Donations to U.S. abortion rights groups, clinics surge after Supreme Court leak https://t.co/cQAP033ThL pic.twitter.com/bRxWKsoUSo
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 4, 2022
Apparently a lot of people, both pro-choice and otherwise, were surprised by the leak of Alito’s draft. (History tells us that a lot of people were surprised by that incident at Fort Sumter, even if in retrospect it seems to have been very much a question not of if, but of when.) Certainly it seemed that a retrogressive movement with so many billions of dollars and tens of ‘brilliantly rationalist’ minds behind it would produce something a little less crude than LOL WE LIED — SUXX TO HAVE A UTERUS!!! to backstop its gleeful misogyny, but why bother with crafting a scalpel when you’ve already got a big club?
People have been procuring abortions for as long as there have been people; the problem has been finding a method that didn’t kill the womb-owner as well as the fetus, hopefully one that might preserve the woman’s ability to have children in the future. I will reiterate, as often as necessary: If this horror must be faced down, again, we are in a *much* better place than we were in 1972, when I was in high school.
Fifty years is long enough for a lot of (incredibly lucky, I know) people of child-bearing capability to grow up assuming they’d always have a choice as to when, and if, they’d have children. It’s not long enough for the historical memories of generations of social work-arounds to have been lost. And it’s been fifty years of amazing medical advances, including much-improved birth control methods, post-coital contraception (Plan B), and the development of safe at-home pharmaceutical abortions. Also, the global internet, which is a miracle women sharing illicit mimeographed pamphlets and ladies-lounge whispers about ‘Aunty Jane‘ could only dream of.
Panic is one of our enemies’ best weapons; we can’t let them use our perfectly understandable despair to keep us from organizing and fighting back.
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Welcome to the New ‘Normal’Post + Comments (237)