Because they have no regard for democracy and zero respect for women, Repubs didn’t think through the possible electoral consequences of their decades-long quest to rescind a longstanding constitutional right by overturning Roe. They gave even less thought to the healthcare ramifications — agricultural boards spend more time pondering how grazing land policy affects cattle than your average Repub lawmaker thought about the impact abortion bans have on women’s health.
So, when the Leo Court obliged and effectively made half the population second-class citizens, empowered state-level Repubs to insert themselves into millions of people’s private medical decisions, and forced healthcare providers to change standard care protocols to conform to religious dogma, Repubs were caught flat-footed by public reaction. And now they are belatedly alarmed because the Dobbs decision blowback has been measurable in most elections held since June 2022.
Public responses by individual Repubs are all over the map. House Repubs and Senator Potato Head from AL act as if governing with a mandate to ban abortion nationwide. Chickenshit candidates like Ron DeSantis sign bans in the dead of night and avoid the subject on the trail. But according to NBC News, Senate Repubs held a messaging workshop this week to try to rebrand their way out of this conundrum:
At a closed-door meeting of Senate Republicans this week, the head of a super PAC closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., presented poll results that suggested voters are reacting differently to commonly used terms like “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, said several senators who were in the room.
The polling, which NBC News has not independently reviewed, was made available to senators Wednesday by former McConnell aide Steven Law and showed that “pro-life” no longer resonated with voters.
“What intrigued me the most about the results was that ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ means something different now, that people see being pro-life as being against all abortions … at all levels,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said in an interview Thursday.
Well, maybe those polled have seen stories about women who seek emergency treatment for miscarriages being advised to quietly bleed out in their homes until the local archbishop and megachurch pastor deem their lives sufficiently endangered to warrant medical intervention. Or maybe they’ve read about Orwellian laws that encourage random busybodies to monetize their neighbors’ deeply private situations.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the polling made it clear to him that more specificity is needed in talking about abortion.
“Many voters think [‘pro-life’] means you’re for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever, and ‘pro-choice’ now can mean any number of things. So the conversation was mostly oriented around how voters think of those labels, that they’ve shifted. So if you’re going to talk about the issue, you need to be specific,” Hawley said Thursday.
“You can’t assume that everybody knows what it means,” he added. “They probably don’t.”
Yep, that will surely do the trick because if there’s one thing all American women are demanding with a single voice, it’s additional and more specific mansplaining from Josh Fucking Hawley! (Who represents a state that bans abortions with no exceptions for rape or incest, BTW.)
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., summarized Wednesday’s meeting as being focused on “pro-baby policies.”
Asked whether senators were encouraged to use a term other than “pro-life,” Young said his “pro-baby” descriptor “was just a term of my creation to demonstrate my concern for babies.”
These fanatical dingleberries will never land on the actual word that describes their position on reproductive healthcare, which is “anti-woman.” But it seems like many voters have reached that conclusion all by themselves. I don’t think more branding workshops will keep Repubs from reaping the whirlwind they sowed for generations, but this is America, so who knows.
Open thread.
moonbat
Facing the real possibility of putting a convicted felon at the top of their ballot and this big giant anti-choice, anti-women chicken coming home to roost the Repugs are finally catching on that they are headed to electoral Armageddon up and down the ballot.
In other words, “pro-baby” ain’t gonna cut it, Jack.
matt
So it’s the ‘pro-life’ people who are now for the nuanced, compromise position on abortion. Funny, I thought that’s what Roe v Wade was, and those are the people who killed it.
Anonymous At Work
I’ve always used “pro/anti-choice” since that’s the divide. No one, except Darkseid is “anti-life”.
bbleh
These fanatical dingleberries will never land on the actual word that describes their position on reproductive healthcare, which is “anti-woman.”
“Waal, I’m not anti-woman. Why I love women. [chuckle chuckle] I’m just sayin’ they gotta know their place.”
Baud
You know who doesn’t have exceptions to the right to abortion? Democrats! Because people don’t have to justify why their exercising a fundamental right.
MisterDancer
Even having done a wee bit of the research, it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around just how much WORK the Forced Abortion Movement put into making “Pro-Life” happen. Not just coining the phrase, but getting it spread like wildfire into the mass media, making it a norm. It was a lot of money and time and manipulation…and it worked a charm.
It was like a testbed for everything from the slander of the term “liberal” in the early Reagan years, to the modern shredding of the term “woke”. Getting “Pro Life” bought into showed a lot of these assholes that they could manipulate the media to sell their lies with ease.
You’re right that I don’t think “pro-baby” works as well. And anything coming top-down tends not to “sell” as well to these people. What does concern me is if the Forced Abortion rank/file do decide to rebrand, and how they’ll inject more toxicity and lies into our body politic to do so.
Betsy
Betty, this writing is the perfect encapsulation of the sitch. It ought to be an editorial piece that is printed in every newspaper!
bbleh
@moonbat: Specifically, they’re the pro-baby, anti-perinatal-medical-care, lock-children-in-cages party.
MattF
I agree that the sudden haste of the misogyny party to ‘clarify’ their abortion policy is what’s really clarifying here. I feel pretty sure that no one is fooled— this is rather more than just a little misunderstanding.
AM in NC
@bbleh: I remember so.very.clearly. the first time I heard dood say “I love women”. As if we are one completely undifferentiated mass.
Uh no dood, you love how a female body can make you feel sometimes, and thus you reduce 1/2 of humanity to servicing that feeling in you.
Creeps. We are surrounded by creeps.
hueyplong
“Clarify” always means “Needz moar mendacity and repetition.”
...now I try to be amused
Dobbs completely surprised me. They had the perfect cynical con game going: keep the base angry over Roe, fundraise, don’t deliver, repeat. Then the true believers on the SCOTUS delivered and blew up the con. I underestimated how deeply the true believers had infiltrated the apparatus.
Joe Falco
Sadly true. We’d need more data and years of election results before we see whether Dobbs has given the GOP the self-inflicted electoral wound it richly deserves. I wish Dobbs would be as monumental a decision for the fate of the GOP just as the Civil Rights Act was for Democrats (obligatory quote from LBJ and obligatory FU to LBJ).
Betsy
Remember when the Republicans were trying to take prenatal care OUT of the coverages required of every health insurance policy by the Affordable Care Act?
Was that “pro-baby”?
ETA: At the time, they justified their proposal by saying “it doesn’t benefit everyone, only a special subset of people in a particular situation, therefore prenatal care coverage should not be required of every health insurance policy”
I remember thinking, What situation is MORE UNIVERSAL to ALL of humanity than being BORN?
I mean, if you TRIED to think of another situation that would apply to more people via health coverage, what exactly would that be?!
Mousebumples
Lol, they’re pro forced birth. Pro women as second class citizens.
Anti taking care of the kids they force women to deliver. Anti Healthcare. Anti bodily autonomy.
