Just noted this in passing while reading SCOTUS-Blog on the Supremes temporarily holding the Texas abortion harrassment regulations:
The seven clinics that were not affected by the new restrictions (and the eighth that is soon to open) were concentrated in the four largest metropolitan areas in the eastern part of the state. The lawyers had told the Court that, for the time being, there were no licensed facilities to provide abortions anywhere in the state south or west of San Antonio — “an area larger than most states.”
Texas officials had urged the Supreme Court not to block the new measures, arguing that they were necessary to protect the health of pregnant women in the state. They also argued that the challengers had exaggerated the practical impact of the new restrictions, and that most women would continue to have access to abortions within what they said was a reasonable driving distance.
Abortion will always be available for the upper and upper middle class as California, Canada or Sweden are within reasonable cost and time parameters.
The majority of abortions in this country are for women who under the age of 25. Historically, this is a cohort that does not have the ability to fly out of state for an elective, common and safe medical procedure. Nor is it a cohort that has bought into the dominant American car culture. The odds of a 22 year old woman, much less an 18 year old having a car, and the financial resources to drive halfway across Texas and back without missing work is not particularly high. It is unreasonable harrassment against female autonomy and reproductive control mingling with blatant classism. And for this the government of the State of Texas wins the asshole of the week.
Epicurus
These yokels are so very interested in “protecting women’s health” that they will prevent women from receiving proper medical care. Next up, they will show people how to lose weight by overeating. The hypocrisy and misogyny on display here are breathtaking. Get politicians out from between women and their physicians. It’s really none of your GD business.
Ferdzy
How about asshole of the decade.
catclub
You could at least mention that the stay issued by SCOTUS is a partial victory for abortion rights.
dmsilev
I was under the impression that the Texas government was no longer eligible for this award, having long since received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Assholery Above and Beyond the Call of Duty.
AnonPhenom
Its the 36% number. That’s the one they want lowered so they can ‘get their country back’.
? Martin
TPM asks an obvious question: Should single women be allowed to vote?
It seems that young women cannot be trusted with anything these days. Not their own bodies, not even their own voices.
Does anyone see a first amendment right being violated when a public speech can be shut down due to the threat of a mass shooting that the state has legislated cannot even attempt to be prevented? Lawmakers obviously don’t see a problem, and I doubt the courts will either.
? Martin
@catclub: Is it, though? We haven’t seen stays issued uniformly in other states with similar laws. At the moment it appears totally arbitrary.
the Conster
@? Martin:
The laws are working as intended.
/white guy
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
It does seem weird to me that the 2nd Amendment is allowed to trump the 1st Amendment. Is there any other part of the Constitution that’s allowed to overrule another part?
Belafon
@Mnemosyne: Here’s how a ruling will go: She wasn’t being directly threatened and did not have credible evidence that someone would target her at the location. Her first amendment rights were not taken away because should could have given her speech.
KG
@dmsilev: the lifetime achievement award does not bar one from the weekly, monthly, or annual awards. like how a coach can be elected to the hall of fame and continue coaching.
Iowa Old Lady
I have what’s probably a stupid question. Does a woman have to go to a clinic to get an abortion? If she can afford it, can her OB/GYN do it in a hospital or outpatient surgery center? That would really make this even more of a class issue.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
So I got this response to a job application:
This same agency has told me in the past that, since I don’t have any direct experience, I’ll need to take an entry level position. So I’m left wondering exactly what jobs I should be applying for.
WaterGirl
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Have you considered writing another book? You could call it Catch-22.
WaterGirl
When I was in my late twenties, I managed the loan fund for our local abortion rights group. The woman would get a loan for her abortion and we set up a payback plan.
I wonder if groups are still doing that, and if not, I wonder if they will need to start up again.
Or maybe something like the underground railroad – people helping women get where they need to go in order to be able to get an abortion.
It’s almost a joke to say that abortion is still legal. Though I don’t deny that it would be much, much worse if Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Hungry Joe
Asshole of the Week? Please. It’s only Wednesday — lots of time left on the clock, and plenty of assholes still on the playing field. Reminds me of a line in “Ragtime”: The newspapers were calling the murder of architect Stanford White “the crime of the century,” but the author (E.L. Doctorow) pointed out that the century was still young.
