Heart of the storm

Oh boy, Minneapolis-St Paul is bracing itself for a sudden surge.

Steps from an interstate and minutes from an airport sits a nondescript building with a tenant never more in demand.
Whole Woman’s Health is one of the nation’s largest independent abortion providers, and the location of its Minnesota clinic is no accident.
“Some patients may fly, some may prefer to drive. So being near the highways that we are and the airport in Bloomington gives patients the most options available,” said Sharon Lau, Midwest advocacy director for Whole Woman’s Health Alliance.
Lau says the clinic is bracing for an influx of patients from states with more restrictive abortion laws than Minnesota after the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade and enabled states to determine abortion access.
Planned Parenthood of Minnesota tells CNN that on Monday, the first business day after the Supreme Court decision, it received its highest call volume ever — an increase of 50% — with many of the calls coming from out-of-state.

This is hitting at a difficult time, when medical services are already strapped nationwide by a pandemic people have been trying to pretend doesn’t exist.

“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to handle the increase,” Stoesz said. “There is already a healthcare worker shortage and we’ve been struggling with that since the beginning of the pandemic. That hasn’t gone away.”
Stoesz expects an increase in the use of the abortion pill as an initial solution, “because appointments are going to be difficult to get,” she said.

Whenever I feel stressed about my occupation of teaching and the risks therein, I just have to remind myself that it could be worse — I could be working in healthcare. Yikes.

Next, rage

Next week, our monthly Podish Sortacast will tackle a hot-button issue: abortion. We’ve got a doctor, a biologist, and a whole swarm of people here who will happily defend the medical procedure and castigate the people who oppose it. Should be fun. I’ll be sure to take my blood pressure medicine beforehand.

Oh no, I was biologist-splained!

Getting into an argument on Reddit might be worse than arguing on Twitter. Some day I’ll learn.

Anyway, here was someone trying to claim that sperm aren’t alive, and that human life begins at conception.

When I agreed with the second quote and also pointed out that that 95% number is a made-up statistic, I got this insightful comment.

Well human life certainly does begin at conception…

You’re not a biologist, btw.

No one argues that a human zygote is something other than a human zygote. Unfortunately, I engaged with the clown claiming I’m not a biologist, and pointed out that those are also human sperm and human oocytes.

They were having none of that.

The question I always ask people who raise the claim that human life begins at conception…are human zygotes not the product of the fusion of human gametes? I

Yes… That’s what we call fertilization. Before conception the egg isn’t fertilized and only contains half of a human’s dna and only 23 chromosomes…

Human reproductive cells aren’t whole human organisms/human beings like a zygote is.

In biology, the zygote is called the cell of life because it usually is the first cell of a new organism. (since it’s basically a fertilized ovum.)

gametes are just the haploid stage of the human life cycle.

Yes… they are reproductive cells. Ofc, they’re haploid… Lol.

Are you sure you’re a biologist ’cause you sure don’t sound like one. Lmao.

I think I just got biologist-splained.

I also think they tripped over themselves. The whole argument rests on how we define what whole human organisms/human beings are. I agree that a sperm cell isn’t a human being. Neither is a zygote, or a blastula, or a gastrula, and neither is a fetus with an undeveloped nervous system and non-functional lungs and an inability to survive without its placenta. “Human” is a modifier used to designate the ancestry of a cell, and is not synonymous with “human being.”

But what do I know? I’m not a biologist!

The Minnesota condition

Here’s what it’s like to live here when reproductive rights are being stripped everywhere around us: the governor sent out a bulk email.

Without Roe v. Wade as a safeguard, Minnesota could soon become the only state in the upper Midwest with safe and legal access to abortion.

We are a safe haven for reproductive freedom, and as long as I’m governor, it will stay that way. That’s why today, I signed an Executive Order to further protect people who get or provide legal abortions in Minnesota from possible legal repercussions in other states.