What’s the anti-abortion equivalent to Death Panels? Ecclesiastical Miscarriage Review Board doesn’t really roll off the tongue.
Taphozous
I suspect that “pro baby” is serving a dual purpose here. 1) it is an attempt to deal with pushback to Dobbs; 2) it shifts the focus to birth control.
It is imprtant to remember that the anti-choice folks are also set on taking away access to birth control.
mali muso
I can’t think about this entire topic without feeling my blood pressure up and getting enraged. Just this week I had a conversation with a friend who recently experienced the miscarriage of a wanted pregnancy and the trauma that came along with the uncertainty around how her medical records might be used against her at some point in the future. Something that should be innocuous, a survey to be completed for the state public health statistics office, in these days reads as sinister and orwellian. How many pregnancies have you had? Did you visit an OB prior to the miscarriage? etc. My rational brain can understand the need to keep population level statistics, but I concurred with her that submitting that information in this day and age would be unadvisable. This is life as a woman in this country in 2023.
Villago Delenda Est
“Pro-life” has always been about punishing the sluts for DARING to exercise agency over their own bodies. Babies have never been the focus, only the thin veneer over patriarchal assholes seeking to impose their fucking bronze-age mindset on everyone.
Villago Delenda Est
@bbleh: Once the kid has left the birth canal, the kid is on their own.
Betty Cracker
@Betsy: Yep, the “pro-baby” thing is a big fat lie too. IIRC, that anti-baby policy came out of Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the ACA?
Omnes Omnibus
OT but big:
BREAKING: Fulton County special grand jury recommended indicting three Republican Senators:
-Lindsey Graham
-David Perdue
-Kelly Loeffler
democracydocket.com/wp-content/u…
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: LOCK THEM UP!
Baud
They want the media to call us anti-baby, I bet.
moonbat
@Villago Delenda Est:
Hey, no slandering of the Bronze Age! Ancient Egyptian medical texts contain prescriptions for birth control AND what to do in case of a miscarriage. The ancients, or some of them, were a lot more liberal than you’d expect.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: But they weren’t indicted. Or are these new indictments?
MattF
@Omnes Omnibus: Very curious to see the specifics about Graham. He’s kept a rather low profile lately.
Baud
@moonbat: Humankind went downhill once we stopped worshipping cats as gods.
moonbat
@Baud: Undoubtedly.
Scout211
@Omnes Omnibus: oooh, even with Graham’s limited testimony, they still have enough evidence to indict? Sweet!
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: No indictments. The final report was filed today.
Betsy
@Betty Cracker: I don’t remember, even though once I went to DC and got tickets to the House gallery to see the Repugs vote for the 78th time to overturn Obamacare.
Mark Sanford was there, newly refurbished from his weird disappearance with his mistress to Argentina, or wherever it was. I remember when that kind of thing ended a political career.
Betsy
@Baud: nailed it
Kelly
@Baud: Wait, What, Everyone else stopped worshiping cats?
gvg
The do NOT love women. They despise us, even the ones who are women.
My whole family would not exist if these fools had their way. My grandmothers first child died in the womb about 6 weeks before expected delivery. She did not go into labor and the fetus was (as it turned out) decaying inside her). Her doctor said wait to go into labor. Nothing happened. she was in the hospital getting sicker. He would not operate. Her childhood doctor saw her mother waiting in the hospital and asked why, then took over and saved her.
My father and his siblings were born AFTER the first child. This is the kind of non scientific unsafe medicine that they want. Pregnancy goes wrong for a lot of natural reasons. It just does. We don’t need blind fools grabbing the wheel and wrecking the process over and over. They make it to scary to even risk trying.
And a lot of them want to make it impossible for women to have jobs and independence, not just their own wives but other women too.
cain
@moonbat: That’s a fact jack
Old Man Shadow
Many states have exceptions written into their abortion bans. The exceptions often require:
So I don’t care how you want to message the issue, the fact is there is no way to have exceptions when your laws are based on a sincere desire to roll back feminism and shove women into the subservient role your fundamentalist bullshit demands they occupy.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: The cats have not forgotten this, either, per Sir Terry.
Baud
Pro-baby sounds too much like probiotics, anyway.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: Yay!
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, shoot, I said “Yay” too soon.
Baud
@zhena gogolia: Lots of people suffer from premature ejubulation.
Frankensteinbeck
Thanks to Dobbs, the normies finally do. It means blocking all abortions, with no exceptions, restricted only by what you think you can get away with. Normies don’t do nuance, which means for once they do get it.
Oh, dude. Go for that one. Please. “Pro-life” sounded bland and innocuous, perfect for obscuring your intentions. “Pro-baby” is jarring and attention-getting as Hell, and everyone who disapproves of the Dobbs decision will hear it as ‘pro forcing women to have babies.’
(This post is repeated/paraphrased from the last thread this story came up in.)
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Tony Stark tried to explain this to Loki and well, shit happened.
Scout211
BC, thanks for front-paging this NRC meeting with their
lying liarsspin doctors. It was discussed a bit last night in an overnight thread but it deserves a spotlight.Why respond to the facts when you can lie about your policies and spin Democrats into monsters who hate babies? They think they are so smart and so clever. They are bragging about it and are just so proud of themselves.
My response last night to Josh Hawley’s claims that the electorate doesn’t understand what the GOP has done to take away the rights of families and pregnant people:
cain
@MattF: It’s hard to say it is a misunderstanding given the bills that are being passed and made into law. Their’s the lying lies coming out of their mouths and then what their actions say when they sign an abortion bill with no exceptions being signed into law.
Princess
@…now I try to be amused: I think some of them likewise underestimated how much the true believers had infiltrated the apparatus. And those true believers aren’t going to buy what Hawley is selling any more than we will, unless they can be convinced it’s election year phrasing only (which maybe they can be since that’s certainly true. Hawley’s intention is certainly a full bann, no exceptions).
suzanne
Because that’s what it means, you mendacious, patronizing, contemptuous piece of shit.
They’re liars. Liars.
Jeffg166
The GQP will do its usual thing and throw one buzz word after another at the wall until one sticks, then repeating it to infinity.
Humanity
(Posting under a different nym for anonymity’s sake.)
My friend and her spouse both had (unknown to them) a recessive gene that would cause anencephaly in 1 out of 4 embryos formed with their genetic material. They found out when their first pregnancy’s fetus was discovered not to have a developing head. They were Catholic so they went through with a term pregnancy and the baby died a little while after the birth.
They tried again. Tragically the same thing happened with the second pregnancy, and they made the same choice. Carry to term. Same result.
My friend was never the same again.
Her whole family also suffered, particularly her mother. None of them to my knowledge are observant Catholics any more.
This is what Republicans want to do to everyone who has a pregnancy. Impose their choice on other people.
