A shoo-in for the title of most prolific liar in American history, Donald Trump has said a couple of things that are true and relevant to the upcoming election. The first true statement was that he made Ron DeSantis (unstated proviso: Trump can unmake him too). The second was that Republicans “are getting killed” on abortion.
Whether by Trump’s tiny orange hand or not, the DeSantis candidacy is looking like a fart in a whirlwind, which is a good thing for the republic, if not for Republicans. But item #2, the abortion rights issue, won’t dissipate like a fart in the shape of a Florida governor. As the Virginia governor’s recent fleecy faceplant makes clear, there are no magic words or outerwear items that will defang the reproductive rights issue. But Republicans are still looking for one weird trick.
Liz Mair, a GOP strategist who worked on the fart-in-a-whirlwind campaigns of Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry, proposed a way Republicans can escape the reproductive rights morass in a guest essay in The New York Times. Here’s a gift link, though I cannot recommend an essay so poorly reasoned, deliberately deceptive and willfully blind to reality.
I call your attention to it because the level of denial in Mair’s piece is almost comical. Her premise is that redefining the meaning of “pro-life” will do the trick, as if decades of red-faced “pro-life” fanatics screaming BABY KILLER and a year-plus of post-Roe “pro-life” legislation that substitutes religious dogma for modern healthcare standards hasn’t etched the correct definition firmly in our minds.
Depending on which pro-lifer you talk to, “pro-life” could mean believing Roe was incorrectly decided and that under a correct interpretation of the Constitution, states were free to enact anti-abortion laws — though many states would not, and that was fine.
Or it could mean believing this but also being determined and committed to working to pass laws in every state banning abortion, possibly with multiple exceptions. Or it could mean believing Roe was wrongly decided and that federal law or the Constitution (or both) should ban abortions, perhaps with exceptions.
Or it could mean being pro-Roe but at the same time anti-abortion, or it could mean strictly opposing abortion in the second and third trimesters, with only cursory concern about Roe.
“Depending on which recovering alcoholic you talk to, ‘recovery’ could mean guzzling a handle of Tito’s every day…” I mean come on! What a steaming load of horseshit! It’s not surprising because forced-birthers lie about everything, all the time, but the massive chutzpah on display here from Mair, who is allegedly one of the “reasonable” Republicans, is something to see.
Understanding that “pro-life” can mean a variety of things should inform the way Republicans approach this issue. Right now, when many voters — again, even Republican voters — hear the term “pro-life,” their brains process it as denoting an extreme position. Maybe they think of states like Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma, which have imposed near-complete abortion bans.
Gosh, maybe “their brains process it” as an extreme position because voters recognize that it is an extreme fucking position. And maybe voters have noticed that when Republicans are in power, they give their extreme position force of law.
Mair dishonestly highlights Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma as rural outliers when in fact 21 U.S. states controlled by Republicans either imposed draconian restrictions or in effect banned abortion after Roe fell, including populous states like Florida and Texas.
In a sign of how desperate Mair is to extricate her party from the trap it made, she turns to shitty misogynist weirdos JD Vance and Donald Fucking Trump as models of how Repubs can move forward:
This trend — in which “pro-life” equals “extreme” — is what Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio pointed to in explaining why voters in the state resoundingly approved a ballot measure enshrining a right to abortion in the state Constitution. As he put it, the pro-life side got clobbered because voters disliked both options, but they particularly disliked the state’s pro-life so-called heartbeat bill, which made abortion illegal beyond about six weeks of pregnancy, and voted to keep some forms of abortion legal.
As Mr. Vance posted on social media, “We have to recognize how much voters mistrust us (meaning elected Republicans) on this issue.”
Well, he’s right that voters mistrust Republicans but he’s wrong about why. By huge margins, Americans reject abortion bans. They mistrust Republicans because Republicans brazenly lie about their intent on abortion all the time.
The “pro-life” movement’s aim is to abolish reproductive rights, as movement figures openly proclaim to supporters, and then they tell bald-faced lies to gain the power to do so, as the Republicans on the Supreme Court did when they called Roe “settled law” as nominees and then overturned it.
Like the robed liars in the highest court in the land, Republicans like Mair, Vance and Trump are only advocating a temporary ceasefire on abortion so they can regroup and think up new lies. Mair comes close to admitting it here:
But the party can triage. Focus first on a broadly winning position, which is banning later abortions. And at least for a few years, drop the legislating, especially where it gets into Ohio-like terrain. That is what the pro-life movement will be left with having to do anyway. If the Trump-Vance scenario comes to pass, the pro-life movement will be left with having to change hearts and minds to affect individual behavior based on (shifted) individual opinion rather than focusing mostly on changing laws.
