This is happening now. Same as during the pandemic. Patient Privacy laws make reporting these very personal and private tragedies public knowledge. As the son of a doctor and nurse, women are at risk in the red and swing states. This will only continue to get worse and worse. The Supreme Court has failed all.
This is happening now. Same as during the pandemic. Patient Privacy laws make reporting these very personal and private tragedies public knowledge. As the son of a doctor and nurse, women are at risk in the red and swing states. This will only continue to get worse and worse. The Supreme Court has failed all.
Yes, Ted, and thank you. That is the thing it so hard to grasp--this is now and it is real and you are certainly right. It can only get worse. Women are going to start dying in numbers--mostly poor women, mostly black and brown women, mostly women who have no options. It is easy, even with everything that is screaming at us, to look away, to think it can't really be this bad, somebody will come up with a plan. There was an article in the Washington Post in the last few days explaining how much good the new governor here in Virginia is doing for parents by allotting money for model schools. He ran on a platform of giving parents the right to get the teaching of critical race theory (i.e. history) out of the classroom. The article was written by one of the leading lights of the evangelical/Trump crew. No background provided. Thank goodness, the comments section lost its collective mind! Even I have trouble believing in organizations like Opus Dei and the Federalist Society. But they aren't a bad dream.
And let me put in a word for my favorite, and often overlooked monster, Mike Pence, member in good standing of the FS, bankrolled by the remaining Koch brother (who has renounced Trump but not his policies), a history of supporting conversion camps for gay teens and, unfortunately, presentable.
I have been out of the country for several weeks and I feel like I have returned to a nightmare. The more I think about and absorb the implications of overturning Roe the more sick to my stomach I become. No one has the right to force a pregnant person to bear an unwanted child. No one. I'm adopted and I am fully aware that I might not be here if abortion had been legal in 1951. Roe is about choice and every pregnant person should have the right to choose whether or not to bear a child. Evangelical Christians and right-wing Catholics have no right to impose their beliefs on the rest of us. These are ancient battles and it is discouraging to have to fight them again. This is also an attack on the poor who are already overburdened. This is simply wrong.
It is wrong at every level, I agree, but Christianity has a long history of imposing itself, swiftly and violently, on a lot of folks over the centuries. And if anyone needs a cover story for a blatant power move, some group of Christians usually volunteers. I am a cradle Episcopalian and have ranted and raved about all this for years. Only recently have I finally thrown in the towel. At the core of the repeal of Roe and of more to come--all of which is going to involve bloodshed in one way or another--is the strike at the principle of the separation of church and state. The people at the helm in the Roe decision believe there should be no separation, that American should be a Christian nation, governed by a minority of its citizens who are not only Christians but the most right wing Christians. They are, in my opinion--and I don't use words like this very often--evil people. You can probably divide them into two groups--the true believers and the simply power mad. Some, no doubt, are both. Bill Barr comes to mind.
An inexcusably long ramble here, and I wish I could offer encouragement on your re-entry but my belief is that your instinct is right on--you have returned to a nightmare and it doesn't look like getting anything but worse.
I think the best we can do at this point--way beyond too late--is to finally acknowledge what's happening. There are still those among us feckless liberals who think it isn't so bad; it will work out; we'll win the mid-terms; Trump's people aren't always getting elected. That kind of willful denial will rob us of any chance at all and, in fact, that reluctance to look clearly at reality is partly responsible for where we are.
So, welcome home, Susan. Put on your heavy boots. We are surrounded by mud in all directions.
Thank you for that. The first thing I read when I got home was the recent edition of The Humanist, which I subscribed to along with lots of other publications after Trump was elected. I did so because I'm a good reader and he isn't, so I read, read, and read as a personal form of protest. As the Religious Right got more and more vociferous, I got more and more turned off by Christianity altogether, which isn't easy to say. Remember Gandhi--"I like your Christ. He is so unlike your Christians." Anyway, reading The Humanist seemed so balanced, hopeful, and ethical by comparison. Wandering around Florence and looking at all those patriarchs was eye-opening. Women do not want to go back to that. Nor do other marginalized people.
We have a rescue dog named Farley who is one of the most aware beings I've ever had the good fortune to meet. Someone described him as "assertive without being aggressive" which is why they thought he got on so well with other beings. Farley was dumped over a fence at two months of age and left to die. He was one day away from being euthanized when a friend of my husband rescued him and eventually gave him to us.
One day I heard Farley barking furiously and came to find a neighbor threatening to kill him with a 2 x 4 if he didn't stop. The neighbor is afraid of dogs and Farley sensed that. He also sensed that he was in danger and all that barking was his way of saying "I'm not going over that fence again." Heavy boots in hand and ready to do what's necessary to get us through the mud.
