The GOP-controlled Arizona House just voted to repeal the 1864 total abortion ban and replace it with a 15-week abortion ban. It looks like the GOP-controlled Senate will also pass the bill, and Gov. Katie Hobbs says, basically, “hurry the fuck up so I can sign the bill,” so it will probably be law before the 1864 ban could go into effect in June.
The Washington Post helpfully solicited comment [gift link] from a couple of anti-abortion activists:
Caroline Helton, a 64-year-old from Mesa, said she was deeply concerned about a referendum likely to appear on the ballot in November that would protect abortion until the point of viability, or around 24 weeks.
“I’m not completely antiabortion, but they have gone too far,” said Helton, who hopes her legislators will ultimately agree to preserve the 15-week law that is currently in effect.
Deborah Tyler, 71, said she is “conflicted” about the 1864 abortion ban, in part because it does not include exceptions for rape and incest. “I don’t know,” said Tyler, who lives in the Phoenix area.
“I haven’t drawn a hard line,” she added, standing outside the statehouse last week. “I’m going to listen.”
[emphasis mine]
Here’s the problem with Arizona politics: there’s an influx of old, white retirees from somewhere else who bring their benighted views with them along with too much furniture and a silly desire to have a green lawn. These two post-menopausal anti-abortion activists have the absolute luxury to opine on this issue as if it were part of a freshman ethics seminar at the local community college. Women who can still conceive might possibly consider it differently. Perhaps the Post could have asked a couple of them, but of course they didn’t.
As usual with the big papers’ political reporting on abortion, it’s overweighted with opinions from forced birthers. That’s because they have strongly-held “beliefs” and therefore those “beliefs” must be front-and-center. The actual suffering and pain of women is secondary to their bullshit. I’ll admit that they’ve interviewed a few women who have been deeply hurt by the abortion bans in their state, but in general the ongoing suffering and pain isn’t given the same weight as the purely theoretical suffering of Jesus and friends over the abortions that are still happening.
Mr. Bear Thinks We Need an Open Thread
raven
And my crazy ass nazi SIL
Cacti
Must have gone to Sun City West to ask for opinions.
Butch
You know, something I’ve wanted to say….my parents had my siblings in their early 20s and then waited until their 50s before I came along. When I was old enough to understand, my mother began telling me (often) how hard she tried to get an abortion, always with the same words, “so I could have gotten rid of you.” It’s always been weird to me to think that I wouldn’t be here to write these words if she had succeeded, but at the same time be completely pro-choice – I believe that if men could get pregnant it would be a sacrament and there would be more abortion clinics than there are gas stations.
Baud
I didn’t realize how much you hated Cole.
Elizabelle
It’s lazy ass reporting.
brantl
@Butch: Glad you’re here; glad you want to be fair, too.
SiubhanDuinne
@Butch:
I’m not here to sit in judgment on your, or anyone’s, mother. But JFC, that sounds straight-up abusive. No child should have to hear that, and no adult should have to remember it. Hugs.
ETA: And thank you for being pro-choice, despite every emotional incentive to not be.
Mary C Cage
O. Felix Culpa
@raven: My condolences on the nazi SIL.
FWIW, my parents added two reliable Democratic votes and no lawn to AZ. Hopefully newer transplants and homegrown younguns will help dispel the dark side.
I’m sure that the reporters tried mightily, but were simply unable to find a pre-menopausal person to interview. Rarer than hen’s teeth in the great state of Arizona, they are.
Quaker in a Basement
At least they asked women this time.
Baby steps!
piratedan
blogforarizona.net/hb2677-is-passed-by-az-house-repealing-the-territorial-abortion-ban-hb2677-sent-t…
Arizona is still in play politically. The grip of the olds is loosening as there have been a new generation of younger voters slowly replacing them as witnessed by the house and senate being closer than they have been in decades. The extremism is turning off the squishy independents and the Dems have been reaching out to the hispanic and native blocs and registering voters. Abortion may still be the fulcrum upon which this all turns.
Nelle
Anybody watching what is happening in Austen, TX with the troops coming in for student demonstrators?
Dorothy A. Winsor
The urge to meddle in other people’s business is strong in these people with “beliefs.” Have beliefs, go ahead. But leave other people to have their own and act on them.
MYOB
CaseyL
I’m concerned that this will reduce the anger and resolve to approve the abortion rights constitutional amendment on the November ballot, combined with the competing/diluting amendments being offered by the GOP to encode the 15-week ban into its constitution
ETA: Though if I remember correctly, this bill passed the AZ house twice already; it’s the AZ Senate that keeps voting it down.
