The US Right hates women. It hates women who are mothers. It hates women who want to be mothers. It hates women who don’t want to be mothers. It hates women desperately trying to become mothers (watch them come for IVF). It hates women who want to work and be a mother but it does nothing to support them if they want to stay home.
It's not just the US right. It's men. I almost feel as if I've been q-anon radicalized as I find myself creating my own media ecosystem of feminist reporting, but they do report the facts. Men hate women. Even liberal ones have such deep seated biases they have to be shaken out.
It's so strange to see men speaking to men and boys online and then see women speaking to women and girls online. It's like watching two distinct realities.
Men: These bitches won't give you sex unless you are at least six feet tall, make six figures, and have a six pack! Let's humiliate them culturally and diminish their citizenship politically! Make them have sex with us!
Married mothers: He promised me we would be a team when we got married and when we were trying to get pregnant. We brought our baby home and he let me down in every possible way. He isn't a partner. He sees me as an appliance and swings his dick around like a sceptor. Please get a job and a house. Please don't rely on men. Think hard about getting married and having babies - it can trap you. Vote!
I feel good about our chances to dingus-dig deeper into this particular topic soon, but this week's affirmation of Welcome To Crazytown: Population You! was the three university presidents, all women and at least one Jewish, being grilled by a MAGA congresswoman for being insufficiently anti-anti-semite. Talk about shots fired... tell me any of that happens if those presidents are white men.
Being a woman and parent in America is like being trapped in a house that’s on fire. You can look out the window and scream all you want but no one is coming. That’s what it feels like at least.
It’s telling how liked this comment is. I’m not a mother, but I’m a disabled woman living with another disabled person, and you have concisely summed up my feelings. Watch out-if someone comes, it might be to involuntarily commit you for screaming.
I never wanted to have kids. I’m one of “those.” But, I decided with my ex that I should try so I can say I tried and never have any regrets. As I suffered through IVF, my ex couldn’t even be bothered to help me with my shots. He joked he would never change diapers. I knew he wasn’t joking and just like our life, I knew that if we had children, I would do most of the work, continue to take care of the house, but he would always have “me-time,” because he was so tired from work. While he was so tired from work, I was a software executive making twice his annual salary, and constantly on the road. When I miscarried, I woke up in the hospital after a surgery. I was so relieved. I had never been so relieved in my life. Not only did I no longer have the 6 months straight of crushing nausea, pain and discomfort, I knew I was right about not wanting kids. I also knew he definitely wasn’t right for me and I was so grateful. My story isn’t like some and I’m thankful for being able to get the medical care I needed, when I needed it, without being punished. I also recognize the great privilege I had with my care and accessibility. Having said that, in spite of all that, I was still just as “responsible,” for earning a paycheck, changing the diapers, and cleaning the house, so he could enjoy his “me-time.”
My sister had a conversation with her partner shortly after they moved into together. She was almost 32 at the time. She said if he wanted kids that was fine, she would do the whole pregnancy thing. But then it would be on him, he would be the primary carer. She would go back to her high paying & demanding job.
I’m in awe of your clarity. Thank you for sharing. More women need to say things like this - and break down this terrible stigma of women who choose not to have kids. I’m a mom of 3, don’t regret it at all as it was by choice and I have a good, very supportive partner. But wow, I wish more women were talking about the possibility of a life sans kids, which was just NOT part of the ethos 24 years ago.
I truly appreciate your comment, Courtney. It took me a long time to so openly share my story because of the stigma you described, but I'm so glad it resonated for you. I also hope that my story will give someone else the courage to do what is best for them and not be pressured into living a life that leaves them asking "what if."
I think most women - kids or no kids - have the “what if” thoughts. It’s the human condition! And while most mothers don’t express regret about having children, the ones that DO firmly park their shame in the psyches of their children. I know, I’m one of those kids.
