This story from a local TV station (so, a priori, awful) slithered into my news feed the other day. It’s headlined “Local advocates stand together to try to end abortions in Rochester”:
“We will reach out very peacefully to someone going in and it’s just, it’s not, we don’t come in judgment or we’re not yelling or screaming at them. We’re gently reaching out as an invitation. If they want to come talk to us they can. And we have some real help for them.” said Ellen Duncan, Co-Director for ROC Love Will End Abortion.
The group plans to meet at the Planned Parenthood Facility every fourth Saturday of the month.
You see, they’re going to have a “meeting”, and lovingly flash a picture of a dead baby, and lovingly have an office in a strip mall a few hundred feet from Planned Parenthood that offers “crisis pregnancy counseling” that pretends to be medical but is really a big old lie because all they want to do is stop an abortion. They’re not going to yell when they try to interrupt women going to get healthcare — they’re going to talk softly and lovingly as they try to shame some poor teenager who’s facing the most scary decision of her short life. And it’s just a mistake that the Planned Parenthood clinic in Rochester looks like a fortified bunker, because these people would never bomb or shoot at Planned Parenthood: they’re only here to help women by trying as hard as they can to never let a Planned Parenthood operate in peace.
I’ve been thinking about Biden’s “unity” message, and how some Democrats say it’s dumb that he talked about unity, because Republicans are twisting it around in bad faith. My reaction is a solid shoulder shrug. We can talk unity and love all day long, just like these anti-choice activists, as long as we don’t get high on our own supply. As long as we unify with people who agree with us, it’s far more palatable for us to flash pictures of Biden’s dog while repealing every goddam executive order Trump ever signed than it is to get sharp edged about it. So, instead of being yelly/shouty, we should “reach out very peacefully” to those who don’t agree with us and “gently reach out with an invitation” for them to kindly go fuck themselves. That works, for me at least.
Update: I googled ROC Love Will End Abortion and here’s their logo:
Can’t you just feel the love oozing from that?
Lyrebird
Totally agree with your read on that particular group.
I think Pres. Biden struck just the right tone in that inaugural speech, saying yes, unity, and yes, tell the truth including about white supremacist terror attacks and attacks on democracy.
Patricia Kayden
Free speech!!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I agree with this. More importantly, I don’t think it mattered what message Biden went with; Republicans would’ve twisted anything he said in bad faith because they’re bad faith actors
jonas
Lol! He forgot to add a link for his defense fund.
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
TBF Rudy is a subject expert on hate. And I’ll be he’ll hate it if he loses this suit bigly.
...now I try to be amused
They came that close to sticking the landing, but they just couldn’t help themselves.
jonas
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): As he’s made clear in a number of interviews recently, Biden’s perfectly aware that he’s dealing with monsters. He knows Republicans are lost and will fight him every step of the way. But the unity rhetoric 1. is catnip to the MSM, even as they call Biden naive, and 2. really does appeal to the average, low-information, “independent” voter.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@…now I try to be amused: I think the tiny coffin of an unborn baby posted proudly on the site is also off message, but I didn’t feel the need to add that to the mix.
...now I try to be amused
I read Biden’s “unity” message as “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Damien
This anti abortion shit makes me furious beyond words. What are they doing to fix our godawful maternal mortality rate? What are they doing to fix our fucked up foster system? Have they adopted one or more of the literal millions of children who’ve had to go through CPS?
Not to mention the destruction of women’s bodies during even the most normal pregnancy, and oh yeah how about we’re overpopulating the planet to death.
Force these people to financially adopt a pregnant woman and her child from conception to independence and see how quick they shut their disgusting fucking mouths.
assholes.
mrmoshpotato
@Patricia Kayden:
Rudes threatens to countersue Dominion. Mmmmmm
Keep your popcorn. I want a porterhouse, roast potatoes and glazed carrots with a few pints of beer so dark you could eat it!
This! Is! Delicious!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Patricia Kayden:
Freeze peach!!!
I still can’t get over all those world leaders like Merkel and that French guy (not Macron) getting bent out of shape about Trump finally facing some kind of consequence for his actions by getting banned from Twitter.
Trump is a goddam criminal who incited a mob to overthrow our democracy, not some opposition leader in a dictatorship
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I’d like to reach across the aisle and offer a token gift to them: a coathanger, a toothed knife, and a corkscrew. The reason for the coathanger should be obvious; the knife and corkscrew are to make it anatomically possible for them to go fuck themselves.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
Yes, there’s something oozing from that group, but it’s not love.
If they don’t want abortions, then fund contraception. Oh wait, isn’t the what Planned Parenthood does if they have the $$?
trollhattan
@Damien:
Good and proper rant! I feel compelled to add the very people who want to end abortion–all types and reasons–are likewise opposed to contraception. Does anybody else find those positions in direct conflict?
John Revolta
I can feel, and smell, something oozing from that, I guess maybe it’s love, I dunno.
catclub
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Does the ban on funding PP that Trump tried to/did impose need repeal by Exec order, or new law?
