Mostly Monday Reads: Requiescat in pace

Posted: April 10, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: mass shooting, misogyny, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, Psychopaths in charge, Rape Culture, religious extremists, Religious Freedom, Reproductive Justice, Reproductive Rights | 14 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

It’s been obvious for some time that Gun Violence occurs in states where guns are readily available. It’s also where Republican Legislatures are not about to do anything about that. Tennessee’s Republican legislature showed how vicious and petty they can be last week.   

The actions of Republicans in the Tennessee legislature resemble the attempts of White Southern Redeemers to take back the South at the end of the 19th century.

These new Redeemers are using their power as a tool of intimidation. What other conclusion can be drawn from the inappropriate and disproportionate response to a decorum infraction?

The viciousness and pettiness kills too.

Today’s mass shooting site was at bank within an office building in downtown Louisville, Kentucky.  It’s an odd state of affairs when my gut reaction was at least it’s not dead little kids again.  Deaths by gun rampage shouldn’t be so frequent they have a moral hierarchy. This unique American form of terrorism happens everywhere these days. I’m not sure how we’re supposed to feel safe when a small group of gun fetishists and NRA hostages bind us to a life of constant fear of going anywhere. Local TV station WDRB 41 reports the carnage.

Four people were killed and eight others were injured, including two police officers, when a gunman opened fire Monday morning inside a bank building in downtown Louisville.

Louisville Metro Police said officers responded to the scene around 8:30 a.m. at 333 E. Main St. — at the Preston Pointe building near Louisville Slugger Field — on reports of a “active shooter.” Police spokesman Col. Paul Humphrey said the first responding officers arrived to hear the sound of gunshots still firing inside.

The eight injured were taken to University of Louisville Hospital. Speaking around 11 am., Humphrey said the suspected shooter, who police believe was either a current or former employee at Old National Bank, was “dead on the scene.”

This is some live footage provided by a bystander.

Republicans are intent on policies that will kill people.  There is no other way to explain these many headlines. Pregnant women are specifically under attack from the Republican Crusade for fertilized eggs. This is from Caroline Kitchener writing for the Washington Post.  “Two friends were denied care after Florida banned abortion. One almost died. New abortion restrictions have disrupted the standard of care for a pregnancy complication both women experienced late last year.”

… a new reality playing out in hospitals in antiabortion states across the country — where because of newly enacted abortion bans, people with potentially life-threatening pregnancy complications are being denied care that was readily available before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

When abortion was legal across the country, doctors in all states would typically offer to induceor perform a surgical procedure to end the pregnancy when faced with a pre-viability PPROM case — which is the standard of care, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and an option that many women choose. Especially before the 20-week mark, a fetus is extremely unlikely to survive without any amniotic fluid.

But in the 18states where abortion is now banned before fetal viability, many hospitals have been turning away pre-viability PPROM patients as doctors and administrators fear the legal risk that could come with terminating even a pregnancy that could jeopardize the mother’s well-being, according to 12 physicians practicing in antiabortion states.

The medical exceptions to protect the life of the mother that are included in abortion bansare often described in vague language that does not appear to cover pre-viabilityPPROM, doctors said. That’s because the risks of the condition are often less clear-cut than other medical emergencies, such as an ectopic pregnancy, in which a fertilized egg grows outside of the uterus, dooming the fetus and posing an immediate danger to the mother’s life.

A 2022 study on the impact of Texas’s six-week abortion ban found that 57 percent of pre-viability PPROM patients in Texaswho were not given the option to end their pregnancies experienced “a serious maternal morbidity,” such as infection or hemorrhage,compared with 33 percent of PPROM patients who chose to terminate in states without abortion bans. According to 2018 ACOG guidance, “isolated maternal deaths due to infection” have been reported in early PPROM cases.

AXIOS reported the findings of a report in January. “Mothers in states with abortion bans nearly 3 times more likely to die.”

Women in states with abortion bans are nearly three times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or soon after giving birth, according to a report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute shared first with AXIOS.

The big picture: The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations, and government officials and health experts are concerned that conditions will worsen now that a federal right to abortion has been struck down.