"A recent US Treasury report shows more than 60 percent of American families cannot afford childcare.. "
I believe it. At one point, we were paying more for daycare than we were for our mortgage--and we were getting a "volume discount" (my term) for having both boys there at the same time. We barely made it through, and my wife and I both had what most would consider well-paying jobs at the time. I can't imagine how people do it today.
And I can't imagine why more companies don't offer on-site daycare. I know it's easier said than done but if nothing else it seems like it would go a LONG way toward attracting talent/retaining workers.
Yes, absolutely. We're not thinking about this using billionaire logic, though: corporate endeavors get terrific amounts of welfare via state and local governments, that's helpful, and the tax code indemnifies against (some might say encourages) losses. The only pesky expense remaining is personnel. The last thing an employer should do in this environment is encourage anyone to stick around.
I work at a public college in a Florida-adjacent state (this is geographically and spiritually true). Like many educational institutions, my employer runs its academic calendar parallel to the local public school system, because duh. Nonetheless, the call for on-campus daycare has been raised and flatly ignored for reasons that make sense only to the above billionaires, despite early childhood education being the college's leading major. Of course, this is the same institution that remains solvent only by committing to unfilled vacancies and allowing the lapsed salary dollars to trickle into empty coffers in non-personnel lines. We are incentivized to keep jobs open in that technical sense only. And why do I prattle on in this manner today...? The surviving employees here end up getting paid the same puny wages for performing two or even three FTE position's duties and (wait for it) what's left of our workforce is 3/4 women, including faculty instructors. As Lyz and others have pointed, these are very much privileged women, especially compared to their neighbors in this county. The benefits such as they are may exist, but no one has any bandwidth for medical care. They're too busy doing multiple jobs AND jitney-ing their kids to daycare et al. Living the dream! "At least we're not Texas" isn't the compliment that administrators and legislators believe it to be (most of them men, many of whom aspire to that standard of legal oppression, of course).
My sister is a licensed school counselor. She has been a childcare worker at her daughter’s daycare for 5 years and she’s their longest term employee. They offeeed her free childcare through a grant they got during the pandemic and she still gets 50% discount now. I know they paid her more because she had her masters and because of the longevity but seeing her experience shows me how much companies could benefit from having daycare present.
We are a dual income family and I’m still counting down the days until my youngest gets out of daycare next fall. We were told they weren’t going to raise tuition this January and I’m very grateful for that.
I’m new here. We know these laws are first about White men being able to control White women. They want to be able to keep them at home tending to them and their children. They will insist on “other” women working, and they don’t care about who attends to their kids.
These laws are always written about “how the Pro-Life movement or Republicans or Men are doing X to women” and of course “how poor and black women suffer more” and lastly “here’s a white women who like you and look what these bad men did to her”.
I have yet seen the “White women who support laws that hurt other women” article. There are plenty of “other” women who would never have an abortion but you never see them screaming at women outside of clinics or lying to desperate women looking for abortions but offering adoption.
I guess I’m just tired of- so tired of talking around how we got here and not holding people accountable (in the vocal/written/civil sense) of their actions. We would not be here if White women didn’t support these measures. Yet we talk about them like they are also victims and not sentient beings.
We talk about MAGA as a cult - are these White women in a Pro-Life conservative cult too. Is belonging to their family circle more important than having their own agency? Do they give a shit when other women die, are prosecuted in unjust laws they elected people to write? They are truly the key to ending this madness but they people who could make the most difference with them, don’t want to upset the Apple cart. If it were my sister, aunt, granny - I’d talk to them often and take them to the polls with me.
Thank you. We lost the ERA battle in the early '80s because white women married to state legislators (there were almost no women in state legislatures 40 years ago) told their husbands to vote no. The men, frankly, didn't give a damn one way or the other. Take a good look at the photos of public protests against abortion. Men know when to fold to keep peace in the house. Guns, yes. Abortion? Whatever makes you happy, dear.