VeniceRiley
@mrmoshpotato: The beer you want is Karl Strauss’ Wreck Alley. mmmmm hmmmm. I too want that meal.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@trollhattan:
I’ve heard of that, but was never clear on why they also don’t like contraceptives? I mean I’m sure some of it is about controlling what women do with their bodies, but being against contraceptives doesn’t square with being anti-abortion to me. Pro-lifers make it sound as if they’re all about saving “babies”. With contraception, those “babies” never formed in the first place.
In my experience, a lot of low-information types don’t like abortion, but being anti-contraceptive is very radical and something I don’t think most of those would accept
Betty Cracker
Speaking of bad-faith unity bullshit, Greg Sargent has a good piece in The Post today about McConnell’s machinations around the sacred and holy filibuster. An excerpt:
That’s exactly the right framing. McConnell wields the filibuster to squelch bipartisan cooperation, not foster it, but most voters don’t pay enough attention to know that, and it’s true media coverage of the standoff frames it as if Biden and Democrats are responsible for achieving unity.
Schumer has said McConnell’s terms for letting go of control — an agreement not to kill the filibuster — is a nonstarter. Good for him. But what’s the endgame for Dems here, aside from waiting out McConnell and leaving Republicans in the committee chairs?
Is the plan to let Manchin, Sinema, Sanders and other filibuster-philes to get so sick of McConnell’s obstruction that they vote to end it and then pass a new agreement on a straight party line vote? Is there another way to break the deadlock since they’re currently operating under McConnell’s rules?
trollhattan
Saints preserve us.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Ohio Mom
Off topic: Just read that my “thoughtful conservative” Republican Senator, Rob Portman, has announced that he will not run for re-election in 2022.
This immediately made me happy, even as I suspect he might want to run for President, and I shudder to think which Republican will run in his place. Still, there’s now an opening for something good to happen and I’ll hold on to that.
Betty Cracker
@Damien: Thank you! Every one of those assholes should be asked those questions.
trollhattan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
My feeble understanding is its origins are in the Catholic Church, where sexytime is solely for procreation (see “Every Sperm is Sacred” in Life of Brian). They’re still fond of the rhythm method.
NB Doubtless there are other societies and religions who feel similarly.
The Other Bob
@trollhattan:
Is there a thought that a Democrat won’t replace Feinstein? … in California?
trollhattan
@trollhattan:
It occurs to me that Minnesotans should insist the My Pillow dude run for senate versus Klobuchar. I will pay Good Money and all buy the popcorn to watch the debates.
dmsilev
@Betty Cracker:
That’s my read on the situation.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
That sounds like Schumer’s plan to me. I think the filibuster needs to go. In the last 4 years the Dems have never used the filibuster because there was never any legislation Republicans wanted passed badly enough that we could use it for. The Trump tax cuts were passed via reconciliation rules, for example.
trollhattan
@The Other Bob:
No chance because of the jungle primary. Last time she ran against another Dem in the general because those were the top two primary vote getters.
ETA the problem here is Feinstein refusing to hang up her spurs, because reasons.
catclub
Is the left wing of the Democratic party defined as – to the left of Dianne Feinstein? i.e, all of it.
sdhays
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It makes more sense if you don’t get fooled into believing that they actually care about babies. They don’t care about “abortion”. It’s a proxy for women having sex without consequences.
Contraceptives are the same – women should always expect that they might have a baby on the way every single time they engage in vaginal sex with a man.
Ksmiami
@Lyrebird: I don’t care what these wannabe witch burners think, or feel. I want them defeated forever
Lyrebird
Yum! Ever had Old Peculier?
trollhattan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I wish those Ryan tax cuts had sunset clauses like the Bush Jr. cuts of 2001, but pretty sure they do not.
trollhattan
@Lyrebird:
In the Totally Normal 3-pack. Yes, good stuff indeed.
rikyrah
@Damien: .?????
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: OMG, Klobuchar would tear that fascist pillow peddler to shreds!
catclub
@trollhattan: I wish those Ryan tax cuts had sunset clauses like the Bush Jr. cuts of 2001, but pretty sure they do not.
They sure do! End of 2026, all the individual tax cuts expire. All the business tax cuts…. don’t.
jl
Wonder if they will bring any $ with the loving talk. There are probably some people who’d like to have a kid but can’t afford it. I don’t see anything about that kind of love. Or some $ to help with contraception, if that kind of thing is OK with them. Is it?
Kattails
My mother told me that Biden will be killing babies after they’re born. I went after that BS. These people lie endlessly. I don’t have time and don’t need to go into the reason for late term abortions here; but the other thing they can’t seem to grasp is pediatric hospice.
Thanks for that thought Damien–And, yeah, how may kids age out of foster care every year? “More than 23,000 …every year. Without the support that comes from an adoptive family or permanency connection, these kids face really tough odds. Many will end up with chemical dependencies, criminal records, or pregnancies at a young age.” Seven out of ten girls who age out will become pregnant before age 21–I’ve actually never looked at this before. Damn. Look at the graphic in the link. The statistics are horrendous.