This is happening now. Same as during the pandemic. Patient Privacy laws make reporting these very personal and private tragedies public knowledge. As the son of a doctor and nurse, women are at risk in the red and swing states. This will only continue to get worse and worse. The Supreme Court has failed all.
Yes, Ted, and thank you. That is the thing it so hard to grasp--this is now and it is real and you are certainly right. It can only get worse. Women are going to start dying in numbers--mostly poor women, mostly black and brown women, mostly women who have no options. It is easy, even with everything that is screaming at us, to look away, to think it can't really be this bad, somebody will come up with a plan. There was an article in the Washington Post in the last few days explaining how much good the new governor here in Virginia is doing for parents by allotting money for model schools. He ran on a platform of giving parents the right to get the teaching of critical race theory (i.e. history) out of the classroom. The article was written by one of the leading lights of the evangelical/Trump crew. No background provided. Thank goodness, the comments section lost its collective mind! Even I have trouble believing in organizations like Opus Dei and the Federalist Society. But they aren't a bad dream.
And let me put in a word for my favorite, and often overlooked monster, Mike Pence, member in good standing of the FS, bankrolled by the remaining Koch brother (who has renounced Trump but not his policies), a history of supporting conversion camps for gay teens and, unfortunately, presentable.
I have been out of the country for several weeks and I feel like I have returned to a nightmare. The more I think about and absorb the implications of overturning Roe the more sick to my stomach I become. No one has the right to force a pregnant person to bear an unwanted child. No one. I'm adopted and I am fully aware that I might not be here if abortion had been legal in 1951. Roe is about choice and every pregnant person should have the right to choose whether or not to bear a child. Evangelical Christians and right-wing Catholics have no right to impose their beliefs on the rest of us. These are ancient battles and it is discouraging to have to fight them again. This is also an attack on the poor who are already overburdened. This is simply wrong.
It is wrong at every level, I agree, but Christianity has a long history of imposing itself, swiftly and violently, on a lot of folks over the centuries. And if anyone needs a cover story for a blatant power move, some group of Christians usually volunteers. I am a cradle Episcopalian and have ranted and raved about all this for years. Only recently have I finally thrown in the towel. At the core of the repeal of Roe and of more to come--all of which is going to involve bloodshed in one way or another--is the strike at the principle of the separation of church and state. The people at the helm in the Roe decision believe there should be no separation, that American should be a Christian nation, governed by a minority of its citizens who are not only Christians but the most right wing Christians. They are, in my opinion--and I don't use words like this very often--evil people. You can probably divide them into two groups--the true believers and the simply power mad. Some, no doubt, are both. Bill Barr comes to mind.
An inexcusably long ramble here, and I wish I could offer encouragement on your re-entry but my belief is that your instinct is right on--you have returned to a nightmare and it doesn't look like getting anything but worse.
I think the best we can do at this point--way beyond too late--is to finally acknowledge what's happening. There are still those among us feckless liberals who think it isn't so bad; it will work out; we'll win the mid-terms; Trump's people aren't always getting elected. That kind of willful denial will rob us of any chance at all and, in fact, that reluctance to look clearly at reality is partly responsible for where we are.
So, welcome home, Susan. Put on your heavy boots. We are surrounded by mud in all directions.
Thank you for that. The first thing I read when I got home was the recent edition of The Humanist, which I subscribed to along with lots of other publications after Trump was elected. I did so because I'm a good reader and he isn't, so I read, read, and read as a personal form of protest. As the Religious Right got more and more vociferous, I got more and more turned off by Christianity altogether, which isn't easy to say. Remember Gandhi--"I like your Christ. He is so unlike your Christians." Anyway, reading The Humanist seemed so balanced, hopeful, and ethical by comparison. Wandering around Florence and looking at all those patriarchs was eye-opening. Women do not want to go back to that. Nor do other marginalized people.
We have a rescue dog named Farley who is one of the most aware beings I've ever had the good fortune to meet. Someone described him as "assertive without being aggressive" which is why they thought he got on so well with other beings. Farley was dumped over a fence at two months of age and left to die. He was one day away from being euthanized when a friend of my husband rescued him and eventually gave him to us.
One day I heard Farley barking furiously and came to find a neighbor threatening to kill him with a 2 x 4 if he didn't stop. The neighbor is afraid of dogs and Farley sensed that. He also sensed that he was in danger and all that barking was his way of saying "I'm not going over that fence again." Heavy boots in hand and ready to do what's necessary to get us through the mud.