This statistic is not likely to improve given the number of hospitals and doctors bailing on maternal and obstetric care. CNN reports “Maternity units are closing across America, forcing expectant mothers to hit the road.”  That’s some quixotic headline, isn’t it?

The Chartis report says that the states with the highest loss of access to obstetrical care are Minnesota, Texas, Iowa, Kansas and Wisconsin, with each losing more than 10 facilities.

Data released last fall by the infant and maternal health nonprofit March of Dimes also shows that more than 2.2 million women of childbearing age across 1,119 US counties are living in “maternity care deserts,” meaning their counties have no hospitals offering obstetric care, no birth centers and no obstetric providers.

Maternity care deserts have been linked to a lack of adequate prenatal care or treatment for pregnancy complications and even an increased risk of maternal death for a year after giving birth.

Money is one reason why maternity units are being shuttered.

According to the American Hospital Association, 42% of births in the US are paid for by Medicaid, which has low reimbursement rates. Employer-sponsored insurance pays about $15,000 for a delivery, and Medicaid pays about $6,500, according to the Health Care Cost Institute, a nonprofit that analyzes health care cost and utilization data.

“Medicaid funds about half of all births nationally and more than half of births in rural areas,” said Dr. Katy Kozhimannil, a public health researcher at the University of Minnesota who has conducted research on the growing number of maternity care deserts.

…

More stringent abortion laws may be playing a role in the closures, too.

Bonner General said in a news release last month that due to Idaho’s “legal and political climate, highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care.”

According to the Guttmacher Institute, Idaho has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country: a complete ban that has only a few exceptions.

Idaho requires an “affirmative defense,” Guttmacher says, meaning a provider “has to prove in court that an abortion met the criteria for a legal exception.”

No matter the reason, Kozhimannil said, closures in rural communities aren’t just a nuisance. They also put families at risk.

Black women are at highest risk.  Here’s an additional hurdle with a racists bent. “Black couple say Texas authorities took away their baby just because they had a home birth. “Instantly, I felt like they had stolen my baby,” the mom said.”

A Black couple living in Dallas say their 2-week-old daughter was taken from them because they decided to have a home birth with a midwife.

Two weeks ago, Temecia Jackson gave birth to her daughter, Mila, at home with the assistance of a licensed and certified professional midwife.

“It was a beautiful birth,” Temecia Jackson said at a press conference on Thursday, April 6. “She was perfect: 6 pounds, 9 ounces.”

Shortly after, the couple says their baby developed jaundice, a common liver condition in newborns that often resolves itself without treatment.

Temecia and her husband, Rodney Jackson, said they were following their midwife’s care protocol for their baby’s jaundice, which was to care for her at home rather than admit her to the hospital.

After a routine doctor’s visit, the couple alleges their child’s pediatrician called Dallas Child Protective Services (CPS) because the parents were going to continue to follow their midwife’s guidance. Days later, Desoto police officers and CPS agents arrived at the couple’s home, demanding they turn their daughter over to authorities.

So, Republicans feel government can ban books, closet the GLBT community,  and end reproductive healthcare but won’t touch the number one thing killing children in this country, guns.  And, when you do get justice for a homicide by guns, a Republican Governor will pardon the murderer. “Texas governor seeks pardon of man convicted of murder in Black Lives Matter shooting.”  This is from Reuters.  

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Saturday he is seeking the pardon of an Uber driver convicted of murder a day earlier in the July 2020 shooting death of a man at a Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Austin, the state capital.

Abbott, in a post on Twitter, said he will pardon Daniel Perry, 37, a U.S. Army sergeant, as soon as a request from the parole board “hits my desk.”

The Republican governor noted that he can grant pardons only on the recommendation of the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles, but that he is allowed to request pardons.

The details of the murder are absolutely horrifying. This is from Dean Obeidallah.

Then we come to Saturday. That is when GOP Texas Governor Gregg Abbott announced he would pardon a man convicted just 24 hours before of murdering a US military veteran who had taken part in a 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest. Why is Abbott–who only pardoned two people in all of 2022—so anxious to pardon the killer who shot 28 year-old Air Force veteran, Garrett Foster to death in the middle of a Texas street? Simple, because he was being  “goaded” to do so by right wing figures from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to Kyle Rittenhouse to the chair of the Texas GOP.

