This is, of course, appalling, but at least one anti-abortion fanatic is being honest about what they believe in:
Men and women, young and old, native Texans and immigrants, they rose to ask lawmakers to protect life, describing a “genocide” and foreseeing the arrival of “God’s wrath.”
The act of public atonement they are seeking is passage of a bill that would criminalize abortion without exception, and make it possible to convict women who undergo the procedure of homicide, which can carry the death penalty in Texas. Though it faces steep odds of becoming law, the measure earned a hearing this week amid a larger legislative push in GOP-controlled states to curtail abortion rights, in a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.
The legislation is the brainchild of state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, a Republican from Arlington, Tex., who was placed under state protection because of death threats he received when he first introduced the bill in 2017. The Air Force veteran, who has been married five times, argues that the measure is necessary to make women “more personally responsible.” He said Tuesday that his intention is to guarantee “equal protection” for life inside and “outside the womb.”
If you remember, Trump, during the primary, famously “stumbled” (in other words said out loud the quiet parts) that women should be punished for abortion before his handlers backed that shit up with a quickness. But, in reality, it’s what the Republicans really think. It’s certainly what the American Taliban, led my Mike Pence and the Opus Dei quorum at the Supreme Court think.
I’ve read quite a bit of fiction, and I play quite a few video games, and in the genre of games I like to play (a lot of isometric RPG’s, fantasy like Deus Ex/The Withcer, etc.) there is always an underlying narrative of some faction of religious fanatics- even in games like Fallout. And usually, no matter how you try to deal with them, peacefully, respectfully, give them their space, inevitably there gets to be a point in the game where the only thing you can do is to burn it all fucking down. Just kill it with fire. Make it no longer cease to exist, loot it, and move on to the rest of the story.
It always seems like over the top fiction. Or, at least it used to. At any rate, I am not sure how we are going to denazify or unradicalize the fanatics after this little experiment in tyranny the Republicans are bringing us. At some point in the near future, if we are to beat back this fascist wave, we’re going to have to address these lunatics and put them back in their place. It’s gonna be ugly, because they are already violent and unhinged. And I just don’t know how we are going to deal with them.
jl
So, for women carrying a child that is nonviable that endangers her health, there will be two deaths in instead of one, and his god will be happy? Nice to know.
The miscarriage and spontaneous abortion police will a fun bunch, too. They’ll have a lot of cases to persecute.
khead
We are headed to a BioShock world. As for the shithead from Texas, the doctor needs to be charged too.
Martin
My mom and I have a rule about nutpicking legislation, which is that it needs to get out of committee before it can be used as an example. CA’s ‘kill the gays’ ballot amendment was hardly representative of views here. Though getting a hearing for this lunacy is farther along than it should ever get.
As to John’s point about video games, I won’t deny taking some great delight at running around blowing up the Far Cry 5 cult. The game shied away from actually having them be the Christian Identity group that they were obviously modeled after, but in my head I’m shooting up dumbfuck racist white people, and it’s pretty satisfying. BOTW is a better game, but shooting moblins in the head doesn’t shake off the stupidity of the day nearly as well.
Really good article on the clusterfuck that is the Wisconsin giveaway to Foxconn.
Martin
@jl: It’s obviously the woman’s fault for having an ectopic pregnancy. What the fuck – does she need GPS to figure out where that egg should go? It’s not like there are a lot of routes to choose from. Amirite?
Kay
They’ve always successfully dodged the question of how they were going to enforce the laws, but anyone who read the increasingly radical anti-abortion laws knew where this was going. The punishments are only half the enforcement story, too. They are going to have to monitor women of childbearing age and investigate all miscarriages, because they’ll have to determine the level of medical intervention permissible in any pregnancy that doesn’t end in a birth. It wasn’t an abortion that put a halt to these folks in Ireland- it was a miscarriage where the pregnant women was denied medical care to “save” the baby.
Eljai
What do you want to bet that his ex-wives have restraining orders against the dickwad?
Kay
@jl:
The investigations will be a new and delightful addition to pregnancy care, don’t you think? Nut job prosecutors combing through any woman’s medical records to determine if there was excessive medical intervention. They may have to set up a new police force.
Brachiator
Now there’s a “child” that certainly should be aborted.
Married five times. Sounds like a loser who’s holding a hell of a grudge. Also, too, if he is getting all Biblical and shit, isn’t it personally irresponsible for him to have been married more than once?
MattF
Note this, from the linked article:
Reporter misses the implication, but it’s the next step, you must not even consider abortion. It’s thoughtcrime.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You have always been on top of this point, Kay. You tell no lies.
Mary G
They are going to go hard after contraception if we let them get away with this. You only have to look at every photo op where Twitler is surrounded by old white men to tell they think barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen is where half the population belongs.
And meanwhile, if their precious daughter Becky gets in a bit of a fix, they’ll fly her out here to California to abort.
