I’ve been reading Slate law and politics writers Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern for years now. They’ve chronicled the conservative-led hollowing out of the U.S. Supreme Court about as well as anyone could, in my opinion. They write about the court’s decline with a horrified detachment that is reminiscent of a steely safari guide describing a pack of braying hyenas taking down a wounded elephant.
But in their latest piece, the veteran Slate editors achieve a level of cold fury I can’t recall seeing before in their work. The article addresses the contemptuous disregard red state officials and judges are now displaying toward pregnant women:
Any woman who seeks to terminate a pregnancy is wicked, any woman who miscarries is evil, and any woman who—for reasons of failing health, circumstance, or simple bad luck—does not prove to be an adequate incubator deserves whatever she gets. Every unborn fetus is the priority over the pregnant person carrying it and must be carried to term at all costs. So goes the moral calculus of the death-panel judges who now determine how to weigh the competing interests between real, existing human life and a state’s dogmatic fixation with a fetus that, by definition, must be seraphically innocent.
One need only look at red states’ scramble to defend their draconian abortion bans to witness this perverse moral hierarchy in action. In the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, the victims of these laws are no longer hypothetical: They are flesh-and-blood women, directly and viscerally injured by the denial of basic health care, and some of them have even had the gall to fight for their rights. Republican attorneys general have responded with furious indignation, openly demeaning these women as liars, wimps, partisans, and baby killers.
If that sounds hyperbolic, read the whole thing, and you’ll find Lithwick and Stern’s fury is fully justified. They cite the hideous legal harassment of an Ohio woman who miscarried as well as corrupt Texas AG Ken Paxton and the state’s supreme court’s papal decree that blocks local emergency care access.
They point to Idaho AG Raúl Labrador’s grotesque insistence that “women forced to carry dangerous, nonviable pregnancies merely ‘disagree with the legitimate policy choices made by the Idaho legislature.’” Lithwick and Stern also call attention to a particularly egregious filing by Tennessee’s Republican AG:
(AG Jonathan T.) Skrmetti has been fighting a lawsuit filed by a group of Tennessee women denied emergency abortions under the ultranarrow medical exception to that state’s ban. The women plaintiffs suffered an appalling range of trauma, including sepsis and hemorrhaging, because they could not terminate their pregnancies. The attorney general’s response to their complaint is a scathing, shockingly personal broadside against the victims of the ban. He accused them of attempting to draw “lines about which unborn lives are worth protecting” by imposing a medical exception “of their own liking.” He mocked them for asserting that ostensibly minor conditions like “sickle cell disease” might justify an abortion. And he insisted that the lead plaintiff, Nicole Blackmon, lacks standing, because she underwent sterilization after the state forced her to carry a nonviable pregnancy and deliver a stillborn baby. The attorney general viciously suggested that, if Blackmon really wanted to fight Tennessee’s ban, she could have tried for another doomed pregnancy.
Perhaps Skrmetti deserves half credit for candor, because he did not even pretend to treat these plaintiffs like compelling moral human beings. Instead, he wrote that Tennessee may allow different standards of care for pregnant and nonpregnant women. A pregnant woman, the attorney general averred, may be refused a treatment if it “has the potential to harm unborn lives—an issue not implicated” when treating nonpregnant women. “No equal-protection rule,” he concluded, “bars lawmakers from acting on that difference to protect unborn babies.” In other words, once a woman is pregnant, she becomes a vessel for “unborn babies,” giving the state authority to cut off her access to urgently necessary health care.
Jesus. Under Tennessee’s outlier system, Skrmetti was appointed to an eight-year term as a “nonpartisan” AG by the state’s supreme court in 2022, so he’ll be crapping on Tennesseans’ rights for the better part of the next decade. Skrmetti is another Harvard Law grad, by the way. The wrap-up from Lithwick and Stern:
The mother will never be able to show that she wanted the pregnancy enough, took good enough care, made every correct predictive decision. And as such, the state will happily dismiss her interests as not only irrelevant, but self-serving, greedy, and dishonest. That it’s being said aloud in courtrooms, in pleadings, and in affidavits should not surprise anyone.