Kent E Reames
hey guys … since this is an open thread
could we stop linking to twitter? like, permanently, forever? the anti-semitism over there is through the fcking roof.
Highly, highly recommend this piece. It brings the receipts. Holy hell!
https://substack.com/notes/post/p-136710955
jonas
If only. The Old Testament/Hebrew Bible is quite clear. Life is in breath, and an unborn child, whose death can be compensatable, is still not the equivalent of a born human. (The stuff in Psalms about the Lord “forming me in the womb” Christians are always quoting says nothing about personhood/ensoulment. God “formed” Adam from the earth, too, but he wasn’t a living being until he received the breath of life in him, i.e. started breathing on his own.)
Some rabbinical opinions in Judaism even suggest that a pregnancy that has become a danger to a mother’s life or health must be terminated.
kindness
Republican officials are informed women (and many men) don’t like living in a Gilead type land. Republicans respond by proclaiming Gilead means many, many things. Not just the userpation of womens rights.
Yea…. that’ll help them at the polls.
Villago Delenda Est
@Princess: It’s the only way to punish the sluts for DARING to have sex.
Frankensteinbeck
@moonbat:
Even the relatively recent ancients. One of the odd historical facts I’ve learned is that conservative generations zealously scrub waves of liberalism from recorded histories. One example I’m reminded of was that while the major British documents of sexual morals insisted virgin marriages were rigidly enforced and 18 was an old maid, a very recent historian went through actual parish birth/marriage records and discovered commoners rarely married before 20 and the women frequently had a couple of kids already. Turns out, what people on the ground wanted was to be confident a wife would survive childbirth. Similarly, a whole lot of prostitutes throughout history miraculously managed to have vast amounts of sex without being constantly pregnant. You could almost suspect that ways of preventing that existed before the 20th century.
Oh, and the examples of and claims about chastity belts are almost all from people writing about what that other country they hate does. Super authentic.
kalakal
What a bunch of fuckwits. The sheer contempt they have for the electorate is mind boggling. They’re anti women, always have been, Dobbs blew the roof off and now they’re desperately trying to haul a tarp over to once again give a “respectable” cover for their murderous mysogeny. Changing the slogan is going to be as convincing as putting a Ferrari badge on a Trabant
MisterDancer
@Kent E Reames: I have, in drafts, a Front Page bit about Musk’s antisemitic shit. I’ll try to get it wrapped and posted this weekend, and I’ll include this article with credit back to you, as it comes with receipts.
That said — I personally dropped Twitter when the sale went thru. I get 1000% why other FPers lean on it, but for me, it was clearly a space I could not sustain using, knowing Musk’s past.
Villago Delenda Est
@jonas: Yeah, and it’s imprecise, at best, of me to characterize it as “bronze age” because even the Old Testament doesn’t bother to address abortion. It has much more to do with modern “Christianity’s” hatred of equality and all that implies, to include ZOMG women treating sex as men have always treated it, because men don’t get pregnant. That’s why birth control is next on the hit parade for these assholes. As moonbat pointed out, the ancient Egyptians were much more sensible about all this than your average holy roller dickweed.
Omnes Omnibus
Carbon fiber body panels. Fiber board body panels. Same thing really.
p.a.
Maybe they’re pro-baby in the Jonathan Swift manner?
NotMax
@Frankensteinbeck
Quasi-relevant.
:)
Ken
I hope Democrats will test the Republicans’ new-found pro-baby stance by proposing suitable legislation. How about mandating three months of paid maternity leave? Full medical coverage during pregnancy and for three years afterward? Automatic eligibility for SNAP for the first three years, regardless of income?
cain
@Betsy:
Betsy – birth is a pre-existing condition. It shouldn’t be covered.
catclub
@Joe Falco:
These things take a LONG time. I don’t think the Democratic majority in the House was gone until the 1990’s …25 years later.
CaseyL
@Baud:
you know, I often think human civilization hit its peak during the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, and has been variously downhill ever since.
catclub
@Ken:
How about maternity leave and/or subsidized childcare for 3 YEARS?
Betty Cracker
@MisterDancer: Glad you’re still working on that post! I was thinking about doing one myself earlier (not on the Twitter aspect — Musk’s antisemitism) but saw the title of your draft and didn’t want to step on a work in progress. So I mentioned Musk’s Labor Day weekend antisemitism spree in comments instead.
In retrospect, I think I should have posted anyway — the subject is worthy of multiple posts, and the MSM has given it way too little attention. Maybe the recent revelation that Musk sabotaged a covert Ukrainian operation against the country that’s waging genocidal war against them will revive it.
Betty Cracker
@kalakal: As a fan of metaphors and similes, I appreciate your work there!
...now I try to be amused
@p.a.:
“How to Serve Man”
moonbat
@Frankensteinbeck:
For real. The hypocritical prudery of the American evangelical mindset has a funny way of eliding over the inconvenient history of any era that shows people were not always (or were never) wed to the ways of their Puritan ideal. I guess that’s yet another reason why they want to ban AP history courses, besides erasing the experiences of POC.
Fake Irishman
@Betsy:
When John Barrasso (R) Wyoming was bloviating about this in a finance committee meeting considering the ACA in 2009, Debbie Stabenow shut him up with a witty comeback using your logic.
Barrasso: “look, why should I pay for maternity coverage when I’m not going to need it?”
Stabenow: “Your mom did.”
best use of the middle school “your mom” taunt ever,
(on so many levels.)
Paul in KY
@MisterDancer: Advertising works.
cain
@Betty Cracker: I was so incensed. I have started the process of withdrawing my employer from twitter. Fuck that guy.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: My guess has been that insiders have known about Musk’s antisemitism but have kept that particular detail about him to themselves. It’s not the sort of thing that just suddenly appears out of nowhere.
kalakal
@Fake Irishman: lol!
EarthWindFire
@matt: Kinda hard to talk nuanced compromise when you’ve been screaming babykiller for almost a half-century. I think I’ll buy more popcorn futures while the Repubs figure this out. Thoughts and prayers to them.
Betty Cracker
@MattF: Yep. Josh Marshall wrote about it here. Addressing Musk’s threats to sue the ADL, Marshall’s conclusion was on point, IMO:
sab
@Frankensteinbeck: Peter Laslett. We read his books when I was in college in the 1970s. The only ones who married in their early teens were royalty, and they frequently did die in childbirth.
Kay
It’s funny because the high dollar fancy anti abortion lobbyists get it – they say in the article that they have to somehow convince women they are pro women, but the male lunkheads in the GOP are stepping on their (lying) message.
Good!
Incidentally, the rape and incest and life of the mother “exceptions” are bullshit. No one ever qualifies for the exception.
They lie to women constantly and this is another example. Don’t wait till you are flat on your back and helpless delivering a baby to find out if the “pro life” movement will happily sacrifice your life for their religion. They will. Oh, and bring a STRONG advocate. You may have to fight to get modern medical intervention if a delivery goes off a cliff.
