I feel like the forced birth pipeline starts very early - insisting that girls and women fit into gender norms and prioritize marriage and children above all else. Making them critical of their bodies and appearances to serve this purpose.
I even think transphobia is another manifestation of this - reducing people to their “biological” functions and using that to determine where in the societal hierarchy they fall. The same thing has been done with race time and time again.
This is why you can’t fall for what appear to be academic debates about “when life begins” and “are trans kids in sports getting an unfair advantage.” It’s never about those things at all, and in fact, those are deliberate, reasonable-sounding talking points generated to try to recruit more people to bigotry.
I like this insight, trying to put these individual issues into a more organized picture. I think Journalism needs to do more of this. Too much we cover each action and indignity as if it were some surprise, isolated, modular incident that is unrelated to all others. In doing so, we don't get the big picture. There is a LOT of that going on these days.
This work also resonates with an essay I wrote in 2012, "Language Defines Our Lives". It had gone offline when Salon magazine's Open Salon forum was retired, but it's available via the magic of the Internet Archive. I think you'll find it interesting and relevant.
"[With the demise of Roe] antiabortion activists achieved their goal and stand to be less energized. This desperate need to whip up enthusiasm among their base is likely behind the Republicans’ sudden focus on transgender children."
"Right-wing media has linked the two in part thanks to the highly visible work of the American College of Pediatricians, which, despite its name, is a political action group of about 700 people, only 60% of whom have medical degrees. (They broke off from the 67,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics in 2002 after that medical organization backed same-sex parents.) They are prominent voices against both abortion and gender-affirming health care."
"Pregnancy has long been riskier than abortion in America. Around 650-750 US women die during pregnancy each year, the highest maternal death rate in the industrialized world.
Comparatively, very few women die from abortion or suffer complications: two women died from abortion complications in 2018."
"So, when Roe v Wade was overturned last summer, there were fears that deaths and complications from pregnancy would shoot up – particularly among women of color.
Black women were 2.6 times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts in 2021 according to CDC analysis. ...
After Roe v Wade was overturned, it was mostly states in the south and the midwest that banned abortion immediately."
Jennifer Rubin notes that Trump isn't the GOP's biggest problem: abortion is. She writes,
"Many Republican candidates (for Congress, state legislatures and the 2024 presidential nomination) have vigorously pushed for a nationwide ban on abortion. That’s a dead-bang loser for the party."
"According to a new USA Today-Suffolk University poll,
'Americans overwhelmingly oppose the next goal of many anti-abortion activists, to enact a federal law banning abortion nationwide. By 80%-14%, those surveyed opposed that idea, including 65% of Republicans and 83% of independents'.”
Und auch deshalb ist die Digitalisierung, die früher oder später unweigerlich auf eine Post-Privacy-Gesellschaft herausläuft, in erster Linie eine Dystopie:
"As abortion bans across the nation are implemented and enforced, law enforcement is turning to social media platforms to build cases to prosecute women seeking abortions or abortion-inducing medication – and online platforms like Google and Facebook are helping. "
Google und Facebook/Meta geben Nutzer:innendaten an die US-amerikanische Polizei weiter, damit diese Menschen verfolgen kann, die Informationen zu Abtreibungen suchen.
Und das ist nur ein Beispiel. Morgen kann schon illegal sein, was heute noch legal ist und etwaige Datenschutzgesetze können auch in Europa gelockert werden, während die Überwachungsinfrastruktur, Digitalzwänge/Abhängigkeiten und der Zugriff auf Gesundheitsdaten immer invasiver werden.
The FBI Is Hunting a New Domestic Terror Threat: Abortion Rights Activists
"After GOP pressure, FBI abortion “terrorism” investigations increased tenfold, government data shows.
[ ...]
Last year, as the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade sparked major protests nationwide, the FBI opened nearly 10 times as many investigations into cases of abortion-related domestic terrorism as it had in 2021, a new internal report reveals."
"These [abortion] bans are another effort by the GOP to impose fascism—but this time it’s religious fascism. I can’t emphasize enough that we must call out the religious component to the GOP’s efforts because it will help everyone understand that this is not just a movement to ban abortion."
"Rather, today’s GOP is academically speaking a 'Christian nationalist' movement that not only wants to end reproductive freedom, but ban access to birth control, strip the LGBTQ+ community of civil rights, ban books that they religiously object to, etc."
"The GOP is being revealed as the dysfunctional, regressive, anti-democratic and anti-pluralistic party of the Christian right, led by a twice impeached and multiply indicted criminal. The Democrats by contrast appear united, progressive, pro-democracy and diverse."
"If this narrative can hold through to next November, the GOP could lose decisively. If the case can be made definitively, the GOP could face electoral annihilation in 2024.
But that work, that messaging, that accountability begins now, in what could prove to be a historic summer."
Preemption is a legal doctrine that allows a higher level of government, like a state legislature, to curtail the authority of a lower level of government, like a city council, to act on a particular issue. ...