It’s an absurd proposal. Republicans stopped trying to persuade people decades ago and went all-in on minoritarian rule because their policies are unpopular, including their opposition to abortion rights.
Republicans also made screaming fanatics a leg of the GOP coalition’s three-legged stool 50 years ago, so they’re stuck with them. And lying about what “pro-life” means isn’t going to fly when nearly half the states are run by fanatics who are consigning every woman of childbearing years to substandard healthcare and higher mortality rates.
I think Mair and company are just going to have to reap the whirlwind on this one. No one is buying their bullshit anymore.
Open thread.
trollhattan
Carly Fiorina campaign? Was the Demon Sheep ad her idea?
How about the fourth trimester? Do we need a platform statement about that?
brendancalling
If she’s so fucking pro-life, why doesn’t she have a bunch of kids?
I’m sorry, bvut I don’t take a pro-lifer seriously if they don’t have at least three kids. Get busy, breeding Liz; you’re 45 and time’s running out to prove your bonafides!
LOL, who am I kidding. All of these people on the right are unlikable, unlovable, and unfuckable.
Baud
That excerpt reminds me of that old “You can call me Ray…” routine.
Baud
This has never been a valid meaning of “pro-life.”
Janee
When I was carpooling a few years ago, abortion came up and one woman surprised me by saying she was pro-life. She said she could never have an abortion, not even to save her own life. She also would not make that decision for other people. To me that was the standard pro-choice position, but she did not or could not say it that way. It may have been a matter of her church’s position not allowing for pro-choice.
Of all the pro-life people I have ever met, she was the only one who would allow another woman to make her own decision. Not-rabid pro-lifers do (or did, she is dead now) exist, but they were rare as hen’s teeth even years ago.
trollhattan
@brendancalling:
There’s a self-description used by not-anti-abortion Republicans: libertarian. See also, legalized weed. But, because the Democrat is always worse, they’ll never get that vote.
Baud
@Janee:
Republicans are pro-choice because they want the right to choose what other people do.
RaflW
None of these “pro life” fucksticks is opposed to the death penalty. In fact most GOP politicians are salivating for moar executions and using means that enhance the cruelty at the time of killing.
And the Catholic Church in the US can truly spare me from their trite bullshit. I was looking for some news info on DeSantis the other day, and noticed that the Bishops in FL ‘took him to task’ with like three whole sternly worded letters on the treatment of immigrants and the death penalty last year. The wet noodle lashing must have been brutal.
What I’m saying is, the anti-abortion movement has cancelled out any meaning of the term ‘pro-life’ other than ‘pro-subjugation-of-women’, and women and their allies know it.
Alison Rose
As Governor Newsom has pointed out a thousand times, these people aren’t pro-life in any sense of the term other than “make all fetuses *cough especially white ones cough* be born”. From an email he sent last year:
Yep. And they think we’re all as stupid as they are and will be tricked if they just do some word-magic. FOH.
Old School
Women aren’t over Dobbs yet? Come on, it’s been almost a year and a half now.
Alison Rose
@Janee:
My sympathies. I cannot imagine a worse time for abortion to come up in mixed company.
bbleh
Look, I don’t see why you’re being so unreasonable. Just because appropriate and in some cases literally lifesaving medical care can be and is being denied to women by doctors and pharmacists either because of a justifiable fear of persecution by politically ambitious prosecutors using sometimes deliberately ambiguous laws or simply on the basis of personal whim doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all stop and consider carefully what might be a plausible, if wholly unsupported by evidence, interpretation of what some people who support some aspect of these laws might be thinking.
I mean, good heavens, what if we’re not being fair to the “pro-lifers”? What if all these women actually get all this healthcare? Then where will we be?!
Baud
@Old School:
Bygones!
Baud
@Alison Rose:
Maybe during an orgy.
Ken
Oh shoot. I was hoping she was going to hold them up as a demonstration of how the GOP’s meaning of “pro-life” encompasses even men who have paid for multiple abortions, and provide the receipts. See? Inclusive!
Ruckus
Betty – I am a old fart male, who has believed for all my adult life that women are the only humans that should be allowed to make a decision about birthing and abortion. Woman are the half of humanity that develop any new humans, give birth to them, often nourish them as infants, and often have to care for them if/when the adult partnership ends. I as a male can cause birth, and I can be a responsible participant in the care and wellbeing of new humans but the other side of humanity has far more involvement in the entire process.