My daughter will be delivering in January. She’s a health care professional so chose providers who are not fanatic religious people and “believe” in modernity but during delivery she will be vulnerable so both her husband and I will be there to keep these fucking creepy ghouls away from her. Good luck getting past us.
EarthWindFire
@…now I try to be amused: I thought what you did too until Amy Coathanger Barrett got appointed.
Then I knew the jig was up.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: WHOA, NELLIE!
syphonblue
Oh so if they’re “pro-baby”, that means they now support paid parental leave, universal day care, free school lunches….
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Miss Bianca: Sadly, this isn’t something that just happened, just the release of the grand jury’s final report. Willis’s office decided not to move forward on some of the indictments, and I can’t say I blame them – there was some disagreement on the grand jury about those indictment recommendations, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they just assessed who they had the best slam-dunk cases against.
Brachiator
The sad thing is that a number of conservative women also are part of this movement to restrict abortion.
I distrust the supposed GOP hand wringing over reproductive rights. Red states have been passing cruel anti-abortion laws for years. The Supreme Court abolished Roe and used as an excuse the lie that they were returning power to the states.
The Republicans want to pass the most restrictive federal law possible. This has always been their position. Trying to find some phoney “pro baby” narrative is nothing more than a distraction.
Again, what is sad is how many women accept this assault on their rights. Some pundits presumed that middle class women would always be able to assert their rights to control their bodies. But if Republicans get their way, only wealthy women able to leave the US might have an unrestricted right to abortion.
Westyny
Jumped to the end to ask if anyone above has already nominated “fanatical dingleberries.”
randy khan
Your periodic reminder (not that many people here need it) that whenever Republicans make mouth noises about reasonable positions on abortion, what they mean is that they want a total ban, but will settle for whatever they can get, and that they will write any legislation that looks like it’s not a total ban in a way that makes it nearly impossible to get an abortion. (So health exceptions are unavailable in practice, or the window where abortion is legal is so short that most women won’t even know they’re pregnant before it expires.) In other words, they’re lying.
Kay
Also good catch on the mansplaining, Betty. I hope the GOP Senators do that – deliver a big scolding lecture to women about pregnancy and childbirth. I am fully confident they will do this. Looking forward to it.
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
True, and maybe it’s becoming harder for Repubs to sell these entirely hypothetical exceptions since people are seeing how they’re applied in real life. (There’s not nearly enough coverage in the national mainstream press, but awareness is creeping up, I think.)
Mike in NC
If the old white men who run the Republican Party have decided that abortion is the hill they’re willing to die on, then die it will. Please proceed GOP.
Princess
@Frankensteinbeck: Frankly, even the medieval Church was more liberal with abortion. It was okay until “quickening”, or roughly through the first trimester. And some canonists argued that it was okay in cases of poverty rather than being used to hide the consequences of “illicit” sex.
West of the Rockies
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think it’s more that women sometimes enjoy sex, but especially that they can exercise control over sex. That does not sit well with the God-bothering patriarchy.
Princess
@Brachiator: There is no wealth in the world that can provide an abortion for a woman who needs one because of an immediate health crisis. Wealthy women aren’t immune from all the consequences of these laws.
Joey Maloney
This is the basis of one of the lawsuits against one of the state-level abortion bans – in Texas, maybe? I don’t remember for sure – by some Jewish women who are suing under RFRA, claiming the abortion ban is impermissible interference with their religious beliefs and practice. I don’t know how likely that is to work, but I always enjoy seeing the Christianists’ legislative toolkits being wielded against them.
brantl
@kindness: usurpation. 2 Us.
Shalimar
@Betsy: They really don’t like babies. The whole party is like the horrible boyfriend who gets you pregnant, convinces you to have the child, and then ghosts you 2 weeks before the baby is due.
UncleEbeneezer
“What intrigued me the most about the results was that ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ means something different now, that people see being pro-life as being against all abortions”
Ya don’t say…glad to see people finally waking up to this but it’s been pretty obvious for most of my entire life.
BethanyAnne
I’m still livid about it. I was angry about the assaults on abortion rights before Dobbs, and Dobbs pissed me right the fuck off. And I’m still there. It surprises me on one level. I’m trans, sterile, and don’t have a uterus. I’d think maybe I’d be a little angry, but it would fade into the background of anger with these fascists. Nope. This is visceral to me. Frequently it angers me more than their direct assaults on my trans self. I don’t know why, but I know it’s true. It just makes me see red. I given even fewer fucks than normal about being polite or rational or civil. That tagline about when someone talks about loving freedom, rest assured they don’t mean yours rings so goddamn true about this. Livid. Just makes me livid.
Matt McIrvin
@…now I try to be amused: Dobbs did not surprise me. Pundits for many years had thought of the Republicans as a bloc focused on doing what they needed to do to win elections. But when you’re on the Supreme Court you don’t need to win elections. This was THE big prize for conservatives and in this instance, they did care about policy–in a gross and horrifying way.
Roger Moore
It ain’t gonna work, Josh. You could run focus group tested marketing blather as long as banning abortion was just a theoretical position that was always going to be blocked by the courts. Now that the courts aren’t stopping it, voters are looking at how Republicans legislate instead of what they say about how they’re going to legislate. This is the Republicans’ worst nightmare. Their policy preferences are awful and unpopular, so they have to focus attention everywhere else if they want to win. They can kind of do that when they’re doing something behind the scenes to help out the ultra-rich, but it doesn’t work when their policies hurt people directly.
Shalimar
@Baud: Blame the Egyptians. It was not a bright idea to bury cats alive in burial chambers where all the important bits were in pots on shelves. Cursed us all forever, they did.
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: A valid response/point from Allison Gill:
Villago Delenda Est
The Aunt Lydia types.
Fair Economist
@cain:Why does the bullshit always travel together? Musk is a South African trust-fund baby courtesy of a blood emerald mine. Of course he’s racist. But he’s heavily antisemitic and misogynist too and those aren’t so obligatory with his background. Is there some sort of “Newton’s Fourth Law” about gravitational bullshit? Any sufficiently large pile of bullshit draws all other bullshit to it until it becomes a pile so heavy no sense can escape it?
Baud
If they wanted to be more accurate, they could go with pro-baby mills.
Dangerman
I’m all for branding workshops; I think “Baud 20XX” would look good burned in.
Oh. Not that kind of brand. My bad.
Carry on.
Paul in KY
@syphonblue: They will certainly be game for skewering on that point. Just about all normies, when they think of ‘baby’, think of a post-birth one.
Could be a ‘hoist by their own petard’ moment, if played right.
