Hekate
Hekate's JournalHow we got here. What is at stake today in the SCOTUS
All of the advances that women have made in the last 50 years actually will go away if the Right Wing gets what they want out of this court.
How, you ask? Because anti-choice is, at first and last, anti-woman, and that means all our choices are in the mix. Contraception, birth control, welfare assistance, childcare, parental leave, jobs and career advancement — all of it.
They’ve been laying the social groundwork forever by redefining the most popular and effective contraceptives as abortifacients. They’ve been lying to teenagers for decades, saying condoms are completely ineffective against both disease and pregnancy.
They’ve laid legal groundwork by making sure that the US Congress inserted “conscience clauses” into every piece of health legislation — so that employers/insurers, hospitals, doctors and pharmacists all have a legal out for not only refusing to provide for abortions but for refusing to cover/provide Plan B, Morning After, contraceptive pills and contraceptive devices. The Hyde Amendment was introduced as a compromise, and somehow it has never gone away.
Legal groundwork at the state level has included “personhood” laws, and when that was too direct they did an end-run by defining the murder of a pregnant woman as a double-homicide. They’ve intruded on the health crisis that is addiction, not by providing support to beat the addiction but by imprisoning pregnant women for endangering their fetuses. They’ve worked to broaden the definition of what endangers a fetus — where there is a miscarriage, there must be a woman at fault.
Are you beginning to get the picture now?
It goes further. When Roe vs Wade was decided, it superseded state laws — but state legislatures saw no need to actually remove those old laws from the books. It may have been lazy thinking at the time, but at some point someone realized that if Roe goes away, the old laws come back automatically unless they have since been overturned by the state — and by that time the culture wars were in full swing.
They have been relentless, in part because Gawd is on their side and in part because women are just too uppity for their own good, but hey, same thing in the end. When one legislative maneuver fails, they try another in a different state, then return and try again.
That’s all I can say for now. There’s so much more.
I was in college when Roe became law. I was glad, and at the same time conflicted. At some point I came to understand that the anti-abortion hysteria was not all about nasty entitled women aborting fully-formed adorable Gerber babies (as the RW likes to portray the situation, thus trying to make every one of us ashamed to speak out in support of abortion), but it was truly about contraception and the ability to prevent pregnancy in the first place. And contraception is foundational to absolutely every advance we women have made in the last century. That’s where we are going.
All of the advances that women have made in the last 50 years actually will go away if "they" get...
…what they want out of this court.
How, you ask? Because anti-choice is, at first and last, anti-woman, and that means all our choices are in the mix. Contraception, birth control, welfare assistance, childcare, parental leave, jobs and career advancement — all of it.
They’ve been laying the social groundwork forever by redefining the most popular and effective contraceptives as abortifacients. They’ve been lying to teenagers for decades, saying condoms are completely ineffective against both disease and pregnancy.
They’ve laid legal groundwork by making sure that the US Congress inserted “conscience clauses” into every piece of health legislation — so that employers/insurers, hospitals, doctors and pharmacists all have a legal out for not only refusing to provide for abortions but for refusing to cover/provide Plan B, Morning After, contraceptive pills and contraceptive devices. The Hyde Amendment was introduced as a compromise, and somehow it has never gone away.
Legal groundwork at the state level has included “personhood” laws, and when that was too direct they did an end-run by defining the murder of a pregnant woman as a double-homicide. They’ve intruded on the health crisis that is addiction, not by providing support to beat the addiction but by imprisoning pregnant women for endangering their fetuses. They’ve worked to broaden the definition of what endangers a fetus — where there is a miscarriage, there must be a woman at fault.
Are you beginning to get the picture now?
It goes further. When Roe vs Wade was decided, it superseded state laws — but state legislatures saw no need to actually remove those old laws from the books. It may have been lazy thinking at the time, but at some point someone realized that if Roe goes away, the old laws come back automatically unless they have since been overturned by the state — and by that time the culture wars were in full swing.
They have been relentless, in part because Gawd is on their side and in part because women are just too uppity for their own good, but hey, same thing in the end. When one legislative maneuver fails, they try another in a different state, then return and try again.