Lt. Governor Flanagan and I have been clear: We will not allow Donald Trump’s 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority to set back our rights here in Minnesota.

Our Republican anti-choice extremist opponents, on the other hand, have pledged to ban abortion outright, with no exceptions even for rape or incest, the first chance they get.

That’s pretty good, and it’s true that the Republicans in this state are yowling about needing to prove they’re good ‘Muricans by imposing even more cruel and burdensome restrictions. It was marred, however, by the usual ‘give me money’ close. Sorry, you can ask for my vote, but not for donations. There are people who need them more. Like the Red River Women’s Clinic.

The only abortion clinic in North Dakota is now preparing to move across state lines following the recent Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade.

Red River Women’s Clinic, located in Fargo, has been the only provider in the state for 20 years.
They now await closure, which will leave many women in the state without care.
Clinic Director Tammi Kromenaker told CNN Saturday they are still open, for now. “The plan is to provide service as long as we legally can,” Kromenaker said.

Fargo, if you don’t know your midwestern geography, is on the far eastern side of the state, right on the border with Minnesota, and Moorhead is a short hop across the river, so this is a relatively easy move. It’s still inconvenient and expensive. I’d rather donate to the clinic than to Democrats.

Unfortunately, as easy as it is to move, these assholes can also easily drive for 15 minutes to torment women. Sickos.

The people in the blue vests are heroes, clinic escorts. The people with the obnoxious signs are scum. I notice that the scum are allowed to cluster right around the entrance for maximum viciousness. Maybe the Minnesota Democrats could get their act together to pass a law setting much larger restrictions on how close harassers can get to a women’s health clinic? Maybe then they could ask me for a few bucks.

Surrounded

Oh, look. Abortion is still safe in a few states, including Minnesota.

I don’t know what’s wrong with those gomers in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, but at least the Minnesota state government has its head mostly screwed on right.

Gov. Tim Walz, a DFLer, in a Facebook post, said: “The Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v Wade is a blatant violation of a woman’s right to choose. But let me say it again: There will never be a ban on abortion in Minnesota on my watch.”

I’d volunteer my house as a waystation on the 21st Underground Railroad that is going to emerge, funneling pregnant people to our still functioning women’s (and trans men’s) health clinics around Minneapolis and Moorhead, but Morris isn’t on the way to anything. We’re way off any major freeway route. Also, to be honest, I live in Minnesota gomer country. We’ve got “crisis pregnancy centers” out here, which are unconscionable shams to draw in people with unwanted pregnancies, where they get handed religious literature and told horror stories about abortion, but that provide no useful medical assistance at all. The countryside of rural Minnesota is littered with godawful religious billboards (Pro-Life Across America, the organization that puts up those awful “my heart was beating at 4 weeks” with a picture of a 48-week infant, is based in Minneapolis).

And yes, just like in the surrounding states, every Republican in Minnesota is a deadly stupid asshole. If you’re trying to get to Minnesota for help, get on I-35 or I-94 and stay there until you get past the suburban ring of Republican sewage that surrounds the city of Minneapolis itself, and don’t get out of the car until you arrive. Once you reach the I-494/I-694 beltway, you might be safe.

Or fly in. The airport is reasonably close.

This is part of the cruelty of the Supreme Court abortion decision. It’s not easy, or it’s expensive, to get good, responsible health care for pregnant people. No matter where you live, if you can afford it, you can donate to help desperate people stuck in the bowels of the beast (that is, most of the country), get to where doctors are allowed to do their work. For instance, Robin Marty, a former Minnesota activist for abortion rights moved a while back to become an Alabama activist for abortion rights — I guess she went where she was needed most — endorses the West Alabama Women’s Center, and I trust her on these matters.

Remember: Abortion rights are good health and good science.

“What is so shocking, inhuman, and irrational about this draft opinion is that the Court is basing its decision on an 18th century document ignorant of 21st century realities for women.”