David Hunt
As a citizen of the great State of Texas, I enthusiastically endorse this award.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Hungry Joe: “Storm of the Century of the Week”
RSA
@Belafon:
I wonder if she considered giving her talk dressed in bulletproof vest, helmet with face shield, and so forth, explaining that this was necessary given the threats against her life in that very venue.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I got a family story about abortion that is both hilarious and shows all too well the costs that get dumped onto society when it’s forbidden, but I really cannot post it in full detail because if it ever got back to my wife I’d be handed divorce papers in a week.
Short version: when the kids and parents get together and tell a sibling Jesus says abortion is bad and they shouldn’t have one, and that sibling has been using that as their only method of birth control for decades (seriously, she had at least 8 we know of), and they’re an irresponsible (warning: serious understatement) fucktard who sponges off of mommy and daddy and refuses to work, don’t be surprised ten years down the line if you end up with your inheritance spent down to nothing.
The oldest is ten years old this week. The celebrations are rather muted from some quarters of the family.
Fred
Here I thought Texas already won that prize for sending a guy with Ebola home to take Tylenol. You know it was ’cause he was:
1) Black
2) Ferrin
3) Had no insurance
Now the Jack is out of the box.
As Rick Perry says, “Oops.” Or as Dubaya sez, “Fool me once…”
Texas don’t give F**k all.
Botsplainer
@WaterGirl:
If Roe is overturned, look for bans on fetal travel to states where D&Cs are still legal.
Tommy
I will say this about the right to life folks, they are “innovative.” Not in a million years would I thought of shutting down clinics in this manner.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Botsplainer: Fully unconstitutional (I don’t think even Scalia and Thomas could sign off on that one, although they would try) and practically unenforceable.
Shakezula
Ha ha ha. That’s funny because a woman seeking an abortion doesn’t wish to be pregnant.
Plus, I’m going to take a wild leap at the facts and say that far more women die from complications related to pregnancy than botched procedures in properly run clinics.
Lee
Having grown up in Texas, I have lived in every part of the state. That is crap. We are talking hundreds of miles of some of the bleakest land in the country.
Lee
@Shakezula: You would be correct. More women have complications and die from giving birth than from abortions.
Keith G
When I open the Balloon-Juice home page (using IE or Chrome), I get an audio of TDS starting automatically.
Tommy
@Epicurus: That is what pisses me off the most. As a dude I am NO expert on women’s health. But there is a Planned Parenthood clinic in the strip mall around the corner from where my brother and his wife live. Clearly they offer services other than just abortion. And it is a pretty affluent area and the place is packed every second it is open. Clearly there is a massive need for the services they provide.
danielx
Of this week?
Right.
If the state of Texas had any interest in protecting the health of pregnant women, it would budget a few more shekels for prenatal care for women on Medicaid, but…
This is about punishing those sluts for their slutty behavior. Biblical morals dictate that they should be punished by being forced to bear children they can’t afford to raise so that those children may be punished unto the fifth generation. Also, sluts.
Tommy
@Lee: Lived in Texas as well and driven across/around the state many times. If you live in West Texas and need to get to one of the few clinics that will stay open if this law stands, that is one heck of a drive.
Botsplainer
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Until Alabama started appointing GALs for fetii, I’d have agreed with you. Personhood (which is where they are trying to head on a de facto basis) would give the judges an “in”.
Think of it like a prohibition on removing a child from the state in a divorce. I do that all the time.
Bokonon
The great State of Texas, behaving like an asshole? I am shocked.
Sure … but that’s a feature of this type of policy making. Not a bug. The point bring the power of the state down unmercifully on one side of the culture wars, and to hurt, punish, stigmatize, and marginalize the other side at every turn. The power of the government is a loaded cannon that the majority points against the minority.
Which is exactly why it is so important for the right wing to control the levers of government. This sort of thing can’t stand up to power sharing or compromises. You need total control to make the government favor and disfavor classes of citizens and viewpoints this way.
Roger Moore
@Epicurus:
They’re already proven to themselves that lowering tax rates increases revenues, so this shouldn’t be a big surprise.
Tommy
It is BS like this that turned my mom from a lifelong moderate Republican to a Democrat. I know my mother would NEVER suggest an abortion to anybody. Yet she also doesn’t think you or me should tell other people how to live their lives. Much less what we should do with our bodies.
I say this all the time here, my mom can’t be alone in her thinking. She should be the core of the Republican base. White, rich, in her 60s. They drove her away!