420,000 in care annually. Average over a year and a half, some more than 5 years.
trollhattan
@catclub:
Seriously? Jeez. Bidnez, treated so unfairly.
mrmoshpotato
@VeniceRiley: That sounds great. Doesn’t look like they distribute outside of the west coast though.
Cameron
@trollhattan: And what a stirring campaign slogan: “My Pillow, right or wrong!”
catclub
@Lyrebird: Old Peculier?
Pecu lier? sinful liar? The only latin I know is pig latin.
mrmoshpotato
@Lyrebird:
Never heard of it.
Kattails
@trollhattan: Many years ago I had a young co-worker who was about to get married. Catholic, she had of course talked with her priest about birth control and gotten the expected answer. Her own mother, however, had said to her “whenever I got religious I got pregnant”.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@catclub:
It would require an Act of Congress since Trump signed a 2017 GOP bill allowing states to deny funding to PP
catclub
@trollhattan: The 2001 tax cuts had an expiration date, but if you can manufacture (ha! I am killing it.) a massive recession when they expire, you can force the other party to keep them alive forever.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@trollhattan: Opposed to contraception and sex education. Two things that have been proven effective to reduce abortions.
Lapassionara
@trollhattan: I think we have Augustine to thank for that view. He was a flagrant womanizer in his youth, but when he found Jesus, he viewed his past life with horror. As I understand it, he thought the only way sex could be unsinful was if it was married sex and for the purpose of having children. He also considered every baby born as having been infected with the “original sin” of Adam and Eve. That is why he thought infants should be baptized.
jl
@Kattails: “whenever I got religious I got pregnant”.
I wonder if there is a certain rhythm to that.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Portman not running for re-election = open Senate seat in Ohio in 2022…
Ksmiami
Does anyone else here just feel like the Republicans have succeeded in making us (even bleeding heart) liberals just meaner than ever? Like I’m nice to my friends and family etc but I can’t even fake it anymore
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Lapassionara: These people are not exactly what you’d call sex positive.
catclub
@Dorothy A. Winsor: oh, so another Biden exec order should have been lifting the international gag order on even discussing contraception or abortion.
(i.e, disallowing funding to organizations that mention abortion as an option)
jl
@Lapassionara: “but when he found Jesus”
I think it was some interval after he found Jesus, or rather, Christ, I think Augustine was in the camp that thought those were two very different things.
I think the most famous Augustine prayer is ‘Oh Lord, give me chastity, but not yet’. Maybe that is a made up story, and someone here can inform me.
JanieM
@Ohio Mom: From Connie Schultz’s Twitter feed:
Made me chuckle.
LuciaMia
You forgot the knitting needle. Theres some family stories about that.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@catclub:
And what if the other party lets them expire anyway? And points out that these tax cuts are actually hurting you? As I remember, the Trump tax cuts were the first time tax cuts were unpopular with the American public
Just One More Canuck
@…now I try to be amused: and wear a good pair of steel-toed boots
NeenerNeener
@trollhattan: Not Life of Brian, it was in my all time favorite Python movie Meaning of Life
WereBear
@trollhattan:
Only people with sense.
Frank Schaeffer put out a Facebook post I have not seen, but I gather he points out that the Evangelicals/Fundamentalists tried a lot of things to politically motivate the their flocks, and forced birthing rang the bell.
It’s nonsense, which is why they lie so very much.
trollhattan
@catclub: @mrmoshpotato:
Here ’tis. Old Peculiar.
Been awhile since I last saw it on the shelves but it came in a 3-pack of odd-shaped bottles containing an odd quantity. They take the name seriously.
Guessing decent stateside Brit pubs can probably get it by the keg. Maybe a Biden-Boris trade deal can remove some of the dumb beer and spirits import-export rules.
trollhattan
@NeenerNeener:
Oh, right! Meaning of Life is much more a musical than Brian (except that memorable closer).
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They have always been anti-contraceptives. Griswold v Connecticut was decided in 1965. Connecticut and other states had oitlawed comtraceptives. Griswold overturned that.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@trollhattan:
Ah, thanks. But that POV of sex is antiquated and most Americans no longer see it that way. The GOP is effectively ensuring the will remain in the minority for the forseebale future. Not right away, but over time it’s going to make putting together a national coalition going forward harder, even if you can get conservative Hispanics on board
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Damien: right there with you, my parents were Catholic but mostly pro-choice My parents had three birth children and three foster children, one of whom they were allowed to adopt after the required seven year wait. I believe abortion should be easily available and low or no cost/ subsidized and I say that as someone who has had two miscarriages. The first one nearly killed me. Pregnancy on it’s own can be difficult, crippling and sometimes deadly. No one should be able to make a person continue a pregnancy they do not want to continue.
Damien
@Kattails: Jesus, don’t even get me started on late-term abortions. I had this argument with a friend, who said he was against abortion that late.