Baud
@Dangerman:
Mark of the
BeastBest!BethanyAnne
@Fair Economist: Poor recording, but I’m reminded of Chris Rock “That train’s never late“
Paul in KY
@Westyny: Add ‘boys’ to that & would be a good bluegrass band name :-)
Villago Delenda Est
@West of the Rockies: Which ties in to the next frontier of prudery, going after contraception.
Argiope
@Fair Economist:
It’s that racism, homophobia & transphobia, antisemitism and the patriarchy are united by making sure THOSE PEOPLE don’t get too uppity and demand real equality, threatening traditional power structures. So yeah, it’s all of a piece.
Villago Delenda Est
@Dangerman: The end of Inglourious Basterds instantly popped into my head.
Baud
@Fair Economist:
Dark Intersectionality.
Fair Economist
@Omnes Omnibus: We knew Lindsey Graham had attempted to intervene in the vote count and I’m not shocked the grand jury thought him indictable. But Perdue *AND* Loeffler? BOTH Republican Senators from GA? That smells like something big, like chronic and long-standing vote count manipulation that most of the state Republican apparatus was in on.
I’m not too surprised Willis chose not to prosecute those. That would make it more political, by drawing in a sitting Senator and (implicitly) the GA Republican Party. Get the slam-dunk indictments, and then once those are done, maybe come back for the more controversial cases.
Baud
OT via reddit, the real reason the media won’t stop talking about how old Biden is.
Ruckus
None of us know how this will work out but just reading this I’m having a hard time thinking that conservatives are not going for broke here. They do seem to get a lot of votes but the harder they push to have their draconian laws in a supposedly free country, in a time where medicine has gotten out of the intellectual era of over a century ago. We are at a time when technology and learning has impacted almost all aspects of human life, except in the concept of conservative life. They want to go backwards so far, to a time when woman and their humanity and lives were as not second class citizens but as 3rd class baby factories. This is pure conservative bullshit. And if the responses to Betty’s post here are any indication, most humans, if they have any concept of humanity, are not in any way up for this bullshit.
Women and their offspring sometimes die from the entire act of bringing children into this world. And seemingly a lot of men overlook the concept that this really isn’t something they have full participation in. I’m not disregarding that men have a roll here but the price is paid far, far more by women than men. They can die from childbirth. The actual process of growing a human being has risks for the woman and the offspring. It is not, and likely never will be a secure, 100% good outcome process. Medicine has been able to help and make it better, but it will extremely likely always be a process that has enormous risks for the woman and even more for the child. We have a lot of information and science to help make this a less dangerous and more successful process, but the risks and outcome will still not always be in the best interest of living. And there is only one person who is always 100% involved – the woman.
Conservatives want to go backwards at least 100 but likely over 200 yrs ago, but time and progress doesn’t work that way. I have no idea why they think it was better then – except for one, men were basically 100% in charge. That was wrong, and is by far no longer true. And it’s a far, far better world because it is no longer true. We have a ways to go and being humanity may take too long a time to get there but it will be a better world.
No One of Consequence
From your post to Coyote’s ears, Betty. May it be so.
-NooC
No One of Consequence
@Ruckus:
If men were responsible for the continuation of the species via childbirth, us hairless apes would have been so much dust long, long ago. I don’t know many people that dispute this.
-NOoC
dm
What’s the allusion I’m missing behind “Leo Court”?
EarthWindFire
@Kay: They should have done a poll on the number of American women want a GOP senator talking to them about pregnancy and childbirth. In their defense, could fit in a thimble is a tough number to report out.
Cameron
Unified Bullshit Field Theory……hmm, possibilities….
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: My question: how long does a DA have to indict, if she chooses to forego these 3 in the first round? Is Ms. Willis time-limited? Can she indict a year or more from now?
(And apologies if it’s been answered elsewhere in thread. Just looked in.)
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@dm: The right wing members were essentially hand-picked by Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society.
Old School
@dm:
Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society has been a driving force in the Republican-nominated members of the Supreme Court being there.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: South African white racism came with a bunch of other extreme conservative positions. The teaching of evolution was forbidden in schools during the apartheid era. The beloved Boer founder figure, Paul Kruger, was literally a flat-earther and bragged about having read no book other than the Bible.
Alison Rose
Sure, they can call themselves “pro-baby” so long as it always includes an asterisk denoting the additional phrase “until birth”. Carlin had ’em pegged a long time ago:
Roger Moore
@Baud:
Does that mean those of us who never stopped worshiping cats are more advanced?
jonas
@Old School: I think it was Sheldon Whitehouse who trenchantly observed during a hearing earlier this summer after it came out that Leo was regularly hobnobbing with Thomas and Harlan Crow and other GOP donors on his luxurious, unreported, getaways that “[Leo] doesn’t have business before the court — his business *is* the court!”
Alison Rose
Good news! Nancy SMASH! ain’t done yet:
I love that she’s reclaiming the right-wing “San Francisco values” attack.
Baud
@Alison Rose:
But what if I don’t want to wear a ball gag?
Villago Delenda Est
@Alison Rose: “San Francisco values” = civilization, equality.
Suzanne
@Brachiator:
One quibble with this statement: the GOP is happy to shit on the rights of wealthy white women, too. Will they have means and therefore be more likely to go abroad to get an abortion if needed? Yes. But the crazy women-haters also want to control them, too. They genuinely want to force all women into baby-making and back into the home.
Betty Cracker
Florida’s 7-member Supreme Court is hearing arguments today on whether the governor’s abortion ban is legal under the state constitution. In the 1980s, the court said the state constitution protected the right to abortion under its privacy clause, along the lines of the Roe decision, IIRC.
Five members of the current FL court are antiabortion fanatics appointed by DeSantis, so it’s likely the governor’s 6-week ban will go into effect after they rule on this case. Then Floridians will get to find out what it’s like to be Mississippi with a longer coastline. We’ll see how they like it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@matt: Exactly. Roe was the compromise. It’s still what you get close to if you start trying to get them to be specific.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suzanne: Kinder, Küche, Kirche.
Scout211
@Alison Rose: Awesome news!
Alison Rose
@Baud: YOU WILL WEAR IT AND YOU WILL LIKE IT! We’ll have a special one made for you that says Baud! 20XX on it.
RaflW
@Fair Economist: “come back for the more controversial cases”
Fuck yes. Lindsey Graham is a scourge and a morally bankrupt weathervane, blowing MAGA since the day John McCain died.
I agree that the Trump & direct accessories trial(s) needs priority. But indict Lindsey and his fellows as soon as that’s over.
Meanwhile, if we had a press what was worth a shit, they’d hound Lindsey to the ends of the earth for this sword hanging over him. But I expect Chuckles the Todd to keep inviting the squirmy old bat on many more times.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
While I don’t hope for a bad result, part of me will not be unpleased that some DeSantis supporters will FO after having FA.
I don’t think FL as yet is as conservative as other Southern states.