Gov. Abbott pardoning a man convicted of MURDERING a BLM protester–who posted before the shooting he was going to kill someone–sends a dangerous message. Abbott is saying you can literally KILL people the GOP disagrees with politically and we will protect you.

The facts of the case are, for the most part, straightforward.  On the night of July 25, 2020, defendant David Perry was working as an Uber driver in Austin during the time of protests surrounding the gruesome murder of George Floyd. As the Austin police detailed, Perry was driving his car when he approached BLM protesters blocking the traffic. At first, Perry honked at protesters as they walked through the street but then seconds later, Perry ran a red light, driving his car into the crowd.

That is when Perry and Foster—both white and both legally armed–came to meet. Foster was openly carrying his AK-47 when he and other protesters approached Perry’s car.

However, at this point there were conflicting accounts as to whether Foster had raised his weapon to point at Perry or if Perry shot first.  Witnesses testified at trial that Foster had been pushing the wheelchair of his quadruple-amputee fiancée, Whitney Mitchell—who is pictured above— and never raised his assault rifle before Perry killed him. Perry claims he shot in self-defense after Foster pointed his weapon at him.

It’s undisputed, though, that Perry fired five shots from his .357 revolver through his car window killing Foster. Perry drove away but later did call the police to admit he killed Foster, claiming self-defense.

During the trial, the key question for the jury was whether Perry’s shooting was justified under the state’s “stand your ground” law–which allows deadly force to be used by a person who feels their life is in danger. Prosecutors argued Perry had instigated the incident and introduced messages that suggested the shooting by Perry was not spur of the moment, but pre-mediated.

One of the most damning was Perry’s Facebook message to a friend before the shooting that he might “kill a few people on my way to work. They are rioting outside my apartment complex.”

During Perry’s 8-day trial, dozens of witnesses testified and forensic evidence was presented. The jury—after deliberating for 17 hours– rendered a unanimous verdict finding Perry guilty of murder.

That is when Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and others on the right began to publicly pressure Gov. Abbott to in essence overturn the jury verdict by issuing a pardon because they didn’t agree with it. On his Fox News show Friday night shortly after the verdict, Carlson called on Abbott to pardon Perry, arguing the defendant had acted in self-defense—despite the jury unanimously rejecting that very defense. Carlson even attacked the prosecutor by employing the common anti-Semitic refrain from the right that he was a “Soros-funded DA”—as in Jewish billionaire George Soros supporting him. Carlson wrapped up by declaring that the verdict “means that in the state of Texas, if you have the wrong politics, you’re not allowed to defend yourself.”

Carlson is lying. Perry had the ability to fully defend himself in his trial. But the jury unanimously rejected Perry’s defense and found him guilty of murder.

Guns have moral agency but women do not.  Welcome to Christo-Fascism 101 for Wipopo.

Wherever they go, they create a hell realm. They don’t seem to get that looks pleasant compared to being in their company and listening to them.  I’d rather be anywhere than near just one of them.   Let’s get them out of government ASAP before they kill everything!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Life will kill you
That’s what I said
Life will kill you
And then you’ll be dead
Life will find you
Wherever you go
Requiescat in pace
That’s all she wrote

Monday Reads: The Miseducation Agenda

Posted: July 18, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: religious extremists, Religious Freedom, Reproductive Justice, Republican Code Words and Concepts, Republican politics, Revisionism | 22 Comments

The public library in Council Bluffs opened in 1866.

Good Day Sky Dancers!

There is nothing more telling about the state of discourse in our country than the move to censor and replace materials in libraries and public schools with pure nonsense and propaganda. As a child, I spent a great deal of the summer in the old Council Bluffs, Iowa Library doing the children’s reading club.  My mother took us to the local library at least once a week.

I don’t know if you can see the inscription on top, but it reads “Free Public Library.”  The city built a new library, but the Carnegie-funded library is now standing as a Union Pacific Railroad Museum.  I currently use another Carnegie-funded library in my neighborhood in New Orleans which features a Drag Queen storybook hour for kids. People come from out of the Parish to protest that, but everyone here is thankful for the creative time to read books together and discuss the one thing kids like to do which is play ‘dress-up.’