The pregnant woman has always been the fallen and the damned. Now, according to red states, it’s acceptable—necessary, even—to ensure that she knows this, from the very moment of conception until the moment she loses the power to make any choices about how she gives birth. Even if she dies, she was forever that which stood in the way of flawless, purest life.
I wish Lithwick and Stern were wrong, but it’s there in the documents, in black and white. We know about the cases they cite because those matters wound up in court, but how many women will die without challenging substandard care in the legal system? That number may be unknowable. But this we know: No matter how high the toll in women’s lives and health, it’s acceptable to red state Republican officials.
Open thread.
suzanne
They see women as the disposable property of men.
Baud
It’s a rare instance when they are being honest about what they think.
Mike in NC
Skrmetti could use a vowel or two.
rikyrah
Kay pointed out long ago, the contempt and disregard for women’s health in these Red States. Not a word she has written about them has been wrong.
And, more of the MSM needs to call it like it is.
No mamby-pamby questions like The New Yorker did in their piece about the young Hispanic woman who was killed because of the abortion ban.
Their headline was ‘ Did the Texas Abortion Law Kill This Woman?’
No..no more of that shyt.
YES, it killed her. And, YES, stop both sides this nonsense, to give any room for ambiguity about the deaths that the Forced Birth side is going to bring to women in these states.
Delk
Meanwhile, Republican governors in 15 states are now rejecting a new, federally funded summer program to give food assistance to hungry children.
Alison Rose
Pardon me for the violent musing, but I’d like to duct tape a few firecrackers to Skrmetti’s dick and let those women in TN light the fuses.
I’ll also add, in addition to everything the authors noted about those seeking abortions or going through miscarriages, that these people also think anyone in possession of a uterus who chooses not to use it for its intended purpose is a sociopath. I’ve been called such numerous times when I’ve stated I didn’t want children. In the eyes of the fetus-humpers, any cis woman who is intentionally child-free is pointless and might as well not exist.
Alison Rose
@Delk: We’ve quoted Carlin a lot around here lately, but “if you’re pre-born, you’re fine; if you’re pre-school, you’re fucked” seems truer and truer every day under the GOP.
Daoud bin Daoud
@suzanne: not just the women but the children they bear are male property. (If you can’t buy slaves, why not breed them yourself?)
wenchacha
It’s disgusting and obscene.
Both times I was pregnant, I had debilitating migraines that would last for several days at a time. I could count on a new round of them every two weeks or so.
First pregnancy, I swallowed lots of Tylenol and Tums. That was all my Dr would suggest as safe. I felt helpless.
Once my daughter was born, I developed a nasty case of postpartum. It took a long time to get help for it, back in 1989.
All I could think was: I had support, much more than lots of pregnant women had. What happens to the people who don’t have any help?
And, all in all, I had a healthy pregnancy, except from the neck up.
I loathe the anti-choicers with all my being.
Daoud bin Daoud
@Delk: Republicans love finding ways to kill people. It fulfills their lust for power.
brendancalling
I hope every single one of these bastards gets testicular, penis, ovarian, or uterine cancer and dies horribly with no medical care. It is the least they deserve.
I realize that’s not nice to say, but these people are actually and actively hurting women.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
And fewer and fewer OBs are going to be willing to train or work in states that make practicing medicine and acting in your patients best interests a possible felony. OBs are already leaving Idaho in droves, causing at least one county to stop deliveries after the only remaining hospital doing deliveries closed its OB department, due to the fact all the OBs left the hospital and the state.
In Idaho, maternity care became a casualty of its abortion ban
IN Texas the same thing is happening, sometimes after doctors have to watch and wait for days while their pregnant patients with ruptured membranes develop infections but still can not be given a D and C, because “there is still a heartbeat”
I’m not doing this anymore
What doctor wants to watch their patient die by inches or develop an infection that results in the loss of her uterus because the hospital is legally barred from performing the procedure needed to best help the patient.