Barbara
@Butch: She didn’t really try to get rid of “you,” the person you became after you were born. She didn’t know you.
Our existence shouldn’t really be an argument in favor or against anything — most of us wouldn’t be “us” absent some pretty terrible antecedents in the lives of other people. My grandfather left Serbia after the rest of his family died of contaminated milk. It would be idiotic for me to oppose pasteurization because it might have lessened the likelihood of my birth.
Not trying to lecture you, but I have thought a lot about this and have heard people construct anti-choice arguments out of similar stories.
ETA: Totally agree with SD — your mom really shouldn’t have laid that burden on you. FFS.
bjacques
“Skin in the game” can also include daughters or granddaughters who are terrified of getting pregnant and living or even driving through Arizona, let alone the Old Confederacy and the Dakotas.
EDIT: The laws they believe in never seem to affect them or anyone they know, until suddenly they do.
Belafon
Donald Payne, Jr, Representative from New Jersey, had died at 65.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-24/new-jersey-democratic-congressman-donald-payne-jr-dies-at-65?…
Elizabelle
@Butch: What Subaru said. Delighted you are here, and how cruel to have heard a few reminders of why you are.
My grandmother had her 13th(!) child at age 48 or 49 during the Depression. Fervent Catholics, yes.
Life is better with reliable contraception and abortion healthcare.
$8 blue check mistermix
@CaseyL: Polling over and over has shown that voters hate a “ban” of any kind — even though the Washington Post might frame this change as “Republicans allowing abortion” it is really a 15-week ban. Also, after this little episode, and episodes like it in other states, voters with any smarts know that nothing but a right to abortion until viability, enshrined in the state constitution, will do, since those legislators will just as easily take away women’s rights as soon as they win the next election.
Anoniminous
Tennessee is working on providing free Post-natal abortions via an AMA unapproved procedure: ad-hoc gunfire. Maybe there’s something there for the Az GOP?
smith
Even postmenopausal women (and men of all ages) have daughters and granddaughters, and given how common miscarriages and problem pregnancies are, many of them have seen those occurrences in their own families. It’s not just their laser focus on their own small orbits of self-interest that restrict their views, it’s also lack of understanding the ramifications of draconian abortion restrictions on the well-being of all women, including their daughters and granddaughters. And I’d guess that in many cases they don’t want to understand, because it makes thinking about it just too complicated.
CaseyL
@$8 blue check mistermix: I do hope they realize that.
aflW
delete
Handle got garbled by FYWP
Tenar Arha
I get the point, and I don’t think these women think very hard about consequences, including for any of their grandchildren who might come visit. But those anti-abortion post menopausal women also forget, lots of these bans will lead to post-menopausal women not getting adequate medical care too. If there’s no obstetricians or gynecologists for those needing pregnancy care, how’s the post menopausal HRT or breast or uterine or ovarian cancer screenings going to get done? Maternity care and hospital deserts will hurt everyone
ETA I forgot to mention endocrinologists and endocrinology 🤦🏻♀️
Barbara
@$8 blue check mistermix: I mean, it’s not just a ban, but it bans the relatively very few abortions that create the most wrenching life and health issues for pregnant women. It’s like consigning women who have real medical difficulty during the course of pregnancy to suffer death or irreparable harm.
RaflW
A 15 week limit is, from what I understand, a little short, so I hope the longer window being proposed by voters can advance.
I get that having the 1800s law looming might have motivated more anti-Republican anger, but unless that could have been held at bay by judicial stay, at least the 15 week option keeps clinics open and doctors out of legal jeopardy. If the AZ Senate in fact acts, that is.
Elizabelle
What a sea change the birth control pill and other modern methods and practices brought. It’s actually fairly recent historically, and too easy to take for granted.
Abortion care is medically another procedure on the women’s and family health spectrum.
different-church-lady
You’re not even allowed to be in Arizona until you’re at least 50.
Geoduck
@Butch: Yeah, my father was a late and unwelcome addition to his family. (Tho I don’t think his parents wanted to have any kids particularly, and ended up with five of them…) It was 1930’s small-town Kansas, so I assume that abortion wasn’t even an option, but I bet it would have happened if it was. But I’m still 100% pro-choice as well.
smith
In light of the arguments before SCOTUS today, I’d say it’s like capital punishment for women who prove to be imperfect vessels. I’m sure animal breeders do it all the time.
RevRick
Ah, their deeply held beliefs have no basis in the Bible they profess to anchor everything. It’s all based on an assumption that a zygote/embryo/fetus is a person, when in the few instances where it opines that status is reserved for those in whom there is the “breath of life.”