It will not make any difference, because the people who have made the decision do not respect scientific or medical evidence, but the cover of The Lancet is about the Alito decision, with a strongly worded opinion inside.

“Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views.” So begins a draft opinion by Associate Justice Samuel Alito, leaked from the US Supreme Court on May 2, 2022. If confirmed, this judgement would overrule the Court’s past decisions to establish the right to access abortion. In Alito’s words, “the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives”. The Court’s opinion rests on a strictly historical interpretation of the US Constitution: “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” His extraordinary text repeatedly equates abortion with murder.
The Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution has been the main foundation underpinning the right of American women to an abortion. That 1868 Amendment was passed during the period of American Reconstruction, when states’ powers were being subjected to certain limitations. The goal of the Amendment was to prevent states from unduly restricting the freedoms of their citizens. That guarantee of personal liberty, so the Supreme Court had previously held, extended to pregnant women, with qualifications, who decided to seek an abortion. Alito rejected that reasoning. He argued that for any right not mentioned in the Constitution to be protected, it must be shown to have had deep roots in the nation’s history and tradition. Abortion does not fulfil that test. Worse, Roe was an exercise in “raw judicial power”, it “short-circuited the democratic process”, and it was “egregiously wrong” from the very beginning. It was now time, according to Alito, “to set the record straight”.
What is so shocking, inhuman, and irrational about this draft opinion is that the Court is basing its decision on an 18th century document ignorant of 21st century realities for women. History and tradition can be respected, but they must only be partial guides. The law should be able to adapt to new and previously unanticipated challenges and predicaments. Although Alito gives an exhaustive legal history of abortion, he utterly fails to consider the health of women today who seek abortion. Unintended pregnancy and abortion are universal phenomena. Worldwide, around 120 million unintended pregnancies occur annually. Of these, three-fifths end in abortion. And of these, some 55% are estimated to be safe—that is, completed using a medically recommended method and performed by a trained provider. This leaves 33 million women undergoing unsafe abortions, their lives put at risk because laws restrict access to safe abortion services.
In the USA, Black women have an unintended pregnancy rate double that of non-Hispanic White women. And the maternal mortality rate for Black women, to which unsafe abortion is an important contributor, is almost three times higher than for white women. These sharp racial and class disparities need urgent solutions, not more legal barriers. The fact is that if the US Supreme Court confirms its draft decision, women will die. The Justices who vote to strike down Roe will not succeed in ending abortion, they will only succeed in ending safe abortion. Alito and his supporters will have women’s blood on their hands.
The 2018 Guttmacher–Lancet Commission on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights For All concluded that these rights, which included the right to safe abortion services and the treatment of complications from unsafe abortion, were central to any conception of a woman’s wellbeing and gender equality. The availability of an essential package of sexual and reproductive health interventions should be a fundamental right for all women—including, comprehensive sexuality education; access to modern contraceptives; safe abortion services; prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmissible diseases; prevention and treatment for gender-based violence; counselling for sexual health; and services for infertility. What kind of society has the USA become when a small group of Justices is allowed to harm women, their families, and their communities that they have been appointed to protect?
The route forward is unclear and perilous. This Court’s argument suggests possible future attacks on a raft of other civil rights, from marriage equality to contraception. Despite urgent pleas from some members of Congress, the long-overdue encoding of Roe into law by the Biden administration is highly unlikely. That a Court is about to force through a health policy supported by only 39% of Americans is dysfunctional. Indeed, if the Court denies women the right to safe abortion, it will be a judicial endorsement of state control over women—a breathtaking setback for the health and rights of women, one that will have global reverberations.

The corruption is next door. Wake up!

Conservatives are desperately trying to change the subject. They want to avoid talking about their potential success in banning abortion and instead whine about those naughty leakers who exposed an imminent Supreme Court decision, or point fingers at protesters who stand peacefully outside the homes of Supreme Court justices, shaming them. They’d rather not discuss their actions to criminalize women’s health, something they’d been working towards for decades.

The ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom, an evangelical Christian organization, and today’s grand misnomer) was crowing about getting here four years ago. They figured that the election of Donald Trump had opened the gates and they were going to get everything they wanted. They were right.

“We have a plan to make Roe irrelevant or completely reverse it,” said Kevin Theriot, vice president of ADF’s Center for Life. Denise Burke, senior counsel at ADF, said that she is “really excited” about the strides that are being made to “eradicate Roe.”

“We have a strategic plan, that is a comprehensive, start-to-finish, from when we’re considering legislation all the way up to the Supreme Court, to challenge Roe,” said Burke. Among the reasons for ADF’s optimism is the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and so many Trump nominees to the federal appeals courts, which ADF believes will lead to courts granting approval to state laws further restricting access to and ultimately banning abortion.

This isn’t a one-off surprise at all. It’s everything they aspire to. Listen to Jerry Falwell brag that he’d been working on revoking women’s rights for 35 years.

They (I’ll get to who “they” are in a moment) aren’t done yet. Miscarriage shall be a crime.

On a humid morning in early October, Brittney Poolaw sat in an Oklahoma courtroom waiting on a verdict. Instead of the jail uniform she’d donned over the past 18 months, she wore a yellow and white blouse. After less than three hours of deliberation, the jury returned with their decision: Poolaw was guilty of first-degree manslaughter. She was sentenced to four years behind bars.

But Poolaw, a 20-year-old and a member of the Wichita Tribe, had not driven recklessly or shot a gun. She’d had a miscarriage.

At least one in four pregnancies end in a miscarriage — it may be as high as one in two. You probably know women who have had miscarriages while trying to have a baby (I know of several, personally). Now imagine them thrown in jail for it. Imagine them being accused of manslaughter. This is what they want, and it’s just the start.

They want to ban contraception.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) on Sunday refused to rule out the possibility that his state would ban certain forms of contraception, sidestepping questions about what would happen next if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

They’ve already started. A Louisiana law bans IUDs and IVF, and calls these acts of, not manslaughter, but homicide.

You really have to look at that law’s provisions to lock this act into existence, without any possibility of ever being overturned. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so evil.

Any federal statute, regulation, treaty, executive order, or court ruling that purports to supdersede, stay, or overrule this Section shall be in violation of the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Louisiana and is therefore void.

Pursuant to the powers granted to the Legislature by Article X, Part III, of the Constitution of Louisiana, any judge of this state who purports to enjoin, stay, overrule, or void any provision of this section shall be subject to impeachment or removal.

They are like children, and they have even grander plans.

The governor of Texas want to stop educating kids.

Gov. Greg Abbott wants Texas to challenge a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires states to offer free public education to all children, including those lacking legal immigration status.

That ruling, known as Plyler v. Doe, struck down a Texas law that had denied state funding to educate children who had not been “legally admitted” to the United States.

We’ve been averting our eyes and lying to ourselves for decades. They couldn’t possibly be this bad, could they? It’s just a few people posturing for their constituents or their congregation, they couldn’t possibly succeed, and you’re probably looking at the ominous possibilities that those danged liberals bring up, saying “Nah, they can’t ban contraception, they can’t destroy the public school system, they can’t take over the government, they can’t establish a theocratic state, it’ll never happen,” and like always, it’s always easier to reassure ourselves that it can’t happen here than to act to prevent it from happening.

The problem is that they have an uncompromising philosophy that requires them to do everything possible to control your life.

…as Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, says: “Not only did Roe vs. Wade establish that there’s a constitutional right to abortion, it also rejected the idea that fetuses are people under the Constitution.” The draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, is steeped in language that paints fetuses—no matter what stage of development—as people. And when we lend credence to the idea of fetal personhood, it creates “a situation in which, when there is perceived harm to a fetus, it can be a victim of a crime. You can’t add fetuses to the community of individuals who are entitled to constitutional rights without diminishing the rights of the person carrying that fetus,” Sussman says.