That’s all I can say for now. There’s so much more.
I’m your age. At some point I realized it was not all about nasty entitled women aborting fully-formed adorable Gerber babies (as the RW likes to portray the situation, thus trying to make every one of us ashamed to speak out), but it was truly about contraception and the ability to prevent pregnancy in the first place. And contraception is foundational to absolutely every advance we women have made in the last century. That’s where we are going.
In years past, I have read that some people knew instantly that the country had lost its innocence...
… and optimism on that day.
I was 16 — and felt deeply wounded, but not that. I resisted conspiracy theories for many years. It took all the events of the 1960s to unfold to bury that much of my innocence. It took so many assassinations, and the Vietnam war.
How sad that some here have seen fit to dismiss, almost mock, our memories.
For those who don’t know, who were not there, let me say that Jack and Jackie did bring a sense of Camelot, of youth and glamor and optimism and renewal. They showed an appreciation of classical music and the arts in general. The great cellist Pablo Casals gave a concert at the White House. Jack and Jackie Kennedy brought in accomplished people, some of them as glamorous as themselves and others just incredibly bright. She was shy, but he was quick witted, witty, ready to spar without rancor with the press.
He founded the Peace Corps, and very many of us who were young sent away for the packet, a big envelope stuffed with information, that we held on to for years. When I was in college and ever since then I have met former PCVs, that is Peace Corps Volunteers.
But on this day, 58 years ago, I was a public high school kid on O’ahu making my way through the jammed hallways between home room and chemistry class, when a boy called out that the president had been shot. He must have had a transistor radio. Our school was typical for the time and place: there was no intercom, there were no televisions — but word spread out nonetheless, and by 9:30 our teacher told us that the president had been killed in Dallas. (I’m scratching my head trying to remember my chem teacher’s name, and all I can recall now is that he was Japanese American, served in the US Army in WWII and was sent to be part of the occupying force in Japan after the war ended.)
The shock was incredible. If there was anyone anywhere in the school who thought this murder was a good thing, they kept their mouths well shut. As I was reminded almost daily, most of the white kids in the school were military dependents (not me), and a fair number of those were from the South, strangers in a strange land.
School was not dismissed, but in midday a mass assembly was called in the big courtyard. Words were spoken, probably a prayer as well, and then the best trumpeter in our school band played Taps as the flag was lowered to half-staff.
And home to spend three days glued to the TV in the living room. Watching the funeral. Watching Jack Ruby kill Oswald on live TV, robbing us all of whatever questions Oswald might have answered.
And on with life, my country changed in ways I could not have foretold.
RIP Jack & Jackie Kennedy 
After engaging in these back&forth arguments several times, I'm with you. If people cannot see...
… the problem with illegal grows, I am out of patience with them. They can take up the issue in their own damn states, and roll out the welcome mat in their own damn counties. See how they enjoy environmental degradation and the prospect of being shot for “trespassing” on public lands.
And if they don't like the taxes in California — gosh, this is a political board. They know what to do: get politically involved and bitch about it to someone who gives a damn.
I voted to legalize a product I can’t even use. I did it for social justice and to clear out the prisons. I had hoped it would put a crimp in the Mexican cartels, who are fcking dangerous no matter where they are. My heart just bleeds for people who say the cartels charge less. Da-yum. The cartels make up the difference in assassinations, beheadings, and human trafficking.
They are a totalitarian regime, or as we say today, an authoritarian government. Always have been.
They are in an expansionist mood, which Obama and his allies saw very clearly. It was stupid of American leftists to agree with American right wingers that the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a bad idea. It would have helped rein in China’s incursions in the Pacific.
Trump, the idiot, aggravated them for no good reason but his own ego and his base’s need for a racist whipping boy.
Biden has Xi’s number, though. He said early on that as VP he had spent innumerable hours with Xi, and that while “there is not a single democratic bone in his body”, Xi is no fool, but an intelligent leader with long term goals for his country. Personally, I think we are looking at the Century of China. Look up the Belt and Road Initiative, and the project to build islands in the Pacific in order to claim territorial rights around them.