I think you described the problem with white women perfectly. It's part of the greater issue, right? It's the danger of white feminism that still holds up the patriarchy. Because they still benefit from being white man adjacent, [we] still haven't experienced enough to take care of other women. Yet. Our day will come, for sure. I say "we," as a white Latinx Cis woman. I think you may also be right as a sort of pro-life conservative cult. They don't think it can happen to them - look at the Duggars for crying out loud. It was her white woman tears that got the story - not the struggle of all the women, especially the black and brown ones that are suffering and dying at disproportionate rates.
This is all true and infuriating. I wanted to add one more point: having a child can medically bankrupt you. God forbid you have a complicated or high-risk pregnancy. Even if you have a straightforward pregnancy, you might be assigned a doctor your insurance doesn't cover, out-of-network procedure, etc. It's hard to follow when you're well, impossible when sick. Given our healthcare system, a parent might lose all their money and slide into bankruptcy just bringing the child into the world. What kind of a gamble is this? Who would willingly expose themselves to the Russian roulette of losing all their money? But that's just what we expects moms to do! And god forbid you complain about this specter of doom hanging over your head - we expect you to just be grateful because you and your child survive. It's another layer in the terrible burden you lay out above.
LOL. If a mom speaks out against structural issues, she's labeled ungrateful, selfish, focused on the wrong thing. Or, victim-blamed for having the audacity to exist in a way that incurs medical bills.
One of the families I know who've declared bankruptcy because of medical debt did so because of the cost of infertility treatments and then the cost of carrying and birthing twins and just never being able to catch up and dig out of that.
The chatter in the Texas subreddit since the Kate Cox story began has been how many women and men (particularly college-educated, well-off women and men) are going to leave the state due to its draconian abortion ban. That's not to mention the anti-LGBTQ and anti-educator policies.
It's me. I'm one. My partner and I are looking to get out before I get pregnant. And I suspect it will take a few years before we know just how damaging these policies have been to red states. The brain drain is coming (if it's not already here).
I'm a TX resident, my entire extended family has lived here for 30+ years, many of them double that. And my husband and I briefly lived elsewhere and moved back. I just want to "yes and" your statement, that it's also a privilege to have the means to leave - not only financially, but being able to find jobs, potentially leaving support systems, etc.
My daughter is applying to colleges this year and is immediately throwing out any info from any university in Texas, Florida, or any other state with draconian abortion and lgbtqa+ laws. Many other high school seniors are doing the same.
The machines behind Abbott (school vouchers) and Paxton (lege impeachment blowback) are jumping into GOP primaries in all levels of state government to push them further right. Press your advantage et al is working very well at a national level, too, as the TX delegation to the House is leading the push to tie Ukraine aid to making Biden's border policies even worse. Now imagine being pregnant and stalled in El Paso or wherever in your efforts to enter the US -- what care options does she have? The entire political conversation is nakedly white male hegemony (we have seen enough naked white male hegemonies, thank you) now and there's no room to move the talking points. I don't miss living in Texas in the least but it's frightening how similar the cultural premises are in too many other states.
That said, despair is cheap. Community is priceless -- let's all continue to find and grow ours so we can push back effectively. Thanks as ever for the conversation here. I learn a lot from you all.
My rage over this is huge and I'm not always sure where to put it, what to do. I contribute to abortion access funds. I make sure my kids and all of their friends know I will do anything to help if they are ever pregnant and do not want to be. I share articles and this newsletter. And still I feel like I am just screaming into the dark. It's very bleak.
It feels wrong to hit the ❤️ button on this article for all the reasons you so eloquently describe that this country and the media are missing the forest for the trees in covering women’s access to healthcare and maternal mortality. Thanks for putting these issues into such thoughtful cohesion. I just wish the war on women wasn’t going so well.
This is my fear, too. I’m glad she was able to get medical care in another state, but am afraid of what will happen to her and her family when they return. Paxton is Satan in a skin suit and Christmas wish is that he go back to where he came from.