Given when and where the parts of the Bible was written it ought to give pause that where law codes of surrounding states openly condemned the practice in the Bible It’s crickets.
Jeffro
LOL
God’s other waiting room, is it? =)
(the first being Florida)
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I have the least skin in the game possible, yet I can still empathize with the needs of people affected by these abortion policies and can still see the harm done.
I’m a fan of the legitimately* conservative position that my personal morality doesn’t necessarily make good policy. I know that no matter how I may personally feel, people’s health and freedom are at stake. Fuck my feelings.
*As opposed to whatever the fossils are calling conservatism these days
Pink Tie
Wild considering that a majority of women seeking abortions already have children [raises hand]. Having planned our family, it is still financially and logistically challenging, but my family is OK in part *because* of access to abortion care. As desperate and freaked out as I felt, I can’t fathom how awful it would be if we were already struggling and had an unplanned pregnancy that we couldn’t terminate. The anxiety would be off the charts and the children I already had would suffer from witnessing their parents navigate that situation under tremendous stress. How do we get everyone into a car that isn’t designed for more than 5 people? how do we travel? where should people sleep? how do our teenagers have privacy? The answer is: don’t have more kids than you can afford and sustain. Sometimes that solution is ending a pregnancy!
I wonder about the anti-abortion activists cited in that article… did somebody have an abortion in high school and they’re now repenting? I have a friend who had an abortion in HS and sadly lost her one-year-old baby to brain cancer years later — now she does “life ministry.”
catclub
@SiubhanDuinne: I think any 50+ year old woman who becomes pregnant is likely to be terrified of the risk of serious birth defects in the child.
Butch
Thanks to all of you for the reactions. A lot of my childhood was spent pretending not to see things that were right in front of me….
Trollhattan
@different-church-lady:
That sun will double a 25YO’s effective age right quick.
karen marie
The important part of this is how the vote breaks down. Only two Republicans voted for repeal. If not for the Democrats, it would not have happened. I hope Arizona voters understand that the Republican majority is a threat to life and limb. Let’s hope Democrats reach a majority come Nkvember.
CaseyL
Sad news for those of us who follow Tom Nichols aka RadioFreeTom: His kitty, Carla – who first became internet famous for waking up the family when their house caught fire, and stayed internet famous for being a Personality – had to be euthanized today due to old age. Nichols posted about it on BlueSky.
smith
@Pink Tie: All valid issues, but in addition, given that women whose lives are threatened by miscarriages or dangerous pregnancies will be sent home to die under the regimes in the worst of the red states — and probably to be sanctioned by SCOTUS — who is going to explain to her existing children why Mommy had to die? Even though the doctors knew how to save her, why was she left to die? This is inevitably coming.
suzanne
@Cacti: Naaaaah, they went to Mormon Mesa! A hellhole. The most conservative city in the country.
I will note that Arizona is the 23rd youngest state, despite its reputation as being where only old people live.
HOWEV….. I believe white people became a minority in the under-18 age cohort around 2015.
piratedan
in other news, apparently SMOTI (Stupidest Man On The Internet) Jim Hoft is declaring Bankruptcy because of legal judgements against him and his “media empire”.
Leto
You’ve been on this Earth for 71 fucking years, and you “don’t know”? How long ago did oxygen stop getting to your brain? Do you have problems operating Velcro? Are you not even allowed to use a spoon to eat? Did you stop learning in kindergarten? These fucking people…
OT- Mowed the yard, picked weeds out of the front garden beds, just generally cleaned/tidied the front lawn. It was nice being out, getting some sun, and doing some work. This weekend we’re looking at getting some outdoor furniture, picking up too many bags of mulch, and a few other odds and ends. And if we can manage it on Sunday, doing a short bike ride.
Edit: I have problem with the phrase “idk”. On the one hand, it’s good when people admit they don’t know something. You want people to do that. On the other, and is more typical in my experience, it’s used to cover up incompetence and dumbassery. Too much time with Airmen does that to you.
Omnes Omnibus
@CaseyL: That should not stop people from doing the right thing today. It sails a little bit too close to heightening the contradictions for me. Repeal the damned law.
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
I agree and disagree with you. Sure I’m not hep on moms telling their kids that they didn’t want them but to be honest, that’s being about as honest as I’ve ever heard. I can imagine wanting children. I didn’t actually, mostly because of my mom. Don’t get me wrong my mom was the oldest and her dad died when she was 18 and playing tennis with her. Her mom died when I was 5 or 6 and my mom became the quasi head of her family of 5. She carried a lot of the load of her family. Not sure she actually had to of course but that was mom. But I got to see a lot of what I call multimomitus, the need to create a family, an extended family, a cohesive family. It mostly worked until the kids hit 18, at which point most of us wanted to leave childhood but most had no real idea how to do that because her point was to keep all the sister’s and brother’s kids together and that’s damn near impossible. We now live all over the country, north to south and east to west. All of us born in southern CA and I’m the only one still living here.
