These ads in my news feed are killing me...no Tumblr I don't fucking want to see ads for fucking Viagra for "him" when my very existence and privacy as a woman are now on the fucking GOP gerrymandered religious extremist SCOTUS chopping block! And why did you start posting them right now FFS!

Furthermore stop putting those manscaping ads in my feed when I keep asking you to hide them! I don't want to hear about "balls" every damn time I come on this hellsite!

And please fix the damn code at the bottom of your ads, its bigger than everything else in my news feed and it looks stupid! Don't you ever look at this stuff or check your work?!

I'm so sorry, not sorry. I'm so fucking triggered by this crap now. if they overturn Roe vs. Wade they are coming for everything else too. There will be blood.

I am angry today and I’ll be angry tomorrow and I’ll be angry next year, because in the words of Donald Glover, “this is America”. Where the idea of the land of the free is the biggest piece of propaganda ever sold to its citizens.

It’s not even up for debate. The GOP and co. won’t rest until it’s back to “the good ol days” where we had segregated everything, women stayed home and played good little housewives, being gay was a crime, and the police were free to do whatever they wanted without repercussions. Which, to be fair the policing hasn’t changed much and now it’s even easier to profile because they aren’t mandated to read your Miranda rights anymore. Cant hold them accountable for “forgetting” that, thanks Supreme Court.

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.

The tipping point. ::  April 7, 2023

Robert B. Hubbell

         I cannot leave the events of today without comment. In three respects, America reached a tipping point on Thursday. It may take months or years for us to appreciate that fact, but historians will mark April 6, 2023, as the high water mark of the retrograde, anti-democracy movement of MAGA extremism.

         In particular, the naked racism of Tennessee Republicans in expelling two Black legislators but not a white legislator for identical conduct in protesting gun deaths of schoolchildren has removed any ambiguity about the racial animus of MAGA extremism. One commentator described the events in the Tennessee legislature as the birth of “the New Civil Rights Movement.” Because that second birth occurred under the scourge of gun violence directed at children, the merger of those movements will be unstoppable. We witnessed two powerful voices emerge in Tennessee on Thursday. They will become national leaders in a movement that will attract new constituencies to the civil rights, anti-gun movement.

         The second tipping point was the publication of the Pro Publica report that exposed the grotesque corruption of Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars (possibly millions) in the form of free travel from a Republican megadonor and failed to report those gifts as required. In truth, the corruption of Justice Thomas has been replicated by other members of the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court. We need only scratch the surface to find that corruption. There is no turning back. And make no mistake, John Roberts has presided over the open wound of corruption during his entire tenure. He must be held accountable for his dereliction of duty, as well.

         Finally, Idaho has criminalized the constitutionally protected right to travel across interstate lines. MAGA extremists have converted the Dobbs ruling that there is no right of privacy in the Constitution into a perverse mandate to deny Americans other rights that are plainly protected by the Constitution. They are doing so under the guise of regulating reproductive liberty. That strategy will lead to the demise of the GOP. Indeed, we have seen the seeds of their destruction in Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