They have more housing for the unhoused in Houston due to their crazy lack of zoning laws (also contributing to their famous sprawl). I said it: the one good single thing about Texas.
That's not exactly right. The bounty law only applies to people who "aids or abets" someone in obtaining an abortion. The first test case was also thrown out for lack of standing.
The neighbor could go after anyone who helped her; I don't know what that will mean for anyone who so much as drove her to the airport. But it also doesn't mean they will be successful.
Yes, the Texas courts got Kate Cox to beg for her life, and then had the fun of telling her no. And then they had the further ton of twisting the law around and telling the doctors that it was all THEIR fault because the law never SAID doctors couldn't make exceptions, only, of course, if they make a BAD judgment the courts will pursue criminal charges that could send doctors to prison for life.
This may be the worst lottery in the world, and Texas - and all the absolute ban states - want all pregnant women and their doctors to ride it.
What honestly baffles me as a man is that we have all of these stories of terrible things happening to women in red states, and yet there are still people making a “case” for marrying people who vote for these same draconian laws.
True, I mainly focused on red states because it seemed to me like most of the recent marry for the sake of marriage articles were focused on conservative men
Yesterday, Trae Crowder referred to Texas as Howdy Arabia, and then said that’s actually an insult to Saudi Arabia. Texass shall henceforth be known as Howdy Arabia.
This is a glib comment, but like Asha, I so often feel like I’m screaming into the void... if I don’t archly apply some dark humor, I’ll just cry all the time.
It goes one layer deeper than the political: doctors who do not perform abortions. By fencing off pregnancy terminations into their own category rather than considering them just one part of women’s health care, the US medical establishment perpetuates this injustice.
“Perpetuates” because abortion technique is no longer part of medical training for doctors, and has become minimal for ob-gyns. And then they have next to no opportunity to practice. (would you want your appendix removed by a doctor who read about the procedure in a book 15 years ago, and just maybe watched an operation once? I thought not.)
That is what has been going on over the past decades of political squabble over abortion. It’s criminal neglect.
Even if the laws changed next week, there are not enough competent medical practitioners to make pregnancy terminations and abortion care a routine and easily obtainable medical service.
The strongest predictor of a successful/uncomplicated outcome is the number of procedures that a doctor has performed. If you had to choose a doctor for a procedure and you could only ask one question it should be "how many of these have you performed?"
I have a lot of support in 2 sets of local grandparents (albeit who all work full time) and a childcare facility we have utilized since 2019. Thankfully my 7 yo had the first more “Normal” year of elementary school since the pandemic began. Yesterday we got a notice that the class below my 4 yo’s is closing in January because they haven’t been able to find more than 1 permanent teacher in 6 months. The childcare shortage never recovered. I am incredibly thankful our placement isn’t threatened but the class was fully enrolled and those kids are being asked to move to the sister school. We started at the other school and I’m glad those parents have those options but if my kid had been born literally 2 months later this would’ve affected me, he wouldn’t have been in preK now.
And this is a lower level problem compared to the women who are forced to have babies or criminalized for the death of their babies. I love being my kids’ mother and I will never love being a mother in the US.
The US Right hates women. It hates women who are mothers. It hates women who want to be mothers. It hates women who don’t want to be mothers. It hates women desperately trying to become mothers (watch them come for IVF). It hates women who want to work and be a mother but it does nothing to support them if they want to stay home.
They just hate women.
It's not just the US right. It's men. I almost feel as if I've been q-anon radicalized as I find myself creating my own media ecosystem of feminist reporting, but they do report the facts. Men hate women. Even liberal ones have such deep seated biases they have to be shaken out.
It's so strange to see men speaking to men and boys online and then see women speaking to women and girls online. It's like watching two distinct realities.
Men: These bitches won't give you sex unless you are at least six feet tall, make six figures, and have a six pack! Let's humiliate them culturally and diminish their citizenship politically! Make them have sex with us!