Adam L Silverman
This is the exact justification used by the Reverend Paul Hill for assassinating Dr. John Britton and clinic escort James Barnett outside the Ladies Center in Pensacola, FL on 29 July 1994. Hill had been protesting the clinic, and others in the area, with a sign that had that same biblical quote on it. Eventually he realized the sign he made was an inspiration from the Deity to him to take action and live his ministry and what he was preaching. He hid his gun in the pole that his sign was affixed too.
I’ll dig out the portable hard drive later and post the sections from my doctoral dissertation regarding Paul Hill.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Well, how ARE they going to enforce it? Why aren’t they asked? They want to pass new laws banning something and they don’t have to explain how they plan on investigating the cases and enforcing the laws?
Why are they allowed to conduct this whole debate in the abstract? They have their SCOTUS majority. Time to grow up and tell people what they plan to do.
They don’t tell people because they know it would be unpopular, so instead we get Bible verses and Hallmark cards about mommies and babies. This is real life. Women get medical interventions in pregnancy every day. Do we have to report to the miscarriage police? Strap on an ankle monitor for 9 months? Register like sex offenders? Get specific.
MattF
By the way, I don’t believe that Trump gives a shit about abortion. I’ve always assumed that his ‘slip’ about punishing women was the result of repeating something he’d heard ten minutes earlier from some fanatic.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. He’s saying that the woman isn’t actually carrying out the abortion herself. She’s only authorizing a procedure that’s carried out by a doctor and medical staff. But that doesn’t get the woman off the hook; getting an abortion would be the legal equivalent of hiring a hit man.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: Old Testament says trying to induce an abortion is a good test for a woman’s infidelity to her husband. Will they make an exception for that? Increases the gender oppression and cruelty, so maybe they will.
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
This much has always been obvious. After all, these are the same people who describe hormonal contraception as a form of abortion.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
God, what a fucking pansy. Aren’t these the same people who think that a good guy with a gun can beat a bad guy with a gun? Aren’t they supposed to be tough guys? “Real” men? He’s a veteran and he goes running to the police at the first sign of trouble? What a coward!
Also, fuck him for trying to force women to be pregnant against their wills, especially when the pregnancy is due to rape or there is a medical emergency necessitating abortion. Women are going to die because of this, if this is passed.
I learned the other day about viability. A lot of forced birthers love to argue that pro-choice advocates are for “late-term abortions”, when at that point, much of the time, the fetus would be viable. The only abortions after that point are medically necessary to save the life of the mother. They also refuse to use the word “fetus”, instead using “baby”.
jl
@Kay: It’s estimated that between a quarter to a third of pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion or miscarriage. Usually fairly early in the term. I am not sure how many of those pregnancies are detected beforehand. But even if a fraction, it would be a nightmare.
Dave
@Mary G: Which is of course insane if you actually take the stated goal of ending abortion at face value; they really want Gilead. There was a time in my life when I underestimated the intensity of sexism and misogyny. I thought it was widespread but relatively shallow compared to say racism. 2016 and it’s secondary effects cured me of that misconception (also helped me recognize though not completely overcome my own unexamined sexism) It’s amazing how much a group of dedicated fanatics can damage even if there position is a distinctly minority one.
kindness
Trump’s/McConnell’s judges are going to bite us in the ass for a generation.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: Abortion is actually required by Judaism, up to the point where the crown of the head breaches into daylight, to save the life and/or health of the mother. The only Jews who do not follow this, which was codified by Maimonides in the 11th century, are the ultra Orthodox and some modern Orthodox who decided that because of the Holocaust, there are so few Jews left that abortion cannot be permitted. Also, because most of the leaders of the ultra Orthodox are Ashkenazi and Maimonides was Sephardi, they’ve always crapped on his responsa and rulings.
In Israel abortions are legal, covered under Israel’s universal health care system, and, because money is fungible, paid for with the US tax dollars paid by Evangelical Christians.
jl
@Roger Moore: That contraception is a hidden agenda of the fanatics who oppoe all abortions, no matter what the situation, has long been obvious to those who follow the issue. But I don’t think to medium and low info voters. Polling certainly has shown a vast majority of men and women think contraception is a very good thing, so a good idea to get the anti-choice, anti-woman (and I think fair to say anti-child) agenda of these haters, sadists, and nut jobs out into the open.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Which state was it where a loon recently proposed required a funeral service after an abortion. It went nowhere of course. Mr DAW and I don’t even plan to have funeral services for one another.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for info, I did not know that. The recipe for detecting an unfaithful wife is in Deuteronomy or Numbers, I forget which. Anyway, it was intended a Biblical pro-tip for the ‘sola scriptura’ Christians out there.
Kay
@jl:
It’s really common! It’s also really common to get medical care either as intervention or afterward.
They never address this and it’s tripped up other radical Right countries, who ended up killing pregnant women because they were refused medical care out of fear of these nutjobs storming in and arresting everyone. This has already happened.