My point is that while I may be a participant in this process, the principal participant is the woman (and the child). That does not excuse any concept of irresponsibility in the process, but it does, in my mind mean that while I might have an agreed upon participation, the major concept of this entire process lies with the woman and that no man should stand in the way of a woman’s decision not to have children, to control their body to prevent child birth, or to end the process if all else fails to prevent something that a particular woman does not want to participate in. If a woman wants to involve a man/partner in the process that is HER decision, not anyone else’s, including him.
I’d bet this concept is not the majority view but if a woman does not want to give birth that should be her decision and no one else’s unless she wants and agrees with the participation of another person.
Alison Rose
@Baud: But that would be wise. “Hey, before we get down to business and potentially create half a dozen pregnancies, let’s figure out how we wanna handle that possible scenario.” Although I guess if you have conflicting opinions, that might put a damper on things.
Baud
@Alison Rose:
I said during, not before.
MattF
@Old School: You get that undertone of irritation in Mair’s piece— “those libtards are still not doing what we tell them to do…”.
satby
Great post Betty, thanks! And while we my ake sure they don’t redefine “pro-life” we need to remind people that there’s a large number of them, some sitting on the Supreme Court, who also want birth control and the right to privacy curtailed too.
gvg
@Janee: That is a Pro choice position not “Pro Life”. If she meant it, she would be voting for prochoice candidates because they would be the only ones who matched her position. Example Nancy Peloisi or Joe Biden who do not choose abortion for themselves but allow others to do what they need to. There have been several politicians who held those positions. I think there were some republicans years and years ago.
matt
Mair’s wishcasting is nice or whatever, but she’d have to negotiate a different position on the issue with the members of her party for that to be anything more than a dream.
Anoniminous
Too early to call total victory but it sure looks like Abortion is another battle in the Cultural War Conservatives have lost.
Alison Rose
@Baud: Maybe this could be the new Democratic pushback messaging. “Anti-choicers are cockblockers!”
RaflW
That Liz Mair piece listing all the options that appear to include exceptions is such facile, easily pierced crapola. We know the GOP is going for no exceptions. Because where that can been introduced, it’s been bandied about. Or even implemented.
And women are already having horrible outcomes or even dying in states with nominal 6-week time limits and with nominal exceptions, because doctors are frightened that the laws granting these narow paths have trapdoors and serious penalties.
The level if disingenuousness suggests that people like Mair really think their fellow readers are stupid. Which might work on Fox or OAN, but not where she chose to be published.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Republicans are pro-choice because they want the right to choose what other people do.
The part in red is their entire concept of government.
chopper
But the party can triage. Focus first on a broadly winning position, which is
banning later abortionsgoing back to roeRaflW
Oh, and “the pro-life side got clobbered because voters disliked both options” is such spectacular head-in-sand horsepucky. Or willful obfucsation.
Mair cannot or will not accept that voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of abortion access because they simply wanted … abortion access. Likewise Kansas. And so on.
craigie
@Baud: This, very much this.
Baud
@Alison Rose:
One of the nice things about Biden running for reelection is that we can put off having to choose from a great group of candidates for four years.
Alison Rose
@Baud: 2028 will be interesting. If the country still exists.
gvg
@RaflW: The catholic church may hold that the 2 things are both alike and many other people too, especially when punching each other in this fight but honestly I don’t think everyone can see the equivalency. infants who have not done anything compared to adults which if system worked the way it should are guilty of murder. Just not the same. Murder is wrong.
I have come round to being against it because we aren’t being fair or careful and I don’t see how to fix that reliably. Executing the innocent is wrong and evidence is it’s not deterring and life is at least s effective. I just don’t see the issues as related. Anti abortion is about making me a semi slave chattel as women were in the past and not about babies at all (that is a mask or distraction they use). They can just fuck off. I know I am equal. I will not be distracted by their opinions.
Old Man Shadow
Yes, by all means, I want you to go and explain to America why a couple who wanted a child who got the worst news of their lives from their doctor about how their desired little baby has a major and fatal defect that will result in a stillborn or brief and painful existence why the woman must endure major physical and even more psychological trauma and force this brief and painful existence on a little baby they love instead of humanely sparing both mother and child (and spouse) further grief because your idea of Jesus has a sad over abortion, but not apparently over handing out fatal birth defects to their child.