Married mothers: He promised me we would be a team when we got married and when we were trying to get pregnant. We brought our baby home and he let me down in every possible way. He isn't a partner. He sees me as an appliance and swings his dick around like a sceptor. Please get a job and a house. Please don't rely on men. Think hard about getting married and having babies - it can trap you. Vote!
It’s true. Nobody wants to say it, but it’s true.
I feel good about our chances to dingus-dig deeper into this particular topic soon, but this week's affirmation of Welcome To Crazytown: Population You! was the three university presidents, all women and at least one Jewish, being grilled by a MAGA congresswoman for being insufficiently anti-anti-semite. Talk about shots fired... tell me any of that happens if those presidents are white men.
Was thinking same.
Being a woman and parent in America is like being trapped in a house that’s on fire. You can look out the window and scream all you want but no one is coming. That’s what it feels like at least.
It’s telling how liked this comment is. I’m not a mother, but I’m a disabled woman living with another disabled person, and you have concisely summed up my feelings. Watch out-if someone comes, it might be to involuntarily commit you for screaming.
I never wanted to have kids. I’m one of “those.” But, I decided with my ex that I should try so I can say I tried and never have any regrets. As I suffered through IVF, my ex couldn’t even be bothered to help me with my shots. He joked he would never change diapers. I knew he wasn’t joking and just like our life, I knew that if we had children, I would do most of the work, continue to take care of the house, but he would always have “me-time,” because he was so tired from work. While he was so tired from work, I was a software executive making twice his annual salary, and constantly on the road. When I miscarried, I woke up in the hospital after a surgery. I was so relieved. I had never been so relieved in my life. Not only did I no longer have the 6 months straight of crushing nausea, pain and discomfort, I knew I was right about not wanting kids. I also knew he definitely wasn’t right for me and I was so grateful. My story isn’t like some and I’m thankful for being able to get the medical care I needed, when I needed it, without being punished. I also recognize the great privilege I had with my care and accessibility. Having said that, in spite of all that, I was still just as “responsible,” for earning a paycheck, changing the diapers, and cleaning the house, so he could enjoy his “me-time.”
My sister had a conversation with her partner shortly after they moved into together. She was almost 32 at the time. She said if he wanted kids that was fine, she would do the whole pregnancy thing. But then it would be on him, he would be the primary carer. She would go back to her high paying & demanding job.
So they don’t have kids 😂
GOOD FOR HER!
I’m in awe of your clarity. Thank you for sharing. More women need to say things like this - and break down this terrible stigma of women who choose not to have kids. I’m a mom of 3, don’t regret it at all as it was by choice and I have a good, very supportive partner. But wow, I wish more women were talking about the possibility of a life sans kids, which was just NOT part of the ethos 24 years ago.
I truly appreciate your comment, Courtney. It took me a long time to so openly share my story because of the stigma you described, but I'm so glad it resonated for you. I also hope that my story will give someone else the courage to do what is best for them and not be pressured into living a life that leaves them asking "what if."
I think most women - kids or no kids - have the “what if” thoughts. It’s the human condition! And while most mothers don’t express regret about having children, the ones that DO firmly park their shame in the psyches of their children. I know, I’m one of those kids.
Oof that sounds so hard. I'm so sorry, Courtney <3
I'm glad you were able to see it, so you can show up differently, to your littles. <3
“Women are already dying, but they’re the lives we are okay with overlooking.”
I cried into my oatmeal.
❤️
"A recent US Treasury report shows more than 60 percent of American families cannot afford childcare.. "
I believe it. At one point, we were paying more for daycare than we were for our mortgage--and we were getting a "volume discount" (my term) for having both boys there at the same time. We barely made it through, and my wife and I both had what most would consider well-paying jobs at the time. I can't imagine how people do it today.
And I can't imagine why more companies don't offer on-site daycare. I know it's easier said than done but if nothing else it seems like it would go a LONG way toward attracting talent/retaining workers.