I’m not asking that much. I’m asking them to go to the next logical step in their proposed progression. I’m the status quo- abortion is legal. I don’t have to explain how my new laws work, they do. They refuse. They get some special exception where they just have to recite Bible verses and no one ever asks them to explain the practical import of their new religious laws.
Dave
@jl: Agreed the honest and emotional impacted anti-choice set tends to still favor contraception but at the end of the day they will vote to “save” babies because while they aren’t happy about the contraception portion, if they are even aware of it, they can’t support murder. My mother falls into this category hence why she voted for Trump despite despising every thing else about him. It’s maddening.
That said if there position on contraception actually enters the mainstream consciousness it’s going to hurt them badly (it’s way to popular) it’s just that there will be a lot of damage done in the meantime.
Millard Filmore
I do not see this in the comments yet:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
from democraticunderground.com/100211999421
MattF
Also, fwiw, I’m reading a series of SFF novels called ‘The Nanotech Succession’ by Linda Nagata– in which an irresistable urge for communal religious rapture is due a virus spread to humans by agents of an ancient malevolent civilization that died out 30 million years ago.
Dave
@Kay: Yep own it I’m really tired of the bad faith cute bullshit used to pass radical unpopular legislation. And how poor a job the media does when it comes to this reporting any deeper than the official line of bullshit.
lou
This is what Texan women could look forward to if this were to become law.
jl
@Kay: Very important to tell friends , neighbors, family etc., about there this hateful nonsense will lead, both in terms of contraception, and havoc it would play with the normal course of reproductive life (as their God apparently intended, so get of His/Her back about it, OK, maybe?). Might be good to get up a list of countries that have gone further down that road to madness and oppression and discuss what happened, and publicize it
So, maybe I am suggesting a front post on it, by somebody or other. Guest post, maybe by an expert?
@lou: Thanks. I thought El Salvador t was one of the countries that went down that horrible road.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: You’re way, way, way low. When I was doing bioethics in grad school, they were estimating somewhere around 80% of fertilized eggs either never implant or implant and the implantation fails before the woman ever knows she’s pregnant. If I’m remembering the literature correctly, the scientific argument for this is that the woman’s body is protecting itself because through some combination of biochemistry it actually can tell that the fertilized egg is non-viable and/or damaged in some way.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: Life begins at dinner and a movie. Or Netflix and chill.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Kay:
That’s the most maddening part about American conservatives, isn’t it? They exempt themselves from the laws and rules they pass that the rest of us must slavishly obey. They’re the worst people on the planet
Adam L Silverman
@jl: I thought the test for infidelity was if one spouse was suddenly much, much happier than the other.
Of course I’m single, so what the hell do I know.
Kay
@jl:
People can bitch about Roe but at least Roe grappled with reality. At least Roe included an examination of rights and a balance. These people don’t bother with any of that “thinking” stuff. They just proclaim the fetus a person, call it done, and move right to the sentencing phase for the woman. It’s shoddy and lazy thinking and they get away with it because they pull out the all-purpose religious card and wave it around to quell questions. I have questions! It’s on them to answer them.
TaMara (HFG)
Is all you really need to know about this man and his relationship to women….
jl
@Adam L Silverman: I didn’t know the rate of nonviable conception was that high. But I was talking about cases where the fetus is carried long enough so that the woman knows or suspects she is pregnant, or realizes or suspects a pregnancy happened in retrospect.
So, what I was giving was the low end estimate of the number of people who could be persecuted for experiencing the normal course of reproductive life. The only question is, how many of pregnancies that ended with something that the woman, or the family, notices would be officially recorded for evil purposes by the reproductive gestapo/KGB.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Adam L Silverman:
I’v always been super fascinated with how the body works, especially at the cellular and molecular level. Like, there is a protein called kinesin that literally “walks” across the filaments in cells to transport different molecules. It also astounds me that these sorts of processes vital to life happened because of random mutations. That it works so well is incredible.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Kay:
You can’t argue with fanatics, Kay. Facts don’t matter to fascists
Kay
I know people are mad at Buttigieg because political media so clearly swoon for him but this is a good fight for him and he’s best positioned to have it. He does go after Pence a lot, and Pence is a good political target.
We have such a wealth of candidates we have one whole person to attack Mike Pence :)
Gin & Tonic
@Millard Filmore:
Not that I don’t trust Democratic Underground as a news source or anything (ahem) but I wouldn’t mind seeing some independent verification of this particular allegation.
Aleta
So many combinations of corrupt circumstances could lead to a trial. A confirmed fetus, but the next routine ultrasound shows less increase in size than expected. Still a heartbeat. The next ultrasounds pick up progressively weaker heartbeats. Each for their own purpose, a boyfriend, an opportunist lawyer and a political LE official, want to go after the mother or doctors for murder. Or an informant who’s facing prison says he sold her drugs. Or maybe a Chinese acupuncturist who dispenses herbal medicine could be targeted even though he treated but didn’t prescribe for her.
