Still going after women

 

Semi-safe in Illinonis

2024 election

This is why women's rights are under constant attack from the right. (Also, according to what I've seen, 91% of black women voted Harris, and exit polls indicate Harris voters' main issue was democracy.)

UPDATE 11/12/2024:

"The Father of IVF"

Ask him what IVF stands for.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Inch by inch, state by state

The truth about "Tampon Tim" culture wars

Critics contend, wrongly, that it mandates menstrual products in boys’ bathrooms. This has unfortunately been used to stoke ongoing culture wars over transgender individuals.

But the law’s actual language provides considerable flexibility for school districts to implement it, according to Deb Henton, the executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators.

That might mean making these products available for free in various locations for all who need them, such as unisex bathrooms, girls’ bathrooms, the school nurse or the front office, but not necessarily in boys’ bathrooms. Henton, in an interview, lauded the “local control” the law provides for implementation, and said she’s fielded no concerns about its rollout.

At Anoka-Hennepin, the state’s largest school district, the free products are not found in traditional male-only bathrooms, a spokesman said. But they are provided for free to all in “nongendered bathrooms,” girls’ bathrooms or from health staffers.

[...]

Minnesota is far from alone in providing this type of assistance. More than half of the nation’s 50 states have taken steps to help students who struggle to afford tampons and pads. Ohio, led by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, now requires period products in schools and has provided $5 million in funding for this, the Alliance for Period Supplies reports. Alabama and Georgia provide grants for schools to make free products available.

Other states, such as Washington, Nevada, Illinois and Utah, require schools to provide these products, though they didn’t fund them. To Minnesota’s legislators’ credit, the new law provides dollars to schools and is not an unfunded mandate.

[...]

The new law went into effect in January and applies to students in grades four through 12.

[...]

This is good and necessary policy. Providing free menstrual products is a practical, compassionate remedy to address an under-the-radar reason for student absenteeism. Some families can’t afford menstrual products, and when that happens students stay home instead of going to class, falling behind as they do.

There’s a lot of talk about closing educational achievement gaps in Minnesota and elsewhere, particularly for low-income students. The new state law, which has a price tag of about $2 million a year, is an actual solution to help address this, one that’s relatively low-cost. And there’s real-world data to back it up. New York City schools reported a 2.4% increase in attendance after a state law went into effect requiring free period products for students, according to the advocacy group Alliance for Period Supplies.

  Star Tribune

They've got nothing on Walz, so they go for whatever they think will energize their base, and one of the most energizing things to MAGA is to denigrate women by feminizing men and then laughing at them.

MAGA are deplorable.

Kansas presents

Gilead, here we come

As the Kansas News Service reports, starting today, abortion providers are supposed to be required to ask patients which of 11 possible reasons is most relevant to their decision to get an abortion. Possible reasons include that the patient cannot financially afford a child or that the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

But also today, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson said that the Kansas health department “has stated that it will not enforce this intrusive law, for now” and a health department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Kansas News Service.

The question is optional — the law states that if someone refuses to answer, their refusal will be recorded. But lawmakers voted down a proposed amendment that would have clarified to patients that the question is optional.

  NPR

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's coming (BACK) if you keep electing Republicans

In Justice Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion on the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe, he opined that the Supreme Court should revisit precedents that codified same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships and the right to contraception.

[...]

In 1965, 26 states prohibited birth control for unmarried women. Griswold vs. Connecticut paved the way for legal contraception in the 1970s; overturning it could have an impact on access to birth control nationwide.

[...]

Earlier this month, U.S. legislators had a chance to codify access to birth control by passing the Right to Contraception Act. Specifically, it would have guaranteed the right of an individual "to obtain contraceptives and to voluntarily engage in contraception."

The legislation also would have protected the right of licensed health care providers to provide contraceptives, services and information related to contraception." It also would have prohibited any laws that impede access to birth control. All but two Senate Republicans voted against it.

  MSN

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Mifepristone access safe for now

The plaintiffs were doctors.

Who will try next?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09:50 am:

A cynical person or a realist.

Make women chattel again

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Inch by inch clawing back our rights

Republicans should be getting the hint

UPDATE 07:33 pm:

Mifepristone access at the Supreme Court

To me, this is the nut and essence of the case:

Laws to counter laws

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Florida was cued up

A Florida Republican senator this week said she has sidelined a bill that seeks to add fetuses to wrongful death lawsuits amid ongoing concern from Democrats that the legislation was an attempt to grant personhood to fetuses.