? Martin
@Botsplainer:
Ah, yep. I can see it now…
scav
Texas, coming all over strong and pleading for backup Federal enforcement of its tender tender concern for da wimminz and da babeez health, while TX hospitals are unfettered from the profit-cramping jackbooted regulations — even when phrased as suggestions — of the CDC et alia vis a vis the health of general bipeds, especially those with not enough green. My Detect Obvious superpower must be having an on day.
skerry
@? Martin: @Botsplainer: That would work if the woman told anyone about the pregnancy and her plans to abort. I know if I was in that situation and thought a lawsuit might result, I’d just quietly get on a plane and take care of it without telling anyone.
Assuming, of course, I am a woman with the means to do so.
When I had my abortion many years ago, only one girlfriend knew about it.
Tommy
@skerry: I would think that is the case with most single women. I would assume a married women would have a conversation about an abortion with her husband.
But I assume a single women, well she wouldn’t be running around talking about an abortion. I’d think a very private and personal thing. I’ve lived with women, been very close if not married, and I am not sure any of them would have told me. I like to think they would trust me enough to have the conversation, but in the end not so sure.
skerry
@Tommy: You can get into trouble making assumptions. A married woman might have very good reasons to keep a pregnancy to herself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tommy:
Maybe the husband isn’t the father. Maybe the husband is abusive. Maybe the husband is strongly anti-abortion. And so on…
Hal
These laws only serve purpose to limit and ultimately eliminate, the ability of a woman to obtain an abortion. In the same way that voter ID laws are designed to try and limit voting by specific demographics by raising ridiculous and easily refuted claims of voter fraud. With abortion, the proponents of these laws publicly brag that their intention is to eliminate access, not protect the woman.
What I don’t understand is why that lack of sincerity, that obvious use of back door measures doesn’t seem to have more sway in convincing courts to strike these laws down? It is disingenuous of say, the Supreme Court to say hey, all other outpatient medical facilities have to comply, so this is really just about medical safety when you know for a fact that it is not.
burnspbesq
@Belafon:
This has been a topic of conversation on my Facebook today. I said we’ve given the FBI enormous resources to fight terrorism, and it’s time for them to go chase an actual terrorist instead of entrapping pimply-faced Muslim teenagers.
sparrow
@WaterGirl: I would sign up for this. I had one when I was 24, and I’m absolutely sure it changed the course of my life for the better. I would want others to have the same opportunities I had.
burnspbesq
If Texas women will simply incorporate their vaginas, the state will lose all interest in regulating them.
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: @skerry: I hear you. I was just kind of inserting myself, in the perfect world I envision marriage if I ever get married, and the actual reality of many marriages.
My main point is I see many on the far right seem to think abortion is like this “gleeful” thing women do. I am thinking it is a painful, hard choice. Personal and private. Not “gleeful” in the least. That was what I was trying to say even if I didn’t say it well.
Chet
@AnonPhenom: This. For all that we hear about the patriarchal, slut-shaming, stay-in-the-kitchen aspects of the “pro-life” movement, there’s also a huge White Panic element that doesn’t get discussed nearly enough.
If only black and brown women ever got abortions, the Right would fucking mandate them rather than trying to ban them.
sparrow
@Tommy: I think for most it is neither gleeful nor particularly glum. For me it ranked about the same as when I found out a root canal had gone bad and I would need to have the entire tooth out: “well that sucks”. I wasn’t exactly excited about it but I knew what needed to be done, and life went on.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: This touches a little on Owen Fiss’s concept that society may need to put its thumb on the scale to encourage certain categories of speakers because they are too frequently shouted down.* I have to admit that I am not very comfortable the concept. Fiss is brilliant and a very nice man (He wrote an article for my law review when I was articles editor so I got to deal with him quite a bit), but restricting speech to encourage speech seems like trying to thread too small a needle.
*Grossly simplified
skerry
@Tommy: Not a painful, hard choice. One of the easiest life choices I have ever made. Not a lot of emotion either way. But definitely personal and private.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy: I like to think they would trust me enough to have the conversation, but in the end not so sure.
What makes you so sure marriage would change that?