This is the same reason Brittany Watts in Ohio last September went to the E/R twice with ruptured membranes and a dying fetus and waited in vain for eight hours, only to NOT be given the needed D and C because it was a Catholic hospital and also because the hospital board could not agree that they were allowed to perform a D and C.
rikyrah
From Jessica Valenti (my go-to on abortion happenings in America)
There ARE NO EXCEPTIONS in these Red States
You can’t find one.
I dare you to find the exception that was allowed an abortion.
Old Man Shadow
This will be taken to it’s logical extreme.
Women will be outlawed from taking certain medications or medical treatments if they are of child-bearing age. Or outlawed from certain professions or actions.
If a women has a miscarriage, they will dig into her life and charge her with murder if they think she did anything that contributed to it or failed to take action. Perhaps even charging a woman in an abusive relationship with manslaughter for not leaving to protect her “unborn baby”.
Because the message is clear: Men control your body. Men make decisions for you. You are not free. You are chattel. We are your masters.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah:Ultimately, the people who vote for these extremists are to blame for this state of affairs. As long as Rs don’t pay a price for their extremism at the ballot box they won’t change.
Old Man Shadow
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: And the GOP’s answer to that will be to make the ban nationwide as soon as they can.
jonas
While statewide ballot measures and amendments and such to protect choice seem to be passing handily even in red states, I have yet to see any real blowback against Republican elected officials, AGs, or judges who are really the ones responsible for this shit, nor do I sense that many of them are concerned much about it, backpedaling, trying to weasel out of their maximalist positions, etc. They’re betting the ranch on people really just not caring about women left to bleed out in the ER from an ectopic pregnancy or something. Incredible, but here we are.
rikyrah
@Delk:
The cruelty IS the point.
Baud
@jonas:
Agree. We’re not there yet.
Jeffg166
@brendancalling: We are way beyond being nice to the GQP and their feelings.
suzanne
@brendancalling:
Come sit by me, rotating tag, snarling pack of jackals, etc.
rikyrah
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Why would a Med student choose a residency in one of these states?
Especially, if they are a woman of child bearing years.
JML
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: and there was already a shortage for OB-GYNs because of how our insurance and litigation systems work, along with hospital management.
What the right-wing lunatics keep doing to women and women’s health care is beyond the pale. Good for Lithwick and Stern for firing with both barrels, just wish they had a bigger gun to shoot with…
Alison Rose
And since we’re on the topic of the desperate measures people will have to go to in order to get an abortion, including traveling out of state and staying in a hotel and paying for childcare and on and on, please consider donating to an abortion fund if you’re able to.
Mel
@Alison Rose: Same. I hate it that you and I and so many other women get subjected to these monsters’ judgment for just living our lives and wanting to make thoughtful choices about our bodies and our private lives.
I desperately wanted children but could not sustain a pregnancy, nor, later on, have provided a young child with the care and attention and level of activity that they need to be happy, bonded, and healthy.
This was due to disabling health issues, but I have been repeatedly told that I was selfish for not risking my life and a child’s happiness, monstrous for “denying” my hubby children (he told me from the start that to him, it was never, ever worth the risk to my life no matter how much we wanted children), and – hold on to your seat for this one- that my illness was my “punishment” for being an outspoken feminist. Yep. As in, “God knows what you are and so you don’t get to have any babies.”
Those assholes punish women for getting pregnant, punish women for thoughtfully choosing to be child-free, punish women for being infertile, punish women for trying to carry to term against the odds and being unable to do so safely in the end, and punish women for choosing to save their own lives or spare an unviable fetus suffering.
There is just no end to the misogyny, and their excuse that it’s “about the innocent babies” is such a crock of shit. The fetuses are just a tool and an excuse to rain down more hatred and control on women.
I worry every day for my wonderful nieces and my precious little grand-nieces.
Baud
@Mel:
Those people are ghouls.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@rikyrah: It also affects where young families are willing to move. My daughter and son-in-law when they were planning the wedding, were looking for better job opportunities and places they could afford a house. Part of the reason they decided to stay in NY state is because her first pregnancy turned high risk and because she knew my family and personal history of bad pregnancy outcomes and difficult deliveries. Most pregnancies are low risk, until they aren’t. And it can turn on a dime.
