Category Archives: Women

Add Another Woman of Color to SCOTUS, Please

Civics, General, Social Justice, Women, ,

“People ask me sometimes, ‘When do you think it will be enough? When will there be enough women on the court?’ And my answer is when there are nine.”

~ Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, PBS Interview, February 5th, 2015

Imagine that: NINE women on the U.S. Supreme Court!

And why not?

The Supreme Court has been in existence since 1789. That’s 232 years and counting. One hundred ninety-two years passed before President Ronald Reagan nominated the first woman nominee, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1981.

Since then, only four women have become U.S. Supreme Court justices.

That is slow-as-molasses progress, don’t you think?

The sex ratio in the United States continues to favor females. In 2010, there were 7.43 million more women, with the difference projected to decrease to 7.42 million by 2025.

Simply put, there are more females than males in America!

Why can’t our nation’s highest court reflect that fact? We’ve had over two and a quarter centuries’ worth of mostly (white) men deciding issues for everyone in America.

Now, President Joe Biden has the privilege of nominating a woman to join SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States). An African American one no less.

‘Bout time!

These politicians whining about Biden being politically correct for making good on his campaign promise to nominate the first Black woman to SCOTUS have convenient amnesia. What they don’t say is that Presidents Reagan and Trump each made a similar promise and nomination during their presidencies.

Here’s a tiny sampling of the cynical, racially-tinged bellyaching out there:

“But which Black woman, exactly? Biden didn’t tell us. Biden didn’t mention the Supreme Court nominee’s legal qualifications or judicial philosophy or ability to perform one of the most important jobs in the country. He didn’t even tell us she was a nice person. All he said was she’s going to be Black and she’s going to be female, because to him, that’s all that matters.

Bridget Floyd would be the obvious choice. She is not a judge or a lawyer or whatever, but in this case, who cares? Clearly, that’s not the point anymore – this law stuff.”

~ Tucker Carlson, Fox News host

“Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart,”
“Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?” [tweet]

~ Ilya Shapiro, Vice President, Cato Institute, and incoming executive director of Georgetown Law School’s Center for the Constitution

“The fact that he’s willing to make a promise at the outset, that it must be a Black woman, I gotta say that’s offensive. You know, you know Black women are what, 6% of the US population? He’s saying to 94% of Americans, ‘I don’t give a damn about you, you are ineligible’.

And he’s also saying — it’s actually an insult to Black women. If he came and said, ‘I’m gonna put the best jurist on the court and he looked at a number of people and he ended up nominating a Black woman, he could credibly say, ‘OK I’m nominating the person who’s most qualified.’ He’s not even pretending to say that he he’s saying, ‘If you’re a White guy, tough luck. If you’re a White woman, tough luck. You don’t qualify.'”

~ Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Oh, boo hoo hoo!

(Note: in 2019, Black women represented 7% of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.)

Black women have too often been dehumanized throughout our history, from the days of slavery to the present day. For example, enslaved women were used for gynecological experiments because of a prevailing perception that Blacks had a higher tolerance for pain – a perception that persists today. African American women and girls are seldom seen as victims and instead seen as deserving of harm or unable to be harmed, a dangerous perception that has perpetuated a long legacy of impunity for violence against them; when abuse occurs, they are less likely to be believed and supported. A report published by Georgetown Law Center found that “adults view Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers.” The men mentioned above and their like-minded supporters seem to think Black women have little or no brains. That they can’t possibly be qualified enough to be a judge, let alone a SCOTUS justice.

But of course there are Black women who are qualified! They are part of a very long line of trailblazing women from many fields who continue to contribute to our society. I only included one link about extraordinary African American women under my Sources, but there are countless links to explore!

Those men and their colleagues will say whatever brings in the bucks or votes, of course. Likely appealing to their fan base or voters with more puke-worthy, disgusting comments that reek of racism and misogyny, similar to the ones mentioned above.

Meanwhile, may President Biden choose the best candidate possible. And hopefully, may he get another opportunity to choose another female SCOTUS justice before the next election, maybe even a Chief Justice. That’d be a good bit of progess.

Methinks Justice Ginsberg would have made a good Chief Justice.

Sources

PBS
Wikipedia – Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court
Wikipedia – History of the Supreme Court of the United States
Statistica
Population USA
Salon
Daily Beast
Portside
New York Times
The Guardian
CNN
Business Insider
ACLU
Ohio State University
Huffington Post

Islamophobia Personified Through Two U.S. Congresswomen

Civics, General, Social Justice, Women, , , ,

Something has been eating at me.

I have been debating in my head the last few weeks whether or not to give space to a couple of Congresswomen whose behavior I find despicable. But after contemplating the fact that I have unhesitatingly called out people who harm (or inspire others to harm) others they don’t like in my blog posts, I thought: oh, why the hell not?!

So here I mention two Congresswomen who I think make Congress look very bad (as if Congress needed any help in that regard), as well as their respective constituents: Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA).

Let’s start with Rep. Boebert. Muslim Advocates reports:

Speaking to constituents over the Thanksgiving holiday, Boebert told a made-up story about being in a Capitol Hill elevator with Omar and telling an approaching Capitol police officer “Well, she [Omar] doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine.” At another event a few months prior, Boebert told a different version of the story where she called Rep. Omar part of a “Jihad Squad.” She also said that Omar and Tlaib were “black-hearted, evil women.” Boebert subsequently used a phone call with Omar not to apologize publicly but to double down on her hate and call Omar “anti-American” and a “terrorist sympathizer.”

Just reading that makes my tummy turn in disgust.

A September Staten Island Conservative Party dinner event video was uncovered on Tuesday, November 30th by CNN’s Kfile and was shared at the time on Facebook but didn’t make national news. Boebert said,

“One of my I staffers, on his first day with me, got into an elevator in the Capitol. And in that elevator, we were joined by Ilhan Omar,” Boebert said in September. “It was just us three in there and I looked over and I said, well, lookey there, it’s the Jihad Squad. She doesn’t have a backpack, she wasn’t dropping it and running so we’re good.”

She apparently thinks she’s funny?

What kind of person would laugh at that?

As a result of her videos, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) – one of the first two Muslim women in Congress along with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), received a profanity-laden voicemail with racial epithets which she played during a news conference and which she said was among hundreds of such messages she has reported since joining Congress.

In the grainy recording, an unidentified man can be heard saying:

We see you, Muslim sand n***** bitch. We know what you’re up to. You’re all about taking over our country. Don’t worry, there’s plenty that will love the opportunity to take you off the face of this fucking earth. Come get it, you fucking Muslim piece of shit. You jihadist. We know what you are. You’re a fucking traitor. You will not live much longer, bitch, I can almost guarantee you that. We the people are rising up, and you will be tried before a military tribunal, and you will be found guilty.

Boebert initially took steps to ease the situation, according to multiple news sources, apologizing “to anyone in the Muslim community I offended”. But after declining to apologize directly to Omar during a tense phone call on Monday, November 29, which Omar abruptly ended, Boebert again went on the attack. Rep. Omar said the voicemail was left for her after Boebert released another video criticising her.

