Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

You don’t need to be a political genius to know that Republicans are straight up shitting themselves right now. The Arizona Supreme Court ruling in favor of an 1864 ban was a tipping point across the country, and the GOP—in every state, at every level—knows that voters are furious.

It’s not just the nightmare stories of raped children being denied care and women going septic that put voters over the edge, but the disdain for women that seeps out of every anti-abortion decision. At the same time Arizona Republicans are enacting a law from before women had the right to vote, anti-abortion groups and Idaho Republicans are headed to the Supreme Court to argue that states shouldn’t have to give women life-saving abortions. How much clearer can they get? All of which is to say: strategists have their work cut out for them. How can they convince voters ahead of November that the anti-abortion horror show they’ve unleashed on Americans is good, actually?

If anyone has an answer, it’s Kellyanne Conway. The Republican strategist and all-around terrible person has been doing damage control in the wake of the Arizona ruling, pushing out talking points at record speed. And the messages she’s focusing on paint a clear picture of what we can expect to see from GOP candidates—including Donald Trump—over the next few months. In a recent appearance on Fox News, for example, Conway stuck to some of her old standards—namely, attacking Democrats as the real extremists. She honed in on ballot measures, specifically, saying that abortion rights activists are trying to pass amendments that are “more permissive than pre-Dobbs.” Of course, this is demonstrably false. It’s also one of the reasons I don’t love ‘viability’ language in proposed amendments—in addition to the fact that it’s just another restriction, Republicans will claim we’re pushing for abortion ‘up until birth’ regardless.

Conway also repeated some of our favorite anti-abortion bingo words like “compassion,” and “federal minimum standard” in lieu of ‘ban’—but it was something she said about states’ rights that piqued my interest.

[“What is state’s rights? Is it when the state Supreme Court speaks? Is it through a ballot initiative? Is it through the governor and the state legislature working together? Is it through the trigger laws that have been on the books? I can argue that it’s all of the above.”]

Over the last few months—especially as pro-choice ballot measures have advanced in multiple states—I’ve noticed Republicans tinkering with the definition of states’ rights and the ‘will of the people.’ Essentially, they know that they’re passing abortion bans against voters’ wishes, so they need to make it sound as if these laws are something Americans actually want. (That’s why they say ‘consensus’ instead of ‘ban.’)

This week, for example, Fox News ran a headline about the EMTALA case headed to the Supreme Court, stating that the Biden administration is “subverting state’s rights” by requiring hospitals to give women life-saving and stabilizing abortions. John Bursch, an attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the radical legal group arguing the case, told Fox News, “It’s pushing abortion on states that don't want it.” It takes a lot of nerve to pass abortion bans no one wants, only to then accuse pro-choice politicians of disregarding voters’ wishes! But that’s the message I’m seeing come up again and again among Republican legislators, anti-abortion activists and conservative media.

Jessica Valenti’s Abortion, Every Day Substack exposes the GOP’s abortion bans are the “will of the people” charade in which they falsely suggest that the Democrats are the ones extreme on abortion.

These nimrods claim to be for “states’ rights” when it comes to abortion bans, but they would ban it nationwide in a heartbeat if given a chance to do so.

Yes, all attacks on abortion rights are driven by a disdain for women. But what put Americans over the edge is the downright offensive and explicit misogyny it takes to enact a ban from 1864.

This is a law adopted before women had a right to vote, and in a time when the man leading the legislature had a penchant for marrying little girls—one 12-year-old, one 14-year-old, and one 15-year-old, to be exact. Can you imagine a starker reminder of what this issue is really about?

It’s like they’re rubbing our noses in it.

Gone is the pretense that Republicans want to pass abortion bans to protect women’s health, or that they’re enacting laws in service of some grand morality. With this ruling, the GOP made clear what their end goal is: forcing women back to a time when we weren’t full citizens, and when we could be married off as children to any 50-year-old lech who decided he wanted us.

To endure that insult, after two years of watching stories about little girls forced into childbirth and women mandated to deliver dead babies, is too much for anyone to take. Especially women.