A proposed Missouri law would allow women to be prosecuted for abortions and potentially criminalize certain types of contraceptives. A bill pre-filed by Senator Mike Moon (R-Ash Grove) this month would change the state’s definition of “person” to begin at the moment of fertilization, opening the door for criminal charges against individuals who terminate their pregnancies or use contraceptives that prevent fertilized eggs from developing, legal experts say. While lawyers who spoke to the RFT see this proposal as a reckless application of criminal law, Moon says his Senate Bill 356, the “Abolition of Abortion in Missouri Act,” is an acknowledgement of the sanctity of human life. “I believe science proves that life begins when a female egg is fertilized by a male sperm,” Moon says. “And because of that, I think life should be protected from the beginning till the natural death.” Moon’s bill has a slim chance of becoming law — thousands of bills are filed each year, and only a handful make it through committee, much less approval by both the Missouri House and Senate. And Moon acknowledges that he has tried and failed to pass similar legislation at least three times before. Still, legal experts worry about the ramifications of his proposal in light of Missouri’s swift enactment of its so-called trigger law after the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last June. If enacted, Moon’s bill could allow an abortion seeker to be prosecuted with a whole host of charges — from murder, attempted murder or assault to, for example, endangering the welfare of a child if a pregnant person is found to have consumed alcohol, according to Marcia McCormick, a professor of law at Saint Louis University. “Anytime an egg doesn’t implant, it could create an opportunity for the state to at least investigate if the failure to allow implantation was intentional,” McCormick says. “If it was intentional, then maybe there could be a murder claim because at that point, the ‘child,’ being a fertilized egg, is destroyed.” Sidney Watson, a professor at Saint Louis University and a specialist in health law, says she fears that the bill would also affect contraceptives and IVF. “This attempt to define life as beginning at fertilization is, I think, a way for some elected officials to outlaw some forms of contraception,” Watson says. Certain types of birth control — such as levonorgestrel, also known as “the morning after pill,” and some forms of intrauterine devices — prevent pregnancies by blocking fertilized eggs from implanting into uterine walls. Though pregnancy is medically considered to start after implantation, GOP legislators in Missouri and other Republican-dominated states have tried to ban morning-after pills in the past for being “abortifacients.” Last year, the Missouri Senate voted to ban Plan B and IUDs as part of a bill to renew a tax on hospitals. The measure did not advance after female senators criticized the language. A revised version of the bill later passed and barred public dollars from being used for any “abortifacient drug or device.”

Pro-choice Missourians worried contraceptives would be at risk once again after the federal right to an abortion was taken away. Under Moon’s bill, McCormick says, “any birth control that operates after the moment of fertilization could count as the instrument of murder.” Moon disagrees. In a phone call Thursday, Moon said the bill “is not intended to” affect birth control. When asked how that’s possible when some forms of contraceptives prevent fertilized eggs from implantation, Moon acknowledged the bill “certainly might” affect contraceptives. “The primary focus is on purposely ending a child’s life,” Moon continued. Moon groups condoms and IUDs as contraceptives separate from Plan B, or the morning after pill. When asked if Plan B would still be lawful under his proposal, Moon responded: “I think there will be lots of conversation about that.” Plan B “very well could be” causing an abortion if an egg has been fertilized, according to Moon. Moon’s bill also sparks concern over how violators would be prosecuted, McCormick says.

The bill lists five places where persons accused could be prosecuted — from the county in which they preside to the county in which they commit their alleged crime. One especially concerns McCormick: The bill would allow prosecutors to try defendants in the county they were apprehended in. This, to McCormick, could be interpreted as an attempt to charge Missourians who travel out of state for abortions. “It seems like they’re trying to get at conduct that maybe isn’t illegal somewhere else or to get around prosecutors in Missouri who’ve said they’re unwilling to prosecute people for violating anti-abortion laws,” McCormick says. Moon’s bill offers few exceptions. A person would not be prosecuted if they were coerced under physical threat to end their pregnancy. Another exception is given for when a licensed physician performs a life-saving procedure that results in the “accidental or unintentional” death of the unborn child, but only after all other options to save the child’s life are exhausted or unavailable. This exception confused Watson and McCormick. Ectopic pregnancies (when a fertilized egg implants in a fallopian tube rather than the uterus) can kill a pregnant person if left untreated and fertilized eggs can not survive, according to the Mayo Clinic. Ending ectopic pregnancies is not “unintentional or accidental,” Watson says. “You mean to do it.” “It’s not entirely clear that the people who draft bills like these understand how biology works,” McCormick adds. Moon claims ectopic pregnancies could be an exception if a woman’s life is in danger. However, he points to a procedure he read about where, in early 1900s Europe, a part of a woman’s fallopian tube was excised and an embryo was successfully moved to her womb. (Moon was presumably referencing a 1917 medical journal article in which an American woman was reported to have undergone a similar procedure — though transplanting an ectopic pregnancy is widely considered to be medically impossible.) McCormick hopes the bill will never pass — not only for its criminal law implications but also for possibly unforeseen consequences. If a fertilized egg is considered a person under law, it could be covered by any state benefit program, she says. Moon himself has little confidence his bill will advance. “I don’t think the majority of either chamber have a desire to take on an issue of this magnitude,” Moon says, adding that a vote for the bill may not be the most politically expedient move for his colleagues. “Unfortunately, it’s going to take a monumental effort to get this passed.”

