One can also point fingers at the higher-ups at Planned Parenthood and NARAL, who would go on national news and say things like "Oh, 97% of Planned Parenthood clinics don't perform abortions!" or "We know abortion is a difficult and painful choice, but we want to make sure it's available!" Then there are the pro-choicers who will say "well, having one abortion is okay, but if you have more than one, you're just using it as birth control" or judge if the circumstances for having an abortion are a "good reason."
As someone who has had abortions (yes, my fellow choicers, I had more than one, judge me and despair), I can quite honestly say that I've had dental surgery that was more painful, bloodier, and more traumatic than the procedures. 33% of American women have had or will have at least one abortion, even women who are anti-abortion, because it's different when it's your own. When people who claim to be pro-choice put caveats on why and how often the choice can be made, it just makes the antis point and say "look, LOOK! They don't like it either!"
Overturning Roe vs Wade has been coming for at least twenty years. I knew it was going to happen when Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to retire out of vanity during the Obama administration, even as she became frail and ill. I knew it when people took every Republican-nominated Supreme Court candidate at their word when they said they wouldn't touch Roe. Anyone who looked at the current judges, with the majority conservative and way too many of them Catholic, and said "oh, Roe will be okay" were massive fools. And now they're all crying because Roe is gone. Guess what? YOU WERE PART OF THE PROBLEM TOO.
Sorry for the all-caps, but I've been seething since Friday.
Livid as well, but not surprised. Not just abortion. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, lgbtq+, EPA, corporate power, bigotry, church/state separation and on and on....So much is at stake!
"How is it possible that such restrictive laws can be passed when only 13% of the people support them?" Five of these justices were appointed by presidents that lost the popular vote, that's how. The system is broken. Time to un-pack the court.
And I just read a quote from a female GOP rep in my state that said she trusts women in our state to control their intake of semen. And then of course later tried to say that she didn't express her words correctly. I have never. Just appalling.
"The undeniable result of this Court decision is that women are officially reduced to second-class citizens. All pretense that they are equal in the eyes of the law has been dropped. They will be first judged by their body, not their intellect. The subconscious message that will influence culture is: if the government finds women incapable of making their own decisions—like children—how can we take them seriously." This right here best encapsulates the situation better than any other media outlet I've read. Thank you for your clarity and insight!
Yes, America needs those 85% to show up at the polls in November (and subsequent elections) and to express their views clearly in public (and private) conversations regularly in between elections. We cannot (piggybacking here—and mixing metaphors?) sit around watching TV and feeling outraged about the news while the burglars make off with our democracy.
Kareem -- thank you for this thoughtful commentary and call to action. It is difficult to breathe when so much frustration persists -- the minority imposing their paternalistic perspective to limit rights and as you highlight, actually increase risk for others. As an OB/GYN, I have seen people die in child-birth and have known someone to take their own life when they felt that had no option to end the pregnancy. Watching this disregard for women and their families and assuming that the right of this fetus supersedes the rights of the mom is sickening. Where is the separation of church and state? why do they have the right to impose their beliefs that define when life begins on me -- some one with different views based on my god and my religion? I am not going to sit quietly, but admit to being tired of this fight. That said, I will put my sight out in support of Stacey Abrams and continue to talk about the injustice that is taking place. A sad world that my children will need to grown up in. Hopefully the next generation will do better.
I truly love your writing, and look forward to it each week. I grew up in an evangelical christian household, and was very much in that camp philosophically for the first 30 years of my life. I have had many conversations with friends and family members about Trump and about abortion. When I put forth the argument that voting for Trump makes a christian extremely hypocritical, I usually get a variation on this as an answer: "I don't car about Trump as a person, I'm a one issue voter, and that one issue is overturning Roe v Wade."
And there is ONLY one argument that they have in regards to making abortion illegal - it is the driving force of the pro-life movement: Christian pro-lifers truly believe, to their core, that abortion is murder. If you can't argue against that then you cannot make any headway with them. Any talk of it 'making women second class citizens' falls upon deaf ears.
I've only come up with one talking point on this that makes any headway with them. (I'm now a science and data guy, generally speaking.) I bring up the point that we allow families to 'pull the plug' when someone is braindead. Those same kind of brainwaves, true human brainwaves, don't occur until after the 12th week, maybe more like the 15th week (I'm not a doctor). If we can pull the plug when there are no brainwaves, then we should be able to do the same in this case.
When I make this argument, I sometimes get a begrudging agreement - usually it's something like,'Yeah, okay, but I'm a christian so I still am gonna vote this way because my faith tells me to'. At which point I bring up separation of church and state and the idea of keeping religion, especially any one religion, away from governmental functions, laws and mandates. Some of them actually nod in silent agreement, some don't. It's the best I've been able to do when talking to pro-lifers about this.