To my mind, Rep. Boebert is behaving worse than a severely immature teenager. Can you imagine being in school or work and having a bully make sick jokes to anyone who will listen that you are a terrorist?

Who’s the black-hearted woman here?!

In the letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics, Muslim Advocates and Bend the Arc note that not only do Boebert’s anti-Muslim attacks sully the reputation of the House of Representatives, they also invite additional hate and threats against the Muslim members of Congress, their staff and all religious minorities.

“We are deeply disturbed by Rep. Boebert’s abhorrent rhetoric. The death threat [voicemail] shared by Rep. Omar illustrates the danger we face when those in positions of power shamelessly spread politically-charged lies and hate-filled messages,” said Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block, Washington Director of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action. “We stand in solidarity with our Muslim neighbors, and all targeted communities in denouncing hate speech and calling on our leaders to hold Rep. Boebert accountable.”

She’s not the only one who needs to be held accountable. How about Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA), a.k.a. MTG?

After her fellow GOP Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado shared the fake story with constituents about getting into an elevator with Omar at the Capitol —comparing the Muslim congresswoman to a suicide bomber which resulted in strong backlash and after Boebert issued an apology to the Muslim community (but not to Rep. Omar personally), MTG posted an Islamophobic tweet attacking Representative Ilhan Omar, saying people should “never apologize” to her and the group of progressive lawmakers Greene has dubbed the “Jihad Squad.”

“Democrats want us censored, shut down, and imprisoned. Never apologize to Islamic terrorist sympathizers, communists, or those who fund murder with our tax dollars,” the far-right congresswoman wrote on Twitter.

“@IlhanMN and the Jihad Squad are all three and are undeserving of an apology.”

I take issue with people who refuse to apologize when they have attacked – intentionally or not, another person or group of people because of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs (or none at all), or socio-economic background.

What does MTG care that her fellow Congresswoman has gotten death threats ever since she became a Congresswoman and more recently as a result of Rep. Boebert’s elevator “joke”?

This is a person who repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry — and FBI agents in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, as CNN’s KFile previously reported.

This is someone who also:

• Endorsed 9/11 trutherism conspiracies and falsely claimed there was no evidence a plane crashed into the Pentagon, according to reporting from Media Matters.

• In 2018, questioned whether the Parkland shooting that killed 17 people was a planned event and called Parkland survivor and activist David Hogg a “paid actor.” In a recently surfaced video from March 2019, Greene follows Hogg as he walks toward the U.S. Capitol and can be heard making false and baseless claims as she asks him a series of questions related to gun rights and how he was able to meet with senators.

• On and offline, frequently engaged with extreme anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Some of the targets of her comments included her future colleagues in the House of Representatives, like Tlaib and Omar, and President Barack Obama, who Greene falsely said is Muslim.

And to add to her illustrious infamy, the representative from Georgia on December 20th used her time in the limelight at the Turning Point USA’s “AmericaFest” rally to call out the diversity of the attendees, only to highlight that the event can’t possibly be racist:

“So I’ve never been to one of these events before. And when I walked in yesterday, I was like, ‘What kind of people come here?'” she continued. “So I’m walking around and seeing some good people and I see white people, Black people, brown people, yellow people…

“And then there’s talk of freedom and loving America and conservative principles, some crazy people in here were talking about how much they love this guy named Jesus. And I heard—someone I really like—I think I heard that a lot of people here like a guy named Donald J. Trump.

“And then I said ‘Oh, oh, I know exactly what this is. The Left calls this a white supremacist party,’ Okay, okay, I know what I’m going to now.”

You get the picture.

(Yellow people? C’mon, MTG. It’s the 21st century, not the 19th century. The term “yellow people” stems from “yellow peril,” a racist ideology dating back to the 19th century used to misrepresent people from Asia, painting them as a group to be feared and reduced to something less than white Europeans.)

She spoke of “talk of Freedom and loving America”…I wonder if MTG knows that service by Muslims in the United States military dates back to the American Revolutionary War, where records indicate that there were some Muslims who fought on the revolutionary side? Or that Muslims have fought in all major United States conflicts, including the War of 1812, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War? More recently, they have served in the Gulf War, Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan.

Those Muslim veterans helped fight for our freedoms – including the freedom of Reps. Boebert and Greene to be insufferable assholes toward their fellow Muslim members of Congress, Muslims in America, and every American who finds Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism UN-American and unacceptable.

Rep. MTG apparently doesn’t agree with her fellow Republican Congresswoman Boebert in issuing a public apology to Muslims and holds the dubious distinction of supporting violence against those she disagrees with or simply doesn’t like. She has a long record of conspiracy theory-laden remarks as well as disparaging remarks about people who don’t look like her or share her beliefs.

Yes, this is a person who relies heavily on social media for her news. In a statement, she did not deny that she liked posts and replied to comments but claimed that many people have run her Facebook page.

“Over the years, I’ve had teams of people manage my pages. Many posts have been liked. Many posts have been shared. Some did not represent my views. …”

Rep. MTG, you just let other people say anything on your behalf, is that right?

Geez!

Ok, so enough of the dastardly deeds of these two Congresswomen. I had to unload this weight off of my mind that is their stinking, despicable Islamophobia – rooted in these Congresswomen’s own ignorance – which has appealed to like-minded people’s fears and which has inspired violence toward their fellow Americans who happen to have a different religion than theirs.

These two Congresswomen seem to carry their Islamophobia like a badge of honor. Worse, they don’t give a flying fig that their sentiments have consequences – of inspiring like-minded people to make threats of physical violence, death, or violent verbal harrassment toward Muslim members of Congress.

It’s too bad that that sort of behavior isn’t condemned by the entirety of Congress. Calls to remove them from committees are just a slap on the wrist.

Hey, Congress? Take a lesson in growing a spine from the more than 350 students from Fairfax High School in Virginia: they walked out in protest on Dec. 16 to show their solidarity with a student who was allegedly attacked in an Islamophobic incident.

According to a Change.org petition, a Black Muslim student, identified as Ekran Mohammad, was allegedly harassed by a group of boys, who threw her onto a desk and removed her hijab on Tuesday, December 14, 2021.
.
The Daily Kos reported that

…both the attackers and the victim were reported to have received equal punishment and made to have in-school suspension in the same room, students told NBC News. After expressing that she felt unseen, the victim’s classmates not only came together but marched in protest for her.

“If we don’t feel safe in our environment, in our school, then something has to be done,” Mohammad said.

One student told NBC News that she and her friends were working on a project when a group of students began to harass them. They were “making these Islamophobic jokes, talking about Jewish people and Nazis, creating the Islamic symbol and putting an X across it,” a student identified as Eliza Gill said.

That’s when Mohammad confronted one of the boys and reportedly “lightly shoved him away,” to which he reacted violently.  “[He] threw me across the room. I hit my left side on the desk, and my chest hit the chair,” Mohammad said. He allegedly then removed her hijab.

