All entries by this author

Just talk over our heads

Jun 26th, 2022 12:22 pm | By

MSNBC generously gives us four men talking about abortion rights. I guess there just aren’t that many women in the world?

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The US is a terrible place to be a poor woman

Jun 26th, 2022 11:59 am | By

Sonia Sodha on the ruling:

It leaves abortion rights to the states, meaning abortion is now illegal or soon-to-be illegal in 22 states in all or most circumstances, including, in some states, in cases of rape. It comes in the wake of already reduced access to abortion in many of those states as a result of practical restrictions on the operation of abortion clinics. It is a dramatic rollback of women’s rights in one of the world’s richest countries, which prides itself on its protection of individual liberties.

Richest and in some ways most advanced…and in others most regressive, by a huge margin.

It has been estimated that maternal mortality will increase by 20% in places with a ban.

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The 13th and 14th

Jun 26th, 2022 10:55 am | By

A law professor at UC Irvine contradicts Alito:

Black women’s sexual subordination and forced pregnancies were foundational to slavery. If cotton was euphemistically king, Black women’s wealth-maximizing forced reproduction was queen.

Because those forced pregnancies were worth a lot of money – money for the enslaver, of course, not for the slave.

Ending the forced sexual and reproductive servitude of Black girls and women was a critical part of the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments. The overturning of Roe v. Wade reveals the Supreme Court’s neglectful reading of the amendments that abolished slavery and guaranteed all people equal protection under the law. It means the erasure of Black women from the Constitution.

Mandated, forced or compulsory pregnancy

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Alito’s dream come true

Jun 26th, 2022 10:09 am | By

The Times on Alito’s long patient campaign to make women prisoners of their own bodies again:

Mr. Alito became interested in constitutional law during college largely because he disagreed with the Supreme Court at the time on criminal procedure, the establishment clause and reapportionment, he has written. The court in the 1960s issued rulings on those topics that conservatives disliked, including protecting the rights of suspects in police custody, limiting prayer in public schools, and requiring electoral districts to have roughly equal populations.

More prayer and fewer rights for other people, that’s what he wanted, along with less ability for the fewer-rights people to fight back via the ballot box. I guess that’s “conservatism”? More power and … Read the rest



Surrogate human

Jun 26th, 2022 3:45 am | By

Brave new world.

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Have you considered?

Jun 25th, 2022 4:56 pm | By

They deserve it because…what? They think women get to own their own bodies just like the real people?

Seinfeld jokes fit well.

https://twitter.com/OriginalRecipeG/status/1540457013918011393… Read the rest


Jurisdiction

Jun 25th, 2022 12:29 pm | By

There are some oddities in the Nottingham Council axes Julie Bindel’s talk at the library story.

Council chiefs cancelled a talk by Julie Bindel, the feminist writer, on protecting women from male violence because it contradicts their position on trans rights.

The talk was scheduled at (and by) the library. Do city councils generally oversee items like what talks libraries are allowed to present? Do they generally veto decisions of that kind, on the grounds that they don’t like the speaker’s ideas?

It doesn’t sound right to me. I’m not an expert in city government but I live in a city and I did work for a city department for several years. It’s my impression that city departments do their … Read the rest



National Your Law Center

Jun 25th, 2022 11:04 am | By

Even the National Women’s Law Center refuses to say it.

Interesting trick, being a national women’s law center while refusing to mention women.

Blah blah blah do this do that but above all DON’T MENTION WOMEN.

No sign of women in that one – you, our, we, our, our, we, we, you – but no women.

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The one forbidden word

Jun 25th, 2022 10:43 am | By

Obama does it.

Someone – Americans – but no women.

People.

You you you our we you:

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You may be feeling a lot of things

Jun 25th, 2022 10:35 am | By

Planned Parenthood also not helping. Pinned tweet:

You, you, you, you. Who? Who are you?

Women. Women, of course, but it doesn’t do to say so.… Read the rest



If you’re a person

Jun 25th, 2022 9:45 am | By

ACLU not helping AS USUAL.

It’s not persons this enslavement is done to, it’s WOMEN.

The ACLU is so determinedly not an ally that it’s become an enemy. Yesterday of all days they still erased women – when talking about abortion needs!… Read the rest



Wait you’re not Julie Burchill?

