounts for more than half of U.S. abortions.

The FDA has said that pulling mifepristone from the market would force women to have unnecessary surgical abortions and greatly increase wait times at already overburdened clinics.

Major medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, weighed in on the side of the government, saying mifepristone “has been thoroughly studied and is conclusively safe.”

The GOP — which, admittedly, is used to voters who meekly take orders, however contradictory — is discovering an ancient political truth: Given enough social control, it’s possible to deprive a population of a particular right almost indefinitely, but people hate giving up a ‘privilege’ they’ve been used to exercising.

Ed Kilgore, at NYMag, “The Backlash to the Reversal of Roe v. Wade Is Getting Stronger”:

During the near half-century in which the Supreme Court precedent of Roe v. Wade protected the right to choose abortion, public-opinion research on the topic tended to be of questionable value. Respondents were asked to categorize themselves as “pro-life” or “pro-choice,” depending on their subjective self-definitions. Polls asked people to engage in hair-splitting on the degree to which they wanted abortion to be legal or illegal. And the whole subject was overshadowed by the fundamental reality that political maneuvering on abortion policy had limited consequences for a majority of voters (though not for those who couldn’t access or afford abortion services).

With Roe gone, the basic laws governing reproductive decisions depend to an enormous extent on where one lives, and abortion policy is a central and urgent political decision (at least outside those few states that have re-enshrined abortion rights in state constitutions). So it’s getting easier for pollsters to weigh how the public feels about what should happen on abortion policy.

There’s already clear evidence that the abortion backlash had a tangible effect on the 2022 midterm elections and the underperformance of Republicans compared to historical precedents. But the effect on political preferences is ongoing…

Given these realities, it’s unsurprising that the anti-abortion activists whose battle cry for decades was to let the people decide are now beginning to rely on right-wing judicial activists determined to ban abortion from the bench, or a bit down the road, a Republican trifecta in Washington willing to override the states and ban abortion nationally. The stakes for 2024 are rising steadily.

Reader Interactions

200Comments

  1. 1.

    Balconesfault

    I’m convinced that the primary value in hammering on this issue isn’t to persuade anyone who has consistently voted R.   They’ve already gone through enough cycles of cognitive dissonance that they are locked in for the foreseeable future.

    But damn, there’s a lot of non-voters who have taken their rights for granted, and are needing to get over the cynical both siderism and accept that yes … there is a fundamental difference between a D and an R and not voting says you don’t care about that difference.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    Mifepristone is approved for medication abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy in combination with another drug, misoprostol. Medication abortion accounts for more than half of U.S. abortions

    Time to talk about banning gas stoves again.

  4. 4.

    Splitting Image

    The most important thing to hammer home about abortion is that it is not the only health care service the Republicans are intent on taking away. It was the wedge issue they used to get the votes out, but they are and always have been opposed to anyone they don’t like getting any kind of health care treatment.

    Abortion was only the beginning. They are working to make health care for trans people illegal. They want vaccine mandates made illegal, if not the vaccines themselves. They want to abolish Medicare. They want to abolish Medicaid. They want you to die, plain and simple.

  6. 6.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I was told for decades that Republican politicians were cynically pretending to want to overturn Roe vs Wade to manipulate the rubes.  It turns out, elected Republicans are also true believers.  Are the ‘libertarian’ Koch brothers complaining, or are all their major plutocrat owners hard cultural conservatives as well as wanting to not pay taxes?

  8. 8.

    Betty Cracker

    @Splitting Image: We won’t know the true scope of the damage Republicans have done to public health with anti-mask and anti-vaccine demagoguery until the next public health crisis.

  13. 13.

    Anne Laurie

    @Splitting Image: The most important thing to hammer home about abortion is that it is not the only health care service the Republicans are intent on taking away. It was the wedge issue they used to get the votes out, but they are and always have been opposed to anyone they don’t like getting any kind of health care treatment.

    The voters we’re targeting here don’t care if Those People are denied medical care.   Gender alignment care? They don’t (think they) know any transgender people.  Medical access for poor people?  ‘I can’t pay my own medical bills, why should I be forced to support freeloaders?’ 

    But reproductive care — it’s been forced upon their attention:  Their trusted GOP wants to take away their health care, and their kid’s / grandkid’s.  No more Plan B, no more medical abortions, no more swift resolution of miscarriages or failed pregnancies.  That was not what they thought they were voting for — they just wanted to punish ‘sluts’ and ‘perverts.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I was told for decades that Republican politicians were cynically pretending to want to overturn Roe vs Wade to manipulate the rubes

     
    Those people were trying to manipulate our voters.

  19. 19.

    OzarkHillbilly

    After an 80-year-old janitor had to return to work after his rent was increased, Texas high school students raised more than $250,000 to help him retire.