Jeffg166
@Butch: You must have been a very big surprise.
suzanne
I will also note that Arizonans have seen a high-profile incident in which a nun at the largest Catholic hospital in the city was excommunicated for allowing a dying woman to have an abortion.
Lots of people still remember this.
HumboldtBlue
piratedan
@karen marie: my impression is that this is but a band-aid for a political gunshot wound. The GOP here was already under fire for the antics of its previous candidates for office in refusing to accept the election results. This still brings abortion to the center of the debate as well and the incandescent reaction from most of the GOP and what they want will drive even more margins in favor of Dems.
Jackie
OT, but good for a chuckle:
Bless Ruby and Shaye!
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
But if people have their own opinions then that takes away some of the support for their “beliefs.”
IOW some people really don’t effectively have their own opinions, they find someone they like and borrow their opinions. Forming opinions takes time, energy and actual thought, just following other’s opinions is far easier. Sure it can create large groups of people that just follow and know nothing else but then this IS humanity.
Jackie
@HumboldtBlue: That sent shivers down my spine!
Thanks for posting this!
HumboldtBlue
@piratedan:
That’s good fucking news.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
Life is better with reliable contraception and abortion healthcare.
Join the modern world? Are you insane? What do you mean time moves forward?
As an old fart I’ve seen a rather dramatic change in living in my lifetime, that in so many, many ways has made it far, far better. I easily imagine that some people think that living was easier 75 yrs ago. Believe me it was not, not in any way, shape or form. Sure it’s more crowded now, and the Helms bakery trucks stopped decades ago, but those 2 issues aside, life is better, life is easier.
Jackie
Another archaic law that treated women as property removed.
geg6
@Elizabelle:
Yep. Which seems to be all the majors can manage. I just wish someone would buy Josh Marshall a winning PowerBall ticket or something. Because we really need good journalism these days and he and his team bring it. But they are a small operation and can’t cover everything. But imagine if they had the resources!
Baud
@Jackie:
Not often we get to cheer Ohio.
cain
@CaseyL: oh no !! He loved that cat so much
😢😢😢
O. Felix Culpa
@RaflW: A 15 week limit ignores the fact that things can go horribly wrong with the fetus or mother AT ANY TIME in the course of pregnancy. So it’s more than a little short. It sets an arbitrary limit to when medical care can be given, even though human bodies don’t work on a schedule set by ignorant lawmakers and godbotherers.
Trollhattan
@Jackie: Nice job, progressive attackers! Your aim is true.
Jay C
@Jackie:
In addition, Dim Jim Hoft (despite being a resident of St. Louis, MO) decided to file his bankruptcy suit in the Southern District of Florida. Did he think maybe his luck would get him Aileen Cannon as the judge on the case, and he could wow her into favorable terms, based on his RW bonafides???
Baud
@Jay C:
I don’t think you can just file wherever you want. He must have some connection to Florida.
dnfre
@Butch: I had a friend in college (1960s) who used to laugh about the fact that her mother had tried desperately to abort her, using tactics like jumping off the kitchen table and punching herself in the abdomen. There were several older children, and the father was in the Navy, gone for long periods of time. You can understand the mother’s position. BUT my friend’s mother always assured her of how glad she was that she hadn’t succeeded, because her mother loved her and couldn’t imagine her not being there. I think that’s why my friend could laugh about it.
HumboldtBlue
Repubs in disarray, and even Fox news is reporting the disarray.
lowtechcyclist
@Barbara:
Hell, the night any of us was conceived, if Daddy had come five seconds earlier or later, a different swimmer would have won the race to the egg, and we’d each be somebody else.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
I could have been a contender.
CaseyL
@cain: Hell, I teared up at the news.
My 16 year old cat went from “amazingly healthy” to “heart murmer/ hyperthyroidism” in one year. Just starting the decline that can get suddenly precipitous, and every so often I just bury my face in his fur and cry. (Which he finds baffling and irritating, to tell the truth.)
oldgold
@Leto: “You’ve been on this Earth for 71 fucking years, and you “don’t know”? How long ago did oxygen stop getting to your brain? Do you have problems operating Velcro? Are you not even allowed to use a spoon to eat? Did you stop learning in kindergarten? These fucking people…”
That is a very harsh judgment to make based on that woman’s statement. In my opinion, way too harsh. She said, “I have not drawn and hard line” and “I am going to listen.”