Unfortunately, not only was Mohammad’s experience allegedly not taken seriously, but suspending her in the same room as her attackers raised questions by students and others alike. Following the incident, Mohammad allegedly spent the evening in the emergency room during which medical reports show contusions and bruises. This evidence was given to the police, WTOP reported.

Investigations into the incident are ongoing, according to a press release issued by the city’s police department. The police department also noted that it was not notified by the school regarding the assault but instead heard about it due to the student rally.

The school officials did not take responsibility in dealing with the incident, much in the same spirit that Congress remains deaf toward Reps. Boebert and Greene in their attacks against their Muslim Congresswomen. You could argue: well, you’re comparing apples and oranges here – Congresswomen and high school students!

Really, are the Congresswomen behaving any better than the students who attacked Ekran Mohammad? Reps. Boebert and MTG are supposed to be adults and represent their constituents. They have greater responsibilities. But they’re spewing Islamophobic rhetoric whenever it’s most convenient with no care that their words may have deadly consequences.

“There’s multiple witnesses who can attest to racist and Islamophobic comments and overtures being made immediately prior to the incident into the assault,” said Abed Ayoub, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, which represents the 16-year-old student.

“It’s the students that brought attention to this, and we need to remember that,” Ayoub said. “We need to empower them and realize the important role they played in standing up for one of their own.”

Hear, hear!

Those 350+ Fairfax High School students in Virginia who walked out in protest to show their solidarity for their fellow student have demonstrated they have far more backbone than much of Congress has toward their fellow members of Congress who are Muslim.

Thank goodness those students are part of our future.


Sources

Muslim Advocates
Yahoo
Newsweek – Marjorie Taylor Greene Attacks Ilhan Omar, ‘Jihad Squad’ After Boebert Apology
HuffPost
The Guardian
Rolling Stone
World Socialist Web Site
CNN
Daily Kos – Rep. Greene uses racist term for Asian Americans while trying to prove conservatives aren’t racist
Wikipedia – Color Terminology for Race
Newsweek – Marjorie Taylor Greene Refers to ‘Yellow People’ in Speech on GOP Diversity
Wikipedia
Daily Kos – Hundreds of Virginia high school students protest after Muslim girl is allegedly attacked at school
WDVM

A Glimmer of Justice

General, Social Justice, Women, ,

Last Monday, a German woman and former member of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) group was given a 10-year prison sentence by a Munich court for letting a Yazidi girl enslaved in Iraq die of thirst.

According to Iraq Solidarity News,

The defendant was “found guilty of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity through enslavement, attempted murder and aiding and abetting the war crime of attempted murder by omission, and membership in a foreign terrorist organisation,” according to a statement released by the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

The landmark case was one of the first trials in the world in which an ISIS member was convicted of war crimes against the Yazidis, a religious and ethnic minority persecuted and enslaved by ISIS in Iraq and in Syria.

An estimated 10,000 Yazidi people were killed in northern Iraq in the mass atrocities. About 7,000 Yazidi women and girls, some as young as nine, were enslaved and forcibly transferred to locations in Iraq and eastern Syria, notes Iraq Solidarity News.

It is hard for me to fathom that these crimes against humanity occurred on such an unimaginable, massive scale against one group of people because of their religious beliefs in the 21st century. It brings to mind the atrocities against Muslims during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s and the Nazis targeting Jewish people (and other “undesirables”) during WWII.

Where did all this hate come from?

Is it a sense of entitlement + blind passion for one’s religion that makes one want to be “pure” – and thus expecting everyone around to be the same? Plus a good dose of assholery that makes one think they are better and above the law than anyone who doesn’t follow their interpretation of whatever religion the perpetrator of violence chose?

There are fundamentalists of varying extremes in every branch of religion, whether it’s Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and whatever else -ism there is out there.’

I don’t begrudge anyone practicing their religious beliefs, be it privately at home or in a sanctuary with fellow worshippers; if it gives their life meaning and purpose, good for them.

But when religious leaders and followers use the name of their Almighty to justify and condone violence against others because of their contempt of others who don’t share their beliefs, when they want to be the morality police and shove religion down people’s throats through imposing a theocracy over their fellow citizens…well, I sure as hell don’t want anything to do with them or their beliefs. Do you?

Witch trials, wars, genocide…how many of those were done in the name of God to “cleanse the world of evil” throughout the centuries? It’s sick.

The German defendant and her ISIS spouse “purchased” a Yazidi woman and her 5-year old child, as household “slaves” in Mosul in 2015. Mother and child were held captive for about six weeks and “subjected to almost daily beatings which the defendant often instigated,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers said in a statement.

I’m glad some measure of justice has come for the mother of her late child. Is 10 years enough punishment for six weeks of sheer terror and a dead child? The husband is facing trial end of November as well. The mother will never get her daughter back and goodness knows what abuses and terror both had to endure.

One can only hope that those responsible for crimes against humanity will have their day in court, be held accountable, and punished to the fullest extent of the law. And not just everyday citizens like the German defendant and her spouse who enslaved and abused a family and killed a child through neglect, but people in positions of power, too. Hold all of them accountable for the world to see.

Whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.

~ Voltaire

Sources

Iraq Solidarity News

Relentless Deep Diggers

General, Media, Social Justice, Women, ,

Last Friday, the Nobel Prize Committee stood up for democracy and awarded its 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to journalists Maria Ressa(Philippines) and Dmitry Muratov (Russia), “in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.”

After the last five years of our ears being assaulted by cries of “fake news!” by the last U.S. president and his minions who whined anytime they were confronted with inconvenient facts by reporters or criticized in the slightest by anyone, this announcement of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize to these fearless journalists was like a breath of fresh air to me. A reminder that there are people in this world who do care about holding people in power accountable and informing citizens with FACTS.

Here’s an article from The Conversation for you that better expresses what I could write in this blog post:

Nobel Peace Prize for journalists serves as reminder that freedom of the press is under threat from strongmen and social media

I wrote of my respect and admiration of Maria Ressa in January of this year, so I am extra happy she was awarded this honor. I spent my college years managing one college paper and reporting and editing for two – and have developed over the years a soft spot in my heart and great respect for journalists like Ms. Ressa and Mr. Muratov who relentlessly dig deep to expose abuses of power, knowing that they may be jeopardizing their safety and lives in the process but continuing to work nonetheless. I admire their determination to hold those in power accountable and inform their fellow citizens.

They and their fellow like-minded journalists would be just the sort of journalists I’d aspire to emulate if I were a working journalist: possessing unrelenting, dogged determination to get the truth out.

I think we need journalists like Ressa and Muratov as long as there are humans on earth or any other planet. They are essential to humankind. They are the courageous and gutsy ones who warn us about powerful people and corporations whose abuses of power would endanger our lives, intentionally or not.

Stand with them. They deserve our respect.