    The janitor, known to students as Mr James, returned to work in January after his rent shot up by $400 a month, according to KDFW. The students at Callisburg high school, about 80 miles (130km) north of Dallas, started their campaign last week and shared it on TikTok, hoping to raise $10,000. As of Friday afternoon, it had received nearly $270,000 from more than 8,000 donors.

    “When I saw him in the hall, it broke my heart,” Greyson Thurman, a senior who started the campaign, told KTEN. “Nobody at that age should be working; they should be living the rest of their life, you know?”

    The kids are alright.

    Millions of Americans are working into the years when they would typically retire – by 2030, the number of people aged 75 and older in the workforce is expected to grow by 96.5%, according to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics. People aged 75 and older are the only age group for whom the labor force participation rate is expected to rise over the next decade.

    This country on the other hand…

  20. 20.

    JWR

    This one hits close to home. (She’s my Rep!) NBC LINK

    Rep. Judy Chu, the chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, blasted GOP Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas on Thursday over his comments this week questioning her loyalty to the U.S.

    Chu, D-Calif., issued a statement in response to Gooden’s remarks in a Fox News interview Wednesday night, when he suggested Chu should not have a security clearance or access to classified briefings. Chu had defended Dominic Ng, a Biden appointee featured in an article by the conservative Daily Caller that alleged Ng has ties to a Chinese Communist Party front group.

    […]

    Gooden said in the interview, “I think that Judy Chu needs to be called out.”

    “I question her either loyalty or competence. If she doesn’t realize what’s going on, then she’s totally out of touch with one of her core constituencies,” he said. “I’m really disappointed and shocked that someone like Judy Chu would have a security clearance and entitled to confidential intelligence briefings until this is figured out.”

    What’s next? Revive the WWII-era Internment Camps? That’s where this idiot is heading.

  22. 22.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A US family has demanded an investigation after its patriarch reportedly died within days of having a stroke in his home and being found but left on the floor by a real estate agent who never called anyone for help.

    Loved ones of the dead man – 69-year-old Randy Vaughan of North Carolina – are raising questions about whether the realtor should have been expected to do more. The state agency that oversees realtors in North Carolina has indicated it is opening an inquiry into the case and is scheduling interviews with Vaughan’s family about his death, the Winston-Salem Journal newspaper reported Friday.

    “It’s about basic decency, caring for your fellow human beings and being a professional,” Vaughan’s brother, Doug, said to the Journal.

    The realtor, for her part, reportedly told the Journal she has “an attorney involved” and has “no liability”.

    Her only concern is her liability, must be a Republican.

  23. 23.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I was told for decades that Republican politicians were cynically pretending to want to overturn Roe vs Wade to manipulate the rubes.

    That may have been true for decades, just not this one or the past one.

    My take (hardly an original thesis, I know) is that the 2010 election marked a sea change.  The wave of new GOP Congresspersons elected that year had been listening to Rush Limbaugh for their entire adult lives, or close to it. And of course watching Fox News when that came into being.

    They’d been drinking the Kool-Aid from the get-go, they were true believers, and a LOT of them came into Congress in that wave year.  And since then, new GOP Congresspersons have been even further down the rabbit hole.  And fewer and fewer of them are from the Mitch McConnell generation that was happy to cynically use the rubes for their own ends, but weren’t drinking the Kool-Aid themselves.

  28. 28.

    satby

    @Anne Laurie: Their trusted GOP wants to take away their health care, and their kid’s / grandkid’s.  No more Plan B, no more medical abortions, no more swift resolution of miscarriages or failed pregnancies.  That was not what they thought they were voting for — they just wanted to punish ‘sluts’ and ‘perverts.

    So true! Plus, they never connect that the medical care for miscarriages and non-viable pregnancies is the same as abortion care. Unless it happens to you, it doesn’t come up, but now the horror stories are getting publicized.

    @NotMax: @Baud: 😘 This is the content I keep coming back for.

  29. 29.

    Princess

    The religion Republicans want to punish the sluts and control women.

    The economics Republicans want a mass of desperate workers who will do anything for crap pay and for this they need more poor babies.

    Criminalizing abortion suits everyone.

  31. 31.

    Matt McIrvin

    I hope they have a plan to somehow get mifepristone re-approved if the courts just yank it over a procedural objection.

    It’s the pattern we saw in the attempts to overturn the ACA: autocratic rule through RWNJ federal courts using bad-faith arguments exploiting procedural loopholes that generally don’t touch the merits of the case.

    I wonder if to some extent this is a projection-based tactic inspired by the idea that liberal courts are always using “technicalities” to protect bad people.