"Medical horror stories from the first year since Roe v Wade has fallen:
• A #Louisiana patient had her water break at 16 weeks of pregnancy—too early for any #pregnancy to survive. She had to carry & deliver the dead #fetus painfully losing a liter of blood.
• A #Wisconsin woman bled for more than 10 days after hospital staff refused to remove fetal tissue from her incomplete #miscarriage.
• In #Ohio a women was sent home from the hospital after a miscarriage, still bleeding & without medical attention.
• Also in #Ohio a woman was blocked from getting an #abortion in the state even after tests revealed that her fetus had kidney failure & heart defects. Continuing the pregnancy put her life at risk, so the woman traveled to Michigan for an abortion.
• In #Nebraska police charged a 17-year-old & her mother with multiple felonies & misdemeanors after the pair allegedly conspired to abort Celeste’s pregnancy on their own.
• A 24-year-old woman fled her home state of #Wisconsin to get an #abortion in #Chicago, only to find out that, upon her return, the abortion may not have worked. Before Roe’s overturning, the doctor could have immediately helped her but now, with abortion banned in WI the woman had to wait, bleeding and at risk of going into deadly #sepsis.
• In #Louisiana, another woman was not able to get in-state abortions even though her #fetus was #nonviable. She had to travel about 1,400 miles to get an abortion in #NewYork.
• In #Ohio two children had recently fled to #Michigan & #Indiana for abortions after getting pregnant through #rape.
• Ohio, 2 women couldn’t get treatment for #cancer while pregnant.
Texas denied abortions to these women when their lives were in danger. Now they're suing the state.
Though speaking out requires them to relive losing their wanted pregnancies, four plaintiffs told The 19th they're doing it because they know they're "not the only ones like this."
A federal judge paused Wyoming's first-in-the-nation ban on medicated #abortion pills on Thursday, citing an ongoing lawsuit over the law's constitutionality.
The ban was set to be implemented on July 1.
The law concerns two abortion pills, one of which, mifepristone, had its FDA approval challenged earlier this year. In April, #SCOTUS ruled that #mifepristone can still be distributed pending that challenge.
Health care providers in #NorthCarolina file lawsuit against state over #abortion restrictions
The #ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of #PlannedParenthood South Atlantic and physician #BeverlyGray. The suit challenges the legitimacy of North Carolina's Senate Bill 20, which bans most abortions in the state after 12 weeks of pregnancy and which is set to go into effect on July 1. The plaintiffs are asking the court to block the bill from going into effect.
#Iowa Supreme Court declines to reinstate strict #abortion limits, but a new law could be coming
Abortion will remain legal in Iowa after the state's high court declined Friday to reinstate a law that would have largely banned the procedure, rebuffing #Republican Gov. #KimReynolds and, for now, keeping the conservative state from joining others with strict abortion limits.
In a rare 3-3 decision, the court upheld a 2019 district court ruling that blocked the law.
👍🏻#Abortion pills will remain legal in #Wyoming for now, after judge ruled Thurs that state’s 1st-in-nation law to ban them won’t take effect July 1 as planned while lawsuit proceeds.
Attorneys for Wyoming failed to show that allowing ban to take effect on sched wouldn’t harm plaintiffs before their case is resolved..
Plaintiffs “clearly showed probable success on merits,” judge said in granting their request to temporarily block ban
Former VP Pious McKissAss (& the entire GOP) can bite me.
Via Jessica Mason Pieklo:
Say it louder for the suckers who fell for the 'leave it to the states' lie
The New York Times:
Mike #Pence on Friday challenged the entire 2024 Republican presidential field to support a national #abortion ban at 15 weeks, demanding that the party go further than its primary front-runner, Donald #Trump, has so far been willing to go.
Comment: abortion & erasure of transgender persons I predict will the key wedge strategies in Republican culture wars leading into the 2024 U.S. elections : noise, disinformation, & identity politics to (1) to divide the electorate, & (2) through information overload induce apathy & dissuade voters from participating / voting - allowing enough of their supporters to elect GOP candidates. ...
Abortion pills will remain legal in Wyoming after a judge ruled Thursday that the 1st-in-the-nation law to ban them won't take effect July 1 as planned while a lawsuit proceeds.
While other states have instituted de facto bans on the medication by broadly prohibiting abortion, only Wyoming has specifically banned abortion pills
...
Twitter Halts Promotion Of Campaign Video Due To ‘Abortion Advocacy’
“The mention of abortion advocacy is the issue here,” a Twitter employee told North Carolina candidate Rachel Hunt, according to emails HuffPost reviewed.
Iowa Supreme Court Deadlocks On Six-Week Ban, Keeping Abortion Legal (talkingpointsmemo.com)
The Iowa Supreme Court split 3-3 on reviving a six-week abortion ban Friday, blocking the ban and keeping the procedure legal in the state.