Sources

The Conversation
The Independent
BBC

21st Century-style Bounty Hunting

Civics, Social Justice, Women, , ,

What explains my absence from not posting a blog entry this month so far?

The real answer is procrastination…but it feels better to blame the Texas legislature and Texas Governor for writing and signing the Texas Heartbeat Act (SB 8/HB 1515), which was assigned into law on May 19th, 2021 and became effective on September 1st, 2021.

This law is the first six-week abortion ban in the United States, and the first of its kind to rely on enforcement by private individuals through civil lawsuits, rather than by the government through criminal or civil enforcement. The act establishes a system in which members of the public can sue anyone who performs or facilitates an illegal abortion for a minimum of US$10,000 in statutory damages.

Think bounty hunting. Vigilantes.

Instead of civilians encouraged to hunt for slaves escaping to seek freedom, it will be civilians hunting for anyone who supports women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies – be it physician, clinic, driver who took the pregnant woman to the clinic, etc.

ABC News reports that the Texas law bans abortions after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Remember, however, back in June I noted:


Obstetricians say the term “fetal heartbeat” is misleading, and that this scientific misunderstanding, among countless others, may contribute to negative public opinion toward abortion, reports The Cut.

Robyn Schickler, OB/GYN and Physicians for Reproductive Health fellow explained to The Cut that what is detectable at or around six weeks can more accurately be called “cardiac activity. She and others argue that what doctors can detect is essentially communication between a group of what will eventually become cardiac cells.

Jennifer Kerns, an OB/GYN and professor at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF), added:

These are cells that are programmed with electrical activity, which will eventually control the heart rate — they send a signal telling the heart to contract, once there is a heart.” It is this early activity which ultrasounds detect — not a heartbeat.

Also, the law requires minors have parental consent to obtain an abortion, which may be difficult to come by in cases of incest. Texas minors can get judicial approval to get an abortion without parental consent, but it may not be realistically feasible for a teen to confirm a pregnancy, go through the court system for a judge’s sign-off, and book an abortion appointment within two weeks of a missed period after being raped.

Perhaps the scariest aspect of the bill is that there are no exceptions for cases of rape, sexual abuse, incest, and fetal anomaly diagnoses.

Well, to me anyway, that is not only scary and stupid, but also disrespectful to more than half the population of America.

Oh yes, let’s not forget that five of the six conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court denied the emergency motion filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights on August 30, 2021, seeking to block the Texas Heartbeat Act from going into effect. So I’m a bit pissed at those justices, too.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s more liberal members, Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, all wrote or joined dissents. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor wrote that “presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand”.

Hear, hear, Justice Sotomayor!

This Texas Heartbeat Act business has gotten me tied up in a knot of fury!

I’ve said before that I passionately believe Uncle Sam needs to stay out of every woman’s womb. Who wants the government to interfere with one’s intimately personal affairs? Who wants the government to interfere with a woman’s medical visits with her health provider?

Do YOU want anyone other than yourself telling you when and whether you ought to have offspring?

And if you do not, and you unexpectedly became pregnant, do you want the government and society to force you to carry the pregnancy to term, regardless of YOUR circumstances – in effect, having strangers who know absolutely nothing about you dictate to you what to do with YOUR body?

These politicians who dream up anti-abortion bills to control women’s reproductive choices and the governors who sign said bills into laws in the name of “pro-life” – do they ever imagine what it might be like to have Uncle Sam interfere in THEIR private lives? Could they imagine if someone wanted or needed a vasectomy or an erectile dysfunction medication that he had to jump through invasive, non-medically necessary procedures and interrogations deemed mandatory by medically-ignorant politicans?

And could they imagine if someone decided to seek a procedure because they didn’t want to be a father anymore, there might be a posse of civilians who thought otherwise about his reproductive choice and hunt down anyone (e.g. physician, clinic, driver) who supported this individual – with lawsuits, greenlighted by the state?

Methinks they would neither appreciate nor approve that!

You do notice that the White House, Congress, and state and local legislatures around the country are still predominately comprised of white males to this day, right? They don’t possess a uterus. And I don’t think they have a clue what a woman feels when she’s pregnant, or what she’s endured if she’s been brutally violated – let alone have any clue about menstrual cycles and the myriad reproductive health issues that can occur monthly or during a pregnancy.

So why the hell are politicians making laws governing women’s bodies?

If men were impregnated by a rapist or family member, would they happily accept Uncle Sam and society telling them they HAVE TO carry the pregnancy forward, NO EXCEPTIONS?

Why don’t these anti-choice politicians get off their high holy horse and stop fucking with women’s lives? They scream freedom and independence until it comes to controlling women. They don’t want freedom and independence for women? (or perhaps, only for the women in their families, but not poor and minority women?) Most of them are not doctors! And the few who are and who also endorse regulating women’s reproductive choices…well, they’re beneath comment.

Do these “pro-life” (mostly male) politicians know anything about women’s reproductive health?

Granted, probably a lot of us aren’t wholly familiar with the intricate details of female reproductive health and pregnancy, but the difference between everyday citizens and sanctimonious politicians is that the latter have publicly made morons of themselves by expounding on their “knowledge” of women.

Recall these lovely gems:

“From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist.”

~former Representative Todd Akin (R-MO), on pregnancy caused by rape. August 2012

“It [the new law] doesn’t require that [carrying a rapist’s baby to term] at all, because, obviously, it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion.”

~Texas Governor Greg Abbott, on being asked why a rape victim would have to carry a pregnancy to term. September 8, 2021

Gestation, as an ABC reporter recently clarified, is measured from a person’s last menstrual period, and ovulation – when a person can become pregnant – occurs about two weeks after that. So the new Texas Heartbeat Act, in reality, gives a person about four weeks after conception — or two weeks after a missed period — to confirm a pregnancy and book an appointment for an abortion within that tight timeframe.

Moreover, some victims of rape or incest are young and may not yet have a full understanding of or familiarity with their menstrual cycles to be able to so quickly identify a pregnancy.

Leave women alone, dammit! It’s their bodies, their lives. Especially leave them alone if you don’t support taxpayer-funded safety net programs to help these women raise their children. Allow me to indulge by reposting the following comment I take to heart:

“I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”

~Sister Joan Chittister, Benedictine nun, 2004

A woman’s body is hers alone. What’s her pregnancy and reproductive choice got to do with your lives, Mr./Ms. Anti-choice politician?

It’s not like pregnancy is a highly transmissible virus and an imminent threat to public health.

Her body, her choice.

Worry about your own morality and look in the mirror first, please, dear elected “pro-life” officials.


Sources

ABC News
CNN
Wikipedia
Planned Parenthood
Huffington Post – Todd Akin on Abortion: Legitimate Rape …
The Cut
NBC News
NPR
The Guardian
PoliticusUSA
Media Matters
Huffington Post – No, Virginia’s Governor Did Not Endorse Killing Babies

When One Congresswoman voted NO to Giving a Blank Check to a Forever War

Civics, General, Women,

Three days after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) cast the lone “no” vote on the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that the House of Represenatatives approved, 420 to 1.

