James Ho's Very Unaesthetic Decision

 

I guess there was no reason at all to expect a better comment in the mifepristone case from James Ho, seen in the picture above being sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas at billionaire Harlan Crow's house because why the heck not?  

But while the overall decision is mixed (the abortion pill remains available with some notable restrictions, such as ordering it by mail) I just need to point to the language of Judge Ho's creepy dissent:

In his concurrent opinion, Ho wrote that the doctors will also suffer an “aesthetic injury” if the pills remain on the market.

“Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them,” he wrote. “Expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos with loved ones. Friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child. Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients — and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.”

Prego fetishists love to see the rounded bellies of pregnant women--do they have standing? I experience an aesthetic injury when I see pregnant people's human rights to make health care choices for themselves violated as a person who theoretically (although probably requiring a late-life miracle like Sarah in the Bible) could still get pregnant myself. Where's my consideration? I experience profound discomfort when I see people forced to experience labor at unwanted pregnancies or to carry pregnancies that will negatively affect their well-being. (Should I go looking for some pro-cancer motherfuckers who find tumors beautiful to go ruin oncology? Of course not. Should a lover of gigantic breasts have veto power over breast reductions--"aesthetic injury!" I mean, why not mandate implants for their sake? If we're imposing upon people, after all.) 

Are we just giving every SOB with an opinion credit for it these days? I consider the poor baby-lover who is sad about abortions as being like the dingus white-supremacist child's opinion of being "traumatized" by diversity: tough actual shit. You live on a planet where people have actual lives that ain't yours, buddy--cope. 

And yeah, a lot of doctors love those unborn babies, but also know very well why abortions are necessary and should stay safe and available. Wanted children are a joy. But we know that pregnant people are discriminated against, that they are targeted for violence and murder by partners, that they may have pre-existing conditions including substance abuse and mental illness that make safely carrying a child (and not running afoul of laws that make murderers of women for activities that could harm fetuses) very difficult. Some patients are prone to miscarriage and fetal abnormalities. Sometimes pregnancies are not a joy. It is possible to celebrate both choices, to honor a patients' will in all cases. 

Zealots and ideologues are poor judges. I think that really, a safe and easily available method for ending a pregnancy is something that should remain lawful with little restriction. And no one should have standing over what happens with a pregnancy until viability but the pregnant person. 

(Nota bene--Josh Hawley's wife Erin of the ADF was counsel in this lawsuit. She is what I would call a "sister-shafter"--she does not give one fuck about female-bodied human rights.)

Klanned Karenhood and Their Fellow Travelers

 

I saw this on Twitter, and wanted to talk about why this particularly bothers me as (extreme Quark from Deep Space Nine voice) a "biological female"--there is a thing we don't really address much: toxic femininity. We can talk about abusive men, men who think with their fists, masculinity in the form of right-fighting and DARVO--but not these women. The ones who wouldn't do violence themselves but would cheer their men on for doing it. (They are also sister shafters--they would sell out any number of women in an instant to gain points with the patriarchy.)

Now maybe the above screencap of a freedom mommy calling for Biden's execution is unfair: she was mad because she thought US military service dogs were left behind, and while that wasn't exactly the case, I also hate to see animals potentially harmed and could get good and fighting mad about it. But I'd have checked the story, and not gone right to talking about execution because I'm not one of these ol' gals.  

But the freedom mommies don't need good reasons to want violence--it avenges them. Or at least satisfies them that their loyalty to the patriarchy has a payoff. See how they love when the daddies get in on the action? Think of a woman goading her significant other to go fight that man who has been looking at her. (Think about the history of white women and lynching, and TERFS and violence against trans people.) They don't get to rock the block of someone they don't like, but they do get told that the one who rocks the cradle rules the world. 

I'm not blaming William Ross Wallace for it--that was the era. We just aren't in the 19th century anymore. And my real problem is--WE AREN'T GOING BACK TO IT, EITHER!

The Christian Nation We Never Were

 

Disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, disaster chow pitchman, is concerned that the Pride celebration at the White House means that the US is no longer a Christian Nation.  I would like to be very reassuring while I say this to him: We never were.  The original inhabitants of this nation were not Christians, and despite all the Christians who came to this land seeking refuge from their Old World persecution, you have to understand, actually being a "Christian nation" or the product of any one religion is a weirdly wrong idea to have about our founding. 

We are by no means a Christian nation. John Adams said as much in the Treaty of Tripoli.  There's a lot wrong with assuming that our founders were all of a mind about religion--which is exactly the reason to presume we are not founded on religious principles, but practical ones. There are ample statements from our founders that attest that freedom of religion was the only way to maintain an already-diverse religious population, Thomas Jefferson was proud enough of his religious freedom edict in Virginia that he had it made a part of his final epitaph.