Go ahead and scream loudly about how this mother is a “slut” or “whore”.
That’ll really win hearts and minds.
p.a.
This is of a piece with conservative “Christians” wondering why their numbers are down. (And home-schooling in an attempt to exert mind control.)
RaflW
As has also been discussed here but bears repeating, the GOP also going after both youth and adult gender affirming health care now appears to connect in voters minds. Lots of people might be personally uncertain about how they feel about trans folks (and are getting a ton of negative messaging to try to budge that in bad ways), but at least a plurality of those uncertain people get that the GOP is parachuting into the center of patient-doctor and patient-family and patient-family-doctor relationships.
It’s all about control of things Republicans don’t like. It is about inserting the most intrusive politics into very personal health care.
In an earlier thread today someone linked to Rick Wilson. I think he’s still mostly a crap person because he supported a lot of the very shitty precursor candidates to the current toxic GOP crop. But he’s at least, maybe, trying to adjust course for his fellow conservatives. This part is naming a wing of the GOP that has mostly been chopped off by the remaining MAGA core, or threatened into silence: “I’m a profound believer in personal liberty, writ large and small. I do not give a rat’s ass who you sleep with, what you do in your bedroom, or what makes you aroused, as long it’s not kids, pets, or non-consensual.”
We still see a lot of Republicans yelling the word “liberty” but it is not a term with any detectable meaning on that side any more. Virtually no one will stake out a position like Wilson’s.
Ksmiami
@Baud: I say this without due respect, in the most emphatic way possible- FUCK HER and FUCK THE GOP. They cannot be trusted with anything; esp not with something as consequential as maternal health and women’s rights to bodily autonomy. They made their bed, now they can fucking die in it.
JaySinWA
@Alison Rose: I’m not sure how many people would object to having cockblockers, considering how many see themselves as the one scoring.
“You’ve got to be a football hero” lyrics might be aspirational rather than a lament.
Nettoyeur
Rich election consultants, esp Republicans, don’t actually give a shit about the content of policies or how tgey affect real people, they only care about getting paid to win elections. They are simply technicians. For that matter, most GOP politicians are now the same (see Trump cult).
Ksmiami
@brendancalling: totally.
teezyskeezy
I dunno, if I’m going to be decapitated *or* hanged, and I find out the guillotine is broken, I’m not sure I’m measurably in a better place. I guess Trump is somewhat stupider than DeSantis, so maybe a less competent fascist, but he’s also got the whole Project 2025 backing him this time to hold his hand, and he’s more motivated for revenge. I feel like we are screwed either way.
Dan B
@Alison Rose: Pro-Life = wedded to PURITY!
There are a host of theories about the source abd strength of this concept from punitive toilet training to pseudo religious psycho indoctrination, and many other desperate needs for control. It’s no wonder that evangelicals gravitate to forgiveness for their sins. They are so out of knowing how to navigate life. They fall into unwanted pregnancy, drug addiction, financial trouble, etc. They are desperate for simple and rigid guidelines plus forgiveness when they inevitably fall from grace. It’s difficult to forgive them when they blame so many people who would like to quietly lead their lives without condemnation. I’m always amazed that right wingers claim that uppity women, racial and national minorities, and LGBTQ will destroy civilization. They rarely (never?) look inward or at vulture capitalists.
Soprano2
I didn’t read the article because I don’t need to, but I looked at the comments, and boy are they dragging her all over the internet. One I especially liked pointed out that what she wants is to go back to how it was before Dobbs, even though Republicans all say Roe was wrongly decided! I didn’t find one comment that gave her any credit at all for anything. It’s good that so many people can see right through the disingenuous crap she’s spewing. They’ve already told us they want a nationwide total ban, and I believe them because it’s what they’ve been saying to each other for decades.
Baud
@Soprano2:
“You can trust us because we don’t think we can get away with greater restrictions right now” isn’t the comforting message they think it is.
Jeffro
And conversely, when Democrats are in power, they do not force everyone to have abortions, use birth control, or be gay. They just let people live their lives, which is of course completely unacceptable to Republicans.
Miss Bianca
I hope so, I sure fucking hope so. We tried to warn people, 30 years ago, at Planned Parenthood about what was going to happen if we gave the anti-abortion forces an inch, knowing they were going to take the whole nine yards:
“How would you like having the police investigate your miscarriage?” was on our posters *30 fucking years ago.* And for the most part, America yawned and had another beer, or rolled over and went to sleep, first telling us not to get so hysterical, it couldn’t possibly ever come to that.