1) While I agree with you 100%, I believe that we should stop using the terms "pro-abortion" and "anti-abortion" as nobody is for abortions. What we are for is a woman's right to choose to have an abortion or not. We need to fight for choice, not abortions.
2) Why do we let our "opponents" use the term "pro-life", when so many of them support the death penalty where DNA evidence supports the fact that many innocent people have been executed? And when so many of them supported unnecessary wars such as Vietnam and Iraq?
By opposing the death penalty, gun control, and unnecessary wars, on balance we are taking the true "pro-life" side. Our candidates should run on being "pro-life" and "against government telling us what to do" (pro-choice) which would blow the minds of our opponents and be a winner at the ballot box.
Virtue signaling - total BS, hypocrisy, going along with the crowd. Now those so-called men who want to subjugate women will feel free to do so. And the women who have committed to the anti-abortion crowd will also suffer the consequences. Do they realize that?
It's quite interesting that other religions and cultures permit and accept abortion as a right of women and respect their privacy rights. The whole white Christian nationalism has finally revealed itself. It's nothing more than a power grab, nothing to do with religion or spirituality just power & control. What did that woman say in her speech? We need more white babies. Best not. With climate change, they will be the ones who will not be able to withstand the sun's heavy rays. And then - poof! Gone. What a total mess
Can we still immigrate to Canada? Billy Joel Armstrong said he was giving up his US citizenship in protest of the SCOTUS ' decision. And THOMAS is a disgrace & his wife also. There should be a clamor so loud that he may feel pressure to resign.
So angry. So sad. Living through all the movements to elevate women & attain equal rights. Seems like a big joke now.
Guns & abortion. Actually they go together to form the mentality of keeping women down. Those who must have guns do so because they are missing a part of their true identity. It's called being human.
Kareem. You express my thoughts & feelings better than I. So thank you.
Perhaps we all can do a virtual assault on the right-wing agenda & wipe out their social media sources. I'm done. Just angry.
My mind is racing as I try to comment on this topic. In the words of Bob Dylan (From a Buick 6, circa 1965), "I need a dump truck baby to unload my head." Part of me wants to shut up and listen. Listen to what my women friends need to unload right now. Listen for how I can help. Another part of me wants to jump up and scream because that stinking lifelong thread of rope - that rope connecting Nixon-Agnew-Reagan-Bush-Trump-Pence and all their pathetic worshippers - has once again wrapped itself around our necks and is threatening to hang us. They cannot win. They will not win. There are too many of us. Snap that rope and bury them in the boneyard of their failed confederacy.
I am unimpressed by companies offering their well paid employees travel benefits for abortions that they likely will not access due to privacy issues while they continue to fund the politicians who seek to turn back the clock. Employees and consumers need to push companies to end these contributions PERMANENTLY. Kareem- Major League Baseball is one of the largest supporters of these politicians while they market their product to women, in some cases wearing pink uniforms, etc. Surely there are athletes willing to make statements against their employer’s hypocrisy and stand with the women in their life! How can we find them? Athletes can lead the way again by staging work stoppages on the days when these contributions are announced publicly if they do not cease these political donations? Wouldn’t this lead many other employees to have the courage to do the same thing if their companies continue to fund anti democratic politicians? Can you help find these athletes?
I will repeat here my comment to your Saturday post about why Hershel Walker is bad for Black Americans.
The best defense against despotism and extreme ideology playing out in the halls of our legislatures is an exponential offense. The Skyhook Equivalent of the Justice Movement is the Voting Booth.
I can't even fathom which is the most soul crushing...the politicized Supreme Court; the do-little Democrats; the power-mad, venal Republicans; the illogical citizenry that follows an obviously deranged super-criminal straight out of the madman playbook; or legislatures that cannot pass laws restricting weapons of mass destruction (stop claiming AK-47s are self-defense, please); or that states can pass laws against a right women have had for fifty years within hours of a Kangaroo Court making a decision. Where the hell are the trigger laws for gun control? Worst of all, the American people elected these leaders during free elections! Those who bothered to vote. If this is the best we can do in a democracy...
We can barely keep the kids we have now alive and functioning. I have seen zero sympathy or compassion for the poor women who now have to make a choice that is soul crushing under the best of conditions. There is no talk of funding prenatal or daycare or any efforts towards improving resources for an educational system under attack by by parents and politicians that think that the facts about slavery or evolution or history is about their self-image and are willing to burn books to avoid uncomfortable conversations.
I'm not surprised. I'm beyond disappointed - the writing's on the wall (Kareem, you know). I'm terrified because we won't learn and don't listen.
Roe v. Wade: Women Have Just Been Declared Second-Class Citizens (Remember to Smile, Ladies)
One can also point fingers at the higher-ups at Planned Parenthood and NARAL, who would go on national news and say things like "Oh, 97% of Planned Parenthood clinics don't perform abortions!" or "We know abortion is a difficult and painful choice, but we want to make sure it's available!" Then there are the pro-choicers who will say "well, having one abortion is okay, but if you have more than one, you're just using it as birth control" or judge if the circumstances for having an abortion are a "good reason."