  33. 33.

    satby

    @WereBear: But historically, that was more a result of the leading figure of the religious right at the time, William Jennings Bryan, dying five days after the end of the trial rather than the trial itself. Without a strong figurehead, the fundamentalists movement fractured. Despite the movie, Scopes lost and anti-evolution prevailed at trial, and influenced teaching almost into the 60s.

  34. 34.

    BretH

    The anti-abortion fanatics have had one tactic from the outset: Never an inch backwards, always forward. I can’t claim ownership of that because I read it several decades ago, but it has proven to be 100% true.

    There will be no stopping until women are under the full control of these people.

  35. 35.

    Mousebumples

    I believe WaterGirl is planning another postcard/music post for tonight if anyone wants to stop by.

    If you want to write for the Wisconsin State Senate race, check out this thread from Tuesday.

    We’re still working on the details for the Supreme Court race, but #PostcardsToVoters is working with WisDems and already has that campaign started. Email [email protected] or text JOIN to 484-275-2229 to get started with them

    P.S. The 1849 Wisconsin abortion ban is up for state Supreme Court review – I think later this year. With Roe being overturned, it’s now in effect…

  43. 43.

    WereBear

    @satby: Yes, but that cross-examination lived on :)

    But I wasn’t saying the South changed, because it lives to not change :) Texas continued to have an outsized influence.

    It’s probably the embrace of modernity in the 20s which did the most to broaden the culture at the time. And women getting the vote!

  48. 48.

    Jeffro

    @Splitting Image:

    The most important thing to hammer home about abortion is that it is not the only health care service the Republicans are intent on taking away. It was the wedge issue they used to get the votes out, but they are and always have been opposed to anyone they don’t like getting any kind of health care treatment.

    Abortion was only the beginning. They are working to make health care for trans people illegal. They want vaccine mandates made illegal, if not the vaccines themselves. They want to abolish Medicare. They want to abolish Medicaid. They want you to die, plain and simple.

    All of this is true…and yet, it’s incredibly important that we stay focused on this one issue by itself.

    I don’t want people thinking about vaccines, or trans issues, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or anything else: we already have big majority support on the simple, single issue of womens’ reproductive freedom.  I don’t want to confuse low-info voters with all these related issues, I don’t want weirdo anti-vaxxers feeling like they can’t support abortion rights, I don’t want to lose people who for whatever reason are squicked out by trans issues, I don’t want folks to be thinking about “moochers” on Medicaid.  (All their takes, btw, not mine).

    Just take this one issue and run with it.  Run hard with it.  It will kill the GOP most everyplace.

  51. 51.

    Matt McIrvin

    @satby: What also made it a little different back then was that in some ways, Bryan’s movement was the religious left.

    My impression is that while schools may have still been pushing creationism through the mid-20th century, it had lost intellectual juice. You weren’t going to win a lot of support in mainstream media, etc. by claiming that evolution was a lie and the earth was 6000 years old. But by, say, 1983 that had all turned around and you could.

    I recall reading Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, a book he wrote about various pseudoscientific movements in the 1950s, and the chapter on scientific creationism was interesting–it described it as a moribund, nearly dead movement, of which George McCready Price was the last great advocate. It was sad to read in the late 1980s because of course at that point “creation science” had made a roaring comeback, was endorsed by national Republican politicians and was trying to reestablish itself as the default in American schools.

  56. 56.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jeffro: ​
     

    Just take this one issue and run with it. Run hard with it. It will kill the GOP most everyplace.

    And let’s give it a go with Virginia this fall. Their entire state legislature is up for re-election, and the GOP there fought to preserve the right of government officials to know about people’s menstrual cycles. Fuck those panty-sniffers.

  66. 66.

    Jeffro

    @lowtechcyclist:And let’s give it a go with Virginia this fall. Their entire state legislature is up for re-election, and the GOP there fought to preserve the right of government officials to know about people’s menstrual cycles. Fuck those panty-sniffers.

    I could not agree more.  For multiple reasons, it’s vital that Blue Virginia turns out in overwhelming numbers this fall.

  69. 69.

    Matt McIrvin

    The abortion issue worked in favor of Republicans for decades and it’s now clear that it’s because Roe existed. Not because there was anything wrong with Roe, but because it meant that the people who wanted some form of legal abortion felt safe that it wasn’t going away, so they didn’t have to be single-issue voters about it. The salience and the intensity on the pro-abortion-rights side was low, and most of the passion that could turn out voters was on the anti side.

    (The antis were also really good at working the refs, so that the mainstream media promoted the impression that Democrats were crazy extreme on this issue and the center was fairly restrictionist. Surely some kind of Grand Bargain could be struck!)

    The conventional wisdom that most people don’t really care about this issue unless they’re anti-abortion should have evaporated the moment Dobbs came down.

  73. 73.