Alison Rose
@Mel: See, and I feel so badly for anyone who wants kids but is unable to have them and has to suffer through that hell. It must be absolutely devastating, and to be treated so horribly by politicians and pundits over it is disgusting. And then they will also use people like me who simply never wanted children as some sort of attack, like…as though my disinterest in having kids is some kind of cruelty toward women who want them but can’t have them? I don’t know, it’s never made any sense to me.
Kay
ooof. That lands right in my gut. I have some hope though. I helped with the Ohio amendment that guaranteed women would be allowed access to medical care. Based on my experience there I’m not the only one who gets that.
FelonyGovt
I’m currently getting my hair done. My hairdresser, a middle-aged man of Algerian descent, was just telling me about a documentary he saw on MSNBC about what pregnant women are being forced to go through in red states. He was outraged! He kept saying “I didn’t realize it was this bad”. Says he will never leave California.
randy khan
If anything, the article is understated – certainly not hyperbolic – because, as always (and not their fault at all), all they can talk about are the cases that have bubbled up to the surface. There are hundreds, more likely thousands, of women who have similar stories who don’t have access to the media or the courts, and probably some of whom can’t speak because they’ve been killed by these monstrous laws.
But it’s still an extraordinary piece. I can’t even describe how upsetting it is to me that this has happened in my lifetime. It’s one of the most important reasons we have to fight.
ColoradoGuy
They’ve shown us what they are: 400,000 dead from Covid on the day TFG slunk away from office. The GOP celebrates death, and they worship AR-15’s as its deadly avatar.
Still, a surprising proportion of the white women in those states would rather choose chattel status rather than vote for Democrats. Racism trumps everything else, even life itself.
Mel
@Alison Rose: I know. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. They throw down on us no matter what our situation. My favorite aunt and my godparents all chose to be child-free, and the shit that they had to put up with from strangers and family because of a logical personal choice was unbelievable.
columbusqueen
@Alison Rose: I’m with you there. The amount of hostility that mothers in particular exhibit towards those of us who chose not to join their ranks still stuns me after all these years. According to those bitches, we’re Satan’s own spawn for refusing our holy duty to reproduce.
lowtechcyclist
@ColoradoGuy:
Yup. And they didn’t give a damn about any of those lives.
There are eight billion already-born people on this planet, and when they are as pro-life about the eight billion as we libs are (which isn’t always very, but at least we try), I might start to take them seriously that they’re really pro-life rather than just using embryos and fetuses as cudgels to keep women in line.
I don’t think I have to worry about that happening during my lifetime, and I expect to live another two or three decades.
Hoodie
@ColoradoGuy: It’s as if they view death as validation of their cause, i.e., the deaths make the cause more righteous.
Dorothy A. Winsor
OT but I don’t know where to put this but Engoron had denied Trump’s request to deliver part of his own closing address because Trump refused to commit to following the rules Engoron laid out. Kise kept pleading for more time, probably trying to wrangle Trump.
https://bsky.app/profile/joshuajfriedman.com/post/3kinfzm4kja2gLink is to Blue Sky. I don’t know how to copy a post from there.
suzanne
On a related note, The Atlantic had an interesting piece about egg freezing and how women are turning to it because of not finding “eligible” or “suitable” male partners. This threatens the male-ownership model of pregnancy and parenting that the social conservatives are pushing here.
And totally not related at all, the Pope made some stark comments about surrogacy this week, and how it’s “evil”.
Men everywhere just really need to keep their hands, dicks, and opinions off when they aren’t wanted.
Burnspbesq
@rikyrah:
I think you’re being less than fair to The New Yorker. The headline is unnecessarily ambiguous, but the article leaves zero room for doubt about what happened. A poor, uninsured Hispanic woman died because she couldn’t terminate a high-risk pregnancy.