The Public Library–now closed–in Vinton, Iowa.

The public library in Council Bluffs when a subscription library was established for males over the age of 12. Libraries now strive to be more inclusive unless their town goes all Fahrenheit 451 on them. This is from CNN: “Iowa library temporarily closes after full-time staff leaves following complaints about ‘liberal agenda’ in book selection.” Rather than shrugging off stuff they don’t like and simply choosing not to read it, the Trumperz Thought Brownshirts would rather close the place down.

A small-town library in Iowa is scrambling to reopen after community complaints about its book selection prompted full-time staff members to resign.

The controversy started over complaints about books on display for children with information on the LGBTQ community, according to Jimmy Kelly, board chair of the Vinton Public Library.

“They would like balance that for every book that talks about LGBTQ issues, that there also be a book describing traditional gender expression,” Kelly told CNN Thursday.

“The people basically accused the library of having a liberal agenda,” he added.

…

“A reconsideration policy allows you to object to materials or programming in which the library is joined. Libraries have this, it’s very common,” she added. “It protects the library staff, it protects the library board as well as the person who is making the complaint. It is a wonderful process.”

The content complaints followed complaints last year the library had a children’s book about Vice President Kamala Harris and one written by first lady Jill Biden, but no children’s books about former President Donald Trump, according to Kelly. It resulted in McMahon’s resignation, he said.

Since resigning last year, McMahon took a job as the library director in DeWitt, about 90 miles away. She says the controversy leading to her decision to leave the Vinton community was unfortunate.

“It was very sad. I really liked working with the city department heads I worked with,” she said. “I had a great staff and there were a few people on the library board who I thought were fantastic, but it was just the atmosphere, and we all will choose a location of where we live or where we work by what matches our personalities and I just did not feel that I needed that extra stress in my life.”

McMahon said she also heard complaints there were no books about former President Donald Trump in the display.

“These were children’s books, these were picture books, and I did my due diligence. Did I miss someone? Did someone write a nice book about the former president? The answer at that point was no. I don’t know if there’s something now, I don’t know,” McMahon told CNN.

The Alvar Library in New Orleans, Lousiana

So, my first thought is just about every book in a collection is about traditional expressions of gender. It shouldn’t need to be singled out in a diatribe. My second thought was is there no wonder that no respectable children’s book author doesn’t want to write a book describing a corrupt, twice-impeached traitor with a wife that did soft porn? I mean seriously, how is that something a small child should be reading about?

But even more seriously, what is Governor Rick DeSantis doing to the Civics Curriculum in Florida?  If this isn’t lies and propaganda being pushed into Public Schools what is? I have slave owners in my family tree. Many of them signed the Declaration of Independence. Two Signed the Constitution.  One of the buggers that signed the US Constituion of the US was an ever not so great Uncle from South Carolina  who was the Governor at one point and wrote the Fugitive Slave Act. My own Uncle helped pen and argued for the Japanese Internment Laws before SCOTUS during Wolrd War Two. The last one particularly hits home to me because my mother-in-law was Japanese so my ex-husband, daughters, and granddaughters are of Japanese descent.

I imagine that most of my relatives–including me–lived on land stolen from Indigenous people. Why hide where they fucked up?  My mother took me around the country showing me where all this happened in the hopes that my knowledge would make sure it never happened again. Those dead people never had an ounce of an impact on me.  However, my mother, local librarians, and public school teachers sure did. Some in ways they intended, others in ways they did not.  The further I got in education, the more I learned that all of our history is not pleasant, it happened, but it should not happen again. It need not be covered up.  I trust our education to determine how and when to elucidate the impact of slavery, of the Indigenous relocation pogroms and reeducations schools, Japanese internment, and the system of immigration that favors some races over others. Then, we work to tear down the remanents that harm our modern society and correct them.

From NPR: “Florida Gov. DeSantis takes aim at what he sees as indoctrination in schools”  It’s always the same with these guys.  Projection! Slavery and Indigenous relocation and massacre are at the heart of our history and considered women to be property until after 1849.  That’s not part of the past that should be glossed-over or celebrated with some pantomimes with kind pilgrims, dancing slaves, and always happy mothers.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made it clear how he views public schools and what they’re teaching children: He doesn’t trust them.