I asked him when he thought about late-term abortions whether he was considering how unbelievably, wrenchingly painful it would be to have to abort a baby that you wanted. Because what did he think, a woman would discover 7 months into the pregnancy that she was expecting a perfectly healthy child and abort it? Maybe that happens once in a million times, but for the most part late-term abortions, or partial-birth abortions if you’re an asshole, are reserved for couples who wanted to have the baby and discovered something was wrong and the baby wasn’t viable. I asked him, how would you feel if you had to abort your daughter because she was going to live for three days in agony, and the government told you no, that your wife had to birth a baby destined to die anyway.
How much of a heartless, brainless dipshit do you have to be to think that the government has any role to play in policing those decisions? Apparently, a pretty big one, because my friend immediately was like “oh….shit.”
Made a convert that day.
LuciaMia
Cause these geniuses have somehow got it into their addled heads that contraception is just another kind of abortion.
HumboldtBlue
As Impeachment Heads Toward the Senate, 6 Moments That Make It Clear Nancy Pelosi Was—And Is—Trump’s Toughest Adversary
Betty Cracker
@Ksmiami: Yep. I’m not sure there’s any going back on that either.
Kattails
@Lyrebird: I have, ages ago, not easy to find. Yummy. Not a super high ABV, but very rich as I remember.
Ksmiami
@Betty Cracker: I can only save my compassion for the deserving- Republicans don’t
patrick Il
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The modern catholic church teaches that the soul joins the zygote the moment the sperm impregnates the egg and cell duplication begins. Anything that stops the process after that is an abortion. Taking some types of birth control may prevent the next step in the pregnancy – – attachment to the uterine wall, thus killing the new life as well as its soul. So many types of contraceptives are considerd abortificants.
In the medical / scientific community a pregnancy does not begin until attached to the uterine wall. so, even when the two camps use the word “abortion” they mean two different things and have endless Conversations in which neither understands the other.
trollhattan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
IIRC waaaaay back in the ’60s Paul VI toyed with the notion of lifting the ban on contraception but did not. And that’s the last time it came close. [long-ass article]
Now that Scrotus is mostly Catholic, I can see access both abortion and contraception under threat. Biden should pack it with Jews and Unitarians.
sab
@Damien: Tell me about it. I have a Catholic niece who works pediatric ICU. They counsel new parents with desparately ill dying newborns.
Catherine D.
@jl:
My aunt called her first three children her rhythm band. They included a set of Irish twins (babies born less than 12 months apart, for those not familiar with mackerel smackers) Miraculously, the fecund relatives had no babies from 1962 onwards ?
trollhattan
@patrick Il:
Pope Francis was pondering whether any of the Covid vaccines relied on stem cell sources before declaring them okie dokie, at least the current ones. That’s how pernicious this can become.
Jager
@jl:
It’s gaming-“Papal Roulette”
Betty Cracker
@HumboldtBlue: Yep, she had his number from day one. From the article:
True, and she also understood her own power as the House leader in a co-equal branch of government. IIRC, she pointedly used the word “co-equal” when talking to or about Trump. She used it in a civic education sense since she knows he’s a dummy who doesn’t understand how the government works, and also as a rhetorical flourish to take an authoritarian wannabe blow-hard down a notch or two.
patrick Il
@patrick Il: That’s the modern church by the way, St. Thomas Aquinas believed the soul entered embryo when the heart starts beating and (left unsaid) abortion would be O.K. before that. There have been periods under different popes when abortion was permissable, but one pope (I forget which one) wrote an encyclical making the forbidding abortion to be the infallible and eternal word of God — so here we are.
narya
my feeling about those botherers: here’s a bag of salted dicks; snack away and leave me alone.
HumboldtBlue
If you’ve already seen a Hamster Rocket today just keep on scrolling…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Good video on the Trump Casino.
https://youtu.be/YU1hHzjx7GE
TLDR; Trump took out so many junk bonds to pay for his 1 billion dollar resort casino that essentially bankrupt before it opened it doors. The man is poster child for the Denny Kruger effect, Trump is so stupid he thinks he is a genius.
Gravenstone
@Patricia Kayden: I think he’s going to find the Trump tactics of intimidation and bullying via lawsuit/countersuit aren’t going to end up in his favor.
Mortal Combat!!
zhena gogolia
So nice to be able to embed presidential tweets!
sab
@patrick Il: Didn’t the Catholic Church up until modern times view the cut-off date as “quickening” i.e. when the baby’s movement could be felt?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin): All these group are about is an excuse to troll people in public.
patrick Il
@trollhattan: Do you think Pope Francis has had his shot yet?
Gravenstone
They intentionally conflate them abortifacients. So they can just use them another hammer against women whose activities they disapprove of.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@LuciaMia: maybe but it’s also that they want to control women’s sexuality. A woman who can easily obtain safe easy to use birth control is going to decide when and if she wants to have kids. Of course it helps especially in the case of teenagers if you Don’t use sex to sell everything and then tell them they are a slut if they dare to think about having sex and plan their contraception in advance. Oh the horror!
Delk
Talking about abortion, massive asshole Joe Scheidler died last week.