WereBear
@Adam L Silverman: I can certainly see how failing certain basic levels of development feedback (the body can be exquisitely sensitive to such) would result in not wasting any resources on conception product that will ultimately fail.
John Revolta
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve heard it also works in cases of legitimate rape.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: I heard a news report that male contraceptive drug is moved through human safety tests, and is moving through mammal effectiveness tests. Same story said that most men would strongly consider taking a safe and effective male contraceptive.
They going after mail contraception, drugs and rubbers, too?
Salty Sam
This! is the think that keeps me up some nights…
jl
@John Revolta: “I’ve heard it also works in cases of legitimate rape.”
But now the ‘legitimate’ GOP approved abortion process after ‘legitimate rape’ will be a crime too?
Gosh, that is just so darn too bad for the women, huh?
Mike in NC
Michael Cohen, as Fat Bastard’s fixer, was responsible for paying hush money to the women that Trump had affairs with. We know the names of two. I also recall there being something about paying other women for abortions, a subject Trump has always refused to discuss. Obviously the Christianists don’t care about that stuff because he was sent by God. The media also seem oddly silent about his numerous dalliances with women who were not married to him over the course of decades.
jl
@Salty Sam: The older ones will not change. They need to be outvoted, and repeatedly reminded to obey the law after they get good and soundly licked politically
Gin & Tonic
@jl: What about vasectomies and tubal ligations?
Karen
@Kay: And they’ll be monitoring to make sure all women of child bearing age are pregnant or were pregnant with child, because the next step to this is to outlaw birth control (except condoms). They call birth control an abortifacient now!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Salty Sam: It’s really hard to put the genie back in the bottle once you let it out.
MattF
@jl: Well, currently, unintended pregnancy is an accident for men and a sin for women. I think changing that is the real problem, rather than some technical improvement in methods of contraception.
rikyrah
Oh Senator,
The AG is a phucking hack ???
twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1116062486413942787
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
I think this would count as the incel position, though maybe they’d extend it to “life begins when I think she’s desirable”.
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: The Pences have a First Amendment right to believe whatever they want and even to say it without government interference. What they don’t have is a right not to be called out on it by everyone else or to not be denounced because what they believe is actually bigotry and prejudice.
?BillinGlendaleCA
How do you deal with these folks? FEMA camps.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Naturally the Pence ladies’ “defense” boiled down to this: You’re not allowed to criticize our hateful, bigoted views that ruin people’s lives because our hateful, bigoted views are based on religion! Fuck every damned one of those fanatics, and good for Buttigieg for going after them. Trump is such a trainwreck clown that Pence flies under the radar way more than he should, given his antediluvian views.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: I haven’t done research into this particular brand of All American crazy in a while, so I don’t know.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@khead: Republicans have always wanted to charge the doctor, charging women is the new twist.
Adam L Silverman
@Salty Sam: Truth & Reconciliation Commission and a Crimes Against Humanity Tribunal.
Roger Moore
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I think there has always been a minority of the minority that has wanted to charge women for procuring abortions; they’ve just been hushed by the rest of the group because even the “no abortion ever” people can see they’re toxic.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@rikyrah:
That Twitter thread is full of RW loons. The bots are out in full force. Gotta love the asshole yelling about “stolen valor”.
Betty Cracker
@TaMara (HFG): I Wiki’d the shit-stain, and it turns out he has been married five times but only four women were involved. One married him, divorced him, remarried him and re-divorced him. I will never understand that in a million years. It’s like having an appendix removed and then reinserted. WTF?
Dave
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’d say there just starting to be comfortable enough to voice it or have been sufficiently marinating in their own little media bubble that they don’t realize how ugly that is to everyone else. Or they do and just don’t give a rats ass because righteous fanaticism.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
I really love the irony in this.
matt
The Air force is full of fucking evangelical kooks.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah:
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: It’s also a giant, flashing neon sign pointing to said evangelicals’ hypocrisy. If they cared about the baybeeeeeez as much as they claim, they’d be marching around demanding an end to US aid to Israel.
jl
@Brachiator: If you can make an argument it all is the mysterious will of God in bringing on Armageddon, mass death and condemnation of almost everyone to hell asap, the fanatical Christian fundamentalists will be cool with it.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Y’know… I sorta guessed that there was a twofer in there. Not all that uncommon, apparently.
JustRuss
@Adam L Silverman:
Well isn’t that interesting? I’m just going to predict that any congressperson who mentions that will be castigated for their antisemitsim.
Azelie
So, I’ve had a few early miscarriages and am also a scholar who deals with women and gender. One of the things that struck me as I was dealing with the miscarriages is how little we know about it scientifically. Partly this is because it’s difficult to study, but another factor is that there is not really urgency to devote resources to it. As someone who was trying to figure out how to approach a medical issue and its implications for my life, it seemed particularly galling to me that for all the worry about the unborn there was not the kind of concern for devoting resources to medical investigation and potential treatments that you would think would accompany a medical problem that applies to this huge number of people. You don’t have to be a gender scholar to understand that those who profess to care about the unborn do not really care about the unborn.