Dickeylee
@MisterDancer:
Pro baby might encourage actually feeding and clothing said babies…
misterpuff
@Mousebumples: Death Panel works.
boatboy_srq
Maybe the GQP should stop going after contraceptives as “abortifacients,” then.
Ruckus
@No One of Consequence:
Yep.
We men have one part of the process of the creation of life. It’s not all that long of a process, it normally feels pretty good, it in my mind has to feel good for the participants because otherwise it likely wouldn’t happen near as often. Woman have an entirely different process that for most lasts a lifetime. Sometimes literally a lifetime. In this day and age we have made the process a tiny bit closer to better outcomes, but it is still not an easy nor anywhere near a guaranteed process. And it likely won’t ever be. And half the world’s population, currently around 3 1/2 billion humans, will never directly have that risk, or full participation.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Same. There’s been a lot of finding out around here lately. I sure hope it sparks a gigantic backlash but bitter experience prevents me from expecting that.
Scout211
Proof that Trump’s “beautiful wall” has done damage to the area. Link
But a frustrating ruling by the 5th circuit: Abbotts’s alternative barrier to walls can’t legally be removed yet.
Federal appeals court allows Texas to leave floating barrier in Rio Grande for now
schrodingers_cat
@Fair Economist: There is a universal law of gravitation credited to Newton but that is not called the 4th law.
The 3 laws of motion describe and explain motion and form the basis of classical mechanics.
Alison Rose
@boatboy_srq: Of course, they aren’t 100% against contraceptives. They’re perfectly fine with their mistresses using them. And getting abortions, for that matter.
Gretchen
@Baud: so are we going to have a special prosecutor to vigorously pursue charges against the tax-cheating millionaires? After all, it was only just that Hunter Biden be prosecuted for late tax payments!
smith
@Fair Economist: I’m guessing Willis knew she had a complex enough case to handle without having to flounder around with the speech and debate clause. I am still hoping Jack Smith gets around to taking that on, however. There are just too many indications that some Congress members were intimately involved with the fake electors and J6.
RaflW
@moonbat: “Repugs are finally catching on that they are headed to electoral Armageddon up and down the ballot” is exactly why the Wisconsin GOP is planning to try to impeach just-elected (by landslide) pro-choice Justice Protasiewicz.
Does it matter to these utterly radicalized and desperate aholes that she hasn’t even heard a case yet? That she’s written no decisions, had no ethics charge of any merit even mentioned (what she said on the campaign stump is not an ethics issue — the Wisconsin Judicial Commission dismissed complaints filed against Justice Protasiewicz over the comments she made, finding there is “no evidence of misconduct”)?
None of that matters.
What matters to the GOP is holding power, democracy and the will of voters quite directly be damned. They’re backed into a very dark corner and see only massive authoritarianism as the sole answer.
Dickeylee
@dm: Lenord Leo, head of the Federalist Society…
Rocks
@Joe Falco: I find the obligatory FU to LBJ unwarranted. He got the Civil Rights acts through a Congress that was dominated by southern white supremacists, an achievement that no one else was capable of. He also got Medicare passed, for which I thank God every day. Had it not been for the Vietnam War (much of which should be laid at Eisenhower’s door), LBJ would be remembered as one of the best presidents the United States has ever had.
KSinMA
@bbleh: This. Can’t be said enough.
Spanky
@Omnes Omnibus: Seems the equally big news is that the DA declined to indict.
WaPo
Roger Moore
@MattF:
The bigger thing is that Musk seems to have stopped hiding it. I’m sure you’re right and he’s always been an antisemite, but until recently he knew he it would hurt him if he paraded it in public. Now he seems to have decided to let his freak flag fly. I wonder how much of his interest in buying Twitter was because he wanted to cut loose and thought owning the platform would let him get away with it.
scav
They keep lowering the working age the way they’re pushing, those neonates will likely need to be professionally employed. Gotta pay off those med bills and start stashing away a nest egg for kindergarten.
Eolirin
@Betty Cracker: Jacksonville’s mayoral race was a hopeful sign at least.
ksmiami
@matt: Ahem. – something like 70,000 daycare centers are at risk of shutting down because Republicans refuse to extend their supplemental funding. GOP policies at every level are anti-woman. The gig is up.
Yarrow
@Spanky: Could mean they flipped.
Spanky
@Spanky:
So far. There’s always tomorrow.
Emily B.
The New York Times article on OB-GYNs leaving Idaho included the staggering (but not really surprising) admission from an Idaho state legislator that he had voted for an abortion ban without paying much attention to the law’s language and implications. “We never looked that close, and what exactly that bill said and how it was written and language that was in it,” he told the Times. “We did that thinking Roe v. Wade was never going to get overturned. And then when it got overturned, we said, ‘OK, now we have to take a really close look at the definitions.’”
I can’t stop being angry at the utter contempt for women displayed here. Every time I look at that quote I get mad all over again. A law that would profoundly affect people’s lives and bodies and health, and they couldn’t be bothered to think hard about “the language that was in it”?
Gift link to NYT article here
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
And again , the crazy thing is that some women want this for other women as well.
smith
@Roger Moore: And he is getting away with it, because people to whom those views are anathema (according to them, anyway) refuse to disengage from Xitter. His antisemitic rampage and pro-Russian interference in Ukraine are not in any way surprising given all the moves he’s made since buying Xitter. Those have been clearly aimed at privileging these sorts of voices and suppressing opposing ones. It is becoming, as Elmo always intended it to be, just a massive version of Truth Social. Why is everybody still there?
Fair Economist
@ksmiami: And yet somehow the media can’t talk about actual *news* like millions of families losing childcare and possibly (as a result) their jobs, because they want too talking about incredibly NON-breaking news like “Biden is old”.
Spanky
Also, per the WaPo:
“We see you, Lindsey”.
RaflW
I know we’ve talked about it before, but it is an ongoing, unfolding mess that OB-GYNs are leaving states like Idaho. Democrats need to be hitting hard on this message in these states, because women & families are at higher risk of problems, complications and loss because of this fundamentalist push to ban and even criminalize medical care choices.
Elizabelle
@Rocks: Thank you. I tire of the disparagement of LBJ too. For just those reasons.
smith
This is because they really don’t want to know the details of how women’s bodies work to produce babies. It’s really, really icky to them — if they had to think about the details of gynecology and obstetrics they’d get female cooties all over them.
scav
@Emily B.: More than that, he’s utterly confident enough to freely admit to a national journalist that he didn’t bother with the reading or understanding beforehand — apparently sees neither shame nor personal consequences arising from his actions.
If he was a short order chef, he’d just grab a bottle and add it. Draino into the milkshakes and dish soap on the hot dogs.
Roger Moore
@West of the Rockies:
It’s not just control over sex but control over their whole lives. A woman who can’t control if and when she gets pregnant has no control over her life. That lack of control is exactly what misogynists want.