At a recent news conference, he returned to a familiar theme.

“Following woke indoctrination in our schools, that is a road to ruin for this country,” he said. “And we’re not going to let it happen in Florida.”

Since becoming governor in 2019, DeSantis has become known for taking combative positions on controversial issues, including education. He recently signed a number of measures aimed at preventing the sort of “indoctrination” he and his Republican supporters fear is taking place.

His “Stop Woke” act sets limits on how issues involving race may be taught. And it allows parents to sue teachers and school districts that violate it.

Another measure, the Parental Rights in Education Act, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, bans any instruction involving sexual orientation or gender identity in the earliest grades and says beyond that it must be “age appropriate.”

In a June interview with the Christian fundamentalist group, Focus on the Family, DeSantis said he believes there’s a “concerted effort to inject … gender ideology and sexuality into the discussions with the very youngest kids.”

You know something is wrong when he’s being guided by Child Beating advocates Focus on the Family.

As first reported by the Miami Herald, the training materials were prepared for the state by groups including the Bill of Rights Institute, founded by Charles Koch and Hillsdale College, a small Christian school in Michigan that is influential in developing conservative education policies.

Segal, a teacher with 18 years in the classroom, says DeSantis is pushing a false narrative that schools are promoting a “woke” progressive agenda.

“I hate to say this,” she says, “but I feel that maybe, possibly he’s pandering to a base for re-election and that’s very hurtful.”

DeSantis is running for re-election as governor in November but is also widely seen as a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

All this comes as Florida is facing a critical teacher shortage with more than 9,500 vacant jobs statewide.

In Brevard County, school board member Jennifer Jenkins says teachers are demoralized. Many have retired or found jobs in other fields. In her district, she says there are 20 vacancies at a single school that only has 40 staff members.

“I don’t know how we’re going to continue to live in this hostile environment, how we’re going to encourage educators to enter the field and stick around,” Jenkin says. “It’s really, really scary.”

School board members have become a particular target. Jenkins has had protesters outside her home, vandalism, and threats of violence stemming for her support for a school face mask mandate.

Ending tenure at Universities is another way Republicans are seeking to stack public education facilities with whatever. From the Advocate here in Louisana: “Mark Ballard: Conservatives want to clip tenure protections for outspoken college professors.”

Louisiana began down what one legislator calls the “slippery slope” toward eliminating job-protecting tenure for college professors who mouth off in unapproved ways.

Senate President Page Cortez, R-Lafayette, Friday received designees for the Task Force on Tenure in Postsecondary Education, putting Louisiana on the path already tread by other Republican-majority states seeking to remove what some professors call protection for academic free thought and what some conservatives say is a license to indoctrinate youth with extremist thought.

“The caricature for tenure has been weaponized on the national level for political pursuits,” University of Louisiana System President Jim Henderson testified May 11 as legislators considered creating the task force. “I encourage you that the conversation around this is around the merits and not about the politics.”

The Darby Free Library in Darby, Pennsylvania is the country’s oldest library. It was founded as the Darby Library Company in 1743 .

There’s a good list there with all states trying to pass some form of the same effort.  So far, none of these efforts have passed but, just like voter suppression efforts, Republicans are hot to quash public education and send tax payer money to places with religious indoctrination agendas.  One of DeSantis’ civics changes includes this doozy via Axios: “Florida training program: “Misconception” that founders wanted separation of church and state”.

Driving the news: That and other content in a state-sponsored training course has raised eyebrows among some who have participated and felt it was omitting unflattering information about the country’s founders, pushing inaccuracies and centering religious ideas, per the Post.

  • The Constitution explicitly bars the government from “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Scholars interpret the passage to require a separation of church and state, per the Post.
  • In another example, the training states that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were against slavery, while omitting the fact that each owned enslaved people.

It’s obvious that the Republican Party likes their base stupid. They also want us to be just as stupid and uninformed.  Fox News Channel and AM radio shows do just that. Whatever can we do to stop all of this?