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker:
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes. The idea was that women were so fragile and weak-minded that they could not be held responsible for getting an abortion, so that all of the blame fell on the doctor. This Texas nonsense obviously wants to severely punish women for having sex and getting pregnant.
I partly blame Trump for this. He is also big on dealing out punishment to those who dare to defy his will.
Steve in the ATL
Apropos of nothing, I am boarding a plane with the UVA women’s gymnastics team.
Wahoowa!
Dave
@Betty Cracker: Evangelicals have provided themselves a nice out for that one though. As it’s between God and his misguidef Chosen People it’s not for us to interfere (unless of course they start electing liberals who peace or something similar) Until they are all massacred or converted during Armageddon of course. And I’m going to go back to not thinking to hard about how much influence a dressed up end times death cult has on the foreign policy of a nation that has the capacity to end all human life.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Adam L Silverman:
Initiating large, legally questionable surveillance programs must run in the family for the Bushes. Like Poppy, like son
eemom
@Brachiator: @Adam L Silverman:
Good thing they’re too stupid to process that information, or it might explode their itty bitty brains.
Sister Golden Bear
@jl:
Feature, not a bug.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: @Betty Cracker: And as I wrote here on the front page, Israel, while having a legal form of private gun ownership, regulates private gun ownership heavily.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: Also, the babies being aborted in Israel are predominantly Jewish and Muslim, so…
Ruckus
@MattF:
Also misses the point that they don’t consider the fact that they want to murder people as well. Of course they don’t consider “those people” to be human so their murder is god approved.
Adam L Silverman
@Steve in the ATL: Eyes forward, hands to yourself!
NotMax
But – but – the “country is full.” So the choice becomes either mandatory abortion or the forced deportation of the pregnant, no? //
Gin & Tonic
@Steve in the ATL: I was once stuck in the Frankfurt international transit zone with some DPRK men’s team, I’m guessing volleyball or basketball. I’d bet UVA women gymnasts are more fun. The DPRK guys weren’t very communicative.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Basketball? Was the center a towering 5′ 6″?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Gin & Tonic:
Wouldn’t surprise me to learn that unauthorized communications with outsiders was illegal for them
TOP123
Just came to the site and admit I haven’t read the comments yet. Live here in Texas. My partner has physiological reasons that make pregnancy extremely risky. If we want to have kids, it’ll likely be through adoption, as any pregnancy for her is potentially life-threatening. She’s a doctor. She’s not joking around or blowing things out of proportion, it’s just reality. I don’t know why people can’t understand this–or more likely refuse to recognize the validity of people other than totemic fetuses.
rikyrah
@Kay:
That’s right. Tell the phucking truth. Make them be honest about their intent.
Peale
@Gin & Tonic: GDP must be the the Romanian Police, or something and not Gross Domestic Product. I know near the end, a lot of the economies of the eastern bloc countries stopped working, but the economy really had to have tanked for that to be the economic GDP number. Heck the economic process normal people go through to find someone to mate with has to have at least as much impact on GDP as the investigation of pregnancies.
catclub
I am not sure they do. That would be too logical. They think women who are tricked into abortion have no agency, only the planned parenthood clinic. I think this guy is an outlier – so far.
Betty Cracker
@Adam L Silverman: IIRC, Israel also has socialized medicine, gender and LGBTQ equality in their armed forces, etc. Unless their set of religious fanatics has changed that recently.
Adam L Silverman
@Betty Cracker: They have not. Who knows what will happen with the new coalition government.
catclub
@Sister Golden Bear:
selective prosecution of same being the feature.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: Absolutely, also only charging doctors implies that women have no agency.
Ksmiami
@khead: we need to cut off their food and water supply and let god help them. They are not entitled to the fruits of a modern technological world. Or as Marcellus Wallace says- let’s go medieval on their asses.
JaneE
@jl: If you go to a Catholic hospital, this is reality now.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Maybe she wasn’t sure the appendix was actually diseased. Wanna bet she is now?
Betty Cracker
Less depressing topic: SpaceX Falcon Heavy set to launch at 8 PM ET and attempt a triple landing. It’s cloudy here now, but with any luck, the clouds will dissipate and we’ll be able to see it!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: I was on a plane with Miss America, she was even on my row; flying coach no less.
Ksmiami
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I kind of feel like they don’t deserve to live here like we should drop them into Saudi Arabia where they’ll feel more comfortable…
JaneE
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: If the fetus is viable and intervention is necessary to save the mother, it is called an emergency c-section, not a late-term abortion. Pro-birthers call it an abortion even if the fetus is already dead and causing sepsis.
Tim in SF
What I’ve never understood is how they plan to stop women from driving or flying to another state for an abortion.
Texas Abortion PD: “Did you have an abortion?”