Gravenstone
@Ohio Mom: Pretty much everyone I’ve read assumed Gym Jordan would dive headlong into the race for the opening seat.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): What they’ll tell you is that many forms of contraception are secretly really abortion (contrary to any evidence).
I suspect something closer to the real answer is that by “the moment of conception” they don’t mean “the sperm goes into the egg”, but “the sperm goes into the person”. That is, what they really object to for theological reasons is sex that can’t make a baby.
Matt McIrvin
@patrick Il:
Also, though, they consider this to be the case even when it’s not true, and the contraceptive really works by preventing normal ovulation.
WaterGirl
@HumboldtBlue: I can’t decide which tweet I like the best, so I will add them both.
WaterGirl
patrick Il
@sab:
Yes, in the long history of the church there has been several different practices – – until the encyclical locked things in . I believe I read Adam comment here that the pope’s decision was based on a faulty transcription of the Bible. Just shows the importance of good penmanship and how history can turn on a dime.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Ksmiami: Yep. This 110%. I’m over Republican tears. No quarter.
Cacti
@Patricia Kayden: A first year law student should tell Rudy that defamation isn’t protected speech.
greenergood
Sorry, I’ve tried to find it but not skilled enough – post on Kos two days ago about the overlap between Capitol invaders and anti-abortion ‘activists’, you know, the ones with guns. The woman who posted it has been involved with protecting women needing abortion AND birth control for years, and recognised from photos and videos invading insurrectionists/people in the Capitol from her horrible experiences trying to help women seeking reproductive integrity in Ohio and elsewhere. I hope someone more skilled than me can find the post – it was informative and enraging, and if you recognise anyone you can tell your local cops …
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: Where’s the dancing?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t care if it IS true . It’s none of their business. And they don’t get to use their religious beliefs to decide it’s their business.
patrick Il
@Matt McIrvin:
subtle, discriminating thinking is not their strong suit. By “their” I mean the true believers (of which I was formerly one). The church itself knows exactly what it’s doing — controIling people. In
Johnnybuck
@Betty Cracker: vote to end it and then pass a new agreement on a straight party line vote?
And effectively end the filibuster. It’s some serious hardball he’s playing. Schumer needs to get the votes to do just that and then see what Mitch wants to do. Voting rights and immigration are not passing without either ending or reforming the filibuster. It seems like a game of chicken to me.
Gretchen
KS Republicans are shoving through a ballot initiative for the August election to overturn the KS Supreme Court ruling that women have a right to abortion. They want the leeway to enact more restrictions.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Damien: Happy that you made a convert. Wish I had. My niece is so fundy that she insisted on carrying her Trisomy-18 fetus to term so she could “protect him” and “keep him safe.” She then sent photos of her stillbirth. Her choice? Absolutely. Bizarre, self-righteous and horrible? Absolutely.
Warren Senders
My mother’s life was saved by an abortion, back in 1955. I was born 3 years later. I owe my entire existence to the fact of my mother’s abortion.
These fetus-fetishists make me so angry I can’t see straight.
jonas
@Cacti: He knows that perfectly well. He’s counting on his and Trump’s stupid supporters not understanding because, you know, the $$.
Gotta keep the grift going as long as possible.
Amir Khalid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
You mean the Dunning-Kruger effect, right?
Gretchen
Conservatives have their people convinced that Democrats are in favor of aborting healthy babies at term. I asked one woman if that even makes any sense. She’s had children. Would you go through the whole pregnancy and then say, nope, changed my mind, kill it? Her reply was that Democrats are evil so they are capable of anything.
trollhattan
@patrick Il:
Hope so. Needs to set the example for Catholics leaning towards an anti-vaxx position, to counter the staunch anti-vaxxers [cough, RFK jr., cough].
Alison Rose
When I lived in San Francisco, I volunteered as a clinic escort, and it was………..interesting. Obviously, being SF, we didn’t have the kind of massive mobs of rabid protestors on a daily basis. Sometimes it got bad, like during the 40 Days For Life shit, but most days, it was just a few old people who sat across the street knitting and had a couple of non-disgusting signs. Some days a young minister (priest? reverend? I’m Jewish, I don’t know how to tell the difference or what the difference is) would be there too, reading the Bible and such. Mostly they were fine, but some times they would walk down to meet women walking up the block from the bus stop on Van Ness and start babbling bullshit at them. Or if they got dropped off, they would take pictures of the car and license plate, which I found really disturbing. And even the “nice” attempts at communication were maddening, because like……..you have no idea why this person is coming here, no idea what they’ve been through.
Though there was a very amusing moment when the preacher guy was trying to talk to a woman as she was walking up the block, and she was ignoring him the whole way. As she reached the doors, he yelled out “Your baby loves you!!” And she turned around and snapped, “I’m here for a pap smear, you fucking asshole.” Clinic escorts are supposed to try to stay out of it (unless the protestors violate laws) but the three of us there all started cracking the fuck up at that one.