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Frank Friday Reads

Posted: December 3, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Afternoon Reads, birth control, Black Lives Matter, Breaking News, children, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Discrimination against women, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, Federal Government Shutdown, Feminists, fetus fetishists, Gun Control, health, Psychopaths in charge, religious extremists, Religious Freedom, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican Code Words and Concepts, War on Women, white nationalists | 14 Comments

Ghislaine Howard, Self Portrait Pregnant, 1984. © Ghislaine Howard.

Happy Friday Sky Dancers!

I’m going to make this entire weekend TV-free. It’s easy for me because all forms of sportsball bore me and I certainly don’t need to see the endless talking heads as it’s been a depressing enough week already. Most movies and tv shows bore me too so my plan is to read and do creative stuff. I’ve got pies to bake, pictures to paint, and music to make!

There were a lot of depressing and insulting things argued during the Mississippi Forced Birth Enslavement and child-trafficking law loved completely by the out-of-touch right-wing Christianists on the court. They must have missed being exposed to the idea that women have moral agency during their important lessons in life sessions. BB covered a lot of it yesterday.

A lot enraged me but none more than the white savior complex of Amy “great white savior” Coney Barret. She seems to feel since she adopted two black children and saved them from whatever hell she imagines with her white nationalist vision and missionary position she can ride to the rescue of all zygotes and embryos everywhere in the country. She feels she knows what’s right and that adoptions are just the answer to everything surrounding a woman’s pregnancy. Adoption justifies the state enslavement of pregnant women resulting in state trafficking of commodity babies. It’s her perfect concoction of everything is better when the rest of us are just the property of white men.

I’m sure as many of you have experience with friends that were adopted and also couples that adopted for a variety of reasons. Even with all the best intentions and best parenting, I’ve never met an adopted person that hasn’t presented some combination of similar emotional and psychological issues. They always feel lacking in a way that I never experienced even though they can be a tremendous variation on that theme. My first real experience came with a young black woman who was adopted by a kind elderly white couple and never quite felt she fit into any community that she met. I’ve always hoped that since multi-racial families are more prevalent that has become less of an issue. I also had a friend who adopted a boy only to find out a procedure could take care of her fertility problems. She then had four kids right after him. His biggest problem was one of his grandfathers continually reminding him that he wasn’t really theirs. Then, another friend had been adopted by a white couple because they wanted her baby. It took years for her to be able to tell her son that he wasn’t her brother. They really couldn’t be bothered with her after the boy was born.

Stuff like this leaves scars. And these are examples of what most people would call successful adoptions. None of the parents in these scenarios are the monsters that many adopted or foster kids get a place with. I won’t even share the trauma I’ve seen an adopted nephew go through even though his parents try everything. Every time a girl breaks up with him he goes through a loss like I’ve never seen in a person. At the moment, I live with someone who was adopted and it’s a variation on this all over. She’s got a form of detachment disorder and just is constantly in therapy over those issues and other personality disorders. She spent time in an orphanage. She loves her parents. They’re annoying in the same way most parents are but again, there are just issues that come along with all that and some people handle it better than others or have been further complicated before they get to their adopted family. It’s a forced birth fairy tale that adoption all rainbows and unicorns for everyone!

Gustav Klimt – Hope, II, 1907

These kids didn’t end up in the foster system although a few came from orphanages. I want to share these three articles with you written today. BB shared a few yesterdays. Don’t get me wrong. Adoption isn’t like they used to do which was to dump a girl in an unwed mother’s home, take the child from her, then put the child wherever. But, it still has that feeling that the state shouldn’t be forcing child trafficking and making women nothing but vessels. This is the worst kind of state interference in a woman’s moral agency. It’s autocratic and it’s purely based on one’s interpretation of a few religions. Babies are not commodities. Fetuses cannot live on their own and women do not just play passive host vessels. My last much wanted pregnancy nearly killed both of us and me several times with cancer I developed during it. Every woman has a different story and every child has a different story. The state just can’t write us all off under one big power grab like we’re all property. It’s a woman’s decision to make. PERIOD.

This is from New York Magazine: “Amy Coney Barrett’s Adoption Myths. “They’re co-opting our lives and our stories.” written by Irin Carmon’.

