Kitchen Karen is Back With a Handmaiden Origin Story

 

Today, I’m proud to introduce the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) Act along with @SenMarcoRubio, @SenKevinCramer, and a group of @SenateGOP colleagues.

You can learn more here: https://t.co/L1mZmoYoQ5 pic.twitter.com/kAmX2Up7Yr

— Senator Katie Boyd Britt (@SenKatieBritt) May 9, 2024

Do you want the government to track your periods and judge you based on the length of time your uterus can hold a very sacred fetus? Would you like to be referred to a totally not-a-whole-bunch-of-doctors crisis group telling you how to just stay pregnant until you pop....something out, regardless of your whole ability to raise or care for a baby, and also deal with whatever the physical/emotional, and/or-financial state you are in when you do give forth your sprog?

If that is the incredibly weird and uncomfortable level of government/religious oversight of your very personal business you would deeply prefer not to have--please vote Democrat, thank you.

OK, I have more to say about this:

They Want to Ban Abortions Federally!

 

News: @LindseyGrahamSC will introduce a national abortion ban in the Senate tomorrow.

Unless something really unexpected has happened, this will be a 15-week ban. Very interesting that it’s being cast as a “late term abortions act” 👀 pic.twitter.com/WMUVO3ys8l

— Caroline Kitchener (@CAKitchener) September 13, 2022

Fifteen weeks is definitely not a late-term abortion ban; I don't care what language they want to use about it. That's not "very interesting"--that's Republicans lying. Republicans do lie about abortion: would you like to see a big old lie made just today?

The Family Research Council decided to lie and say that "Abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of the mother." This is a big steaming lie. Ectopic pregnancies. fetal hydrocephaly, and the continuations of cancer therapies where the treatment is contraindicated for pregnancy spring to mind. They are vicious liars, but of course, they would be. This is child abuse promoter James Dobson's little corner of the culture war, which can boast George Rekers and Josh Duggar among its more notorious membership. and is fronted by Tony Perkins who somehow counts as a daywalker among these values vampires. 

Lies about things like maternal mortality show that these people don't care about the lives of people who become pregnant. Lies about fetal heartbeats (for a version of "heart" that doesn't yet even have chambers) and "pain-capable" fetuses are gratuitously imposing the qualities of born persons on pregnancies to try to create a separate life for that which depends solely on the body of a whole other, sentient person. 

I want to be hopeful about the turnout we saw in Kansas against a deadly stupid abortion ban, and to read into the voter registration numbers that show record female participation as a wholly good thing.  But if this is a real thing Senate Republicans are thinking of doing to turn out their base--

I hope they get good and screwed to the ever-loving wall over it. Because they are telling us that they don't want the Dobbs' ruling's concept of states' rights (itself a dodgy, shitty construction saying some people can just be freer to self-determination based on geography) but want to just deny female-bodied people the right to end a pregnancy based on some arbitrary deadline that politically sounded good to them and had nothing to do with our bodies, needs, economic status, or any of the other things that affect us as people. Because who are mere child-bearers anyways?

This is hostility to people who want to determine their reproductive future. I give them hostility in return. A thousandfold. 

UPDATE: The bill is worse than others Graham has put up before, with a 20-week gestation. The GOP can claim there are exceptions for rape and the life of the mother, but these are worse than useless.  See this part:

There's Something Right with Kansas

 

I believe the idea was simple enough--put a referendum on altering the Kansas state constitution with respects to abortion on the primary ballot in a red state in a midterm year and let the natural conservatism and low turnout do the rest. 

Yeeeeaaaah, that's not what happened. Instead, there was very strong voter turnout against that measure. The somewhat Orwellian named "Value Them Both" bill (which is more like, "Value them Both but While the Pregnant Person is Pregnant, Value the Fetus Just a Bit More") failed. Despite mushy-sounding language that made the proposition sound like it was affirming rights in the state constitution and preventing the funding of abortions in a way that was not being proposed, activism and clear messaging hammered home the idea that opting for "Yes" meant opening the door to an abortion ban.

In the post-Roe landscape, as people come more and more to look at the stark cost of denying reproductive freedom, these bans are not popular, because the burden of unwanted or unviable pregnancies without the remedy of abortion access is undue. 

Preserving rights, giving people choices, respecting freedom of conscience, and recognizing that laws should be humane because they are made for humans, and not the other way around, should be simple common sense. In a world where anti-abortion figures enthuse that 13 year olds can do "phenomenal" things as parents, it only becomes too clear that so-called pro-life activists are living in a dangerous fantasy that ignores the messiness of human events, where reasonable people understand all too well that children should not have to be phenomenal, and adult humans should be free to make choices that affect them physically, financially, and impact their whole families. 

Social conservatives are in denial that reserving freedom of choice is popular, because most people have not willfully blinded themselves to the realities of a heart-breaking miscarriage, the denial of life-saving care, the economic strain, or the simple need to let people have reproductive freedom because forced labor is wrong. 

To me, this says that anti-abortion extremists are already on the back foot and need to be booted. There's no good reason not to lean in on letting people know: one party respects your rights, and the other party wants to take them away, and make some pastor your private parts policeman. Make it crystal clear that it's abortion rights today, birth control tomorrow. If SCOTUS wanted this in the hands of the people--the people will need to decide--and if it's in the hands of the state, then it must be clear who needs to run the state senates, houses or assemblies as well. 

Only 52

 

I screen capped the above Tweet and am linking it because I kind of think it will be deleted, but a Washington Post columnist just recently on Twitter said "Only 10% of girls even get their period. Only 52 girls under the age of 14 got abortions in Ohio last year--and 10 is a long way from 14." 

How many should there be before you give a shit? I wonder, when I see that. See, I know girls as young as five have conceived. Girls who are, say, eleven years old, have been forced to have caesarian births.  At 11 years of age.  Only 10% of girls under 11 even get their period. Only. Only 52 girls under the age of 14 got abortions in Ohio in 2021. 

Only 52--one a week, just in Ohio. Just in Ohio. This is a figure that doesn't look at the Ohio children whose families made them give birth. This is looking at just one state. 

And I don't even know what to do with "10 is a long way from 14." Like, in terms of the child's innocence? In terms of how fucked up it is that she was likely impregnated by a grown man? How does anyone say something like that--as if implying that 14 years olds ate capable of consent and bearing and parenting a child. 

It's still very fucked up and not right, at ten, or fourteen, or really ever for someone to experience a nonconsensual sexual experience. 

I'm trying to not wonder if McArdle even understands what kids are, she of the imagined school shooter kiddy pile-up. She didn't understand what assault rifles did then and doesn't understand what birth for a tween means now. Whether their pelvis can handle it, what it means for the future fertility of the child, whether it is traumatic, how the delivery is made (cut from hip to hip?) how the pregnant child processed the trauma of all of it. 

It's strange to see an argument that was supposed to make the situation of pregnant tweens seem less horrific only--only--hammer home how traumatic and wrong it actually is. And how strange the word "only" can seem when appended to a tragic number.