Rep. Lee stood before her House colleagues and pleaded with them not to give President Bush a blank check to wage war against the remote, lawless nation (Afghanistan) accused of harboring the Sept. 11 terrorists.

“Let’s just pause, just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control,” she said to them days after the attacks.

One woman. Trying to reason with her colleagues not to decide hastily to give the president a blank check. Death threats and vilification followed for years. But her vote was also widely praised as an act of political courage.

She told the LA Times she has never wavered on her conviction that she was on the right side of history. “No way” she said in an interview when asked if she ever had second thoughts. “I did a lot of thinking about that. I talked to constitutional lawyers about that. I’m a person of faith. I prayed over that. And we’re humans, because we all make mistakes. So that’s the calculated risk whenever you cast a vote that may or may not be the sentiment of the majority. But no.”

She has lobbied for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to declare war by repealing the military authorization. She has become an antiwar crusader to bring U.S. troops home, pestering each new president to wind down the fighting.

Kudos to Rep. Barbara Lee! But what of her colleagues – her own party members in particular?

Did they really want to give the president a blank check to punish whomever he and his advisors thought were a threat to American national security? If they were on the fence, why didn’t they speak up like Rep. Lee? Were they too wrapped up in emotions as the rest of America likely was? Too blinded by emotions to think straight – at least to give some days’ pause to think things through as Rep. Lee advised?

Or did they know in their hearts she was right but too worried about keeping their seats and potentially the public backlash they’d likely receive? Granted, I imagine it’s much easier to conform under a national crisis. Yet Rep. Lee had the fortitude to speak publicly and vote NO.

We’ll never know; or maybe we the public might discover their real sentiments about that vote after some of those members retire and write a memoir to celebrate themselves.

This of course would be after U.S. lost thousands of lives, a ton of money, and an estimated tens of thousands of Afghan lives lost, ruined, or uprooted.

Specifically, official government data shows the war has cost the U.S. around $1trn. Between the fiscal years of 2002 and 2020, official counts of total military expenditure in Afghanistan by the US Department of Defense totalled $824bn; additionally, spending on reconstruction by various agencies including the state department came to $131bn.

Unofficial estimates, however, suggest the bill is much higher. The Costs of War project by researchers at Brown University in Rhode Island estimates that between 2001 and 2021 the war cost the US $2.26trn. Their estimate includes items in addition to those in the official tallies: the bill for operations in Pakistan, war debt and support supplied to veterans, which are excluded from official tallies.

Although the military evacuation of tens of thousands out of Afghanistan has ended, There is chatter of potentially more military (drone) strikes if safe passage of those still wanting to leave the country is threatened by militants, which would cost still more money and lives.

Regarding the cost of lives lost: on the U.S. side: 2,448 American service members have been killed in Afghanistan as of April 2021, according to data from Linda Bilmes of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and the Brown University Costs of War project, as reported by the Associated Press. An additional 3,846 U.S. contractors also lost their lives.

Oh wait…add 13 more service members from the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K (or IS-K,ISKP, ISK), attack last week.

On the Coalition side – the allies from three dozen countries.who helped the U.S. fight in Afghanistan, there have been an estimated 1,147 deaths (as of May 18, 2020).

And on the Afghan side, according to Wikipedia:

During the War in Afghanistan, over 47,245 civilians, 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan military and police and more than 51,000 Taliban fighters have been killed as of April 2021. Overall the war has killed 171,000 to 174,000 people in Afghanistan. However, the death toll is possibly higher due to unaccounted deaths by “disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war.”

The Cost of War project estimated that the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may be as high as 360,000 additional people based on a ratio of indirect to direct deaths in contemporary conflicts.

We can add about 170 more Afghan lives lost as of Thursday, August 26th, 2021, thanks to Isis-k, according to local Afghan health officials. Plus two Isis-k members, and nine members of a family – including six children, thanks to a drone strike by the United States on Sunday, August 29th.

Are there more? Even at this late stage of the war, I’ve had to make a bit of an effort to scroll the news to find the 170 figure; U.S. media mostly mentions only American lives lost in any U.S.-involved conflict, and rarely mentions lives lost on the other side — unless it’s the enemy, and less often, civilians. If foreign lives lost are mentioned at all, it’s just a blip way down in the article. If you want to find out about Afghan lives lost, you might have to turn to independent media or sources outside the U.S.; that’s been my reading experience, anyway.

At least some members of Congress seem to have regrown a bit of their spines back: on June 17th, 2021, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), a significant step to reassert congressional control over the executive branch’s military powers. But the vote does little to reduce the actual authority amassed by the White House over the past 20 years to use force all around the world.

That’s because a far more consequential piece of legislation, the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was passed just after the September 11 attacks, remains in place. Though the 2002 AUMF relates to the use of force in Iraq and has been rarely invoked in recent years, the 2001 law is the legal backbone for U.S. military action against what are deemed to be terrorist entities or threats in any country.

While Congress has not previously had an appetite to check the White House’s post-9/11 war powers, this bill to repeal the 2002 AUMF has been noted by many political observers as a potentially important shift in thinking. This bill to repeal the 2002 AUMF was introduced by none other than Rep. Barbara Lee. The bill, H.R. 256 secured 49 Republicans among its 268 votes to pass. The measure has also gotten the support of President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

And on August 4th, 2021, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted voted 18-14 to repeal both the 1991 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) with supporters saying it was long past time for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority to declare war. (no kidding?!)

The repeal action now moves to the full Senate for its expected approval, a decided change in sentiment from decades since the twin military campaigns in Iraq.

A little progress is better than no progress at all, yes?

Here’s a glimmer of hope: in mid-July, a bipartisan and ideologically diverse group of senators proposed a new bill that, if passed, would dramatically shift the relative amount of power the president and Congress have over U.S. military operations. The new bill sets out a clear definition of which military activities need to be reported to Congress and how quickly. This is especially important given the ambiguities – such as loopholes in the 1973 War Powers Resolution which attempted to constrain presidential power after the disasters of the Vietnam War – that prior administrations (and the present one) have exploited since then.

With the leadership and persistence of Rep. Barbara Lee, support from like-minded colleagues, and public sentiment against forever wars, perhaps we’ll see a bit more responsible behavior from our elected officials? Like repealing the 2001 AUMF and not giving a blank check to the president to wreak destruction around the world in our names?

I leave you with words from one of my favorite journalists:

The Taliban’s takeover of Kabul is being likened by many to the fall of Saigon. Before the Afghanistan War, there was the Vietnam War. And there were many other wars during and before Vietnam and Afghanistan that garnered less attention.

If there is a lesson that Americans as a nation ought to take away from these devastating militaristic exercises that consistently do more harm than good, it is to ensure we never again rally behind a desire to bomb, raid, occupy and militarily strike another nation.

This means standing up to the liberal and conservative establishments that find a detached comfort in the cold calculus of warfare with no concern for life, safety, or democracy.