And that’s the thing that Democrats would do well to remember as we close in on November: The danger abortion bans pose to women’s health and lives makes us afraid, but what makes us furious is the affront to our humanity.

It’s that anger that politicians campaigning on abortion rights need to tap into. The foremost feeling driving American women on abortion rights isn’t fear—it’s humiliation. It is demeaning, incredibly so, to watch as statehouses full of men decide that women were better off in a time when we had no choices, about anything.

If Democrats want to motivate women, they should talk less about how dangerous abortion bans are, and more about what that danger means: that to Republicans, our lives don’t matter. Instead of talking about how women are losing their rights, remind voters why that is: because Republicans don’t want women to have any.

sex object, jessica valenti

That’s the thing about misogyny: It tells women to present themselves in a way that men find arousing, but looks down on them when they do. There is no winning this game. If you don’t adhere to sexist beauty standards, you’re sneered at as ugly and worthless; if you go along with them, you’re an attention-seeking slut. The more nuanced bit, though, is that women aren’t just expected to look desirable to men—we’re supposed to enjoy that desire more than anything. More than our comfort, more than our safety, more than our ability to make a living. So when a woman disrupts that fantasy (say, by complaining about a uniform at an already-sexualized workplace) men become livid.

Jessica Valenti, Male Attention is Worthless

With Americans furious over bans, support for abortion right skyrocketing, and the issue winning every ballot measure since Roe was overturned, conservatives’ new strategy is to propose ‘pro-choice’ amendments of their own. Disguised as initiatives to protect abortion rights, these measures would actually trick voters into codifying Republican bans. In Arizona, for example, Republicans are considering a ‘pro-choice’ amendment to distract from anger over the 1864 ban and to undercut a real abortion rights measure. A leaked strategy document shows that the amendment would claim to protect abortion up until 15 weeks, but be made toothless by restrictions enshrined alongside it. Republicans are even tossing around feminist-sounding names like the “Arizona Abortion Protection Act” and the “Arizona Abortion and Reproductive Care Act.” The goal is to make Arizonans believe they’re voting to protect abortion rights while directing them away from the measure that would actually do so. Something similar is happening in Nebraska, where a coalition of anti-abortion groups proposed a measure they hope will distract from a genuine abortion rights amendment. After the pro-choice group Protect Our Rights launched a ballot initiative to protect abortion until ‘viability’, conservatives proposed a similar-sounding amendment, Protect Women and Children. This measure would supposedly allow abortion in the first trimester.

In a moment when Americans overwhelmingly want abortion to be legal, Republicans are desperate to sound as reasonable, moderate, and even as ‘pro-choice’, as possible. Their extremist talking points haven’t worked; that’s why they’ve shifted from taking about ‘bans’ and abortion being ‘murder,’ to using words like ‘consensus’ and ‘compassion.’ Conservatives need voters to believe that they’re seeking some sort of middle ground. The truth? They will say anything to ban abortion and to keep it banned. They’d rather craft elaborate, deceptive ballot measures than lift wildly unpopular and unwanted restrictions. And they’d rather frame their policies as pro-choice than risk losing another vote.

Two steps to a national abortion ban under Trump.

Jessica Valenti talks republican strategies on abortion. Worth watching to the very end,

But why look into reasons women decide not to have children at all? Why the need for explanation? After all, people rarely ask parents why they chose to have children—it would be considered odd, and a bit rude. But when it comes to women without children, asking about their private life and relationship is seen as perfectly socially acceptable.

Jessica Valenti, Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness

They said that women’s lives wouldn’t meaningfully change — but women are suffering, every single day. [...] Voters should remember that none of this is accidental. All of this is misery, and hurt is by design.

–"I Write About Post-Roe America Every Day. It’s Worse Than You Think" by Jessica Valenti

While falling in love is fun, it's not everything, and it's not the antidote to an unfulfilled life, despite what Reese Witherspoon movies may tell you.

-Jessica Valenti (b. November 1, 1978)

She is a  feminist writer, founder of the Feministing blog in 2004.