If you're a US Citizen over 18, remember to VOTE in the midterms. Irritate everyone you know into voting. Even if the candidates are blah. Even if you're burnt out. Let's get this the fuck over with!

*Feel free to use any of my graphics on your social media. Please do.

As bad as things are, a Republican congress is going to make it a million times worse.

If the GOP gain control of #Congress, in addition to stopping the investigation into January 6 and gumming up the process of getting bills that HELP PEOPLE passed in favor of performative "anti-woke" "anti-CRT" and anti-Biden measures, they promise to pursue a NATIONAL ABORTION BAN.

No ban will end abortion. It will end legal, safe abortion. The rich will get them anyway from private doctors who lie for them. The poor and desperate will do it to themselves and die in the process.

The American Health Care system is already terrible when just money is corrupting it. Adding in confusing "only if the life of the mother is in danger" rulings make it even worse. Women will die… Have died. You are punishing not just people seeking to terminate a pregnancy but couples getting fertility treatments, incest/rape victims, and ovary-havers facing an unexpected medical crisis. You are in favor of unnecessary, pointless death.

If you personally believe abortion is amoral, don't get one. Work to prevent the need for abortion with comprehensive sex ed and contraception. Crusade for maternity leave and make American society more welcoming to mothers.

If you want abortion banned to "punish sluts" who get an abortion the day before their due date on a whim, get in a trash can. You're not pro-life, you're pro-forced birth.

Democrats must keep the House and Senate and hopefully increase their numbers to make Manchin/ Sinema irrelevant as they should be.

Another good reason to vote for the Democrat in the general if you're in the US.

Like the 2025 plan, the GOP wants to use the Comstock Act to repress birth control and use it as a legal wedge to get under Griswold v Connecticut.

I understand that Biden is supporting a genocide but any Republican will be worse. If you want to understand Biden and every Third Way Democrat that is in the pro-genocide camp you need to vote in primaries and go out and demonstrate (as well as have support and solidarity with the people going farther). Look to the Atlanta activists resisting Cop City for a roadmap on what you, personally, can do.

Reducing harm is an everyday job and not engaging won't fix anything. Especially when standing in the sidelines will put you in a genocide at home rather than protesting one abroad. There are no good choices, only better and worse actions to take.

"Despite clear evidence that antiabortion laws make women’s lives worse in a plethora of ways, women are generally not much less likely to support abortion access than men.

Some might argue that these women have simply been brainwashed by capitalist or patriarchal ideology. But this is unconvincing. An alternative explanation, put forward several decades ago by the sociologist Kristin Luker, is much more plausible. Luker’s book, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, was both a history of abortion restriction and a study of 'pro-life' activist women.

Among the women she interviewed, Luker found that they tended to come from less affluent backgrounds, have less education, and have fewer career prospects. For these women, motherhood was by far the most important and socially valued role they thought they could play in society. Without access to meaningful, highly paid, or prestigious career paths, motherhood was central to their self-esteem and sense of social respect.

Abortion access, by making motherhood optional rather than the central telos of women’s lives, dethroned it as the key source of self-regard and community recognition. And for 'pro-life' women, that was the abortion rights movement’s grave sin. The struggle over abortion access was therefore a struggle over women’s place in US society and whether that place was centrally defined by motherhood.

Though Luker’s study was conducted in the late 1970s, its conclusions hold true today. Among people with a high school education or less, women are still more likely than men to oppose abortion rights. At the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, the dynamic flips: women are more in favor of abortion rights than men.