Lawmakers expected to hear the bill, SB 476, in the Senate committee on Rules on Monday but Chair Debbie Mayfield announced that it had been temporarily postponed.

  Politico

Only the backlash over the Alabama ruling has put a halt to this avenue of MAGA control over conception and women's rights.  It'll come back around.

“Although I have worked diligently to respond to questions and concerns, I understand there is still work that needs to be done,” Grall said. “It is important we get the policy right with an issue of this significance.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

In his opinion [giving rights to incubated embryos], Parker wrote: “Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself. [Alabama’s Sanctity of Life statute] recognizes that this is true of unborn human life no less than it is of all other human life—that even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

  Elie Mystal @ The Nation

This is in the decision of a Alabama Supreme Court justice. Tom Parker

The word “God” appears 41 times in [Justice Tom] Parker’s opinion, which also liberally quotes from the Bible, specifically the Book of Genesis, and theologians like Thomas Aquinus and John Calvin. In an interview, Parker said he supports the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” which is a code for imposing Christian rule based on biblical precepts on the rest of society.

[...]

The decision came out on Friday, and less than a week later two Alabama clinics, including the state’s largest hospital, have stopped offering IVF because they cannot assume the legal liability that could arise from discarding the unused, unwanted embryos IVF treatments produce.

[...]

Do the icicle babies get a Social Security number? Can their mothers count them as dependents on their taxes? Do their fathers have to pay child support? Are we all nine months older than we think and, if so, do 17-year-olds get to vote in the upcoming election?

[...]

This is clearly unconstitutional. The Alabama ruling, on its face, violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The court is privileging one religious sect—dominionist Christians—over all others, and it is doing this to extract legal payments from others, namely hospitals and clinics, that don’t share the justices’ religious viewpoint. Using the power of the state to force others to live in accordance with a particular religious belief is the very definition of state-sponsored religion.

[...]

What’s troubling to me is the extent to which the rest of the country has just accepted that we live under the rule of theocrats in robes and there’s nothing we can do about it. Establishment politicians, media figures, and even non-theocratic judges just kind of shrug and pretend that scripture is a reasonable basis for judicial pronouncements in a free society. If these judges and justices were establishing any religion other than fundamentalist Christianity, people would lose their minds.

[...]

I don’t know how we combat the Christian takeover of the judicial branch—a takeover that has largely already happened—when most people in power won’t even acknowledge that a theocratic takeover of the judicial system is bad and out of step with the principles the country was literally founded on.

[...]

The priests and deacons and ministers of our time are using the bully pulpit of the judiciary to impose their version of God’s will on the rest of us, and their God is spiteful, bigoted, and misogynist.

We are entering a new Dark Age, one where, like the last one, science, education, and facts mean nothing, and Christian myths and legends are given the force of law. I don’t know how to stop them, but I think the first step is to recognize and name what they’re doing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 03/07/2024:

Extrauterine children

In a case originating from Mobile, LePage v. Mobile Infirmary Clinic, Inc., the [Alabama] Supreme Court held in a 7-2 decision that parents of frozen embryos killed at an IVF clinic when an intruder tampered with an IVF freezer may proceed with a wrongful death lawsuit against the clinic for alleged negligence.

[...]

[T]he defendants and their amicus devote large portions of their briefs to emphasizing undesirable public-policy outcomes that, they say, will arise if this Court does not create an exception to wrongful-death liability for extrauterine children.

[...]

On appeal, the Supreme Court has now reversed the trial court and held that a human frozen embryo is a “child,” which is “an unborn or recently born person,” within the plain meaning of the Act and under prior judicial decisions recognizing that unborn children are protected by Alabama law.

[...]

That life is sacred because every human being is made in the image of God, noted Chief Justice Parker, and the People chose to make that a clear matter of constitutional law. As to the effect of the Sanctity of Life Amendment, Chief Justice Parker reasoned that it “does much more than simply declare a moral value that the People of Alabama like. Instead, this constitutional provision tilts the scales of the law in favor of protecting unborn life.”

  1819 News

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 02/22/2024:

And what did those IVF clinics do with the frozen embryos they already have?  "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Doe, We are closing our clinic; come pick up your children."

UPDATE 02/22/2024:

UPDATE 02/23/2024:

UPDATE 02/24/2024:

If corporations are people, why not embryos?

UPDATE 02/25/2024:

UPDATE 03/07/2024:

They're coming for your birth control

Don't say you're surprised.  

January 1, 2024