Elizabelle
Fabulous news. Nancy Pelosi has Joe Biden’s, and every Democrat’s, back again. LA Times:
San Francisco values. I love it.
ksmiami
@Fair Economist: Our media is a national disgrace and leaves people less informed than if they had not watched at all.
narya
@Emily B.: Exactly. They didn’t bother to think about it carefully, because it was entirely performative. That’s what’s coming through about all of these laws–they didn’t bother to inform themselves about any actual facts, any actual risks to pregnant people, any real-life circumstances that any woman in their lives could have told them about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Rocks: The FU to LBJ is a gesture to a regular commenter here who says it every time LBJ is mentioned. This commenter got an all expenses paid trip to Southeast Asia courtesy of the US government. He has reason to say it.
ETA: The part about the the VN War is little too “Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
patrick II
@Betsy:
1“it doesn’t benefit everyone, only a special subset of people in a particular situation,
That is true of all diseases at least until we encounter at coming universal plague.
Citizen Alan
@MisterDancer: As I’ve mentioned, I literally can’t drop Twitter without jumping through a lot of hoops because my account was permanently suspended years ago, and cancelling your Twitter account is one of the things you can’t do while suspended.
Brachiator
@Emily B.:
The people who wrote these laws knew what they were doing. They just didn’t care that women might be harmed.
The worst of them think it acceptable to leave medical outcomes up to God. They don’t accept competent medical judgement.
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator:
Conservatives are the worst. But Conservative women are the worst of the worst. And I’m convinced it’s because deep down, they bitterly resent the choices they made when they were younger (or that the Patriarchy made for them) and want to ensure that no other woman can ever choose differently in order to validate their own unhappy lives.
Old School
@Spanky:
Was expecting that to be from Rudolph.
206inKY
@Betsy: Amazing and spot-on rants like this are why I’ll never stop reading balloon juice.
Citizen Alan
@No One of Consequence: I’ve never understood this argument. If “men” were the ones who carried babies to term instead of “women,” then all of the gender baggage that arises from childbirth and the disparity it necessarily imposes on both genders would simply flip. It would be the men relegated to second class status and told to stay home and take care of the kids while the women are out working, and it would be the men who would be marching for reproductive rights (and dismissed as “sluts” by the Matriarchy).
UncleEbeneezer
@Elizabelle: I think it’s important to note that Grand Juries vote on whether there is evidence that a crime occurred but not whether enough evidence exists to get a conviction. Those are two very different questions. IANAL, so open to correction from the real experts here, but my understanding is that a GJ recommending charges is never a guarantee that Prosecutors will choose to indict, and Prosecutors can have legit reasons to decide not to.
wjca
I think the 3 political hacks on the Court would never have gone with Dobbs if they realized what the political blowback would be. But they were clueless, and so blindsided their entire party.
Elizabelle
@UncleEbeneezer: That makes sense.
And, nothing to stop anyone from continuing to investigate, and bring further evidence to another grand jury.
One has to prioritize. More may come out in the upcoming trials.
JoyceH
Originally, the right insisted on the term pro-life because it sounded better than anti-abortion. Now it just means anti-abortion with all the horrors that brings with it. Anyone else remember when the right spent years calling Obama a socialist? Instead of bringing down Obama’s approval, it increased the approval of socialism.
smith
@wjca: I think the political hacks on SCOTUS were fulfilling their side of the quid pro quo that got them seated. It’s the political hacks on the other side of that deal who somehow failed to anticipate how it would blow up in their faces. Remember that even the top actors in GQP world live in the same constructed “reality” that the Goobers who vote for them do.
Roger Moore
@Rocks:
If it weren’t for the Great Depression (much of which should be laid at Coolidge’s door), Hoover would be remembered as one of the best presidents the United States has ever had.
The Lodger
@Scout211: This is a federal issue. Why doesn’t the Army Corps of Engineers just tear Abbott’s floating toy out of the Goddamn Rio Grande and leave it on state property?
Roger Moore
@smith:
Don’t ask me. I said I was going to delete my account if he restored the banned Nazis. He did, and I did.
KSinMA
@Elizabelle:
But she’s OLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
wjca
Certainly, at least until Carter, he was by far the best ex-president the United States has ever had.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: It’s not quite the same situation–Herbert Hoover’s greatest accomplishments were not as President. As wjca suggested, Jimmy Carter might be a better comparison for him.
Whereas LBJ as President actually shepherded an enormous expansion of the social safety net and the passage of civil-rights laws with teeth. The Vietnam War was a gigantic stain on what otherwise would have been an extraordinary legacy.
RevRick
What’s the word for when the state can hijack a woman’s body and life, for any reason, stripping her of her personhood, her very standing as a human being?
Could it be: tyranny ?
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I think Johnson would have pulled US forces out of Vietnam if Republican Congressional leaders had backed him and stood next to him when he announced it. But they were willing to make political hay out of what they and other American elites knew by 1966 was a lost cause.
Mr. Longform
I’m late to the game here, but I just want to point out that this collection of words
“because if there’s one thing all American women are demanding with a single voice, it’s additional and more specific mansplaining from Josh Fucking Hawley!”
is my favorite bit of BJ writing ever.
Roger Moore
@wjca:
Supporters of William Howard Taft would undoubtedly dispute that. Even if you want to rate Hoover higher, I think “by far” is stretching things.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin: And he had beagles! Little Beagle Johnson.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
My point wasn’t really that Hoover would have been a great president if not for the Great Depression, but that Vietnam is just way too large an issue to set aside.
Frankensteinbeck
@Alison Rose:
Yes, and no. They will happily make it legally impossible for their mistresses to get either, then be confused when their mistresses get pregnant. They don’t know or care about the effects of their policies, and are always surprised when the leopard eats their face.
@wjca:
I think they were picked by McConnell specifically to overturn Roe vs Wade. That was their assignment, why they were hired. Trump thought they were being hired to protect him. No. The dumb fuck was just picking from a list pre-curated by the Federalist Society and McConnell. He was McConnell’s patsy. There are probably a few more poison pills baked into their hiring, but Roe was the most explicit.
McConnell is an evil, evil man. People wildly underestimate his extremism because he lies through his teeth and sounds educated doing it.
...now I try to be amused
@Citizen Alan:
I think that’s at the root of conservatives’ hostility to personal freedom in general — the freedom to be childless, unmarried, gay, trans, whatever. What a self-made hell it must be to feel that what you secretly want for yourself is sinful and forbidden, so you live someone else’s life instead of your own
In another discussion someone remarked that conservative men seem to fear irrelevance more than death. I replied that it makes sense to me. If you live an other-directed life and conclude it wasn’t worth the sacrifices you made, then you have lived for nothing.
Kay
@Emily B.:
Agree. I hope there are a lot of women like us, Emily.