So, first that hypocritical fucker Henry Hyde went for “no Federal money for abortions”, and people said, “Yeah, we’ll let them get away with that.” Then it was, “no abortions for minors without parental consent,” and people went, “yeah, we’ll let them get away with that.” Then it was “partial birth abortion bans”, and people went, “yeah, we’ll let them get away with that.” And on and on and on, every step a link in the chain that was going to bind child-bearing women to gestation slavery, until they finally got what they wanted – the Roe overturn and THEN America put down the beer and the bong and woke up and went, “WHAAAAT?!”
Well, okay. Better late then never. Stay woke on the subject of abortion, America!
ETA: Righteous rant btw, BC. Should be published as an op-ed in the NYT. HA! Sometimes I just kill me.
Anyway
@Jeffro:
but the pronouns!!!
/s
Baud
@Jeffro:
@Anyway:
And gas stoves!
teezyskeezy
@Miss Bianca:
Some things never change….
Jeffro
I love the end of Mair’s piece! You can almost hear the pleas for the GOP to go back to wink-and-a-nod “pro-life-ism” and quit getting killed on this issue:
scav
And there we see a strategist yearning for the past golden days when “pro-life” was a vaguely interpreted magic phrase to trot out every two years to rally the troops and then retire to the back back burner while getting to the important work of disemboweling regulations on corporations. And, when faced with the task of dealing with republicans’ reputation of untrustworthiness? Play wordgames, add ambiguity to definitions and await “(shifted) individual opinion” that will come magically to one weird trick you! Hey Presto! Billable Hours!
Miss Bianca
@Ksmiami: And FTFNYT, for publishing that rank, disingenuous tripe.
Jeffro
@Anyway:
@Baud:
but do we force people to use pronouns, or buy gas stoves? (Or assign pronouns to their gas stoves?) No, no we do not.
(Fox News viewers, of course, live in an alternate reality where President Biden has already banned burgers and is just about to ration us to 2 beers – Bud Lights, no doubt – per week.)
Greg
Dem candidates need to hammer their opponents on abortion. Make their opponent either forcefully demand harsh anti-abortion laws or make them reject those kinds of laws. By forcing an opponent to chose a side will split their support. There are GOP voters that are not militantly pro-life, but if the candidate is forced to campaign on “ban all abortions”, they will have a difficulty in voting for that candidate. If the candidate lands on a more pro-choice position, then the rabid pro-lifers will be less likely to vote for that candidate. And with the gerrymandered districts that are set for close(ish) results, a few points can mean the difference between status quo and a blue wave.
Brit in Chicago
@trollhattan: I think I see the compromise/consensus position that Haley and others have been calling for. I’m a pretty much absolute pro-choice guy (and as a guy I don’t really think it’s my business, except to offer my support as needed). But I might be able to get behind a ban on fourth-trimester abortions, if the whole country would just stop trying to legislate about the others. Any chance of it, d’you think?
zhena gogolia
@Jeffro: You have to get with the program. We send jackbooted thugs to rip people’s gas stoves out of the walls.
zhena gogolia
@Brit in Chicago: Is this a joke? Fourth trimester?
Brit in Chicago
@Old School: “Women aren’t over Dobbs yet?”
I dunno. Are they still the ones who get pregnant and have babies?
Brit in Chicago
@zhena gogolia: A joke? Would I joke about a serious topic on this very serious site? (A clue: the answer begins with a “y”.)
rikyrah
My go-to about Abortion rights is Jessica Valenti. She’s always in the trenches on this subject.
She said months ago to keep out for this:
The forced birth crowd trying to change the meaning of Abortion BAN.
Because, they know abortion bans are unpopular, so they are trying to change the language around the word BAN.
Never forget…EVERY STATE that supposedly has EXCEPTIONS..
DOES.NOT.HAVE.EXCEPTIONS.
It’s not a reality.
The 15 week ‘ compromise’ is not a ‘compromise ‘, because, it would restrict Abortion in states with Abortion access…
YET..not lift the bans for those states with lower bans than 15 weeks.
The ‘compromise’ is bullshyt.
scav
@Brit in Chicago: Nevertheless a superb negotiating point that many might (surprisingly — if disappointingly to all teachers) agree to.