Another Scott
@Dorothy A. Winsor: +1
Person 1: I’m anti-abortion.
Person 2: Well then, don’t have one.
People like Palin who explicitly campaigned on “I chose not to have an abortion” are infuriating when then want to make it impossible for another to also choose.
MYOB, indeed.
Cheers,
Scott.
HumboldtBlue
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@oldgold: So Roe was decided just as she was reaching adulthood.
In the abstract, I’d say you’re right, it’s good to have an open mind. Still, this issue has been at the forefront of our politics basically since she could vote.
I’m honestly sick of the notion that it’s somehow high-minded to not have an opinion. What this woman is really saying is that she has been, to date, too lazy to put any work into thinking about how we should treat each other as a community.
Jackie
@O. Felix Culpa: 15 weeks abortion UNTIL Nov 5😁
If AZ state senators vote yes next week, AZ’s women will have more breathing room, at least!
Omnes Omnibus
@oldgold: I would think that you would be on board with criticizing people for taking too long to do things.
stinger
@O. Felix Culpa: I’ll never celebrate a 15 weeks law as a “win”, nor a 24 weeks/viability law. How about just staying out of my business altogether? (Spoken as a long post-menopausal woman.)
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Omnes Omnibus: Tehehehe…
Anonymous At Work
@Baud: I was curious who was gonna call him out…
Eyeroller
@lowtechcyclist: It’s a lot more complicated than that. Hundreds are required (out of the few thousand survivors of the original hundreds of millions) in order for one lucky one to “win.” Reaching the ovum may not be totally random, and may select for the strongest sperm, but after that it does seem to be mostly random.
oldgold
@Omnes Omnibus: Ha! Good point.
Yes, criticism is fine, but like everything, it is possible to go too far.
Leto
@Omnes Omnibus: Hammer, don’t hurt’em!
JustRuss
@HumboldtBlue: I have this fantasy that fucking RFK Jr. will save us by giving all the Republicans who can’t pull the trigger for Trump but will never vote Democrat(sic) an outlet. Biden wins the popular vote hugely and squeaks by in the fucking electoral college.
mrmoshpotato
Repealed.
Starfish
@catclub: In 2021, maternal mortality rates for people aged 40 and higher was six times that of someone who got pregnant in their mid-twenties.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: I know, it’s giving me flashbacks to my own dear old Ma yelling at me, “Sometimes I wish you’d never been born!”
At least she qualified it with “sometimes”.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Miss Bianca: I’ll typically counter similar sentiments with a “I didn’t ask to be here.”
mrmoshpotato
SAY IT LOUD , SAY IT PROUD! AND FUCK ‘EM!
And fuck all of the golf courses too! IT’S A FUCKING DESERT! And George Carlin was absolutely fucking right!
Eyeroller
@suzanne: I read the article at the link. The woman was only 11 weeks pregnant. At that stage the “baby” is mostly humanoid and has been promoted to “fetus” (a term that applies only to placental mammals) but it’s still the first trimester and it’s not all that well developed. I’m not Catholic and don’t fully understand the theology behind this. As RevRick notes, there’s little actual Biblical support for it. Maybe Jeremiah 1:5 is some of it. I suppose if you think an 11-week humanoid is a “person” it’s murder to kill it, so better they both die and go to heaven than the mother survive and be a murderer. The Aztecs believed that women who died in childbirth went to the same special heaven as warriors who died in battle so maybe there is some similar underlying psychology operating there. They are both “martyrs.”
Quaker in a Basement
@Jackie: Site appears to be down. Sweet!
Citizen Alan
@Butch: well, it kind of sucks that she would say it like that to your face. (No offense, but she sounds kind of awful.) But my mother was older when she had me, and when people make that kind of argument to me (“if you mother had aborted you, you wouldn’t be here!”), I just shrug and say that if my mother had gotten an abortion, my soul would have just entered some other newborn and I’d have just had a different life. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE BIBLE FUCKING SAYS!
Citizen Alan
@Leto: She knows. She must doesn’t want to admit that she wants other women to suffer and die for no purpose except to own the libtards.
Citizen Alan
@Eyeroller: Martyring someone against their will is just a pretty word for murder
Gvg
@Butch: My sympathies to you and…I don’t like your mother. That is horrible. Even if it was true, she should have kept her mouth shut.
Butch
Probably late to the game but I did want to tell you that I came back and read all the replies. Thank you again.