That evil idea is nonsense, unsupported by science. A person does not magically appear at the instant of conception; it’s not black or white, no baby, then <blink> baby. Fetal development is a progressive process that takes a single cell with all the autonomy of a shed speck of dander to a squirming infant over the course of months, and at the expense of the mother’s body and work…and that only begins years of responsibility to make it an independent person. They’ve absorbed this lie that full human beings are created at conception and that a fetus therefore has all the rights that its mother has.

Where does this foolishness come from? Here’s a clue.

The issue has also prompted Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, the House’s lone antiabortion Democrat, to clarify his position.

“My faith will not allow me to support a ruling that would criminalize teenage victims of rape and incest,” Cuellar said in a recent statement. “That same faith will not allow me to support a ruling that would make a mother choose between her life and her child’s.”

It’s their faith, their religion. Ironically, the Christian Bible doesn’t even take the absolutist position they do — these beliefs don’t come from a god, but from generation after generation of male prophets and preachers interpreting their holy book to say what they desire it to say, and endorse their possession and control of women.

And that tells you who they are. They are not The Other, they are not outsiders, they are not freakish cultists. They live among us. They are your aunts and uncles, parents and cousins. They’re your neighbors. Look around your community — it’s guaranteed to be pockmarked with a diverse assortment of churches, protected to an excessive degree by the law, given freedom from taxation or any kind of regulation, thriving like unchecked cancers in every town. Some of them are filled with decent people who care about civil rights for everyone, but in others…right now, at this instant, they are celebrating a new era of oppression, and are planning to elect more town council members, more school board members, more representatives and senators, more people who will tell everyone else that they must obey, they must follow, they must do as they’re told. Women will serve, gay people will be punished, miscegenation must be eradicated, children will be indoctrinated, everyone must accept that their beliefs, no matter how ridiculous, are Truth.

They are us. These oppressive laws are not built on a secular or rational foundation, they are entirely the product of peculiar religious beliefs of a minority that we’ve encouraged to flex and grow.

This insanity is going to continue on. We can fight back and elect better representatives, kick out some incompetent judges, pass laws that, for instance, end those screaming masses outside women’s health care clinics, but ultimately the solution has to be … tax the churches. End the special privileges given to religion. Stop the politicization of the pulpit. You want to endorse politicians, lobby for more restrictive laws, campaign against the heathen? You aren’t a church, you’re a Political Action Group, and should be regulated in the same way.

Bring back separation of church and state. Acknowledge that freedom of religion is one thing, a good thing, but that abuses of that freedom are the root cause of our current damnation. Educate our children about reality as we can see it, not blind mythology.

I knew the place was missing something

Our lack has been filled. Iris has opened a Freethoughtblogs Abbatoir.

Here, we perform extractions of lifesaving organs–whether people consent to them or not!

Don’t worry! The Abattoir does not harvest organs from just anyone, willy-nilly. That would be morally reprehensible, barbaric, and inhumane. You see, all of our involuntary organ donors meet one, and only one, very specific criteria: they would eagerly and happily force other people to donate lifesaving organs without the donor’s consent. And these donors do so with absolutely no regard for the harm this may cause, whether physically, psychologically or financially. Since all of The Abattoir’s donors feel so very strongly about this particular principle, it is only just and fair that they live by it!

She has a few photos of the place, I think prior to the actual opening. Once the site gets going, it’s going to be significantly less tidy, and things will get blood-drenched quickly.

Uh-oh. Do we have a Freethoughtblogs Laundry? No, we do not. Do we have a Freethoughtblogs Autoclave? Nope. I’m not in any hurry to open one, I think we can satisfy our donors with reassurances that it’s somewhat cleaner than a back alley.