Captain C
@Patricia Kayden:
Dominion: “Great! Okay, fuckers, let’s have us some discovery…”
Gretchen
@Kattails: yes, my brother lost a premature baby, so he is furious that people will kill babies late in pregnancy. He should understand about hospice for babies who can’t be saved, but he doesn’t. He leads with his pain and these jerks take advantage of that.
trollhattan
@Matt McIrvin:
They really seem to tie themselves into knots on the subject. From the article I linked upthread.
Perfectly clear to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
R in ATL
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Keep in mind that we’re parsing those statements through the first amendment filter. My understanding is that in the European context their statements seen are pushing for a (potentially cross governmental) board to determine when to shut people off rather than relying on individual companies.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Gretchen: That’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it? There are people who genuinely think we are so horrible that the only path to “unity” is for us to renounce ourselves.
Suzanne
@Damien:
They want women to give their babies to infertile rich white couples.
They aren’t willing to do good if they don’t get something out of it.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@greenergood: not found on DailyKos but The overlap between anti abortionists and Capitol rioters
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
That seems like the DeVos schtick, doesn’t it?
matt the semi-reasonable
I like this framing. ‘Love and Unity will stop Nazi Coups!’
catclub
The Lord works in mysterious, 28 slot packet, ways.
cckids
@mrmoshpotato:
@VeniceRiley: Actually, you want New Holland’s Dragon’s Milk. Yum.
Alex in FL
Why don’t these “Pro-Life” Organizations fully incorporate as Counseling Service non-profits and offer real services and options instead of gentle words and Bible-thumping. Maybe they should enter into contractual agreements with every pregnant woman who enters their doors and offer to fully cover the OB/GYN, raise the child in a middle-class home, get on-going medical insurance for mother and child and follow on job training or college tuition for each. They should remain fully private and solicit for donations (kinda like the St. Jude Hospital folks or the ASPCA). Then they could tout their successes with testimonials from the grateful Moms….. Yeah, Right.
catclub
FTFY
patrick Il
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m trying to type on my cell – – but any interruption of the natural process causes the loss of a soul. When Pope John was in Africa years ago he preached against Condoms because it would mean that unborn babies would lose the chance for their souls to enter heaven – – even the dire starvation at the time when most did not make it until five. That’s when they lost me.
Ruckus
@Damien:
Nothing logical, sound, reasonable, makes them shut the hell up because they aren’t logical, sound, or reasonable.
satby
@Damien: My favorite policy wonk made the same argument at a Fox news townhall and got an ovation.
Suzanne
@catclub:
I want to remind the socially conservative right that they are completely free to decline to take birth control pills and to decline abortions. I mean, I will fight for their right to decline those if they so choose.
Ruckus
@The Other Bob:
They think there might be if Newsom is recalled.
Suzanne
@catclub: Are you kidding?! Now it’s a major social status signifier for white evangelicals to have babies from other races. See the Boney Carrot family.
pluky
@trollhattan: They do, but only for the little folk!
“Many tax cut provisions, especially income tax cuts, will expire in 2025,[10] and starting in 2021 will increase over time; this, by 2027 would affect an estimated 65% of the population and in that same year the law’s provisions are set to be fully enacted,[11] however, corporate tax cuts are permanent.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act_of_2017
lapassionara
@patrick Il: Not to mention faulty translations being the source of some bad theology also.
satby
The core reason they’re anti-contraception and anti-choice is white supremacy. They were more open about it in the 60s- early 79s when the Right-to-Life speakers routinely included dire predictions of a majority-minorities country if educated white women were allowed to control their reproduction.
catclub
Yeah, the key advantage Trump had there in most cases was a MUCH larger legal budget than his opposition.
HumboldtBlue
@WaterGirl:
That will never get old.
On another note, I have always like the smell of celery, I like to eat it raw and it goes in all my soups and stews and celery salt is what makes Old Bay taste like it does.
I just ran to the co-op for ingredients for Guinness Irish stew (we’re having a true winter storm blowing down from the Gulf of Alaska) and the last thing I put away was the celery and my hand smells like celery and I like it.
catclub
@Suzanne: I guess i am behind the times.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Boney Carrot — lol!
Cameron
@Amir Khalid: Could be a reference to Dunkin’ – Kroger, the doughnut store/supermarket merger.
catclub
and then it turns out these are people for whom, ‘Religion is no fun if I cannot impose it on people outside my religion.’
Ruckus
@sdhays:
It’s power.
The power to control others who they think are lesser than they are. Or darker than they are, or less religious than they are. Or whatever than they are. They are terrified of someone, anyone showing that they have no more power than anyone else. They hate equality, because they always lose when there is equality because their ideas, ideals and them, are shit. Sexism, racism, liberalism, all of it scares them, because it lessens them in the eyes of the world. Of course if they weren’t such shits, the world wouldn’t give a damn.
Cacti
Kirsten Sinema (R-AZ) announces that she is opposed to ending the legislative filibuster and is “not open to changing her mind”.
Dems just never learn, do they?
Might as well just hand the gavel back over to Mitch McConnell.
satby
@Suzanne: Those kids weren’t adopted to be her children, they’re both Haitian and I believe they’re probably restaveks. Watch the family interaction at her nomination, the younger black child is clearly responsible for the youngest white child and no one else in the family ever helps or takes over from him. Even with a father and older siblings there.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Amir Khalid: Yes, Dunning-Kruker.