    SFAW

    @kalakal: ​
     

    A strong contender for “Appalling idea of the day” shambles out of the murk.

    Boris Johnson wants to become head of NATO

    I eagerly await Tony Jay’s comments as to why this is a (more or less) great idea.

  75. 75.

    SFAW

    @Baud: ​
     

    It will take years for the media to catch up. We can’t count on them to visit our diners.

    “Our diners”? Are those the ones where the “House Specialties” include arugula, Belgian endive, and Grey-Poupon-encrusted everything?

  80. 80.

    kalakal

    @SFAW: Personally I’d be happy with him being made head of SATO* for life. They could give him a nice office on St. Helena

     

    * Created just for him

  85. 85.

    Anyway

    @satby:

    So true! Plus, they never connect that the medical care for miscarriages and non-viable pregnancies is the same as abortion care. Unless it happens to you,

    I don’t understand why the medical community isn’t more vocal about this  — that they can’t provide women’s healthcare with the restrictions passed by Rethug legislatures. Gun owners scream all the time about every imagined infringement on their rights — here we have real women facing dangers to their health and its not leading the news.

  86. 86.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @kalakal:

    A strong contender for “Appalling idea of the day” shambles out of the murk.

    Boris Johnson wants to become head of NATO

    BoBo and the rest of Brexit crew ought to be wretches in some penal colony off the north tip of Scotland.

  88. 88.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: Ha! It worked! Now everyone thinks Baud is quoting something I said because it’s true! My soash meads stock just went up!

  89. 89.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @kalakal: I’m still waiting on someone here to connect “tip” and “penal” in the intended entendre.

    ETA: I’d take St. Helena over an island north of Scotland. I think…

    ETA2: and thanks for the link to Rockall. Weird and wonderful things you learn these days.

  91. 91.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SFAW: The first place they exiled Napoleon was Elba, which is just off the Tuscan coast. That turned out to be way, way too close to mainland Europe.

  93. 93.

    kalakal

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    I’ve come around to thinking Rockall would be a better place to dump that wretched crew. It seems cruel to inflict them on the good folk of St. Helena.

    And Rockall does have an appropriate recommendation

    There can be no place more desolate, despairing and awful.

  95. 95.

    Suzanne

    I have noticed a strange behavior (well, at least I think it’s strange) around the issue of abortion, and I have noticed it in other contexts, too. That is: some people genuinely seem to think that nothing bad will ever happen to them. I’m not sure if they just face facts and then subsequently assume/hope for the best, or if they just push thoughts out of their minds to mentally “avoid confrontation”. I remember reading a quote from a commander in the military who said that, if he told ten soldiers that nine of them would die on a mission, each of them would think, “Wow, I’m really going to miss those guys!”. I am sure that dumbass delusional optimism is some sort of evolutionary strategy when faced with an immediate threat, but hot damn if it is seriously maladaptive in other contexts.

    It relates to abortion because we will say things like, “What if that was your/your wife’s/your daughter’s miscarriage and she couldn’t get care?”, and it is not persuasive because they just genuinely think that nothing bad will happen. Or, like, when we said, “Little girls who are raped by their family members will get pregnant and that’s terrible”…..they didn’t believe us until it happened to that poor girl in Ohio. I have noticed that evangelicals are terrible at this. I’m not sure if they honestly think that God will keep bad shit from happening to them (even though the Bible is full of bad shit happening to good people).

    It’s a failure of empathy, but it’s more accurately a failure of imagination that comes prior to empathy. Like, if you cannot even imagine yourself in a tough situation, there’s no way to even elicit a response from a hypothetical.

  97. 97.

    Scout211

    This happened earlier this week, so it may have already been posted. But it fits this thread, so I am posting it here.

    Twenty-One States Announce Historic Governor-Led Reproductive Freedom Alliance

    The Alliance is a non-partisan coalition of 21 Governors committed to protecting and expanding reproductive freedom in their states, the largest such coalition ever convened. The Alliance will work together to strengthen reproductive freedom in the face of an unprecedented assault on abortion access and other forms of reproductive health care by states hostile to abortion rights and judges who are advancing their ideological agenda. All Governors who support reproductive freedom are welcome to join the Alliance.

    Major funding for the Alliance is provided by the California Wellness Foundation with additional support from the Rosenberg Foundation.

  99. 99.

    kalakal

    @Suzanne: You’re right. It is a a total lack of imagination, their world view is so closed it’s almost as if their cognitive faculties never got as far as object permanence . They’ll scream about how social security/medicaid/medicare should be cut and then be shocked when their social security/medicaid/medicare is cut.

    It leads to a weird circular logic only bad/weak people should suffer negative consequences and that’s because they’re bad/weak people.