Harrison Wesley
@zhena gogolia: So there’s a compromise position? Abortions are legal if performed in a gas stove? Or maybe I’m misunderstanding something. Or I shouldn’t have drunk a bottle of wine for lunch.
Geminid
@Greg: Virginia Democrats did that in last month’s election. They kept punding the issue, warning people that Republicans would ban sll anortions.
In mid-October, Republicans countered with an ad campaign saying no, we support less extreme restrictions. They would rather have gone through the campaign pushing other issues and not mentioning abortion at all, but they had to stop the bleeding. Their ads probably helped Democrats.
twbrandt
Apropos, today’s WaPo has a front-page story on Hadley Duvall, whose story of being raped by her stepfather beginning when she was 5 helped Andy Beshear win election as governor of Kentucky. Worth a read. (The link is a gift link.)
Dan B
@Janee: I wonder how your carpool pro-lifer would respond if she had children. Would she feel good about leaving them without their mother? Would she prefer they be adopted, raised by grandparents or relatives, or remanded to foster care?
It seems like the focus is always on the “pure/ innocent” baby and not on existing children. Practical considerations seem abandoned to concepts of virtue based upon rigid theology.
Sad for so many children.
azlib
Pro-Life as a marketing slogan has irrevocably become defined as outlawing all abortions, period. I suppose the anti-abortion folks could try New-Pro-Life as a slogan. They would likely have the same success as Coca Cola’s disasterous introduction of New-Coke in the 1980s.
Martin
@Alison Rose: California’s maternal mortality rate is *half* that of the next best state. It’s 10x better than, I think, any confederate state – certainly 10x better than most.
And CA still has serious problems with the maternal mortality gap for women of color, despite being the best in the nation by a wide margin.
JoyceH
Did anyone else see the MSNBC two-hour documentary on the Terry Schiavo story? SO depressing! I’d forgotten a lot of the hysteria around that- and note that it wasn’t until the anti-abortion crowd got involved that it really turned nasty. That was when the ‘rumors’ about the husband abusing her were invented and the politicians got involved. Remember Frist diagnosing from the Senate floor that based on a video he watched, it was quite possible that Terry could recover? And the Senate AND House passed a bill and GWB returned early from vacation to sign it? Meanwhile, in court, an actual doctor produces an actual CT scan that shows that most of Terry’s brain had LIQUEFIED… Sheesh,
JoyceH
@azlib:
They’re changing the word ‘ban’ to ‘limit’. Makes a HUGE difference, right? And actually, an absolute ban is not their ultimate goal – if they succeed in that, they’ll just move on to banning birth control. How do we know? Because they’ve said so!
JaySinWA
@Alison Rose: If only “pro life” people were consistently advocating for pro life positions it would be easier to take their beliefs seriously. The implications of a truly pro life position would have to consider the life of the one bearing the child, and the child’s life from beginning to end (wherever they believe the beginning is).
If pro life people were advocating for quality of life issues from pregnancy to death, their potency in the Republican party would be greatly diminished as they would be dismissed as socialist/communist.
I’m not sure you could turn people who are pro pre-born life into pro whole life. Certainly there would be differences about beginning and ending of life and what is permissible and what is required, but it would be a more meaningful debate.
Ksmiami
@Miss Bianca: that rag sucks so hard they can’t even be used for toilet paper…
Matt McIrvin
@JoyceH: The Schiavo story has particular significance to this blog– it was the last straw that drove John Cole to leave the Republican Party.
coin operated
@JoyceH:
yup. One of the videos they put out they claim that Terry could visually follow a balloon as it floated around her room. It wasn’t until the autopsy came out that we discover her entire occipital lobe was slush.
Martin
Have you tried the power of prayer?
C_Scrutinizer
@JoyceH: Didn’t have to see it, I watched the circus as it happened. BTW, you might ask the Blogfather about the Terry Schiavo case on his political orientation.
JaySinWA
@JoyceH: I’m pretty sure that they aren’t waiting for total abortion bans to move on to birth control bans. They already have state restrictions and bans on birth control choice for minors in states. There is organized opposition to OTC birth control from some of the same anti-abortion groups.
Eolirin
@JaySinWA: The even bigger tell is that they’re completely uninterested in measures that would reduce miscarriages.
patrick II
I have been feeling a little sorry for the non-MAGA people of Florida. To run to the right of Trump DeSantis has sponsored and signed extreme laws that the people will have to live with long after DeSantis is gone, hopefully, only until the next election.
