収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

We’ve been talking for a while about states with comprehensive abortions bans losing prenatal care and gynaecological practitioners, like in Idaho. Well, it’s spreading to more states, now, as they start enforcing their Republican policies. Alabama is now facing closures that will require people to drive 100 miles while in labour, or give birth in an emergency room. With states like Texas forcing women to carry foetuses which literally cannot survive being born – sometimes more than one at once – I home this is finally becoming real for the kind of low-information toggle-back-and-forth voters who thing everything is just fine until it hits them.

We’ve also talked about states sending women to prison for abortion pills, also; Republican Nebraska sentenced a mother to two years in prison for helping her teenage daughter get medication a few weeks ago.

I’m not sure whether we’ve mentioned that the Republican candidate for governor in Kentucky signed a pledge against contraception or not, but he did. He caught some heat from that – and some appropriately vicious ads – and is pretending to soften his position a bit, but believe me: that’s “softening” is a lie and he’ll sign anything, no matter how barbaric, and I’m not saying that because I know him in particular, but because there are no ‘moderate’ Republicans and every single one of them would do the same.

But there’s more to talk about out there, like how the “Kid’s Online Safety Act” or KOSA is a blank-cheque for Republican governors to censor speech online, and that absolutely is going to include abortion information, and probably birth control. Given that some of the Republicans most strongly behind it have already stated outright that they intend to use it to wipe LGBT people offline, it’s certain they’ll use it this way as well.

And the infuriating part isn’t Republicans supporting it, it’s that Democrats have been ignoring all this and supporting it too – including Elizabeth Warren, who I thought might know better than this – playing an absolutely idiotic game of “It’s not for that and won’t be used that way” when we all known damned well that is exactly what it’s for and it’ll be used that way just the same. For fuck’s sake, they’re even saying so.

This is definitely one to contact your legislators about, again.

We’ve got to the point where once again Republicans are saying the quiet part very much out loud – that this is about punishing women for having sex . Starting to realise that wasn’t a great idea, are just as quickly trying to rebrand, but not actually change any policies.

So don’t let them get away with it. Don’t let your friends let them get away with it, either, or pretend none of this is really happening, or that it’s only happening to “other people” who “deserve it” and not them, because Americans will memory-hole things faster than anyone else in the world and it has to stop.

Remind them that Idaho banned abortion, and then disbanded its legislative maternal mortality committee, and turned down Federal money to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage and federal grants for child care.

And then Alabama put a woman in prison for “endangering her foetus” and then forced her to give birth in a fucking prison shower.

And then the Republican fundamentalist fake medical organisation, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, said that in cases of life-endangering pregnancy complications that are guaranteed to be fatal to the foetus and endanger the mother, women should be forced to labor for up to 24 hours, even if they must be treated with blood transfusions in intensive care, in lieu of an abortion, in order to deliver “an intact fetal body.”

You know, for spite.

Because, you had sex, you bitch – you vessel of sin – and you need to be punished for it, and for being a woman.

This is what they want, and we know that, because this is what they’ve already done. They don’t give a single flying fuck about babies. They care about hurting women.

Don’t let anyone pretend it’s ever been about anything else.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.