Yes, absolutely. We're not thinking about this using billionaire logic, though: corporate endeavors get terrific amounts of welfare via state and local governments, that's helpful, and the tax code indemnifies against (some might say encourages) losses. The only pesky expense remaining is personnel. The last thing an employer should do in this environment is encourage anyone to stick around.
I work at a public college in a Florida-adjacent state (this is geographically and spiritually true). Like many educational institutions, my employer runs its academic calendar parallel to the local public school system, because duh. Nonetheless, the call for on-campus daycare has been raised and flatly ignored for reasons that make sense only to the above billionaires, despite early childhood education being the college's leading major. Of course, this is the same institution that remains solvent only by committing to unfilled vacancies and allowing the lapsed salary dollars to trickle into empty coffers in non-personnel lines. We are incentivized to keep jobs open in that technical sense only. And why do I prattle on in this manner today...? The surviving employees here end up getting paid the same puny wages for performing two or even three FTE position's duties and (wait for it) what's left of our workforce is 3/4 women, including faculty instructors. As Lyz and others have pointed, these are very much privileged women, especially compared to their neighbors in this county. The benefits such as they are may exist, but no one has any bandwidth for medical care. They're too busy doing multiple jobs AND jitney-ing their kids to daycare et al. Living the dream! "At least we're not Texas" isn't the compliment that administrators and legislators believe it to be (most of them men, many of whom aspire to that standard of legal oppression, of course).
My sister is a licensed school counselor. She has been a childcare worker at her daughter’s daycare for 5 years and she’s their longest term employee. They offeeed her free childcare through a grant they got during the pandemic and she still gets 50% discount now. I know they paid her more because she had her masters and because of the longevity but seeing her experience shows me how much companies could benefit from having daycare present.
We are a dual income family and I’m still counting down the days until my youngest gets out of daycare next fall. We were told they weren’t going to raise tuition this January and I’m very grateful for that.
I’m new here. We know these laws are first about White men being able to control White women. They want to be able to keep them at home tending to them and their children. They will insist on “other” women working, and they don’t care about who attends to their kids.
These laws are always written about “how the Pro-Life movement or Republicans or Men are doing X to women” and of course “how poor and black women suffer more” and lastly “here’s a white women who like you and look what these bad men did to her”.
I have yet seen the “White women who support laws that hurt other women” article. There are plenty of “other” women who would never have an abortion but you never see them screaming at women outside of clinics or lying to desperate women looking for abortions but offering adoption.
I guess I’m just tired of- so tired of talking around how we got here and not holding people accountable (in the vocal/written/civil sense) of their actions. We would not be here if White women didn’t support these measures. Yet we talk about them like they are also victims and not sentient beings.
We talk about MAGA as a cult - are these White women in a Pro-Life conservative cult too. Is belonging to their family circle more important than having their own agency? Do they give a shit when other women die, are prosecuted in unjust laws they elected people to write? They are truly the key to ending this madness but they people who could make the most difference with them, don’t want to upset the Apple cart. If it were my sister, aunt, granny - I’d talk to them often and take them to the polls with me.
This is a great point and many many books have been written on this topic especially recently
Thank you. We lost the ERA battle in the early '80s because white women married to state legislators (there were almost no women in state legislatures 40 years ago) told their husbands to vote no. The men, frankly, didn't give a damn one way or the other. Take a good look at the photos of public protests against abortion. Men know when to fold to keep peace in the house. Guns, yes. Abortion? Whatever makes you happy, dear.
I think you described the problem with white women perfectly. It's part of the greater issue, right? It's the danger of white feminism that still holds up the patriarchy. Because they still benefit from being white man adjacent, [we] still haven't experienced enough to take care of other women. Yet. Our day will come, for sure. I say "we," as a white Latinx Cis woman. I think you may also be right as a sort of pro-life conservative cult. They don't think it can happen to them - look at the Duggars for crying out loud. It was her white woman tears that got the story - not the struggle of all the women, especially the black and brown ones that are suffering and dying at disproportionate rates.
