Jess Piper reports – from the ground in rural Missouri and Arkansas – about how, since it knows it cannot win fair and square, the Republican party is resorting to tricks, subterfuge, and outright lies to try to impose its minority position on abortion on the majority who believe that abortion should not be made illegal.
She recently went to a Democratic rally in Arkansas, and encountered a woman handing out cards with QR code.
The woman was positioned at the entrance to the drive to the rally as if she were an official checking people in. A man with her was sitting in his car watching.
The woman smiled and asked Piper if she wanted information on the petition to put abortion on the ballot in Arkansas. Piper said she'd like it.
But when Piper scanned the code on the card and it took her to Google drive, she became suspicious.
Her suspicion increased as she began reading folders on the Google drive including one labeled, "Decline to Sign." They were full of packs of lies about the initiatve to put abortion on the ballot. They were designed to discourage people from signing this initiative.
Piper concludes,
“'Decline to Sign' is a coordinated movement and we saw it in Missouri as well."
"It is well-funded and not at all grassroots. They have signs, sites, and lawmakers who are bought and paid for to do their dirty work."
And its goal is to confuse voters and discourage them from signing petitions to place abortion on the ballot — because Republicans know they cannot win this fight fairly. So they intend to cheat and lie to try to win it and to impose their minority position about abortion on the majority by those means.
Frozen embryos in test tubes remain babies in Alabama: on May 3, the Alabama Supremes denied a request to rehear its ruling about this..
Look at the test tube and its contents and you may be baffled at the judgment that it contains a baby, but the Alabama Supremes' ruling is not about science, what you can see or what you think: it's about what a minority of religionists believe and want to force you to believe.
Mark Silk notes that the "pro-life" movement is in political retreat following the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision and the chaos that decision has ushered in. The "pro-life" movement now finds itself "at serious odds with Americans' historical deference to diversity of belief."
Silk concludes that “the pro-life movement has pushed the political envelope too far.”
"Now, Davis has disclosed his former partner’s abortion to a state district court in Texas, asking for the power to investigate what his lawyer characterizes as potentially illegal activity in a state where almost all abortions are banned."
Denying pregnant people emergency abortion care under EMTALA advances Christian Nationalism
By Kalyn Mizelle McDaniel May 01, 2024
"...Abortion bans violate the separation of church and state by imposing one narrow religious viewpoint on everyone. Removing EMTALA protections from pregnant women goes a step further by advancing the Christian Nationalist commitment to relegating women to second-class citizenship. According to complementarianism, which is intrinsically intertwined with Christian Nationalism, cisgender woman have a distinct role. Motherhood and submission to men are key parts of the separate role women play. The incapability of the role is evidence of its second-class nature. Complementarianism is diametrically opposed to the liberation of women, and fittingly, limiting the instances in which their wellbeing can be protected in emergency rooms aligns with that ideology..."
Robert Reich sketches the context, the troubling period of history, in which students are graduating from college:
"My students are graduating at a tremulous time.
The largest campus protest movement of the 21st century. The first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. The most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. Two horrific wars."
Texas man files legal action to probe ex-partner’s out-of-state abortion.
senior staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, described Mitchell’s statement and general approach as misleading “fearmongering.” “People need to understand that it is not a crime to leave Texas or any other state in the country for an abortion,” said Duane, who is working with lawyers from the firm Arnold & Porter to represent the woman and others targeted in the Davis case. “I don’t want people to be intimidated, but they should be outraged and alarmed.” #abortion#womensrights https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/05/03/texas-abortion-investigations/
A coalition of reproductive rights advocates say they've submitted the required number of signatures to get a proposed amendment to enshrine #abortion access in #SouthDakota's constitution on the November ballot.
55,000 signatures were collected — far more than the 35,000 needed.