Woman: “I sure did. I flew to San Diego for a couple of days. Had it at the Womancare Clinic across from Balboa Park. Stayed at the Park Hotel right next door. Lovely time.”
We’re not going to stop women from travelling, so isn’t this just a restriction on women who don’t have the means to travel out of state?
Ruckus
@Dave:
It’s not that they don’t give a shit, their beliefs always out weigh yours, because their beliefs are religious based, which in their world is a far, far higher plane than it’s possible for yours to be. And it doesn’t matter to them that your religious beliefs say it’s OK, they don’t actually recognize other religions.
Steve in the ATL
@?BillinGlendaleCA: now that’s just sad
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Koreans are actually tall for Asians, at least in a historical context.
cain
I wonder if he feels that illegal unborn should have the same protections? If so, then this asshole should be against kids locked up in cages, right?
Adam L Silverman
@JaneE: Like the Santorums!
oursilverribbon.org/?p=188
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: Flying coach, yes. She was the former Miss Hawaii and was flying back for the pageant in Atlantic City to crown her successor, this was 9/10/2001.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@JaneE:
I know that. That’s just the term they call it, which I think I alluded to in the original comment using quotation marks around it.
Ruckus
@TOP123:
Wanna bet they consider that your wife should have to give her life for a fetus, regardless?
Many of the evangelic consider that a newborn maybe a convert, they know you are not one.
Mary G
@Tim in SF: Yep. Kill off some poors.
Fleeting Expletive
I think a whole lot of the anti-abortion cohort is cosplaying a membership ritual in order to belong to the RW cult. Nothing to do really with babeeez but a lot to do with basic patriarchy, which at his point in our culture perceives itself embattled and surrounded by amazons and Tucker C’s insult intended for Chris Hayes. Boys are just scared, they can’t help themselves.
It always winds up being about power to subjugate others, and it’s not often women have been able to even exist on their own terms, historically, culturally, or individually.
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
Note that G&T’s comment specifically cited the North Korean team.
JaneE
@Azelie: The birth control pill came out of research into infertility – why some women couldn’t conceive with no apparent gynecological problems. They may be afraid that research will enable a better abortiafacient medication.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Yes, but any child that had basketball skill would be well fed and probably grow to normal height.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Evangelicals are stupid, and largely suckers being exploited by right wing crackpots like the Kochs, etc. Also I don’t think that evangelicals even know that modern Israel exists. Some of them seem to think that there is no sin or crime in Israel, and that morality is policed by ultra-Orthodox rabbis and that (holy of holies) there is no separation of church and state.
sab
@Tim in SF: Flying to another state works fine if you can afford it and you are actually having an abortion. It’s not an option if you are having a failed pregnancy or miscarriage. Once your water breaks it’s too late to travel.
That’s what happened to Savita Halappanavar in Ireland. Once you are in labor you can’t just get on a plane to go elsewhere. So they let her suffer because the child that could not be aborted while it had a heartbeat, although it had no chance of survival. That was standard operating procedure in Ireland before the referendum. They would wait it out until toxic shock from septicemia killed either the mother or the child first. If the child died first they would rush the mother off to the ICU and try to save her. In Savita’s case she died first, so the fetus also died because it was too young to live outside of her uterus.
I am old enough to remember before Roe v. Wade. In some of the more benighted parts of the country this was normal. I knew someone who almost died like this in Mississipi in 1970. She didn’t know this was normal. She lost the kid, all her hair fell out, and she was terrified about ever getting pregnant again. She didn’t realize there were medical alternatives that could have saved her life and fertility.
In other parts of the country (big cities) there were doctors who would help with a quiet medical procedure that would save the mother.
A guy who has been married five times probably doesn’t give a rat’s ass about his wife’s life or fertility. There are always other possible wives out there.
stinger
That’s the only thing about all this that makes me smile.
JPL
@Mary G: Restrictions on birth control and abortion have always been about the poors.
Forced pregnancy
The Moar You Know
It’s really cute that y’all think that when these psychos come after contraception that the American people are going to rise up and draw a line in the sand.
We will do nothing at all. They are willing to make their point with guns and blood. We are not. And we will lose. “Bigly”, in the words of some asshole who should have been aborted.
JPL
@Adam L Silverman: I found it amusing that Pence had to send his wife and daughter out to attack Pete B. Since EFG is no longer with us, let me say Fuckem
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@The Moar You Know:
I thought you weren’t ever coming back to BJ? You said so yourself.
JaneE
@TOP123: They choose to ignore anything that doesn’t fit into their black-and-white world. You hear politicians say that no one needs to have an abortion or that there are no longer any medical reasons to abort. If that were anywhere close to true, the US wouldn’t be down among third world countries in maternal mortality.
Fleeting Expletive
Also quite convenient that abortion is a big ol’ sin that only a woman can commit, therefore an eternal demonstration of the unquestionable moral superiority of the sperm donor side of the equation. That, of course logically requires menfolk to assume the burdens of supervising the women. For their own good, naturally.