Judge for yourselves; there’s a link to the article in this tweet.
https://x.com/newyorker/status/1745141785767051376?s=61
TheOtherHank
Plus, as Atrios has been pointing out for a while, abortion bans really mean that uterus-havers in red states can’t really get quite a large range of health care. Any medication where part of the process is being asked if one is or might be pregnant (emphasis on might be) is going to be withheld on the grounds that it could cause a miscarriage/abortion. No chemotherapy for you.
Alison Rose
@columbusqueen: Their inability to understand that not everyone wants what they want is so immature.
Also, like…if everyone on the planet who had a uterus used it, there’d be like 50 billion people. Fuck that.
Alison Rose
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Aw man…TBH I was a little looking forward to it.
catclub
I am on his side. It is abusive of disadvantaged women.
Bill Arnold
@Burnspbesq:
Still a bad headline, though:
Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Alison Rose:
I’ll provide a lifetime supply of firecrackers. Or is that a dicktime?
catclub
I would blame GOP voters as being responsible for the existence of those GOP officials.
catclub
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: dicklifetime.
very short when surrounded by firecrackers.
TBone
I’m still in the middle of reading all of this. I hope hubby’s blood pressure machine batteries are charged. I have found one thing to say that shuts these cretins the fuck up.
Ejaculation is responsible for 100% of abortions.
Old School
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Clicking through, it was closing argument only. No new evidence, no testifying, no irrelevant matters, no campaign speech, no impugning judge or staff.
Kise also wanted to postpone until January 29th because Melania’s mother died.
SiubhanDuinne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Apparently Melania’s mother died yesterday, and because Donald was so very close to his mother in law, and needs time to pay his proper respects, he’s asked for a postponement to January 29th.
AlaskaReader
Those who claim they are ‘pro=life’,
…are only referring to their own life, …no one else’s.
rikyrah
@suzanne:
Women have standards. How dare they! (remember that WaPo article from a few weeks ago about the hard times for male Trump supporters trying to date, and that the solution was for women to suck it up and throw away their standards of not dating male Trump supporters).
Women have decided not to go into marriage to become single mothers who are married.
Being a mother is hard. I respect those who are doing it.
I never could go into parenthood, planning to be a single parent.
And now, I realize how many married women are actually single parents. That was a punch.
Alison Rose
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m sure Melania is very sad. Or she will be, as soon as she watches some acting TikToks about “how to exhibit sadness on stage”.
Betty Cracker
@Old School: Melania’s mother was Trump’s age. He’s probably rocked by the implications for his own mortality.
Tony G
One of the implications of this forced-birth ideology is that every one of the millions of women who have miscarriages every year should be considered a possible murderer (and probably detained for that reason) until the state government is able to determine that the “spontaneous abortion” is not, in fact, a deliberate abortion. States will have to train and hire more police and build more jails and prisons in order to pursue their “pro-life” agenda.
Jeffro
OT but I cannot quit watching clips of Raskin, Crockett, and Moskowitz utterly SCHOOLING their GOP counterparts on the Oversight Committee.
I’m serious. It’s like Super Bowl highlights from the time your favorite team played and won. =)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@jonas:
I would say the VA legislature flipping could be an example. We may just not be at the point where enough voters connect the dots
Captain C
@Old School:
@SiubhanDuinne:
Is it bad that the first thing I thought was, “which golf course will they bury her at?”
Captain C
@Alison Rose: It’s easy. She just needs to pretend she has to cohabitate with TFG the rest of her life, no matter what. That will ensure the proper outer demeanor for this occasion.
suzanne
@catclub: I think, under capitalism, all work is exploitative of disadvantaged people. I also think it’s not any government’s business what women do with their bodies.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@ColoradoGuy: Yeah, I just re-read the Idaho article and there’s a bit near the end about how some women who ended up being affected by the new abortion ban chasing all the OBs out of the county where shocked(!) shocked(!) I tell you that their political choices ended up having adverse affects on them….and now they have to drive 90 miles to Spokane to see an OB or deliver at home or in a birth center with a midwife. Not that everyone in Idaho adversely affected, voted for the Republican assholes, but a lot of them did.
wjca
I’m waiting for the first red state legislature to modify their anti-abortion law so that whether an abortion is allowed depends on the gender of the fetus. And don’t tell me it won’t happen — predicting the direction insanity will take has proven impossible.