Main point is Trump has a decades old record of making disastrous decisions. Simply describing Trump as a narcissist is not enough because someone who is incapable of empathy still should be able to do math.
Gravenstone
@Cacti: Bet she whines loudly when she can’t seem to get any of her legislative priorities brought up for consideration this session.
leeleeFL
@mrmoshpotato: With a knife and fork? Like I used to order Guinness at Katy Daley’s in SoHo? Yum!
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: That’s exactly it. I am horrified at the thought of how many of those stolen kids who were separated from their parents probably ended up in the hands of right-wing conservative “christians”, with no paper trail. I don’t even want to think where cute little girls might have ended up. It’s appalling. All of it.
Alison Rose
Think my comment about being a clinic volunteer went into moderation–did I use a bad word?
catclub
In the nearly 232-year history of the US Senate there have only been 11 Black senators
on the other hand, 2 of those eleven went on to Presidency or Vice Presidency.
WaterGirl
@satby: Gotta love Pete.
HumboldtBlue
Meet Estonia’s first female Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas.
WaterGirl
@satby: Who are you guys talking about? If I’m going to feel like I’m about to throw up I would love to know who I loathe this much.
WaterGirl
@Cacti: Call me crazy, but I have to think there might be one Republican senator who would like to accomplish something over the next few years.
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose: Your comment did go into Spam, but I fished it out. It’s at #113.
Cacti
@WaterGirl: At this point, I would call it crazy.
Republicans would rather burn the country down than lose political power.
WaterGirl
@Cacti: I don’t know. I just can’t believe that this will end with a non-functional senate and not one f-ing Republican will step up to help the American people.
Kropacetic
Fiks’d
raven
Really, nobody poster it!
Joy Division
Suzanne
@satby: It is very much A Thing for evangelicals to adopt babies of other races. Occasionally it leads to some degree of awareness, in the case of David French, who finally acknowledged that racism was real when he got racist messages with the face of his daughter, who was adopted from Ethiopia. Usually, it’s done for social status, because it’s super-trendy and cool to have a baby from somewhere else. It’s how the rest of the Christians know you’re better.
Kattails
@Gretchen: I saved a link to an article by a woman who described wishing she’d had a late term abortion. The fetus’ brain itself had failed to form, only the brain stem; the rest was filled with fluid–hydranencephaly. So the body had rudimentary functions, but no hope of any higher life. The baby girl could not metabolize sleep hormones, could not regulate her temperature, lock up in seizures, was blind, deaf, completely cognitively stunted, prone to diabetes, insomnia. Developed a kidney infection and nearly died from the antibiotics. So many IV drips the tiny veins blew out. Zantac, diuretics, Synthroid, Klonopin, lorazepam, melatonin, Miralax. Ended with a UTI, proteinuria, uncontrollable fever. Survived for a few months.
Because once they’re born, it’s given that they must be kept alive under any and all circumstances.
We wouldn’t treat a dog like this.
Miss Bianca
@mrmoshpotato: Theakston’s Old Peculier is an English old ale, or maybe it’s a barley wine – I confess to not fully grokking the difference between the two. I got it on tap in England donkey’s years ago and it made me a fan of heavy, rich, dark, STRONG ales. I didn’t think it actually exported to the US, tho’ apparently I’m wrong.
Miss Bianca
@HumboldtBlue: HAMSTER ROCKET!!
This just made my whole damn day.
Kattails
@Gretchen: Just thinking that he might try understanding that, just as something went terribly wrong with his own wife’s pregnancy, different things can go terribly wrong with others, and might not be discovered until very late term.
tommyspoon
I did some clinic defense volunteering in the 90s in and around Washington, DC.
These folks DO NOT come in peace.
Alison Rose
@WaterGirl: Merci!
catclub
@Kattails: Just thinking that he might try understanding that, just as something went terribly wrong with his own wife’s pregnancy, different things can go terribly wrong with others,
You could have been writing about Rick Santorum! …and No, he could not either.
HumboldtBlue
@Miss Bianca:
Made my week and it’s only Monday.
Original Lee
If anti-abortion beliefs weren’t at bottom misogynistic, perfectly reversible vasectomies would be something responsible parents would encourage for their sons.
satby
@Suzanne: I’m aware of that. But I don’t believe boney-carrot’s two kids were adopted for that some reason. Those two kids are servants in the guise of adopted children.
satby
@WaterGirl: Coney-not my relative
Just Some Fuckhead
Gonna disagree on the unity thing. It’s just giving Republicans and the press a cudgel to beat us with. It’s no different than the “bipartisanship” Obama lived and died with. The right approach is to say, America gave us a mandate to lead and we hope Republicans will respect that and work with us on behalf of Americans but if they don’t, we intend to use every tool at our disposal to enact the agenda America voted for.