As someone who has had abortions (yes, my fellow choicers, I had more than one, judge me and despair), I can quite honestly say that I've had dental surgery that was more painful, bloodier, and more traumatic than the procedures. 33% of American women have had or will have at least one abortion, even women who are anti-abortion, because it's different when it's your own. When people who claim to be pro-choice put caveats on why and how often the choice can be made, it just makes the antis point and say "look, LOOK! They don't like it either!"
Overturning Roe vs Wade has been coming for at least twenty years. I knew it was going to happen when Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to retire out of vanity during the Obama administration, even as she became frail and ill. I knew it when people took every Republican-nominated Supreme Court candidate at their word when they said they wouldn't touch Roe. Anyone who looked at the current judges, with the majority conservative and way too many of them Catholic, and said "oh, Roe will be okay" were massive fools. And now they're all crying because Roe is gone. Guess what? YOU WERE PART OF THE PROBLEM TOO.
Sorry for the all-caps, but I've been seething since Friday.
Livid as well, but not surprised. Not just abortion. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, lgbtq+, EPA, corporate power, bigotry, church/state separation and on and on....So much is at stake!
"How is it possible that such restrictive laws can be passed when only 13% of the people support them?" Five of these justices were appointed by presidents that lost the popular vote, that's how. The system is broken. Time to un-pack the court.
And I just read a quote from a female GOP rep in my state that said she trusts women in our state to control their intake of semen. And then of course later tried to say that she didn't express her words correctly. I have never. Just appalling.
So true. A tyranny of the minority is what we are experiencing. SCOTUS is just another arm of the Christian Nationalists.
"The undeniable result of this Court decision is that women are officially reduced to second-class citizens. All pretense that they are equal in the eyes of the law has been dropped. They will be first judged by their body, not their intellect. The subconscious message that will influence culture is: if the government finds women incapable of making their own decisions—like children—how can we take them seriously." This right here best encapsulates the situation better than any other media outlet I've read. Thank you for your clarity and insight!
Yes, America needs those 85% to show up at the polls in November (and subsequent elections) and to express their views clearly in public (and private) conversations regularly in between elections. We cannot (piggybacking here—and mixing metaphors?) sit around watching TV and feeling outraged about the news while the burglars make off with our democracy.
Kareem -- thank you for this thoughtful commentary and call to action. It is difficult to breathe when so much frustration persists -- the minority imposing their paternalistic perspective to limit rights and as you highlight, actually increase risk for others. As an OB/GYN, I have seen people die in child-birth and have known someone to take their own life when they felt that had no option to end the pregnancy. Watching this disregard for women and their families and assuming that the right of this fetus supersedes the rights of the mom is sickening. Where is the separation of church and state? why do they have the right to impose their beliefs that define when life begins on me -- some one with different views based on my god and my religion? I am not going to sit quietly, but admit to being tired of this fight. That said, I will put my sight out in support of Stacey Abrams and continue to talk about the injustice that is taking place. A sad world that my children will need to grown up in. Hopefully the next generation will do better.
Great piece, thank you for writing this. I am also livid about this, and not surprised despite myself. Thank you for writing this piece.
I truly love your writing, and look forward to it each week. I grew up in an evangelical christian household, and was very much in that camp philosophically for the first 30 years of my life. I have had many conversations with friends and family members about Trump and about abortion. When I put forth the argument that voting for Trump makes a christian extremely hypocritical, I usually get a variation on this as an answer: "I don't car about Trump as a person, I'm a one issue voter, and that one issue is overturning Roe v Wade."
And there is ONLY one argument that they have in regards to making abortion illegal - it is the driving force of the pro-life movement: Christian pro-lifers truly believe, to their core, that abortion is murder. If you can't argue against that then you cannot make any headway with them. Any talk of it 'making women second class citizens' falls upon deaf ears.
I've only come up with one talking point on this that makes any headway with them. (I'm now a science and data guy, generally speaking.) I bring up the point that we allow families to 'pull the plug' when someone is braindead. Those same kind of brainwaves, true human brainwaves, don't occur until after the 12th week, maybe more like the 15th week (I'm not a doctor). If we can pull the plug when there are no brainwaves, then we should be able to do the same in this case.
When I make this argument, I sometimes get a begrudging agreement - usually it's something like,'Yeah, okay, but I'm a christian so I still am gonna vote this way because my faith tells me to'. At which point I bring up separation of church and state and the idea of keeping religion, especially any one religion, away from governmental functions, laws and mandates. Some of them actually nod in silent agreement, some don't. It's the best I've been able to do when talking to pro-lifers about this.