    It’s the old deserving and undeserving poor thing and everybody except them is undeserving.

    As an extra bonus should one of them suffer the rest instantly invoke ‘no true scotsman’

  100. 100.

    oldgold

    The party of “limited government” has  shown its true colors once again. This week Lee County Florida’s Executive Committee has voted & passed the “Ban the Jab” resolution, asking Governor DeSantis to ban the sale and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. Some members  of the Committee referred to the vaccine as a “bio-weapon.”

  101. 101.

    WereBear

    @Suzanne: I have noticed that evangelicals are terrible at this. I’m not sure if they honestly think that God will keep bad shit from happening to them (even though the Bible is full of bad shit happening to good people).

     
    It’s a kind of, “No one I know voted for Nixon!”

    In highly conforming societies, secrets are kept and a facade is polished with devoted care. This hobbles their experience and their critical thinking skills, as we see with the Evangelicals who easily lose it over what we think is the most trivial differences.

  104. 104.

    EarthWindFire

    @Splitting Image: They want you to die, plain and simple.

    It’s worse than that. They want to pat themselves on the back for “letting”you be born, then work you until you’ve outlived your usefulness. Why give anyone health care? You got sick? Just means you’ve outlived your useful life.

    For a bunch of folks who don’t believe in Darwin, they sure practice survival of the fittest.

  105. 105.

    delphinium

    @Suzanne:  Republicans/conservatives/Christians get abortions too, but somehow that is overlooked in the discussions. As others have pointed out, these folks think that if they do need an abortion that it is justifiable and all will be forgiven by God and their family, unlike anyone else who gets one. So besides lack of empathy/imagination it is also the usual hypocritical stance that this is fine for me but not for thee.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @Scout211:

    Democrats at the state level have been great. Really pleased at their response, both rhetorical and in terms of concrete actions. They did quite well in the midterms with it – they should keep pushing.

  108. 108.

    delphinium

    @Scout211: This is great news! I hope these types of alliances can be formed for other issues as well. We need to keep looking forward regardless of what Republicans do.

  112. 112.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Suzanne:I’m not sure if they honestly think that God will keep bad shit from happening to them

    For some reason or other this puts me in mind of Tevye’s plea to God: “I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?”

  118. 118.

    WereBear

    @Soprano2: It’s downright eerie. It’s a phone call

    I would expect the scandal would be she would have left and called from the car as her way to the next appointment.

    But this person doubled down.

  120. 120.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: ​ She thought he was drunk. She asked him if he was OK and when he was unresponsive just assumed it was confirmation of her assumption. The fact of the matter was the man didn’t even drink.

    As for her, she is a broken person and should be kept far away from the rest of society.

  121. 121.

    Suzanne

    @kalakal: It leads to a weird circular logic only bad/weak people should suffer negative consequences and that’s because they’re bad/weak people.

     
    I have literally met people who have said, “I’ll never get cancer”. Uhhhhh, like, that’s a thing that happens to a lot of people. Probably many that they know, who they likely consider “good people”.

    I am somewhat neurotic, and I have to be reminded that the worst outcomes in any given situation are somewhat unlikely. So I don’t relate to this mindset at all.

    But it’s really toxic, because if you can’t imagine bad outcomes happening to you/your loved ones, then you have no cognitive empathy. I would like to think that social-emotional learning would help get past this mindset, but also just BASIC-ASS REALITY must slap them upside the head at some point.

  126. 126.

    eclare

    It is gray, drizzly, and 45 here in Memphis, so I am going to sit on the couch and binge the most recent season of Great British Baking Show.  I’ve been saving it for a day like this.

  127. 127.

    Suzanne

    Very O/T: has anyone watched Cocaine Bear? I’m mildly curious.

    ETA: I really enjoy the incredibly straightforward title.

  128. 128.

    WereBear

    @Suzanne: Part of it is that we all live in a world of scams now. Decades of trying convince us what is good for profits is good for the rest of us has devolved into obvious lies.

    I’m not surprised people seek alternative sources when everything we encounter about something contradicts the last thing we were told. Many chronic disease sufferers are the people who help the most, because they aren’t getting on the fad of the moment. They are doing science, not getting funded by drug companies.

    Which I don’t call science, but that’s another thing Republicans have tried to ruin, by forcing Ayn Rand Rules.

  129. 129.

    EarthWindFire

    @OzarkHillbilly: She thought he was drunk. She asked him if he was OK and when he was unresponsive just assumed it was confirmation of her assumption.

    She’s ok with people showing up drunk to her home showings then. WTAF?

  130. 130.

    kalakal

    @Suzanne: For the most part it’s toxic and results in a callous lack of empathy.

    I have seen it’s tragic flip side when bad things happen to people eg cancer and they assume it must be their own fault.