SiubhanDuinne
@Alison Rose:
I probably shouldn’t have laughed at your comment quite as enthusiastically as I did.
SiubhanDuinne
@Captain C:
Good question. TIFG already got the tax write-off for Bedminster when he buried Ivana there, so, I dunno, maybe Doral this time around?
cain
@SiubhanDuinne: Will he also later claim that some dog ate his evidence?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@suzanne:
Maybe I asked you this before, if I did I apologize, but do you think generative AI models and automation could have the potential to disrupt the patterns the article you quote discusses by eliminating or at least reducing the numbers of several kinds of college-educated office jobs in the near future, say in 10-15 years? Obviously, I don’t think this would be a good outcome for anybody
cmorenc
@Alison Rose:
A crucial upcoming legal issue is to what extent officials in states with strict statutory prohibitions of in-state abortions will be able to successfully criminalize travel by pregnant women to an abortion-legal state. There is a longstanding, well-established set of SCOTUS cases confirming a US citizen’s right to travel interstate, precisely against state laws attempting to restrict their interstate movement. Of course, SCOTUS precedent set between the New Deal and roughly 2000 are treated by the current RW SCOTUS with little more respect than toilet paper, so it’s possible they will invent a “compelling state interest” of anti-abortion states in the life of the fetus justifying laws criminalizing exit by pregnant women who return un-pregnant.
TBone
@Alison Rose: sent out the Xmas card to the rumpy neighbors (the ones with the Hitler Youth kid) “A donation to Planned Parenthood has been made in your name.” It makes donating extra fun!
SiubhanDuinne
@cain:
Yes. The only question is which dog — Major or Commander?
Barbara
@catclub: Is surrogacy really more exploitive of women than many other occupations? Would it not be possible to require protections that lessen the burden? Shouldn’t women be able to decide for themselves whether surrogacy is unduly burdensome?
I am not arguing in favor of surrogacy but I am struck, always, at how patronizing people become towards adult women as soon as they engage in that person’s own personally disfavored form of sexual or reproductive action
ETA: The answer may be different when people travel to other countries, but even there, isn’t the overall issue whether women are adequately protected from the inherent risks of serving as a surrogate?
Alison Rose
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s Balloon Juice. Of course you should have :P
Alison Rose
@cmorenc: Yep, it’s already happening. The idea that they’re telling people “you aren’t allowed to go somewhere because you’re pregnant and you might get an abortion while you’re there” is just…terrifying.
Betty Cracker
Regarding surrogacy, I’ve heard of cases where family members and friends were surrogates for people who couldn’t otherwise give birth. Is that “evil” too? Pretty broad brush there, Frankie.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Alison Rose:
A lot more men need to wake the fuck up. I couldn’t imagine being a husband, boyfriend, friend, etc of a pregnant person and not be pissed off about this intrusion into the personal life and violation of rights of somebody I care about. Literally putting their life at risk for their fucked up ideology.
And I think what’s also terrifying is, as many commenters and the post talk about, is how conservatives have only doubled down despite the political backlash. They are completely incapable of moderating or changing course
geg6
@FelonyGovt:
ABC had a Diane Sawyer special on exactly that Friday night. I’ve never wanted kids but I was in tears by the end of it.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I’m no expert but it seems like a thing where there can be abuse and exploitation, but that doesn’t mean there always is.
TBone
One of the crown jewels is Texas’s bounty hunting law.
Ksmiami
@FelonyGovt: even Islam is more liberal on abortion than these asshat fundie Christianists
catclub
@Captain C: Is the two weeks delay they want in the pre-trial preparations the time it will take Trump to dig a six foot deep hole?
catclub
@suzanne: I doubt that Pope Francis thinks he is in the government business.