~ Sonali Kolkatar, 8/19/21 Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal has many critics — but most are missing the point

Sources

Los Angeles Times
MSN
The Cut
BBC
New Statesman
The Conversation
Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs – Brown University
The Intercept
UPI
Congress.gov – H.R. 256
ABC
Newsweek
NY Mag
Wikipedia – Coalition casualties in Afghanistan
Wikipedia – Civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
Reuters
Alternet
The Independent

A Governor’s Sense of Entitlement & Disrespect for Women

General, Women, ,

Last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced he would resign amid allegations of sexual harrassment by 11 women. Another woman has come forward since then with similar allegations. According to an explosive investigation into the allegations by the New York Attorney General’s office, the governor’s office was a “hostile work environment for women” in which he sexually harassed several current and former employees over years.

For an elected leader who has seemingly prided himself on standing with women and signing into law important bills like the 2019 Reproductive Health Act, a key component of his 2019 Justice Agenda – as well as legislation in later that year to to beef up sexual harassment protections for women in the workplace. This is bad optics, at the very least, for an elected leader.

It’s good he decided to step down (though not for 14 days from the time he made the announcement), right?

According to the New York Attorney General office’s investigation report:

In an instance involving one of Cuomo’s unnamed executive assistants, the governor was found to have “reached under her blouse and grabbed her breast.”

The same woman also recounted a circumstance in which “the governor moved his hand to grab her butt cheek and began to rub it. The rubbing lasted at least five seconds.”

Governor Cuomo responded,

“I take full responsibility for my actions. I have been too familiar with people. My sense of humor can be insensitive and off-putting. I do hug and kiss people casually — women and men. I have done it all my life,” Cuomo said.

“In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone. But I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn,” he said. “And I should have. No excuses.”

Okay, so you’re a hug-and-kiss man, Governor; you say it’s what you’ve done all your life, what your parents taught you, what Italians do (kiss on both sides of the cheek). But apparently you don’t have a sense of boundaries – of when to stop making contact with others, like inappropriately touching women’s bodies without their consent.

All the good you have done for New Yorkers through signing of landmark laws for greater equality for women, workers, and the LGBTQ community, as well as guiding New York in the first weeks of the pandemic, will now be overshadowed by these serious allegations of sexual misconduct.

Publicly championing the rights of women and others doesn’t excuse your despicable behavior. Other men on the left have been called to accountability for sexual harassment or misconduct and resigned: former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman; former Senator Al Franken of Minnesota; and former Representative Anthony Weiner of New York, thanks to his sexting to multiple women – at least one who received an unsolicited photo of his junk and the same to a minor – for which he went to federal prison for 21 months and had to register as a sex offender. Those are just a few to name; how many others are there whose sense of entitlement and lack of respect for women caused harm to others?

Having political power does not entitle you to have limitless access to other people’s bodies to make you feel good, Governor Cuomo.

How do you think YOU would feel if a powerful elected official groped your wife, daughter, son, relative, or friend, or better yet – yourself, just because he (or she) felt like it?

And then you or your loved one are told by the perpetrator’s henchman (or henchwoman) to keep your trap door shut about the violation? And if you choose not to stay silent, your perpetrator publicly gaslights you by telling investigators that you processed what you heard through your own filter, and that it was “often not what was said and not what was meant”.

Y’know what Governor? There’s probably many other people who share your political beliefs who DO NOT inappropriately touch others without their permission or make lewd comments and who have the necessary experience and skills to run for office .

The same can be said for politicians on the right who have been accused of sexual misconduct, such as, of course – our former President “Grab them by the pussy” Trump, no less.

However, because you’ve championed women’s rights and signed laws to support more than half of America’s population, your actions are particularly egregious.

To my mind, the only way forward is for you to be held accountable for every complaint made against you. The women who have accused you of inappropriately touching them and making lewd comments to them deserve to be heard.

That’s 12 women who’ve now come forward. Are there more? The NY AG’s investigation interviewed 179 witnesses and reviewed 74,000 items including emails and texts. That sounds like they mean serious business.

“I do it with everyone,” you said in response to the testimony of one of the 11 women, Anna Ruch, who testified that she felt “distraught and uncomfortable” at a 2019 wedding party when you (whom she says had never met), cupped her face in your hands and said: “May I kiss you?”

As CNN’s Chris Cillizza observed, “‘I do it with everyone’ is an interesting defense of sexually inappropriate behavior.”

Sounds like disrespect toward Ms. Ruch to me. And entitlement – reaching out (literally!) to any young woman who strikes your fancy.

Reports have you responding to the accounts of your accusers with a potpourri of outright denial, appeals to failing memory, suggestions that the women had “misunderstood” your actions, and darker insinuations that they and the investigators were motivated by political or other animosity towards you.

Making defiant denials, gaslighting your accusers, and appealing to a myriad of excuses is not leadership.

I’m glad and relieved you stepped down. You’ve potentially left a painful mark on the lives of 12 women – something they’ll have to live with for the rest of their lives. They consented to do their jobs, not to be your plaything.

And to anyone dissing the governor’s accusers with lame comments like “the women just want the money” or “the women just want their 15 minutes of fame” or belittling them with name-calling, I ask you:

Just TRY imagining for a moment if someone in a position of power put their hands on your ass, your junk, or your breasts without your consent. Would you enjoy it? You’d have to live with that moment of violation forever.

Likewise, how do you think you’d feel if a powerful elected official violated your loved one? Would you start blaming your loved one for how she dressed or where she was? Or would you focus on the perpetrator and seek justice for your loved one?

Think about it.

Sources

MSN
State of New York, Office of the Attorney General
NBC
The New York Times
The Guardian
CNN
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo – The Reproductive Health Act
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo – Legislation to Protect the Rights of New York’s Working Men and Women
Wikipedia -Anthony Weiner
Salon
LegalMatch
News 12 Connecticut

Happy, Happy Juneteenth National Independence Day!

Civics, General, Social Justice, Women,

Can you believe it: Juneteenth (June 19th) – is finally a national holiday – a nationwide holiday commemorating the end of slavery?! Yay! Officially it is called Juneteenth National Independence Day and historically known as Jubilee Day, Black Independence Day, and Emancipation Day.

On Thursday, June 17th, 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bill that was passed by Congress to set aside Juneteenth, or June 19th, as a federal holiday. “I hope this is the beginning of a change in the way we deal with one another,” he said.

The Senate approved the bill unanimously; however, 14 House Republicans — many representing states that were part of the slave-holding Confederacy in the 19th century — opposed the measure. Fourteen white male Republicans.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states (that had seceded from the United States) “are, and henceforward shall be free” on January 1st,1863, it could not be enforced in many places until after the end of the Civil War in 1865. Places like Galveston, Texas, where slaves didn’t get word of their official emanicpation until a certain Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and his troops arrived at Galveston on June 19, 1865, with news that the war had ended and proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas. That was more than two months after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia.