Twice in oral arguments this week for the abortion case that could overturn Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked pro-choice advocates: Would banning abortion be so bad if women could just drop their newborns at the fire station for someone else to adopt? She conceded that forced pregnancy and birth are “an infringement on bodily autonomy,” but suggested, misleadingly, that the real choice is between having a later abortion and “the state requiring the woman to go 15, 16 weeks more and then terminate parental rights at the conclusion.”If advocates for abortion rights were so worried that “the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy” would harm women, asked Barrett, who adopted two children from Haiti, “Why don’t the safe-haven laws take care of that problem?”

The attorney for the clinics, Julie Rikelman, reminded Barrett that it’s 75 times more dangerous to give birth in Mississippi than to have a pre-viability abortion, disproportionately threatening the lives of women of color in particular. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said citing laws where parents can relinquish their newborns, no questions asked, “overlooks the consequences of forcing upon her the choice of having to decide whether to give a child up for adoption. That itself is its own monumental decision for her.” People who have lived and studied the realities of adoption also had a lot to say about Barrett’s blithe solution — one that drew on a well-established conservative political strategy to put adoption forward as the kinder face of the anti-abortion movement.

The day after oral arguments, I had a conversation with Angela Tucker, a transracial adoptee, host of The Adoptee Next Door, and media consultant; Kate Livingston, Ph.D., a birth parent and educator of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; Kathryn Joyce, journalist and author of The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption; and sociologist Gretchen Sisson, Ph.D., who studies abortion, adoption, and reproductive decision-making in the United States.

Pablo Picasso Pregnant Woman Vallauris, 1950

Please go read the questions and answers in this conversation. They are enlightening, to say the least. Elizabeth Spiers writes this for the New York Times: “I Was Adopted. I Know the Trauma It Can Inflict.”

As an adoptee myself, I was floored by Justice Barrett’s assumption that adoption is an accessible and desirable alternative for women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. She may not realize it, but what she is suggesting is that women don’t need access to abortion because they can simply go do a thing that is infinitely more difficult, expensive, dangerous and potentially traumatic than terminating a pregnancy during its early stages.

As an adoptive mother herself, Justice Barrett should have some inkling of the complexities of adoption and the toll it can inflict on children, as well as birth mothers. But she speaks as if adoption is some kind of idyllic fairy tale. My own adoption actually was what many would consider idyllic. I was raised by two adoptive parents, Alice and Terry, from the time I was an infant, and grew up in a home where I knew every day that I was loved. A few years ago, I found my biological mother, Maria, and three siblings I didn’t know I had via a DNA test and Facebook.

The first time I spoke to Maria on the phone — she lives in Alabama, not too far from my parents, and I live in Brooklyn — she apologized repeatedly for giving me up and told me she loved me and that I would always be family. “You are blood,” she would say later. I told her, and continue to tell her, every time she brings it up, that the apology is unnecessary. I had a wonderful childhood and I believe she had made the right decision. But she remains heartbroken about the years we missed together.

Both Maria and my mom, Alice, oppose abortion on religious grounds. My mom is white and Southern Baptist; Maria is Hispanic and Pentecostal. Both like to point to me to justify their beliefs, saying that had Maria gotten an abortion, I would not exist. It’s a familiar argument: The anti-abortion movement likes to invoke Nobel Prize winners who might never have materialized, or potential adoptees who might have cured cancer, if they hadn’t been aborted at eight weeks.

Here is my third offering on this topic.

You could make the argument that from Alito on … they all should step down. They were hired by the Republicans to tank Roe and whatever follows that insults their personal religious fetishes. We all have the right to practice our religions but not to force them on others via the state. It’s hard to believe they’re on the Supreme Court and they have such open disdain for the First Amendment of the Constitution.

‘How brilliant to paint yourself changing’ … Chantal Joffe’s 2004 self-portrait Photograph: © Chantal Joffe Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London/ Venice

When should a Supreme Court justice’s deeply held religious beliefs require recusal — that is, that the justice not participate in a particular case? A difficult question, to be sure, but one that Justice Amy Coney Barrett has already answered for herself. And her answer requires her recusal in abortion cases.