Old School
During this morning’s Hunter Biden committee meeting, somebody brought up Hunter’s art. I hadn’t realized there was interview with a gallery owner yesterday. (Politico link)
MomSense
They don’t care. This is all infuriating and the worst part is we could have prevented this misery by being responsible citizens and voting for Gore, Kerry and Clinton and showing up in off year elections (hello 2010 and 2014) so the GOP couldn’t steal a SCOTUS seat.
The Supreme Court is lost to us and there is no short term hope of unpacking the court with more justices.
I just feel so angry and sad about all of this.
Brachiator
My sister and I talk about this regularly. Her anger is increasing and she is frustrated that so many people around her seem to be placidly accepting these changes.
I am somewhat surprised at the increased disregard and disdain for women, even though it was clear that red states were working hard to limit women’s reproductive rights.
This is related to the cold decision made by Second Amendment fanatics that the murder of school children and other innocents is an acceptable consequence of guaranteed access to guns.
Baud
@MomSense:
Concur.
Soprano2
@suzanne: My choir director at the local state university did this. She’s in her early 30’s. She got divorced last year; her husband had a similar job to hers somewhere in Texas, and I guess their long-distance relationship didn’t work out. She’s a Dr. of Music, I suspect she’ll have a hard time finding someone to marry.
TBone
@MomSense: we can undo the legal damage (expand the SC, fight everything else everywhere) and formally enshrine the necessary equal protection and privacy doctrines into law. This is fixable. Don’t despair, women don’t have short memories. The Salem witch trials are still famous.
BellaPea
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: To you and Alison Rose, I live in Tennessee and will gladly contribute to the firecracker fund for Skymetti, who thinks he is God Almighty’s avenging angel. Sorry excuse for a human being.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@TBone:
Agreed. Conservatives spent 50 years trying to undermine Roe v Wade until they eventually succeeded.
There has been tremendous success at the state-level putting into place reproductive health protections. That of course doesn’t negate the awfulness women are facing across the country. Things can be changed for the better. Sadly, as MomSense notes, it won’t be in the short-term, but things can be changed for the better
Soprano2
In a lot of ways this was my mother. My father worked a lot – he was gone most of the time. He earned all the income, so I think that made him believe he could do whatever he wanted. Part of it was because of his job – being a high school coach in a small school means a lot of late nights – but he also spent most Saturdays over at his mother’s house helping her. When I think about it from an adult point of view, I realize that my mother was responsible for about 95% of the parenting in our house. No wonder she was unhappy so much of the time. The only thing she didn’t have to do was work outside the home at a job.
Paul in KY
@Mel: I hope you told all those horrible people to fuck off into the sun.
Paul in KY
@Captain C: Not bad at all.
Brachiator
@Old Man Shadow:
There are, unfortunately, many women who approve of these laws, including women legislators who help write these laws.
This is as much about ideology as it is about gender.
TBone
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): bravo, bravo, bravo! We are not defeated unless we give up. Never, ever, I say!
rikyrah
@MomSense:
I feel you. For every muthaphucka who told us in 2016, that ‘you can’t scare me into voting for Hillary by bringing up the Court’
They will never be forgiven.
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
The actual dead bodies that we can directly connect to the abortion laws are just beginning to come. My anger has never gone away.
Very important for us to get abortion access on the ballot in as many Red States as possible in 2024.
TBone
@rikyrah: wait till the “back alley” hatchet jobs start piling up in red states.
Alison Rose
@Brachiator: Especially because those women tend to be at least upper middle class and they know that if they or any of their relatives need an abortion, they can still get one.
Ryan
I mean, if you’re Trump, why wouldn’t you conclude that the women be punished. Honestly, the only thing The Handmaids Tale got wrong was the legal froth that would surround this issue.
dr. luba
@suzanne:
The pope said surrogacy represented a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child and that it exploited surrogate mothers’ financial circumstances.
He’s not wrong. It’s abuse of poor women.
It’s one thing when a friend or family member volunteers to be a surrogate. It’s another when you hire a poor woman in a poor country.