Luker’s analysis has the advantage of explaining the sincere investment in 'pro-life' politics by tens of millions of US women while also linking it to the political economy of capitalism. The United States’ devastating economic inequality creates a situation where, for huge numbers of women, the elevation of motherhood to a sacred duty constitutes one of the only sources of positive meaning in their lives. As scholar Stephanie Coontz has argued,

Women with less economic or personal autonomy are often drawn to a culture of family values that emphasizes men’s responsibility to look after women. Women who have a shot at achieving or competing on their own emphasize equality, supporting the kind of policies that make it possible for them to move up in their jobs and combine work and family.

While 'pro-life' women are a crucial part of the antiabortion movement, it would be a mistake to overlook the equally central element of male sexism. From Rush Limbaugh’s leering rants about college students and birth control to GOP candidates saying women should learn to enjoy rape, misogyny permeates the 'pro-life' movement. For many men, restricting abortion access, and reinforcing women’s primary social role as mothers, is but one part of the broader project of cementing women’s subordination.

But this kind of misogyny and gender hierarchy is also deeply rooted in capitalist political economy — though again, not largely as a direct consequence of capitalists. Instead, capitalism tends to reinforce women’s social role as caregivers. Women are paid less than men, so in many families, it makes sense for them to prioritize childcare and domestic labor, while it makes more sense for men to prioritize their careers. Women are consequently viewed as less reliable workers than men (particularly in occupations with nonstandard hours, like business and law), further locking the structure of inequality in place.

Such inequality, ultimately generated in the labor market, also fosters power imbalances within relationships. Women are more likely than men to stay in unhappy relationships because of financial concerns and more likely to bear the burden of household labor. Domestic violence against women is more prevalent when there is a bigger wage gap between men and women. Crucially, even households that desire an egalitarian division of labor are undercut by labor-market inequalities. The structure of capitalism, left to its own devices, renders inequality between men and women, and the patriarchal ideology that justifies it, inevitable.

The political economy of capitalism and the politics of abortion restriction in the United States are deeply intertwined. Those links, however, don’t lead to capitalists’ bank accounts. Instead, they run between the restricted opportunities capitalism creates for huge sectors of the working class and ideologies that emphasize women’s role as maternal subordinates to men.

Because antiabortion politics are rooted in the inequalities of capitalism, combating them requires challenging those inequalities. First and foremost, the political inequality at the heart of the US Constitution, which empowers minorities over majorities and allows unelected justices to legislate, needs to be dismantled. Though the 'pro-life' movement commands the support of tens of millions, the simple fact is that clear majorities of Americans oppose outlawing abortion. Real political equality would deal a devastating blow to the antiabortion cause.

Even more fundamentally, the structure of capitalist labor markets needs to be tackled head-on. As Lillian Cicerchia recently put it, we need to 'create ties between feminists, the labor movement, and health care campaigning.' Unions shrink the pay gap between men and women. Egalitarian social policies, like Medicare for All, reduce both the dependence of workers on their employers and of women on men who earn more than they do. Family leave policy can allow men and women to have equal incentives to perform unpaid domestic labor, rebalancing power in both the labor market and the family. And finally, of course, we need to fight for widespread, publicly funded abortion access for anyone who needs one.

There is a deep connection between capitalism and forms of gender inequality like abortion restriction. But misunderstanding the nature of that connection only hinders the fight for a truly free society."

- Paul Heideman, from "The Antiabortion Movement Is the Rotten Fruit of a Brutally Unequal Society." Jacobin, 8 July 2022.

Idaho legislators disbanded a state committee that investigated the root causes of maternal deaths, making it the only state in the nation with no such mortality review.

. . .

They allowed two bills to die that would have put Idaho on the same track as nearly every other state with abortion restrictions — including Florida, Kentucky and Texas — by extending postpartum Medicaid coverage to 12 months. Idaho’s Medicaid coverage ends two months after birth, the minimum under federal law.

They turned down $36 million in federal grants to support child care this summer, while other states with new abortion restrictions — Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri among them — made investments in early childhood education and day care. Idaho lawmakers at the time attributed the decision to a pending audit of a different batch of grants.

. . .

But Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center and a leading anti-abortion lobbyist, is not bothered by the lack of government support. Pregnancies, births and child care are not the purview of the government, he said, but of families, communities, charities and, most of all, churches.

. . .