“human kindness is overflowing
and I think it’s going to rain today.”
joel hanes
Fallout
In Fallout 4 Far Harbor, I managed by very careful choices to engineer an uneasy three-way truce between the synths of Acadia, the Children Of Atom cult, and the islanders/settlers. Some of the means employed were a bit, uh, direct.
OTOH, in the Commonwealth, I had only the smallest bit of remorse about destroying Covenant, which was a seriously racist cult, and The Institute, sort of a cult. The Brotherhood of Steel I’ve allowed to continue, even though they’re a militaristic genocide cult, because Halen and Neriah are nice.
But I chose the Minutemen ending because basically I’m a commoner at heart.
John Revolta
@Tim in SF: Crossing state lines to commit a felony. Easy peasy.
RedDirtGirl
@Brachiator: Not if they are all at the same time!
chopper
@John Revolta:
wouldn’t that be a jurisdictional problem?
John Revolta
@Steve in the ATL: @?BillinGlendaleCA: I flew back from London with the Martha Graham dancers once. Good times.
Sab
@sab: Everyone addressing the voluntary abortion question with cracks and jokes is ignoring the medically necessary abortions to save the mother. These are real and unforunately common.
Too many men in our commentariat.
Keep on smirking, guys.
Mary G
Early respite thread:
joel hanes
re: Ireland
Allow me to recommend to all and sundry the movie “Philomena”, starring Judy Dench.
trollhattan
@John Revolta:
Was Betty Ford with them?
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t believe that at all.
@Sab:
Give it a rest.
And I say that with all due respect.
trollhattan
@Mary G:
Awww, Larry!
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
You’re killing me…like removing and reinserting appendix. My stomach hurts from laughing.
J R in WV
@Gin & Tonic:
OK, not gonna compute GDP percentages, but here’s some horrific text from a wiki article about Decree 770:
To counter this sharp decline of the population, the Communist Party decided that the Romanian population should be increased from 23 to 30 million inhabitants. In October 1966,[1] Decree 770 was authorized by Ceaușescu. Abortion and contraception were declared illegal, except for:
women over 45 (later lowered to 40)
women who had already borne four children (later raised to five)
women whose life would be threatened by carrying to term, due to medical complications
women who were pregnant through rape and/or incest
Enforcement
To enforce the decree, society was strictly controlled. Contraceptives disappeared from the shelves and all women were forced to be monitored monthly by a gynecologist.[citation needed] Any detected pregnancies were followed until birth. Secret police kept close eyes on operations in hospitals.
Sex education was refocused primarily on the benefits of motherhood, including the ostensible satisfaction of being a heroic mother who gives her homeland many children.
The direct consequence of the decree was a huge baby boom. Between 1966 and 1967 the number of births almost doubled, and the number of children per woman increased from 1.9 to 3.7. The generation born in 1967 and 1968 was the largest in Romanian history. Hastily, thousands of nursery schools were built.
Circumvention and mortality
In the seventies, birth rates declined again. Economic pressure on families remained, and people began to seek ways to circumvent the decree. Wealthier women were able to obtain contraceptives illegally, or bribed doctors to give diagnoses which made abortion possible. Especially among the less educated and poorer women there were many unwanted pregnancies. These women could only utilize primitive methods of abortion, which led to infection, sterility or even their own death. The mortality among pregnant women became the highest of Europe during the reign of Ceaușescu. While the childbed mortality rate kept declining over the years in neighboring countries, in Romania it increased to more than ten times that of its neighbors.
Many children born in this period became malnourished, were severely physically handicapped, or ended up in care under grievous conditions, which led to a rise in child mortality.
SiubhanDuinne
@cain:
You can make the same argument coming from the other direction: Since this country can’t possibly accommodate any more immigrants — “We’re out of room! We’re FULL! Don’t come here, there’s no room for you!” — you’d think they would enthusiastically support contraception and therapeutic abortion.
ETA: I see NotMax had the same thought at #87, an hour earlier.
(Not to mention, I always love how people who describe themselves as fervently “pro-life” are so devoted to the death penalty.)
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Oh my gosh, you sound like my 8th grade teacher, Sister Dolores. She would say exactly that, plus she would warn the boys against “playing pocket pool”
Sab
@joel hanes: She didn’t die in childbirth. She survived and her kid survived and was adopted.
Savita, who had a husband at home who loved her, did die.
These two stories are not remotely comparable except that all the deciding figures were Irish Catholics clergy and politicians.
I think the Irish abortion referendum pretty well decided about how they feel about those guys.
Brachiator
Ran across this the other day. Barbara Bush on abortion
J R in WV
OK, my comment about abortion control in Romania is in moderation, probably because of some secret bad work…. help, someone!!
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
I disagree. That’s the in-your-face thing that women will understand. Even the lowest of the lowest information voters.
bemused
@SiubhanDuinne:
As my husband says, they don’t give a shit about babies once they are born.