WaterGirl
@sparrow: We had a 100% repayment rate. Zero defaults on the loans. Women were unbelievably grateful for the funds and they made sure to pay back every penny because that was what funded others who were in need.
danielx
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Don’t count on it. Scalia, Thomas and Alito will sign off on just about anything they want to sign off on, precedent, logic and constitutionality be damned. Cops have been given more or less carte blanche to pull over anybody, anytime, for any reason or for no reason at all thanks to The War on Terror and The War on Americans – er, War on Drugs. I’ve no doubt that a significant percentage of Texas law folk – say those who are evangelicals, which I don’t imagine are hard to find – would consider it a sacred duty to pull over any vehicle proceeding from west to east which might possibly have a pregnant woman on board. In order to protect their health and save them from themselves, plus to protect those precious fetal American persons. Once they’re born, of course, the hell with them.
Tommy
@sparrow: Interesting. As I often note I learn something new here each day. I guess in my comment I was projecting what I thought a women would think (and we know about assumptions ….).
My gut is I’d feel about the same as you did, you know if I was a woman.
Omnes Omnibus
@skerry: The one time it touched on my life (as far as I know) was when a girl I had rather casually dated and with whom I envisioned no future contacted me to tell me she was pregnant (birth control failure). She also immediately told me she was having an abortion. Very matter of fact and practical. She wasn’t asking me – her mother had told her not to tell me in case I was the kind of ass who would make a fuss – she was telling me. I asked how much it was and wrote a check for half of the cost. She declined my offer to go with her saying she preferred to go with her mother. End of story.
Tommy
@Gin & Tonic: As I said in another comment above this I was doing some projection. I have never been married. I have this vision of what it would be like. Finding that soul mate. A vision that might not be based in reality. But a vision none the less.
In that vision, I like to think my wife and I would have a conversation about an abortion. Pretty much across the board I’d differ to her decision, but still like to be included.
Roger Moore
@Hal:
Because the courts [ETA: that are going along with these laws] aren’t being sincere in their reasoning, either. SATSQ.
sparrow
@Tommy: I think that’s reasonable if you are in a good relationship. I discussed it with my boyfriend, asked for his opinion (but not his permission). Fortunately he agreed with me so things were very simple. He also paid for half. But circumstances can (obviously) be very, very different.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
I thought making credible threats of violence was already illegal as assault. The problem here isn’t one of free speech, it’s one of freedom to carry one’s weapon anywhere and everywhere. The police were unwilling to take reasonable and sane steps to keep weapons away from an event where somebody had made a credible threat to commit mass murder. Something tells me that they would have reached a different conclusion had the speaker been Israeli and the threat had sounded as if it was made by a radical Muslim.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Yeah, the credible threats of violence make it a different thing. The bit about Fiss was rather tangential to burnsie’s comment. His remark simply jarred something loose in my head, so I babbled on about it.
skerry
@sparrow: @Tommy: I know a lot of women who have had the procedure. I’d estimate about half of them discussed it with the other party, whether married, single or in a committed relationship. When it was discussed, the major point of the discussion was financial.
Me? My insurance paid it in full.
Tommy
There is a story I tell rarely. A happy story IMHO. My grandfather was a small town rural doctor. He had issues. He was a racist. Far right. He was so hard on my dad, all those military schools. He was never around, always working.
This was a different time. He had offices where you could get out patient surgery done.
In the 50s and 60s it wasn’t even an open secret. You could get an abortion at his practice.
As my father would later explain to me, he took the Hippocratic Oath. He put his politics aside when the health of a person came into play.
I have a III at the end of my name. Share a name with him. When I go back to that town my parents now live in, he lived in, and I am introduced, I am often hugged. Told my grandfather was there for them.
He did the right thing. Brings a tear to my eyes!
Shakezula
@danielx:
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Yep. Like it or not, some free speech is more equal than others, even in the good ol’ U S of A.
danielx
@Shakezula:
This is true, I forgot that part.
Betcherass that not one of daddy’s little darlings in the Tri Delt houses at U of T, or SMU, or Baylor will ever have to ‘ruin her life’ because of an ‘indiscretion’. Yes, I fully admit I’m stereotyping, but affluent women have always been able to obtain safe abortions if they wanted them, laws or no laws. So it has always been and so shall it always be.
For poor women, not so much.
d58826
@Shakezula: The intent of the la,w according to texas officals, is to ensure the same high level of care in an abortion clinic as would be received in any one of the fine Hospital;s in the state. Hmmm did I hear some one mutter Ebola??????????
d58826
@Tommy: The old ‘country doctor’, even though it was in the big city, who brought my Mom, my aunt, my sister, me and countless other kids into the world also proformed the procedure. He just marked it up as a D&C, no questions asked.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
What did the agency say when you pointed that out to them?