The Supreme Court hears arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Wednesday, which challenges the constitutionality of Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Under current precedent, the law is unconstitutional — as both the district court and the court of appeals held. Both Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, and Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey, decided in 1992, hold that a state cannot ban abortions prior to viability, approximately the 24th week of pregnancy. Mississippi has asked the Supreme Court to overrule those precedents.

To follow her own words in a 1998 law review article, Barrett should have recused herself from deciding this case (and all other abortion cases) if she has any integrity at all.

In “Catholic Judges in Capital Cases,” published in the Marquette Law Review, Barrett (then a law clerk to a federal court of appeals judge) and her co-author address the dilemma that faces devout Catholic judges in capital cases. She writes that such judges are “obliged by oath, professional commitment, and the demands of citizenship to enforce the death penalty,” but they are also “obliged to adhere to their church’s teaching on moral matters.” They are therefore “morally precluded from enforcing the death penalty.”

What’s a Catholic judge to do, then? According to Barrett’s article, the judge must recuse herself. She can neither enforce the death penalty and violate her religious conscience, nor fail to enforce it and violate her oath of office.

And even in a case in which a judge has discretion whether or not to sentence a convicted criminal to death, he cannot resolve to keep an open mind and then claim to have done nothing wrong if he decides not to impose the death penalty. Because, Barrett writes, “A judge who suspends his moral judgment during sentencing sets his conscience aside” and “cuts himself loose from his moral moorings.” That unloosing is itself a sin, she concludes — analogous to “looking lustfully at a woman” and thus committing adultery “in his thoughts.”

Barrett’s bottom line is that an “observant Catholic judge” may not “formally cooperate in bringing about the defendant’s execution.” And for that reason, “if one cannot in conscience affirm a death sentence the proper response would be to recuse oneself.” To do otherwise is to “betray a public trust” by manipulating the law “in order to save lives.”

Well, Well, Well!

Celebration of the body … Jenny Saville’s Electra (2012). Photograph: Prudence Cuming/© Jenny Saville. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.

Here are a few other links to how Christianists are forcing everyone to follow their distinct takes on Christianity. They sound more like the Taliban every day. And take it from me, as a former Methodist who was frequently called not a real Christian, they will come for all of you.

Also from The Hill: “North Dakota school superintendent slams critical race theory, calls to teach ‘Christian heritage'”.

A North Dakota school district superintendent sent an email that says racial injustice is being pushed by a “political ideology,” called for a “Christ centered Republic” and deemed critical race theory “bigotry cloaked in academic theory,” according to InForum.

The news service, which obtained a copy of the email that was sent to a North Dakota Council of Educational Leaders-run listserv, reported that in Starkweather Public School District Superintendent Larry Volk’s email, he said that it was “time to move away from godless corrupt woke, left-wing ideology and back to the devout Christ centered Republic the founders envisioned.”

Volk also vowed in his email that critical race theory “will never be taught in our district. We will not teach institutionalized bigotry promoted by the left.”

“Racial injustice has been pushed by a political ideology — not a race of people. There is no systemic racism in America created by our Founding Fathers — the racism is the project of the godless Democrat party that has rejected god, family, faith and America and embraced secularism in the form of Marxism,” Volk said in another portion of the email.
“My district will continue to teach the Christian heritage and origins of the American Republic focusing on primary source documents from the founding era,” he added.

In an email to The Hill, Volk defended his email, which included some political commentary regarding a list of historical events, figures and groups, saying that “my goal is simply to teach as accurately as I can.”

Yeah, Jesus the street preacher and social justice warrior would surely not recognize the description of his work here.

My last set of links is basically a group of writers telling Dems to face the culture warriors .head-on and decimate them. As Amanda says below, “fight early and fight often.” There are also some gun fetishists that need to be dealt with.

In one good piece of news, there’s this. McConnell folded like a cheap umbrella.

https://twitter.com/YossiGestetner/status/1466459437137338372

In other good news, Donald Trump is still NOT president. We’re just back to fighting old battles like Women’s Rights, Voting Rights, and probably GLBT rights shortly. Have a peaceful and joyful weekend!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?