    Many years ago I used to work in a hospital for people with learning disabilities ( one of the old asylums that thankfully no longer exist)  and many of the parents of the residents broke your heart. They were convinced that they were somehow to blame for their child having NiemanNiemann Picks or PKU or whatever and their child suffered for something they had done. Often they felt shame for having ‘abandoned’ a child they could never have cared for due to lack of support. They had been wracked with guilt for decades.

    In point of fact the society of time had largely dictated their actions but they felt it was their own personal sin.

    Needless to say this is not the attitude of our modern MAGA fundy nothing is ever their fault. They are the real victims

  132. 132.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Obviously, the people are most shocked by the life-threatening cases where abortion is denied, so it’s good politics to highlight them. But it’s such a retreat on abortion rights. It makes me sad.

  136. 136.

    WereBear

    There was a chat on Mastodon that pointed out to me just how much sludge is out there to be waded through, and how difficult it is for someone who doesn’t have much in the way of assessing sources or evaluating the science to find out what they need to find out, and trust it when they think they do.

    Especially, as I saw so much growing up, their culture punished them for “too much thinking.”

  140. 140.

    Barbara

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​She has clearly been advised to say nothing that could be construed as an admission of liability, so this is what she came up with. I’m not defending her because I obviously don’t know any details, but I do think a woman’s reaction is more likely to be affected by worry over inherent threat potential (drunk guy is pissed to find a stranger in his house) than a man’s, and that this kind of fear often never even occurs to men.​

    Once in a position of safety she probably should have called her employer, if not the authorities.​​​

  141. 141.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @kalakal: ​  Who amongst us wouldn’t hide in a ‘fridge to avoid Piers Morgan? It is one of the most relatable things Boris has ever done.​

  142. 142.

    Jeffro

    @Suzanne: I saw the trailer on YouTube, and I was kind of surprised how gory and f-wordy it was.  But then again, it was YouTube, not in a theater.

    I can’t decide if it’ll be worth it just to see Ray Liotta (RIP) again.  (He actually has a few more posthumous releases coming out this year and next – wild)

  144. 144.

    Suzanne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Who amongst us wouldn’t hide in a ‘fridge to avoid Piers Morgan? 

    OMG Piers Morgan is just disgusting. Just a total trash human. Watching him continue to be garbage to Meghan Markle because she wasn’t into him reminds me that some people are just 100% incapable of reasonable behavior and probably shouldn’t be let off-leash.

  154. 154.

    narya

    @Suzanne: I think it’s more that acknowledging that they/a family member might need this care would cause cognitive dissonance on a massive scale. They’ve been taught, and believe, that only slutty-mc-slut-sluts ever need this care; realizing that they need it or want it upsets the whole apple cart. And upset apple carts are way too difficult to handle–if THIS one thing is wrong, what if other things are wrong, too? My personal observation is that one of the big dividing lines is how/whether people handle ambiguity; folks who need there to be VERY CLEAR RULES THAT APPLY ALL THE TIME have a much more difficult time dealing with any information that challenges those rules; they’ll discount the information rather than examine the rules. (We all do this to some extent, of course.)

  155. 155.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Mousebumples:

    Thanks!
    yay for postcards!

    We can make a difference with postcards to Get Out The Vote, especially in relatively low turnout elections like Wisconsin April 4, 2023

    We/Postcards can help flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court

    and help prevent a 2/3 R majority in the state senate by flipping WI-SD-08 – which won’t be easy because Republicans have gerrymandered it, but doable, especially with a great candidate:
    https://www.jodiforsenate.com/

    is there a Rosie the Riveter We Can Do It postcard gif?

    Erin Brockovich was in East Palestine talking activism and mentioned her book, “Superman’s Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What WE THE PEOPLE Can Do About It.”
    (she didn’t say postcards are our superpower, but still….)

  156. 156.

    eclare

    @Barbara:   To me the weirdest thing is that she assumed he was drunk and passed out.  So does every man in her life get drunk and pass out?

    My first thought would be some sort of diabetic reaction.

  160. 160.

    J R in WV

    My first thought would be / is a “medical emergency” call 911.  At my former place of work, long ago in a time before history, the network guys had a contractor in to upgrade server systems in the network center. As they exited that secure facility, the contractor fell over with a heart attack. Fortunately the HR people had sponsored courses in CPR, and had heart machines all through the giant building. Plus only 4 minutes from a fire department with paramedics and rescue trucks.

    They had the poor guy into a cardiac hospital in 15 minutes, he survived, and returned to work to complete that task before taking his retirement. As opposed to this “person” who had no thoughts at all, and just left a situation where they could have saved a life with a brief phone call.

    Pretty strange.

    No humanity there at all.

    You have to wonder, do they have a family? How is that working for them?