1) While I agree with you 100%, I believe that we should stop using the terms "pro-abortion" and "anti-abortion" as nobody is for abortions. What we are for is a woman's right to choose to have an abortion or not. We need to fight for choice, not abortions.
2) Why do we let our "opponents" use the term "pro-life", when so many of them support the death penalty where DNA evidence supports the fact that many innocent people have been executed? And when so many of them supported unnecessary wars such as Vietnam and Iraq?
By opposing the death penalty, gun control, and unnecessary wars, on balance we are taking the true "pro-life" side. Our candidates should run on being "pro-life" and "against government telling us what to do" (pro-choice) which would blow the minds of our opponents and be a winner at the ballot box.
Virtue signaling - total BS, hypocrisy, going along with the crowd. Now those so-called men who want to subjugate women will feel free to do so. And the women who have committed to the anti-abortion crowd will also suffer the consequences. Do they realize that?
It's quite interesting that other religions and cultures permit and accept abortion as a right of women and respect their privacy rights. The whole white Christian nationalism has finally revealed itself. It's nothing more than a power grab, nothing to do with religion or spirituality just power & control. What did that woman say in her speech? We need more white babies. Best not. With climate change, they will be the ones who will not be able to withstand the sun's heavy rays. And then - poof! Gone. What a total mess
Can we still immigrate to Canada? Billy Joel Armstrong said he was giving up his US citizenship in protest of the SCOTUS ' decision. And THOMAS is a disgrace & his wife also. There should be a clamor so loud that he may feel pressure to resign.
So angry. So sad. Living through all the movements to elevate women & attain equal rights. Seems like a big joke now.
Guns & abortion. Actually they go together to form the mentality of keeping women down. Those who must have guns do so because they are missing a part of their true identity. It's called being human.
Kareem. You express my thoughts & feelings better than I. So thank you.
Perhaps we all can do a virtual assault on the right-wing agenda & wipe out their social media sources. I'm done. Just angry.
My mind is racing as I try to comment on this topic. In the words of Bob Dylan (From a Buick 6, circa 1965), "I need a dump truck baby to unload my head." Part of me wants to shut up and listen. Listen to what my women friends need to unload right now. Listen for how I can help. Another part of me wants to jump up and scream because that stinking lifelong thread of rope - that rope connecting Nixon-Agnew-Reagan-Bush-Trump-Pence and all their pathetic worshippers - has once again wrapped itself around our necks and is threatening to hang us. They cannot win. They will not win. There are too many of us. Snap that rope and bury them in the boneyard of their failed confederacy.
I am unimpressed by companies offering their well paid employees travel benefits for abortions that they likely will not access due to privacy issues while they continue to fund the politicians who seek to turn back the clock. Employees and consumers need to push companies to end these contributions PERMANENTLY. Kareem- Major League Baseball is one of the largest supporters of these politicians while they market their product to women, in some cases wearing pink uniforms, etc. Surely there are athletes willing to make statements against their employer’s hypocrisy and stand with the women in their life! How can we find them? Athletes can lead the way again by staging work stoppages on the days when these contributions are announced publicly if they do not cease these political donations? Wouldn’t this lead many other employees to have the courage to do the same thing if their companies continue to fund anti democratic politicians? Can you help find these athletes?
GRATEFUL AT LEAST, that state laws still prevail, and that California and several other states strongly protect women's rights.
And yes, it takes money to travel here, so for many, the right to choose is an economic issue.
I will repeat here my comment to your Saturday post about why Hershel Walker is bad for Black Americans.
The best defense against despotism and extreme ideology playing out in the halls of our legislatures is an exponential offense. The Skyhook Equivalent of the Justice Movement is the Voting Booth.
Justice=VotingBooth2
J=VB2 (Squared)
I can't even fathom which is the most soul crushing...the politicized Supreme Court; the do-little Democrats; the power-mad, venal Republicans; the illogical citizenry that follows an obviously deranged super-criminal straight out of the madman playbook; or legislatures that cannot pass laws restricting weapons of mass destruction (stop claiming AK-47s are self-defense, please); or that states can pass laws against a right women have had for fifty years within hours of a Kangaroo Court making a decision. Where the hell are the trigger laws for gun control? Worst of all, the American people elected these leaders during free elections! Those who bothered to vote. If this is the best we can do in a democracy...
We can barely keep the kids we have now alive and functioning. I have seen zero sympathy or compassion for the poor women who now have to make a choice that is soul crushing under the best of conditions. There is no talk of funding prenatal or daycare or any efforts towards improving resources for an educational system under attack by by parents and politicians that think that the facts about slavery or evolution or history is about their self-image and are willing to burn books to avoid uncomfortable conversations.
I'm not surprised. I'm beyond disappointed - the writing's on the wall (Kareem, you know). I'm terrified because we won't learn and don't listen.