No action set Idaho apart from other abortion-ban states more than when the Idaho Legislature allowed its Maternal Mortality Review Committee to die this year. The committee had been granted unique powers to review private health care and other records of women who died during or within a year after pregnancy and draw conclusions about the root causes of those deaths.

Its budget of $10,000 a year came only from federal funds, so keeping the committee going seemed pro forma. Every single state, New York and Texas alike, had put one in place. But in Idaho, a lobbyist for an ultraconservative political nonprofit stood up and spoke against it at a hearing.

Fred Birnbaum, legislative affairs director of Idaho Freedom Foundation, said studying the causes of Idaho’s roughly 10 to 15 preventable maternal deaths each year risked inviting a push for more government support to help keep people from dying. And government support was anathema to his group.

Birnbaum’s assessment was partly correct. Idaho’s maternal mortality committee had made recommendations that could increase public spending, such as extending Medicaid coverage postpartum, expanding access to naloxone to prevent death from opioid overdose and providing better housing and child care support. But of the 52 recommendations in the committee’s final report, most called for no new government spending.

------

I doubt he has any problem with government money for farmers.

"They’re not pro-life. You know what they are? They’re anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don’t like them. They don’t like women. They believe a woman’s primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state." -- George Carlin

Republicans would rather rationalize away Herschel Walker's alleged abortion scandal than ever admit they backed the wrong candidate, a GOP strategist said of the Georgian's too-late-to-bail-out predicament.

"Conservatives will look at it as he's still the lesser evil on policy," the GOP fundraiser, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the fast-approaching midterm elections, told Insider of race between the embattled Trump-backed candidate and incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.

The GOP fundraiser rightly predicted that MAGA supporters would rally around Walker by arguing that if he gave an ex-girlfriend money in 2009 to cover a single abortion that's still better than allowing Warnock to divert taxpayer dollars to funding all abortions.

"They'll say that Warnock wants to take YOUR money to pay for abortions … which makes him a bad person and unfit for the Senate," the GOP fundraiser said, adding that the political shamelessness is "just a continuation of Trump."

Less than two hours later conservative commentator Dana Loesch advanced that very narrative.

"IF true, Walker paid for one broad's abortion compared to Warnock who wants your tax dollars to pay for EVERY broad's abortion-as-birth control with no limitations," the former NRA spokeswoman wrote online, adding, "This isn't a difficult choice and conservatives shouldn't look to the left to validate their vote."

Other Walker supporters skirted the abortion issue altogether, casting blame anywhere else.

"Herschel Walker has denied these allegations in the strongest possible terms and we stand firmly alongside him," Mallory Carroll, a spokeswoman for Women Speak Out PAC, a super PAC associated with anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement. Carroll added that her organization would continue campaigning against the "extremism of Sen. Warnock and Stacey Abrams," the latter being the Democratic gubernatorial nominee challenging incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp this fall.

The Georgia Republican Party billed the allegations against Walker as political theater.

"Democrats will do anything to distract from their own abysmal record of rising inflation, an open border and a decimated middle class," Georgia GOP spokeswoman Danielle Repass told Insider.

'WALKER CAN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT ABORTION NOW'

Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory University, said the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade this summer opened up new lines of attack for Georgia candidates.

Gillespie said Walker's campaign had leaned into painting Warnock as a hypocrite for using his position as a minister to preach abortion rights from the pulpit. But she suspects that strategy is done for.

"Walker can't say anything about abortion now," Gillespie told Insider, adding that she fully expects to see Christian Walker's scathing social media posts denouncing his father dominating the airwaves through election day.

"I'm almost certain if there will be some type of digital ads that will include Christian Walker's Twitter rants," Gillespie said.

The Senate race stands out not only because of Walker's sky-high name recognition as a former University of Georgia football standout who won the Heisman Trophy in 1982, but also due to the implications of a GOP win in the state — which in recent cycles has been more receptive to backing statewide Democratic candidates.

Walker's opponent, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, is running for his first full term in office after winning a Senate runoff election last year to fill the remaining term of GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson, who stepped down in 2019.