This is all true and infuriating. I wanted to add one more point: having a child can medically bankrupt you. God forbid you have a complicated or high-risk pregnancy. Even if you have a straightforward pregnancy, you might be assigned a doctor your insurance doesn't cover, out-of-network procedure, etc. It's hard to follow when you're well, impossible when sick. Given our healthcare system, a parent might lose all their money and slide into bankruptcy just bringing the child into the world. What kind of a gamble is this? Who would willingly expose themselves to the Russian roulette of losing all their money? But that's just what we expects moms to do! And god forbid you complain about this specter of doom hanging over your head - we expect you to just be grateful because you and your child survive. It's another layer in the terrible burden you lay out above.
Yup, yup, all true. Completely disgusting, and why aren’t the GOP talking about THAT? “Pro-family” … except when they’re not.
LOL. If a mom speaks out against structural issues, she's labeled ungrateful, selfish, focused on the wrong thing. Or, victim-blamed for having the audacity to exist in a way that incurs medical bills.
One of the families I know who've declared bankruptcy because of medical debt did so because of the cost of infertility treatments and then the cost of carrying and birthing twins and just never being able to catch up and dig out of that.
The chatter in the Texas subreddit since the Kate Cox story began has been how many women and men (particularly college-educated, well-off women and men) are going to leave the state due to its draconian abortion ban. That's not to mention the anti-LGBTQ and anti-educator policies.
It's me. I'm one. My partner and I are looking to get out before I get pregnant. And I suspect it will take a few years before we know just how damaging these policies have been to red states. The brain drain is coming (if it's not already here).
I'm a TX resident, my entire extended family has lived here for 30+ years, many of them double that. And my husband and I briefly lived elsewhere and moved back. I just want to "yes and" your statement, that it's also a privilege to have the means to leave - not only financially, but being able to find jobs, potentially leaving support systems, etc.
For sure and it's heartbreaking that so many will not be able to leave.
My daughter is applying to colleges this year and is immediately throwing out any info from any university in Texas, Florida, or any other state with draconian abortion and lgbtqa+ laws. Many other high school seniors are doing the same.
It's heartbreaking. I'm from TX originally and I still have lots of friends and family there. It's like, at what point is too much?
"Too much" is different for everyone but it is definitely in progress:
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/13/ken-paxton-court-of-criminal-appeal-primary-republicans/
The machines behind Abbott (school vouchers) and Paxton (lege impeachment blowback) are jumping into GOP primaries in all levels of state government to push them further right. Press your advantage et al is working very well at a national level, too, as the TX delegation to the House is leading the push to tie Ukraine aid to making Biden's border policies even worse. Now imagine being pregnant and stalled in El Paso or wherever in your efforts to enter the US -- what care options does she have? The entire political conversation is nakedly white male hegemony (we have seen enough naked white male hegemonies, thank you) now and there's no room to move the talking points. I don't miss living in Texas in the least but it's frightening how similar the cultural premises are in too many other states.
That said, despair is cheap. Community is priceless -- let's all continue to find and grow ours so we can push back effectively. Thanks as ever for the conversation here. I learn a lot from you all.
I left for grad school in 2015, which was supposed to be temporary. Never going back.
My rage over this is huge and I'm not always sure where to put it, what to do. I contribute to abortion access funds. I make sure my kids and all of their friends know I will do anything to help if they are ever pregnant and do not want to be. I share articles and this newsletter. And still I feel like I am just screaming into the dark. It's very bleak.
Same same.
It feels wrong to hit the ❤️ button on this article for all the reasons you so eloquently describe that this country and the media are missing the forest for the trees in covering women’s access to healthcare and maternal mortality. Thanks for putting these issues into such thoughtful cohesion. I just wish the war on women wasn’t going so well.
That’s a great reframe, thank you! It really really does go out to all of them. ❤️
Ken Paxton will arrest her when she comes home. There is a “bounty” for turning in your neighbor in Texas.