I think he would have had some of these laws passed anyway, but after his presidential bid announcement, he went off the chart right-wing nuts, even picking a fight with Disney, and firing attorney generals. Most of those things were a cry for the attention for voters outside of Florida, but Florida is the place that is stuck dealing with this mess.
Chip Daniels
Well, Ms. Mair, depending on how one defines “Pro-Life” Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden are “Pro-Life”.
Chip Daniels
@JoyceH:
If memory serves, the Terry Schiavo case was one of the events which moved our blog host from Republican to Democrat.
...now I try to be amused
@scav:
Life got hard for strategists like Mair when the true-believer GOP base got their own elected, but Mair can never say that out loud.
...now I try to be amused
@Matt McIrvin:
Was it Cole who wrote that in the Schaivo case the GOP sided with the in-laws from Hell? I read it somewhere, anyway, and that resonated with me.
jimmiraybob
To be fair, as nominees they probably hadn’t yet acquired the appropriate appreciation of proper 17th-18th-century English common law that the founders meant to put into the Constitution.
Brachiator
This is so tiresome. Right wing extremists got what they wanted and now dread having to face the consequences of their actions.
I haven’t had a chance to read all the comments and have to leave in a few minutes, but a quick question.
How could federal legislation help resolve the issue now that the Supreme Court has ruled that abortion can be controlled by the states?
TriassicSands
It is with great sadness that I must report that after 3/4 of a century as the America’s most prolific and outrageous liar, Trump finally had a rival, only to have him eliminated from the competition by Trump’s own party, which, no doubt, did so in order to assure that their man, their leader, their god would remain the country’s unrivaled fabulist.
Poor George Santos. He had thrown down the gauntlet making it clear that Trump would have to work harder and that his days of effortless lying would no longer be enough to keep him on top. There was no way that a party that values dishonesty and lies, the bigger the better, would allow a mere representative to usurp the crown. It’s true that virtually every word that comes out of Trump’s mouth is a lie, but Santos took the next step. Not only was every word dishonest, but somehow even his punctuation reeked of falsehood. Given his age, Santos would undoubtedly have surpassed Trump and stolen what had pre-Santos seemed to be Trump’s for as long as he could breathe and utter a syllable.
Geminid
@Martin: According to World Population Review,* California’s maternal mortality rate is 10.10 per 100,000 , best in the nation. Then come Wisconsin at 11.60 and Minnesota at 12.60. The median rate for all states is ~17.7, and Arkansas has the highest rate at 47.5 per 100,000.
* worldpopulationreview.co
WaterGirl
@twbrandt: Just read that entire story. I am left speechless.
Dan B
@Eolirin: Many woman with complicated pregnancies like ectopic pregnancies will not be able to bear children unless they can get an abortion. The pro life crowd don’t care. They are fine with crushing future joy to maintain Purity!
trollhattan
@Brit in Chicago: Now that you mention it, if Nikki and crew float “A federal 15-week ban as a reasonable alternative to the very restrictive 8-week bans” then the first Democratic counter of “Our counteroffer is a nationwide fourth trimester ban, what do you think?” might set the tone. Then a followup pitch “The best way to stop fourth-trimester abortions is strengthening the ACA.”
Alternatively, “How about never, does never work for you?”
Dan B
@trollhattan: Or: We want a woman and her physician to decide. Get government out of the way!
wjca
There’s a real opportunity here: “We will not only agree to ban 4th trimester abortons. We will even accept ‘forced birth’ (e.g. C-sections) at that point. You can get an abortion ban AND a forced birth provision — what’s not to like?”
Some of them are probably dumb enough to embrace it.
VFX Lurker
Roe interpreted existing federal law (right to privacy). Federal law overrides state law. An explicit federal law that protected a right to abortion would override state law.
That’s my off-the-cuff take on this.
Villago Delenda Est
Everything from Roe V Wade onward has been about denying women agency of any kind. That’s what this is about. The reactionaries want to exterminate The Enlightenment and the equality for all that it implies. They hate equality. They want to go back to feudalism. Fuck them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Geminid: It’s a shame that Smokey Eyes managed to survive a birth in Arkansas.
Subsole
@Miss Bianca:
Speaking of righteous rants, yours is pretty damn spot on.
Chris
DeSantis 2024 was 100% a media creation, which he just happened to be dumb enough to fall for. I still believe that even at his peak popularity (which was pathetic even then), at least half the people saying they’d vote for DeSantis were low-info voters going “DeSantis? What, is Trump not running again? Then sure, I guess DeSantis is the next best thing.”