Emma from FL
@trollhattan: actually, anti-abortion in the current sense dates only to 1869. Before, it was not murder to destroy a fetus before ensoulment, also known as quickening https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/catholic-church-teaching-on-abortion-dates-from-1869-1.1449517. This is a good explanation. Sorry but I don’t seem to be able to embed properly today.
Captain C
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I still don’t understand why in 2016 the Democrats didn’t run an ad campaign consisting of variations on “Donald Trump bankrupted multiple casinos and ran an entire football league into the ground. This is America. If you can’t make money on gambling and football you are an epic fail of a businessman.”
Madeleine
I think that my sister recently became part of this organization. She mentioned that she has participated in activities outside the Rochester Planned Parenthood. I was sick. She became involved in a fundamentalist church through her now husband in the last year. I don’t understand and I hardly recognize her any more.
Dan B
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): These people are driven by a warped worship of “Purity”. Babies are pure until birth is the logic. They are big on guilt, sin, disease, and filth as things which must be avoided. The same is true for physical pleasure. There are roots in Calvinism and Puritans but also in our first socialization, toilet training. There’s a shaming / guiltily method that fears dirt. And there’s a nurturing method that rewards success and doesn’t demonize “accidents”. You’ll notice that most of these anti-abortion demonstrators are scrupulously clean and coiffed, and we don’t want to know about their unfullfilling sex lives. Their concept of love is rigid and suffocating.
Although I’m sure some of them are very fine people…..
BruceFromOhio
Brown children in cages is probably okay though.
Dan B
@sdhays: The anti-abortionists are also horrified about sex that does not have any possibility of pregnancy: non vaginal, gay, etc. I’d love to see what the reaction would be if a counter demonstration in support of non P in V sex would be.
And…isn’t there mention of abortion in the Bible and it’s somewhat supportive or not opposed?
BruceFromOhio
Just dropped fifty clams on PP via the ROC site link. It’s using a teaspoon to empty the ocean, right, and it’s better than not doing it.
The god-botherer’s must be preaching to each other to sleep at night, because they sure as fuck ain’t preaching to me.
Patricia Kayden
The Pale Scot
@greenergood:
Wrong website, the articles are on Mother Jones and Vice
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Kos+two+days+ago+about+the+overlap+between+Capitol+invaders+and+anti-abortion+%E2%80%98activists&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
burnspbesq
@Patricia Kayden:
Rudy’s best chance to beat Dominion (which, thankfully, he won’t do) is to put on expert psychiatric witnesses who will testify that he’s so (technical legal term here) fucked up in the head that he was incapable of forming reckless disregard for the truth.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dan B: I know these people and purity has nothing to do with their opposition to abortion. Hell, their own Bible condones abortion in Numbers 5: 11-31 so it ain’t that either. Evangelical Christian leaders supported abortion up through the early 70’s so “we have always been at war with eastasia” isn’t the reason either.
J R in WV
We contribute the same amount to Planned Parenthood as we do to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Way more than the ACLU gets, as they appear to us to be higher profile than PP or SPLC.
Back right after Trump “won” his first election over Secretary Clinton, I ran into my cousin at the “Gucci” Kroger’s. He pulled out his newish ACLU membership card to brag on it, did it the day after the election, as did I. But I DIDN’T GET A CARD!!!! So I called/wrote forget now which, and we have our ACLU Membership cards now.
But really, I think Planned Parenthood does more important work than the other two, though they also do important work for liberty and the rule of law. Just me, maybe.
My mom was Republican all her life, until the Rs started dumping on reproductive rights, and they lost here right then. She was confined to her bedroom with COPD from Pall Malls, we were alone, and she said “Don’t tell your dad, but I haven’t voted for a Republican since they attacked abortion!”
After having had years to think about it, I’m certain mom had either a close friend or a cousin who died after a black market abortion. She was outgoing and had a ton of close friends and more cousins that I ever knew. And I never told dad, or my RWNJ brother.
evodevo
@satby: Yep…they are STILL pushing that idea, if my fundie son’s social circle is any indication…you are supposed to have as many white offspring as you can to counter the POC birthrate…
hitchhiker
@Kattails:
That’s 63 kids, every day of the year. Christ.
I think the passion about abortion has to do with sentimentalism more than anything. Maybe it’s just b/c my own daughter just went through a twins pregnancy, got severe pre-eclampsia that didn’t resolve after the births, and is now slowly recovering from surgery while nursing two babies at once … but the cutesy, gooey motherhood stuff makes me gag.
We are all wild about those babies. Mad with joy! But pregnancy is not cute, and for lots of women it’s not simple.
These abortion-is-murder folks seem lost in a fantasy of maternity that I can’t recognize in many actual families. Their sobbing and praying over “child-killing” leaves me cold. It’s performative, creepy, and self-indulgent.
There are good fertility clinics in Rochester, which means there are stacks of frozen embryos that no one is trying to rescue. Why aren’t they handing out flyers to those customers?
cain
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
The thing is – these pro-choicer’s are free to abort their babies and get forgiveness because their situation is “special” – they aren’t sluts – like the rest of these people.
It’s so goddam triggering.
BigJimSlade
Again.