The following year, the now-free people started celebrating Juneteenth in Galveston. Its observance has continued around the nation and the world since. It is celebrated with concerts, parades and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Now the rest of America has (officially) caught up. ‘Bout time!

Well, 14 House Republicans might still be living in the 19th century. Why didn’t they support the bill to make Juneteenth a national holiday?

Here’s a sampling of their mindset:

“We have enough federal holidays right now. I just don’t see the reason in doing it,” he said. “I don’t think it rises to the level I’m going to support it.”
– Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas

“Let’s call an ace an ace. This is an effort by the Left to create a day out of whole cloth to celebrate identity politics as part of its larger efforts to make Critical Race Theory the reigning ideology of our country. Since I believe in treating everyone equally, regardless of race, and that we should be focused on what unites us rather than our differences, I will vote no.”
– Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Montana

“I don’t believe it’s healthy to reach into the dead past, revive its most malevolent conflicts and reintroduce them into our age,”
– Rep. Tom McClintock, R-California

“Juneteenth should be commemorated as the expression of the realization of the end of slavery in the United States – and I commend those who worked for its passage. I could not vote for this bill, however, because the holiday should not be called ‘Juneteenth National Independence Day’ but rather, ‘Juneteenth National Emancipation (or Freedom or otherwise) Day.’  This name needlessly divides our nation on a matter that should instead bring us together by creating a separate Independence Day based on the color of one’s skin.”
– Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas

And Tom Tiffany, R-Wisconsin, told a tv station that House Democrats had “used their majority to balkanize our country and fuel separatism by creating a race-based ‘Independence Day.’”

Oh, for fuck’s sake! Get over your yourselves!

Race-based ‘Independence Day’?! No comment.

“We have enough federal holidays” – how much is too much, Rep. Jackson? How does Juneteenth not rise to your level, sir? WHAT is your level? Celebrating the end of slavery in America isn’t worth having an official day to remember?

“It’s not healthy to reach into the dead past”, Rep. McClintock? Is it healthier to keep your mind narrow and closed? Is it healthier to sweep the ugly and painful aspects of our history under the rug than to address and acknowledge past wrongs?

This isn’t about YOU.

Pooh on you!

You could learn a thing or two from Ms. Opal Lee, the 94-year-old activist from Fort Worth, Texas, who is oft-referred to as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth”. At age 89, Lee was determined to walk 1,400 miles from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington D.C. in an effort to create the holiday (she logged 300 miles) and spent years focused on this effort. She told a story to an online audience hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, that highlighted how far the nation has come, even as recent months have illustrated how far it still has to go on rights and inclusion.

When she was a child growing up in Texas – a week after nine-year-old Lee moved with her family to an all-White neighborhood – an all-white mob of about 500 surrounded the house, prompting her mother to send Lee to stay with friends. When her father showed up with a gun to protect his home, a local police officer said, in Lee’s telling to the online audience, “If you bust a cap, we’ll let the mob have you.”

Her parents slipped away when it got dark, and the mob tore the house apart and burned it, she said.

The date of the attack was Juneteenth.

“If those people had allowed us to stay in that community, they would have found that we were just like them. All we wanted was a decent place to stay, and my father had a job. My mom was working two,” said Lee. “That was all we wanted. We would have been good neighbors, but they didn’t give us the opportunity to show them that.”

Do those 14 people who voted NO on the bill to make Juneteenth a national holiday even have the slightest clue of the hate and pain that Opal Lee and her family had to endure for decades? Do they give a rat’s ass?

Ms. Lee’s determination and passion to make Juneteenth a holiday is incredibly inspiring to me and so many others. As a former educator whose job involved social work, Lee now strives to ensure future generations know about Juneteenth. She authored a children’s book entitled, “Juneteenth: A Children’s Story” (which I just now learned as I am writing and researching this post).

Lee told her online audience that what’s important is to continue to seek equality and push back when fairness and equality are denied, as with the recent spate of legislation to restrict voting rights and bar some public school teaching on racism:

“We are going to soldier on. We are not going to let those kinds of things stop us from getting over to our children what they need to know.”

Days before she witnessed Congress pass a bill to make Juneteenth a nationwide holiday commemorating the end of slavery, she told CNN:

“I’m not just going to sit and rock, you know?”

Hear hear!

Sources

PBS
CNBC
National Archives
Wikipedia – Emancipation Proclamation
Crosscut
Mvorganizing.org
NPR
USA Today – Juneteenth 2021 celebrations: What to know about the holiday
Wikipedia – Juneteenth
CNN
The Harvard Gazette
MSN
USA Today – Who are the 14 House Republicans who voted against a Juneteenth holiday? And why?
The New York Times

Get the Hell OUT of Women’s Wombs, Uncle Sam

Civics, General, Women,

This headline caught my attention the other day:

Texas high school valedictorian scraps approved speech — and speaks out on new anti-abortion law

On May 30th, 2021, at Lake Highlands High School’s graduation in Dallas, TX, Paxton Smith scrapped her valedictory address – which had been approved by school officials – and told her audience it felt wrong to her “to talk about anything but what is currently affecting me and millions of other women in this state.”

She said:

I have dreams, hopes, and ambitions. Every girl here does. We have spent our whole lives working towards our futures, and without our consent or input, our control over our futures has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail me, that if I’m raped, then my hopes and efforts and dreams for myself will no longer be relevant. I hope you can feel how gut-wrenching it is, how dehumanizing it is, to have the autonomy over your own body taken from you.”

WOW!

Ms. Smith has got guts. And a strong sense of self-confidence, to scrap her school official-approved speech and instead speak publicly and passionately about women’s reproductive health and how the new anti-abortion law signed by her governor could affect her and millions of other women.

The Texas law – one of the nation’s strictist abortion measures – outlaws ending a pregnancy as early as six weeks, before many women are even aware they are pregnant, and after a “fetal heartbeat” has been detected. It includes cases where the woman was impregnated as a result of rape or incest. There is an exception for medical emergencies.

Similar “heartbeat” bills have been passed by other states and held up by the courts, but Texas’ version has a twist, notes the Texas Tribune.

Instead of having the government enforce the law, the bill turns the reins over to private citizens — who are newly empowered to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion after a fetal heartbeat has been detected. The person would not have to be connected to someone who had an abortion or to a provider to sue.

WTF?!

It is yet another so-called “fetal heartbeat” measure, which medical experts say is a scientifically misleading phrase. Why?

Because pulsing cells can be detected in embryos as early as six weeks, this rhythm — detected by a doctor, via ultrasound — cannot be called a “heartbeat,” because embryos don’t have hearts.

Obstetricians say the term “fetal heartbeat” is misleading, and that this scientific misunderstanding, among countless others, may contribute to negative public opinion toward abortion, reports The Cut.

Robyn Schickler, OB/GYN and Physicians for Reproductive Health fellow explained to The Cut that what is detectable at or around six weeks can more accurately be called “cardiac activity”. She and others argue that what doctors can detect is essentially communication between a group of what will eventually become cardiac cells.