  162. 162.

    Nelle

    @eclare: My uncle was found passed out on the street (well before medical bracelets) and carted off to a hospital, where he was shunted off to the side until they could get to the “elderly drunk.”  He died of diabetic shock in the hospital he helped to found.

    His funeral, in a small, German speaking Mennonite church was attended by the mayor of the city and a bevy of nuns in their habits.  He had made it a life practice to aid the needy.

  163. 163.

    James E Powell

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I agree with your analysis. The 2010 midterm election marks the death of the Reasonable Republican. Similar to the way that 1994 midterms marked the death of “we agree on goals, but differ on how to get there.”

    Because it’s so obvious & central, because it’s been talked about so much, people sometimes want to look away or outright deny what the election of a black president did to the minds of the majority of American white people.

  164. 164.

    Suzanne

    @narya:

    I think it’s more that acknowledging that they/a family member might need this care would cause cognitive dissonance on a massive scale. 

    Well, yes. But what I’m talking about is the kind of magical thinking that creates a mindset in which someone can convince themselves of what you’re talking about. It’s not limited to abortion or political hot topics. It’s not limited to religious people (though I see it a lot from them). I’m talking about people who literally never think they’ll get sick, or at least won’t ever entertain the idea. That they’ll speed and never get in a wreck.

  165. 165.

    James E Powell

    @oldgold:

    In American political code, “limited government” always meant stop giving free stuff to black people and don’t make us live with them or or make our kids go to school with them.

  167. 167.

    lowtechcyclist

    @kalakal: ​
     

    A strong contender for “Appalling idea of the day” shambles out of the murk.

    Oh, that’s nothing. You want to hear the winner? (At least, I hope there isn’t any idea crazier than this one today.)

    The latest thing on the right is that the whole war in Ukraine is an invention, a Wag-the-Dog sort of thing. Elmo’s buddy, catturd, is one of the leading promoters of this bullshit. They claim there’s no video evidence of this war, like there has been of other recent wars. (There’s tons of video. And photographs. And so forth.)

    If that turns out to be the runner-up (or worse) for the day, I don’t want to hear what the winner is.

  168. 168.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    It’s all fun and games until some woman in one’s family dies from septic shock during a miscarriage because some god bothering assholes who think car alternators run on magic, blocked the abortion she need to survive, eh GOPers?

  169. 169.

    UncleEbeneezer

    NBC News confirms: Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked a federal judge to compel the testimony of Mike Pence before the federal grand jury investigating the circumstances surrounding Jan. 6. The motion to compel was filed in D.C. District Court before Judge Beryl Howell.

  174. 174.

    evodevo

    @Suzanne: Yes…the evangelicals I know definitely think “stuff” will not happen to them.  When I mentioned global warming to one woman, her response was “I don’t care. Jeezus will take care of MY family!”  Her parents were also talibangelicals, so she was indoctrinated early.  Almost all of them think this way, until the bad shit happens to them, and then they whine and moan about it as if they were being singled out for undeserved consequences.  They literally DON’T CARE (like Melamine’s jacket said)…

  175. 175.

    RevRick

    @Suzanne: Imagination is the last thing Evangelical churches want since they’re built on the shaky foundation of justifying the unjustifiable. They are, after all, the literal or spiritual descendants of the churches that vociferously defended slavery, advocated for secession and Civil War, and supported Jim Crow laws and its violence. The irony here is that when Northern Baptists first entered the South’s upcountry, they opposed slavery, as their Northern Puritan cousins would increasingly do. But the Southern planter aristocracy would have none of that, so a deal with the Devil was made where the Baptists would shut up about slavery in exchange for full power to police personal behavior. Of course, this “tolerance” became intolerable, until you have Evangelicals making full-throated apologies for slavery. But to do so they had to adopt a frozen interpretation of the Bible across the board.
    Which includes views on hierarchy, gender roles, purity and the like. And so they say things like, “The Bible says…” meaning shut up. And in further service to this lack of immigration they scream, “Abortion is murder!”, which of course presupposes a fetus is a person. Which in their eyes has the added bonus of taking that status away from women.

    Interestingly, the ancient rabbis never adopted this view, in part because of a weird scenario in Exodus 21, in which a pregnant woman intervenes in a fight between two men and subsequently miscarries. Now, Evangelicals like to argue the technical term for miscarriage isn’t used, so the death penalty for harm must refer to a dead fetus. But here’s where a little imagination helps.
    Suppose the woman’s almost at full term. She’ll likely deliver a live baby. But if she’s only at seven months, it’s a dead baby and then the death penalty? The penalty is worse for a less-developed fetus? Reason says this is backwards, so the references to harm must refer to the mother-to-be. Extending this logic further, the rabbis concluded that abortion was mandatory in cases where the woman’s life was in danger. The life of the one who is, trumps the life of the one who might be.