One of the things we Americans often don’t understand is that there are vast swaths of the Earth where democracy has never taken root and likely never will, China and Russia being the most notable examples on the world stage — tho far from the only ones. Why ban movies, music, books, and other things from outside? Because they unsettle people and give them unauthorized thoughts. I did mention they were a totalitarian regime.
Over time I have seen that small groups of their citizens (and sometimes masses in protests) will demand more freedom and more rights, and while they may call it democracy, what they will settle for is an orderly and predictable society without random cruel oppression. I wish their people luck.
Finally, why Taiwan and why now? Taiwan is unsettled business from the Revolution. The anti-revolutionaries fled to Taiwan, those that could. China considers Taiwan part of China, and figures the Revolution is not over until they get it back. The US, otoh, has always kept Taiwan as a satellite for our own purposes (we can do propaganda, too) — keeping the plucky Taiwanese free from Red China and all that.
Why now? I don’t know, but I am sure Xi’s reasons are well thought out. And I am equally sure Joe Biden is aware of what they are.
Actually, that is exactly what you are suggesting. You want to spring the bad news on "adults" ...
They’ll call you a liar, because they’ve been taught all their lives that everything in this country is sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. Also they won’t be in school any more, right? So under what circumstances are they going to learn reality?
And that’s just the WHITE youngsters we’re talking about “protecting” from reality. Even more specifically, the straight, male, white young people.
Everybody else (which is most of the country, when you think about it) will be getting such a case of cognitive dissonance that they’ll start doubting their own sanity.
Well, those women are a very big chunk of the population of the country & need to be educated pronto
I don’t think they are incapable of learning. Do you think they are incapable? That they as presumed adults need to be mollycoddled?
As for your sorrow (I guess) over my learning things at a young age, a wise teacher parcels knowledge out in digestible increments according to age. We were all readers, and Mom said nothing in the house was off-limits; we just had to discuss it with her. She also made certain lessons personal, just one instance being the KKK, which was very active in her home state of Colorado when she was growing up. The KKK hated Roman Catholics, and her family was Catholic. Our neighbor across the street escaped the Holocaust. Another neighbor was a court stenographer for the Nazis.
And — funny thing about kids’ books in the 1950s and early 1960s — there was a sub-genre of them with a war theme specifically for elementary and middle school kids, with the lesson that even if your whole country (i.e. Denmark or France or Holland) is taken over by the Nazis, you can do your little bit to help the grownups resist. Did they scare me? No. They taught me even children can recognize evil and resist it.
Which reminds me of Harry Potter. Jo Rowling is at least a generation younger than I am, but clearly has read widely. I read her books as they came out, and read them all aloud to my grandson. I recognized more than one genre from my childhood: fantasy to be sure, but also English boarding school; and most importantly, that children/teenagers can recognize evil and organize to resist it. Dolores Umbridge is a perfect representation of a Nazi or any other totalitarian functionary.
How can children resist evil if they are never taught to recognize it and how to resist it — how can adults.
Gain knowledge. Fight back. Resist.
I learned about the Holocaust and other atrocities at my dear old mother's knee in the 1950s
It was fresh in people’s memories then. IT WAS FRESH IN PEOPLE’S MEMORIES THEN.
I learned about violence against black Americans by watching it on tv as it happened, and from the photos in LIFE magazine.
And I asked my mother to explain. She was a reader and a thinker and believed all people should be treated equally.
My mother was a suburban housewife back when “housewife” was just a job description. We were blue-collar. Our house was tiny and the budget was tight.
I think I saw your deleted post and passed it by in weariness. But since you want to defend it and brought it up again…
No, we don’t think suburban housewives are stupid here. But Mary, there is a consensus about the abysmal level of education across the country — a large swath of our citizens 45 and under either were sleeping in history class or were not taught it at all.
My mother used to quote the guy who said those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
I would add, that especially applies to violence. What the ever loving whatever was going on at Abu Graig Prison? What did we think would happen when our local police were given military hardware? How the hell did we end up with a fascist for president?
I hope you get my point, because I have to exit for an appointment. I will be only too happy to belabor my point when I return.
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Gender: FemaleHometown: Central Coast, California
Home country: USA
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 90,617