Miss Bianca
@JoyceH: Yes…sadly, I *do* remember all that.
VFX Lurker
I used to regularly read Daily Kos. One day markos posted: John Cole has seen the light. I clicked on his link, and I was rewarded with Cole’s great writing and even greater rant about the GOP and Schiavo.
I stuck around here to read more of Cole’s wonderful writing. Sometime after that, I left Daily Kos because one of the regular writers (firedoglake, I think) tried to kill what became the Affordable Care Act in 2010. I’ve lurked here ever since.
Villago Delenda Est
Precisely. Part of the ongoing war on women’s agency, connected directly to sexual activity. If they could abolish the orgasm (ala Nineteen Eighty Four) that would be next.
frosty
I’ve been wondering how I got here. I think I had exactly the same experience, because I was a dKos reader starting around 2005 and someone somewhere must have mentioned B-J.
thruppence
The Federalist Society is really The Feudalist Society, financed and organized to ensure that nothing can get in the way of the desires of the very rich and their fiefdoms, the major corporations.
JoyceH
I do remember John Cole’s departure from the GOP. I was already reading BJ. Found the link at some lefty blog or other as a “Repúblican who is nonetheless reasonable” or words to that effect.
Chris
@Baud:
One of the things about being from Maryland is that by the time the primary gets to you, it’s pretty much been decided already, which makes that kind of thing simpler.
Yeah, it’s kind of a small frustration having to choose when the reality is that pretty much all the candidates will at the very least pursue similar policies, which are generally pretty good ones. The first primary I was eligible for was Clinton vs Obama, and I didn’t even vote, largely because as far as I was concerned there was nothing to choose. They were both clearly smart and competent people who were pushing for largely the same things, and their advantages over each other were a matter of opinion (one had less baggage than the other, but that’s because he had less experience, so it kind of cancels out).
Voted Clinton over Sanders eight years later largely because Sanders struck me as a one-trick pony, but I would’ve been pretty much fine with him too.
I think the only reason I voted Biden in 2020 was that everyone else had already dropped out by then, not that I really minded Biden even though he wasn’t my first choice.
Anybody who can rise to being a serious choice for the Democratic primary is almost certainly okay in my book. Hand me the damn ballot.
Villago Delenda Est
@thruppence: Prezactly. Which is why tumbrel rides are appropriate for all 70,000 members.
Stef
@Dan B: Some places weasel around this by defining the treatment for ectopic pregnancies as not an abortion… Or not a direct abortion vs indirect abortion… Or only considering implantations in the uterus rather than the Fallopian tube… or other variants. Life Matters: Abortion RLP 2011 | USCCB Choose compassion during complex pregnancies – U.S. Catholic (uscatholic.org)
Chris
@gvg:
There are multiple reasons why the death penalty is a bad idea, but the more I look at attempts to reform the police, the “justice” system, and the security state more generally, the more I’ve come to think that the death penalty the same way I do torture: it’s a solution in search of a problem, which grants the power to act sadistically to what are already the least trustworthy parts of any government. The lack of care or fairness are to a large extent the whole point.
CaseyL
Open thread, so I want to boost this article: After the Hit and Run.
I first heard about Restorative Justice almost 10 years ago, when I worked for a Tribal Law clinic at the UW Law School. The idea was uplifting in so many ways, but I did wonder how well Restorative Justice practices and principles could or would translate to an urban society.
This article is about exactly that: organizations that are trying hard to bring Restorative Justice to the cities. The article was written by someone who was a victim of a hit and run, so has a very personal view of how urban society deals with these crimes.
Please read and, if you care to, send it on to other people.
Sally
Is there life after birth?
Democrats: Yes
Republicans: I don’t really care, do you?
Tim C.
@frosty: Yup. Same.
Ramona
I love this essay written by an English barrister in the early aughts I think.
https://jme.bmj.com/content/27/suppl_2/ii10
I especially like this point she makes:
“Biologically, the developing fetus is somewhat like an invading organism; if it were not for a complex system of compensating mechanisms, the woman’s body would reject it in the same way as the body rejects a transplanted organ.”
ChrisSherbak
@Geminid: It’s actually a great story. CA medical folks wanted to improve maternal outcomes (after generally believing they were doing the best they could) and Did Science to figure out why. They made some procedural changes/improvements and the rates improved. https://www.npr.org/2018/07/29/632702896/to-keep-women-from-dying-in-childbirth-look-to-california