In capturing the Senate seat last year, Warnock defeated then-GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who had been appointed by Kemp and was seen as candidate who could appeal to both Republican women in the Atlanta suburbs and conservatives in the more rural parts of the state.

But Democrats had compelling candidates in Warnock — the senior pastor of Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church — and former investigative journalist and 2018 House candidate Jon Ossoff.

Buoyed by President Joe Biden's victory in the state over Trump in 2020 — the party continued to use their robust turnout operation in the 2021 runoffs, allowing Warnock to unseat Loeffler and fueling Ossoff's win over then-GOP Sen. David Perdue.

Republicans, stung by the losses, are eager to regain their dominance in the state, and a Georgia Senate win represents one of their best ways to get there.

We all know that criminal activity from the rich white people often goes unpunished…

And not only is violence from the privileged not taken seriously…. perversion is ignored as well.

If you research, historically this violence and perversion was often inflicted on BIPOC populations (missing Indigenous women, forced sterilization, medical experiments on Black women)  … this is why the overturning of Roe vs. Wade didn’t shock me & the GOP’s r*pe sympathizer rhetoric doesn’t surprise me either. This had always been America.

So now our societal enabling of the “predatory & privileged looks like : Rich White men like Woody Allen & Errol Musk publicly celebrating grooming the daughters they raised. And Government officials can question a 10 year old r*pe victim, while their “pro-life” supporters can suggest (that children can “ask for it”) & minors should be held accountable for her own violation by being forced to give birth.

Last week was apparently “Some Tennessee Republicans Discover Tennessee Republicans Suck” week, which I was unaware was a statewide commemoration. But I honor the moral journeys of those faceless members of the “Leopards eat your face” party who have just now discovered that their party is exactly what it claims to be. ..... Bean writes: This past February after an anti-LGBTQ vote, Mannis decided to try to reason with some of his colleagues. He went to some of their offices and sent emails to others. “I asked them to think about what they were doing to LGBTQ students … just wanted to express from personal experience the impact this can have on children. Do you think I am gay because I had gay influences? Have you ever sat down and talked with a gay person?” His efforts were not well-received. One colleague came to his office seething with anger. Then he was summoned to House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s office where the entire leadership team was waiting to rake him over the coals for “insulting” his colleagues. ... The other example comes from this barn-burner of an article at Pro Publica by Kavitha Surana, who repeatedly got state Sen. (and doctor) Richard Briggs to admit to such absolute stupidities about the Tennessee Republican position on and conduct around abortion that I am stunned he hasn’t changed his name and grown a goatee so that he can plausibly deny that he is himself. Every bit of Surana’s piece is so good and so important. Just read the whole thing and imagine me shouting after every sentence. Republicans are flat-out coming for birth control and in vitro fertilization next. They want the ability to mine your medical records. They don’t want exceptions for abortion, at all. And they’re saying so out loud. Read it and absorb it. But back to Briggs. “When Tennessee Right to Life, the state’s main anti-abortion lobbying group, proposed the trigger ban in 2019, Briggs admits he barely read the two-page bill forwarded to his office," writes Surana. "He followed the lead of his colleagues, who assured state lawmakers that the bill included medical exceptions. He even added his name as a co-sponsor. ‘I’m not trying to defend myself,’ he says now.” He co-sponsored a bill he hadn’t even read. He couldn’t even be bothered to read a two-page bill. When I told you all last week that there are only two types of bills filed by our state legislature, I’m sure many of you thought I was just joking or being hyperbolic. Briggs is literally describing how “I’m going to say I wrote this bill, but actually some special interest group or lobbyists or a think tank wrote it and I’m not that clear on what’s in it” bills happen. And what has Briggs found now that he's pulled his head out of the sand and applied his expertise as a doctor to the Republicans’ stand on abortion? He has found that it’s horrific, that it calls for endangering pregnant people, and that it doesn’t line up with science. Which, yeah, this is all true. But it’s not new. I mean, they gave him a two-page bill that told him exactly what they were up to, and had he — as a doctor — read it and given it any thought, he would have realized the consequences of that legislation before he co-sponsored it and voted for it. For years, loads of us have been saying anti-abortion groups in Tennessee were disingenuous and seemed not to have even a basic understanding of pregnancy or its risks. .... If Briggs asked a nurse what medications a patient had been prescribed and she said, “I don’t know, I didn’t really read her chart,” he’d be pissed. You can’t make good medical decisions without having all the information. But Briggs is admitting (and let me be clear, we all know he is not alone; this is how it’s done) that when it comes to his political work, when his constituents are in the position of trusting him to have read the bills he votes on, he doesn’t do it. And we all know that many legislators don’t.