Jun 25th, 2022 9:08 am | By

More responses to Nottingham City Council’s libelous and misogynist actions and statement:

https://twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1540682255852519424

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How very progressive

Jun 25th, 2022 8:47 am | By

Reactions to Nottingham Council’s breezy libeling of Julie Bindel are harsh.

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The speaker’s views, which we will not specify

Jun 25th, 2022 8:34 am | By

Nottingham City Council offers a “statement.”

https://twitter.com/MyNottingham/status/1540610180920008704

Ok I read the statement. It’s a complete crock of shit.

[Generalized apology and explanation and warning. I’m going to be swearing a lot for the foreseeable future. I’m feeling a level of rage and alienation I wasn’t expecting (it was very unimaginative of me not to expect it).]

A complete crock of shit, I say.

Nottingham City Council has cancelled a booking to use a space at Aspley Library for a talk by author Julie Bindel today (Saturday 25 June). This is due to the speaker’s views on trans gender rights being at odds with aspects of the council’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

Explain yourselves! What views? What aspects? … Read the rest



A cornerstone

Jun 24th, 2022 4:30 pm | By

From Pliny:… Read the rest



“Some patients broke down and could not speak through their sobbing”

Jun 24th, 2022 4:09 pm | By

Starting today.

Abortion bans that were put on the books in some states in the event Roe v. Wade was overturned started automatically going into effect Friday, while clinics elsewhere — including Alabama, Texas and West Virginia — stopped performing abortions for fear of prosecution, sending women away in tears.

“Some patients broke down and could not speak through their sobbing,” said Katie Quinonez, executive director of West Virginia’s lone abortion clinic, whose staff spent the day calling dozens of patients to cancel their appointments. “Some patients were stunned and didn’t know what to say. Some patients did not understand what was happening.”

In Alabama, the state’s three abortion clinics stopped performing the procedure for fear providers would

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P v W

Jun 24th, 2022 12:01 pm | By

Fresh Air yesterday:

The Supreme Court is wrapping up its term, and it’s expected that the court will overturn Roe v. Wade. A draft of Justice Alito’s majority opinion that was leaked early last month would end the federally guaranteed constitutional right to abortion and allow states to write their own abortion laws. This is happening as we approach the 50th anniversary of Roe. We’re going to talk about how we got here and what might happen next.

My guest, Mary Ziegler, has written several books and many articles and op-eds about the debates and battles over abortion. She says overturning Roe isn’t the final goal of the anti-abortion movement. Her new book is called “Dollars For Life: The

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Not just taking this

Jun 24th, 2022 10:04 am | By

Still the Times – sorry it doesn’t provide links for individual pieces the way Guardian Live (for instance) does.

Representative Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri, was seated in the same Planned Parenthood where she chose to have an abortion after an assault, listening to providers and advocates talk about the challenges of their work at a roundtable when her chief of staff passed her a phone. The Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade.

“Sitting in the same place where it was easy to access, and sitting in the same place where those rights were stripped away from people who right now are in the same situation that I was in,” she recalled. “It broke me down. I was just

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No liberalizing here

Jun 24th, 2022 9:55 am | By

Compare and contrast:

Around the world, many governments have been moving toward easier access to abortion, with more than 50 countries liberalizing their laws in the past three decades.

But the US, proud of its unique backwardness, is dashing in the opposite direction.

By contrast, a recent Supreme Court brief filed by abortion providers said that overruling Roe puts “the United States in the company of countries like Poland and Nicaragua as one of only a few countries moving toward greater restrictions on legal access to abortion in the past 20 years.”

Priest-ridden Ireland is better than we are.… Read the rest



Massive impacts

Jun 24th, 2022 9:16 am | By

When Boris Johnson is better than the US Supreme Court:

Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, characterized the Supreme Court decision as a “big step backward.”

Speaking at a news conference in Kigali, Rwanda, at a meeting of leaders of Commonwealth countries, Mr. Johnson acknowledged that the ruling was from another jurisdiction, but added that “clearly it has massive impacts on people’s thinking around the world. It’s a very important decision.”

“I think it’s a big step backward,” Mr. Johnson said, “I’ve always believed in a woman’s right to choose, and I stick to that view, and that’s why the U.K. has the laws that it does.”

Well not exactly – the UK doesn’t have the laws it does because … Read the rest