  176. 176.

    OverTwistWillie

    This post 19th amendment progressivism is so troubling. Can’t we just throw up some bull about Sherman Anti-trust and Walmart, or whatever, so as to transform the rurals of our imagination into Trotskyites?

  177. 177.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Matt McIrvin: What also made it a little different back then was that in some ways, Bryan’s movement was the religious left.

    Big part of it was evolution was being used as the justification for eugenics.  The modern creationist use the same argument that evolutionary theory de-sanctifies human life and leads to drugs, rock in roll, model railroading, cross dressing, union membership, poverty, uppity women, racism,   altruism, teen pregnancies and other social horrors.  Once as a tragedy, second time as a farce.

  178. 178.

    Kirk Spencer

    @James E Powell:

    To that end I’ve been wondering what we will see when we finally get a female president.

    I think we’ll see more negative reaction than we did with a black man. Thing is that Obama’s experience gives all an idea what we need to prepare for .

  179. 179.

    Jackie

    Apparently ALL news outlets are demanding McCarthy share J6 Capitol Hill footage.

    Can’t wait to see his justification to deny access.

  183. 183.

    davecb

    @OzarkHillbilly, @Soprano2: ​

    She thought he was drunk. She asked him if he was OK and when he was unresponsive just assumed it was confirmation of her assumption. The fact of the matter was the man didn’t even drink.

    Were I a woman, I might not want to go into a place with a partially-dressed man collapsed on the floor. I think I’d call 911 or at least my boss for advice

  184. 184.

    narya

    @Suzanne: Yeah . . . I cannot quite wrap my head around it, tbh. It’s like they create a reality in their head and then stick to it, regardless of any evidence that would counter it, and they no-true-scotsman their way out of any such evidence.

  186. 186.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @James E Powell:

    Because it’s so obvious & central, because it’s been talked about so much, people sometimes want to look away or outright deny what the election of a black president did to the minds of the majority of American white people.

    Hell yes. And Obama’s re-election was the last frontier of the already rock bottom level of reason most of them tenuously held on to.

  188. 188.

    Bill Arnold

    @JWR:
    Hah. I was replying to “Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas””s tweet on the matter of Judy Chu, and it was deleted right while I was composing the reply. Mr. Lance Gooden,, anti-American POS, must be feeling some heat.

  191. 191.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JWR:  @Bill Arnold: I think Rep Gooden’s every public utterance is going to come under scrutiny in the next few days, and odds are things are going to get uncomfortable for him

  192. 192.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @James E Powell: Absolutely.  The book I’m reading, Mothers of Massive Resistance really brings this home as you watch organizations of white women (United Daughters of the Confederacy, Daughters of American Revolution, Pro-America etc.) of  continually shifting their slogans (Parental Choice, Christian Nation, Local Control, Small Govt, Traditional Values, States’ Rights etc.) but always in the goal of maintaining racial segregation of schools and preventing the expansion of rights for Black People.  Tellingly, these organizations/campaigns always had support from and even worked with, the KKK.

  193. 193.

    Redshift

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Might happen.  Worth trying to get Pence’s direct testimony first, but if that takes too long, no reason not to go to Quayle.

    Unfortunately, there is. Pence is a witness, Quayle is hearsay. His testimony wouldn’t add anything to what they’ve got from the Pence aides.

    More likely, of the Pence challenges don’t get knocked down quickly, they’ll agree to exclude questions about conversations when he was at the Capitol. There’s no way he’ll get a speech or debate exemption for talking about the count at other times.

  197. 197.

    Redshift

    @lowtechcyclist: I agree that was a tipping point, and Obama’s election was a big shock to their system, but a lot of it was also a slow progression. They used to be mostly cynical manipulators (I always remember Reagan telling the so-called March for Life “I am with you”… remotely, while sitting out of sight inside the White House a block away), but the younger people they inspired to run were true believers. And then, I think, the manipulators started realizing they could have more money and influence (which is all they cared about) outside of government, like DeMint moving to Heritage, and they abandoned government to their nutcase heirs.

  200. 200.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kirk Spencer: The Democrats nominating Hillary Clinton seems to have been a berzerk button for a lot of people, and not just Republicans.

    Many will argue, this wasn’t just any woman, it was that woman. But the thing is, the hate-cult around Hillary Clinton started with people who were shocked by her overt feminism and political ambition. A political wife wasn’t supposed to act like that; it made her Lady Macbeth. I do think many in younger generations were brought up absorbing that hate without really realizing where it originally came from

    I’m also struck by how much of the anti-Hillary rhetoric just got shifted wholesale to attacking Kamala Harris.

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