This is my fear, too. I’m glad she was able to get medical care in another state, but am afraid of what will happen to her and her family when they return. Paxton is Satan in a skin suit and Christmas wish is that he go back to where he came from.
I hope you're wrong, but I think you're right.
I repeat. Why does anyone in their right mind want to live in Texas?? Doe it have any redeeming features?
They have more housing for the unhoused in Houston due to their crazy lack of zoning laws (also contributing to their famous sprawl). I said it: the one good single thing about Texas.
From the Texas Tribune today: "Hours after Cox announced she had left the state, the Texas Supreme Court ruled on her case, validating her decision to go ahead and seek care elsewhere." https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/13/texas-abortion-lawsuit/
I think this would mean that Paxton et al can't arrest her? Because they struck down his restraining order?
That's not exactly right. The bounty law only applies to people who "aids or abets" someone in obtaining an abortion. The first test case was also thrown out for lack of standing.
The neighbor could go after anyone who helped her; I don't know what that will mean for anyone who so much as drove her to the airport. But it also doesn't mean they will be successful.
Yes, the Texas courts got Kate Cox to beg for her life, and then had the fun of telling her no. And then they had the further ton of twisting the law around and telling the doctors that it was all THEIR fault because the law never SAID doctors couldn't make exceptions, only, of course, if they make a BAD judgment the courts will pursue criminal charges that could send doctors to prison for life.
This may be the worst lottery in the world, and Texas - and all the absolute ban states - want all pregnant women and their doctors to ride it.
What honestly baffles me as a man is that we have all of these stories of terrible things happening to women in red states, and yet there are still people making a “case” for marrying people who vote for these same draconian laws.
I mean to be fair they’ve been happening to women in blue states too. I wrote about so many cases that happened before Dobbs too
True, I mainly focused on red states because it seemed to me like most of the recent marry for the sake of marriage articles were focused on conservative men
You know, I’m starting to see all of it from a perspective of coercive control and domestic violence.
Yesterday, Trae Crowder referred to Texas as Howdy Arabia, and then said that’s actually an insult to Saudi Arabia. Texass shall henceforth be known as Howdy Arabia.
This is a glib comment, but like Asha, I so often feel like I’m screaming into the void... if I don’t archly apply some dark humor, I’ll just cry all the time.
It goes one layer deeper than the political: doctors who do not perform abortions. By fencing off pregnancy terminations into their own category rather than considering them just one part of women’s health care, the US medical establishment perpetuates this injustice.
“Perpetuates” because abortion technique is no longer part of medical training for doctors, and has become minimal for ob-gyns. And then they have next to no opportunity to practice. (would you want your appendix removed by a doctor who read about the procedure in a book 15 years ago, and just maybe watched an operation once? I thought not.)
That is what has been going on over the past decades of political squabble over abortion. It’s criminal neglect.
Even if the laws changed next week, there are not enough competent medical practitioners to make pregnancy terminations and abortion care a routine and easily obtainable medical service.
The strongest predictor of a successful/uncomplicated outcome is the number of procedures that a doctor has performed. If you had to choose a doctor for a procedure and you could only ask one question it should be "how many of these have you performed?"
I have a lot of support in 2 sets of local grandparents (albeit who all work full time) and a childcare facility we have utilized since 2019. Thankfully my 7 yo had the first more “Normal” year of elementary school since the pandemic began. Yesterday we got a notice that the class below my 4 yo’s is closing in January because they haven’t been able to find more than 1 permanent teacher in 6 months. The childcare shortage never recovered. I am incredibly thankful our placement isn’t threatened but the class was fully enrolled and those kids are being asked to move to the sister school. We started at the other school and I’m glad those parents have those options but if my kid had been born literally 2 months later this would’ve affected me, he wouldn’t have been in preK now.
And this is a lower level problem compared to the women who are forced to have babies or criminalized for the death of their babies. I love being my kids’ mother and I will never love being a mother in the US.