They hate people who get government assistance but will fight tooth and nail to abolish abortion. Why do they want more people on assistance?
Boris, Rasputin's Evil Twin
@Betty Cracker: I would suggest it’s more like having a hemorrhoid removed and reinserted.
Ladyraxterinok
@JaneE: In HS in the 50s ‘everyone knew’ you didn’t go to a Catholic hospital if you were pregnant. Why? They would save the baby and let the mother die, even if she had several kids or the baby being born was in great trouble.
SiubhanDuinne
@bemused:
I know. The absence of logical rigor is shocking.
bemused
@SiubhanDuinne:
They’re pretty much illogical on everything.
joel hanes
@Sab:
These two stories are not remotely comparable
You are refuting claims I did not make.
In fact, I made no comparisons nor claims at all.
I simply recommended a movie germane to the general topic.
I admire your passion about this issue.
Sab
@Brachiator:@Brachiator: Infuriated me when I first saw this. Thought about it a bit and calmed down.
My outrage shouldn’t be gender specific. Lots of guys are on my side.
But do you you accept that women are dying and being damaged needlessly by the save all fetus frenzy that can’ t actually save all fetuses?
eemom
@joel hanes:
Also The Magdalene Sisters.
Also Four Months Three Weeks and Two Days — a rivetingly horrifying film about a young woman getting an abortion in Communist Romania.
Ladyraxterinok
@Brachiator: Many Evangelical groups visit Israel every week. From blurbs about the tours I’ve seen on TV and YouTube they focus primarily on visiting sites of Jesus’ life and ministry. Also Plain of Meggido sp? where final battle of Armaggedon will take place. Modern Israel is there to provide transportation, hotels, and restaurants. And out look sites with guardrails and tourist souvenirs.
J R in WV
@Sab:
No one is smirking about these issues, here, today. Sometimes people use snark as a way to deal with the horror of today’s AmuriKKKa, which is a long way from smirking about women who need an abortion to live.
No one here approves of a ban on abortion, whether medically necessary or elective for another important reason.
Get over yourself.
I still have a large comment containing information about the horror of the abortion ban in Romania during the days of “communist” dictatorship in moderation. Haha…
Sab
@joel hanes: @joel hanes: @joel hanes: @joel hanes: @joel hanes: @Sab: @joel hanes: I agree with that. Philomena was traumatized by the separation ( and so was her son) but I don’t know that either of them thought she made a wrong decision. The movie says not.
What in hell does this have to do with women dying nedlessly in childbirth.
eemom
@joel hanes:
Incoherent misplaced belligerence is not the same thing as passion.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: You’ve never seen us together, have you…//
PenAndKey
@Sab:
I read through the entire comment thread and don’t see a single comment from someone “smirking” at this issue. Are some snarky or using gallows humor in their comments? Sure, but what else would you have us do? My wife would be dead if D&C wasn’t an option for miscarriages, and the law proposed in Texas? It would see her prosecuted for homicide and threatened with execution for saving her life rather than continue a non-viable pregnancy if we lived there. There’s absolutely nothing funny about that, but if I have a choice between a bout of dark humor or making statements that would likely get me put on a government threat watch list I know which one I’ll do every time.
Sab
@J R in WV: I haven’t heard a peek yet about this anything being an abortion issue. Not a peep. All afternoon. Now you jump in, but not a peep until I implicated “you guys”.
Brachiator
@Sab:
It’s not even a question. It’s not about accepting that women are dying, it’s about preventing them from dying from this mischief and oppression.
@Ladyraxterinok:
Yeah, but they see the country through their Biblical filters. I would love it if a tour guide reminded them that abortion was legal in Israel, and possibly underwritten by American tax dollars.
joel hanes
@Sab:
I give up. Pied.
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
One of the few times that I was overcome by rage was watching a tv segment about children in Romania. These insane policies resulted in an overflow of children sent to orphanages, where they were neglected because of staff shortages and incompetence and lack of care. I have never been able to watch any repeat or similar segment of such despicable abuse of children.
debbie
Ohio just passed a law outlawing abortion beginning at 6 weeks without exception. If these assholes truly cared about the child, they would have enacted accompanying legislation criminalizing the behavior of the man who couldn’t keep his fucking pants zipped.
Jack Hughes
ascap_scab
And I just don’t know how we are going to deal with them
Simple, round up all of the MAGAts, put them in FEMA camps, and release the smallpox.
brendancalling
Lincoln, Sherman, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower knew how to deal with this scum. Their kind is in short supply today.
Darkrose
Oddly, none of these allegedly pro-life clowns seem to think the awful maternal death rates for black women are a problem.
prob50
@Brachiator:
‘
But that doesn’t count because he’s a righteous Christian male. The get to make up shit to exempt and absolve themselves as the situation(s) evolve. Those women, on the other hand, well, underneath it all they’re clearly a lower level of the species and need to be dealt with by firmer an surer hands – you know, like Rep. Tinderholt