And now contraception is in their crosshairs!?RU486? IUDs? This has NOTHING to do with being pro life. This has EVERYTHING to do with taking control of women's bodies.

Hey guys, we need you to stand up with us, LOUDLY, on this one.

Remember that you are all easily replaced with a zucchini.

We have hardware for your job. Hell, even if they went on to ban dildos, then they will have to ban everything that is taller than it is wide, because I would take any replacement over the dick of someone who supports this.

The Republicans want to control our bodies so much.....that they only leave us with abstinence from organic dick as a form of birth control.

Funny that they aren't after viagra....or mandating vasectomies.

Republicans not only want anti-abortion centers to be in every town, in every state—they also want the people who run these centers to establish a national network of ‘maternity homes’, and to target school-aged girls by offering free sports physicals to female students. (The hope, they say, is to “engage early” with this vulnerable population.) This isn’t just about ensuring that people can’t get the abortions or contraception they need—but that community after community is indoctrinated with dangerous and false information about their reproductive health. The strategy is insidious, but smart; it allows Republicans to embed their extremism into communities across the country, while maintaining that they’re just trying to support women, babies and families. In a moment when Americans are furious about abortion bans and the steady stream of post-Roe horror stories, conservatives know they need to rehab their image and convince the public that their ‘pro-family’ plan goes beyond banning abortion and punishing women. They believe these centers are the answer. But their plan relies on people not knowing the truth about what crisis pregnancy centers really are, and what their spread really means. That’s why Democrats have to constantly raise the alarm about just how deceptive these groups are—and why the GOP is so interested in supporting them. Voters need to know that conservatives’ interest in expanding crisis pregnancy centers isn’t just about stopping people from getting abortions, but ensuring Americans can’t get contraception, either. With Republicans relying so heavily on their ‘reasonable’ birth control talking points, they’re giving us an incredible opportunity to tell voters what their real agenda is. Let’s not waste it.

Jessica Valenti

uh. so i follow thousands of ppl on twitter right. like. hundreds of artists, news sites, meme/shitposters, media reviewers, etc., and only have about 20 IRL friends/classmates from high school or college. so. obviously i can’t really see what my IRL friends are up to due to my feed being clogged with other random things right. so. i checked up on a college friend today. and. wow. i’m quite disappointed in them. as it sadly turned out, she is a pro-forced birth person. despite being a queer person, they follow some crazy anti-abortion twitter that is like LGBT+ people against abortion??? like. wow. so many young queer ppl are against their own health rights and everything. its a shocking and disappointing rabbit hole that i’ll just use as a blocklist, including my particular college friend. man. you think you know a person, only to learn that they’re actually crazy and don’t think that the GOP will be coming after queer people after getting rid of Roe V. Wade. like. man. just so disappointed.

there’s even a whole twitter thread she made about taking the GOP on their word of not going after LGBT+ and interracial marriage rights and stuff and like. whew. again, just so disappointed. you think you know a person. anyways if you know, you know. we used to be college classmates. despite the general quality decline at our college, which is a former historical women’s / liberal arts college, the general vibe from all the staff and teachers was being pro-choice. im surprised that her politics are like this, really. man.

(for the like. 3 or 4 IRL college classmates that follow me here who also want to get disappointed tonight by learning what our mutual ex-classmate has been up to since graduation, feel free to DM me. im just going to soft block her and if they text me on twitter or something i’ll just be like “i think your politics are dangerous to public health of minorities, esp females/AFAB which we both literally are” and hard block on everything forever)