Similar to organ donation.
Brachiator
@Alison Rose:
More complicated than this. There are many religious women who are middle class and lower middle class who buy into this nonsense.
And too many people, including the upper income types, don’t seem to truly understand how right wing efforts to interfere with women’s medical care put all women at risk.
If doctors are forced to lie to women about risky pregnancies in order to insure that they don’t seek an abortion when best advisable, all the money in the world might not save them from horrible outcomes.
dr. luba
Late to the discussion, as always. I’ve been luck that most of my career in OB has been during the Roe era, and that I live in a state that has codified Roe into our state constitution.
Were I going into practice now, I would never even think of working in a red state/abortion ban state. And I think that is true of many young OBs, most of whom are women nowadays.
I think what many of us particularly resent is these old white legislators with no knowledge of science, anatomy or biology mansplaining reproduction and women’s health to us.
dr. luba
@Brachiator: Many buy into this nonsense until it is them or their daughter…..
Dan B
I’m struck by the fact that Stern, a CIS gay man, would be part of writing these pieces but it makes sense. The outrage the right aims at women and infants who are “impure” rhymes with the bile poured on gay men: “pedophiles”, plus people of color, “diseased, lazy, smelly, lascivious, criminal, etc.”. We’re they all imprinted at toilet training that anything impure must (will?) be punishedto avoid social collapse? For hay men it’s about the ” butt secs”. For babies it seems to be about passing through the “impure” vagina. The hypocrisy that pregnancy comes from a penis in a vagina. Apparently semen is pure and p-in-v sex is “natural”, and thus avoids the taint of fifth that birth does. The root of the horror that propels the rise of legal vigilantism runs deep. Mark Joseph Stern may realize that gay couples kids may be ripped from their “impure, pedophile” families. As far as I’m concerned these fear filled right wingers have the most polluted hearts and minds.
Brachiator
@dr. luba:
Many variations on this theme.
When my family moved to Southern California, a very knowledgeable friend drove me around and gave me a tour. We came across this interesting, big house in Hollywood. I later learned that this was a facility owned by the Catholic Church. Good religious souls from the mid West would send their daughters there to have their babies and of course to give them up for adoption. Then they would return home with no more trace of their sins.
Dan B
@suzanne: To your point an Iowa legislator (white male, did you ask?) has introduced a law that once they’ve graduated eighth grade kids can work on farms during school hours. That would make closing the southern border much less problematic. It would also address the problem of zeroing out food support for families and paying for welfare. Although minimum wage for farm workers might be a touch low.
suzanne
@dr. luba: I don’t disagree with you on the exploitative nature of many surrogacy agreements. But Francis called for a worldwide ban on it. That precludes the sister, friend, etc. agreements you just discussed.
Alison Rose
@Dan B: Some gay men can be really awesome when it comes to repro rights because they see the connections. When I lived in SF and first started volunteering as an escort at PP, there were only a few men in the volunteer pool (compared to a few dozen women), and they were all gay. A little later there was one straight dude, and maybe another here or there, but most of the small number of men who stepped up were queer dudes, and one of them told me something like “The majority of people holding these signs and screaming at women here are also the ones who wanted to keep me from getting married”.
Brachiator
@dr. luba:
I vehemently disagree with the Pope on this. I don’t see how the dignity of anyone is violated here. And the Pope disapproves of all surrogacy, even when family or volunteers are involved.
Dan B
@suzanne: I feel the same. Many, if not most, gay couples have children through surrogacy. Pope Francis command would prevent the majority of these families.
columbusqueen
@Betty Cracker: I think family members who do surrogacy sans compensation are fine. It’s when money enters the picture with unrelated women that things get dicey for me.
RevRick
@Old Man Shadow: There’s a word for this: tyranny. And those making and enforcing these laws are tyrants.
MomSense
@TBone:
Three or my ancestors were convicted and killed for the crime of witchcraft.
When someone shows me the path to four more justices who are not Republican christofascists I’ll feel more optimistic. As things are now and in the short term, it’s not happening.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Exactly.