GOP lawmakers are one thing but don’t forget that this entire movement put no thought into the repercussions on womens health. The lawmakers aren’t writing these laws- they’re coming entire out of professional anti abortion lobbying groups – well compensated Right wing lawyers are drafting them.
They just didn’t give a shit. The work is sloppy junk because women don’t matter at all in anti abortion circles.
There’s this gross idea on the religious Right that the role of women is to sacrifice. You hear it at their rallies. They celebrate women who die in childbirth. What they’re doing is sacrificing OTHER WOMEN for their religion. You’re getting them into heaven when they sacrifice you for “the baby”.
The women don’t exist in these statutes because “women” are ranked way, way below a fetus on the religious Right. Betty’s right- they put more thought and work into a statute regulating livestock than these abortion laws. They’re garbage.
Kay
@Emily B.:
I cannot imagine the absolute arrogance of these Right wing lawyers.
“I will decide when the women requires medical intervention!”
Three years of law school and they’re also MD’s now? My. Ass.
Who raises these fucking people? GIANT egos. I blame the parents.
Elizabelle
@Frankensteinbeck: Alito is on the ballot this year. So is Clarence “Corruption by the RVful” Thomas, and the other rightwing hacks.
But it seems to be Alito that has really sunk their warship.
Brachiator
@Kay:
Also, some religious hardliners push the idea that babies are innocent, while women and men are tainted by original sin. So, the baby’s life is worth more than that if the woman, who should be happy to sacrifice her life for her child.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
It gets back to Wilhoit’s Law of conservatism. They think they’re part of the in group who the law protects but does not constrain. They may even be right about that. Of course one day they may suddenly discover they’re part of the group the law constrains but does not protect. This is the basic problem with that approach to the law. If the law doesn’t apply equally to everyone, you can never be sure you’ll stay in the favored group. The only way to guarantee you’ll stay a first class citizen is to have only one class of citizen.
wjca
Fair point. I was (unconsciously) thinking “out of government.” Certainly Chief Justice Taft did some good work extending Constitutional protections to state laws.
And I confess to some reservations about anybody appointed to anything by Harding.**
** Until TIFG, the clear leader for “most corrupt President”
kmax
Have not read all the comments yet, so my apologies if this has been stated above.
Pro-baby is such a poor slogan for the Repubs since their policies switch from pro-life to pro-death once the baby is born.
wjca
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’ve got no brief for McConnell. But I see him as far motivated by power than by ideology. So I think he hired them to protect and promote his party, and thus his power. Ideologocal impacts were a bonus, to be sure. But not, IMHO, the main driver.
Chief Oshkosh
@matt:
That is exactly right. But the rightwing assholes as so fucking stupid they never understood that.
Westyny
@Paul in KY: can’t have a double plural. So, The Fanatical Dingleberry Boys! Opening for The Aristocrats!
Odie Hugh Manatee
Someone needs to convince them to go with “pro-birth” because that describes them quite well. Anything to make that woman have that baby. Because once the baby is here then they revert to “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!” and offer little to no assistance to new parents. You can’t call yourself pro-life if you agree that that same child can later be put to death for breaking a law.
Pro-birth says it all.
hotshoe
@Kay:
And even if some do qualify for exceptions, how does that make the reality of living in Gilead any better?
How does a 17-year-old incest victim getting an “incest exception” abortion make it any better for the 21-year-old woman — who enjoyed sex with her lawful husband — who already has two kids in diapers and is secretly determined to kill herself if she can’t get an abortion this time? She won’t qualify for “save the life of the mother” exception.
Of course the Dominionists who made all abortions illegal don’t think that’s unfair; the cruelty is the point. A woman should die, her existing family should be left bereft, life is meant to be miserable unless you are one of god’s elect.
I understand why Rs are trying to gaslight voters about the horrifying and completely-predictable results of anti-woman legislation. What I don’t understand is why anyone else believes a word those inhumane bastards say.
Chris T.
@Betsy:
Unlike humans, Republicans are hatched from eggs, like reptiles.
More seriously, if they were “pro-baby”, wouldn’t they be for things that directly benefit babies? But they’re not.
Kent
McConnell always struck me as much more about promoting the power and wealth of the business elite and promoting an antiregulatory agenda so they can consolidate more power and wealth. So a Koch Republican, not a MAGA Christian Nationalist Republican. Look who his is married to. An heiress from a Chinese shipping conglomerate.
He is very much evil in his own way. But I doubt he gives the slightest shit about abortion. He wants conservative judges so they can dismantle the regulatory state, kill environmental regulations, enable the fossil fuel industry, etc. And, of course, perpetuate Republican power through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and all of that.
Elizabelle
@Kent: Yeah. I suspect McConnell was personally horrified by the Alito leak re Dobbs. “No you fucker. You don’t want to actually catch the car! You just want to threaten it.”
I think abortion politics was the way he and Leo got these oligarch/plutocrat/corporation-protecting stooges through.
Kent
@Elizabelle: Exactly. I suspect he cares much more about say…diminishing the power of unions and enabling his corporate masters than anything to do with abortion, school prayer, LGBT rights, etc. He isn’t a culture warrior.
Ruckus
@Betsy:
I mean, if you TRIED to think of another situation that would apply to more people via health coverage, what exactly would that be?!
Are you trying to bring actual sense into this? I mean really, you want to live in the REAL world? Instead of that make believe place that conservative fucksticks do?
Ruckus
@MisterDancer:
I haven’t closed my twit account – yet. I used to go on several times a day for around 2 hrs total a day. But I no longer post, other to respond to someone I’ve followed for years. And I rarely go on more than a couple times a week for maybe a total of 15 minutes. And every time I do the first thought is “How do I delete my account?” The current owner has turned it into a far deeper cesspool than it was. Such a nice man – NOT.
wjca
I would say that McConnell was (and is) about promoting the power and wealth of McConnell. Whatever he does for the business elite, or anybody else, is a means to an end.
Ksmiami
@Odie Hugh Manatee: “pro- forced birth” is more accurate and devastating.
Mike G
If there’s a massive backlash brewing over Dobbs, why didn’t Dems smash the House and Senate elections in 2022?
Ryan
@Mike G: But they did. They lost only a few seats in the House during a redistricting year, and they won a seat in the Senate. Compare to Obama in 2010. Lost something like 65 House seats? Don’t compare us to the almighty, compare us to the alternative.
Ryan
I can’t wait to see how they see these anti-Interstate bills, where wimmens can freely travel across state lines without harassment.
Betsy
@Ksmiami: Yes, because the moment their agenda includes forcing certain women to have abortions, they’ll be on that like a hen on a June bug.
This is about eliminating the right to privacy and self-determination, not about “life”.
Remember: Dobbs didn’t find that life begins at conception. It found that the right to control your own pregnancy isn’t protected by the constitution.
Under that principle, the same government that can prevent you from having an abortion, can also make you have one you don’t want.