Jennifer Kerns, an OB/GYN and professor at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF), added:

These are cells that are programmed with electrical activity, which will eventually control the heart rate — they send a signal telling the heart to contract, once there is a heart. It is this early activity which ultrasounds detect — not a heartbeat.

Electrical activity from a cluster of pulsing CELLS. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you anti-choice, anti-science lawmakers!

Nationally, according to a report the Planned Parenthood Federation of America released in March 2021, legislation limiting abortion in 2021 has skyrocketed in comparison to a similar time frame in 2019. Compared to bills introduced from January through mid-March 2019, medication abortion restrictions and bans have tripled to 33, anti-abortion constitutional amendments have tripled to 14. Compared to just one abortion restriction enacted by this point in 2019, 12 have been enacted so far this year by states.

Overall, state legislatures have introduced 516 abortion restrictions, compared to 304 by mid-March 2019.

Why are politicians so hell-bent on policing women’s bodies?

Mr. or Ms. Politician, you’re not being “pro-life” when you consider only the fetus, not giving a flying fig about a pregnant woman’s life and moreover cutting social safety net services like SNAP and Medicaid. You’re just reducing the woman to a mere baby vessel. “Pro-birth” is more accurate, I think.

Would you, Mr. or Ms. Politician, savor the idea of having the government intrude on your private doctor visits? Of course not! Only if it involves someone else, right? (like someone female, and especially someone female and a minority?) You like government so small it can fit into a woman’s womb?

Get the hell OUT of my and other women’s wombs. You don’t belong there. What’s next? A government minder in the room during an exam of your wife/mother/sister/friend because you don’t trust the women in your life or her doctor?

How would you feel if politicians wanted to intrude on you or your husband/father/brother/friend’s doctor-patient relationship in some way – such as a law dictating a doctor had to report to the state when a man has a vasectomy – including reporting if the man refused to do so if forced by the state; and also a law wherein a doctor has to report each time a patient is prescribed erectile dysfunction medication or testoserone and testosterone-enhancing drugs? Or a law rebooted from the not-too-distant-past that essentially says you need sterilization because of who you are, e.g., a minority, a low-income earner, someone with a criminal record, etc.?

Would you not dread the state knowing about your or your loved one’s junk business?

Politicians wouldn’t care at all about your junk or that of the men in your family any more than they care about pregnant women’s lives, regardless of their circumstances. Privacy and respect be damned! You’re just another sperm bank or baby vessel who needs oversight from unseen, holier-than-thou lawmakers who don’t trust you to think for yourself, let alone believe you deserve the freedom to have bodily autonomy!

I hope millions upon millions of women will take inspiration from young Paxton Smith and mobilize against these intrusive, restrictive, and dehumanizing laws against women.

I hope that her generation will become an undeniable force to be reckoned with in making these sorts of laws completely unacceptable, disgusting, and horrific to society – making anti-choice measures ancient history – a notion dreamed up by barbarian minds consumed with controlling women’s bodies and their lives.

And I fervently hope that Ms. Smith’s generation – of all genders – will be the one that permanently and legally enables all women – here in the USA and around the globe, to live freely without fear of government interference into their private health matters forevermore. That would be an incredible achievement to materialize in my lifetime.

I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.

~Sister Joan Chittister, Benedictine nun, 2004

Sources

Alternet
Common Dreams
HuffPost
Popsugar
Berkeley Political Review
ThoughtCo.
Mic.com
PBS
Texas Tribune
NPR
Planned Parenthood
Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF)
The Cut
Wired

When Asian American Lives Don’t Matter

Social Justice, Women,

I have a story to tell you on this first day of April:

A 65-year-old Asian American woman fell on Monday, March 29, 2021, near Times Square in New York City because a man passed by in a hurry and accidentally knocked her over.

At least a few bystanders happened to witness her fall in the Heaven’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, according to police, who released the video in an appeal for help identifying the careless man.

The woman was headed to church when the man knocked her down. The witnesses – lobby staffers at the apartment building where the incident occurred outside its doors – stopped being bystanders and rushed out to help the woman. They sat her down in the lobby of the apartment building she was in front of, offered her tea. One even ran down the street to bring her flowers. They didn’t let her leave until they felt she was calm and well enough to walk on her on.

Ain’t that sweet of them?!

The Asian American woman went on her way to church and only suffered minor bruises and bumps.

The. End.

If you believe that story, then you’ve been living under a rock.

That was my brief fantasy version of an event this past Monday, March 29th.

No, the real story is that the 65-year-old Asian American woman, identified by police as Vilma Kari, was violently attacked in broad daylight near Times Square on Monday by a man who knocked her to the ground and started furiously kicking her head, allegedly shouting, “Fuck you, you don’t belong here” at her.

According to video released by the NYPD that showed the horrific attack, there were at least three bystanders in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. Who did NOTHING. Nada. Just stood around. The video showed a few passing cars as well that did not stop. Two of those bystanders were building security personnel of the apartment building where Ms. Kari was attacked outside its doors.

So much for security, eh?

Three men versus one attacker…surely they had a chance to stop him? At least scare him away? But who wants to get involved in helping an Asian woman being brutally attacked?

Apparently, no one.

She could have been my mother, auntie, sister, or a friend.

Or yours.

Now the public finds out that the suspect, identified by police as Brandon Elliot, served 17 years in state prison for stabbing his mother to death in 2002 and that he was released on lifetime parole in November 2019. He’s been charged with “two counts of assault as a hate crime and one count each of attempted assault as a hate crime, assault and attempted assault,” according to local news.

Mr. Elliot looks to be a BIG man in the video. He. Kicked. Her. Head. Furiously and repeatedly.

Are there any words for this?! Yet another attack on the Asian American community.

And the “security” personnel didn’t do a damn thing. Just stood by and watched. Didn’t even try to help her, let alone call 911 for help. Did they enjoy watching Mr. Elliot viciously kick Ms. Kari in the head? Were they scared he’d beat the shit out of them if they got involved? What sticks out is that they made no effort whatsoever to intervene.

Cowards.

Ms. Kari was taken to the hospital, where doctors found she had a fractured pelvis and contusions to the head, according to WABC TV.

“The victim sustained a serious physical injury and was removed by EMS to NYU Langone Hospital,” and is stable, the police said.

I feel so bad for Ms. Kari and her family. I hope she will recover — physically and emotionally — and not suffer too badly from this horrible crime. She was attacked for being who she was. She did absolutely nothing wrong.

When will this anti-Asian hatred end?

I don’t know. But I say to the bullies like Mr. Elliot who scream “You don’t belong here”: take your poison to the nearest toxic waste dump where it belongs, please. Go to your local public library and read a history book about Asian Americans. Turn your brain back on instead of being a radioactive asshole. A fucking pariah to your community. To America.

Peace.

Sources

The Post Millennial
The New York Post
CNN
MSN
Independent
CBS