They provide abortion care, support and information for women all over the world, in 16 languages, and are currently responding to the growing needs of Ukrainian girls and women!
“Founded in 2005 by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, Women on Web is a team of medical doctors, researchers, activists, and help desk members. Women on Web advocates for and facilitates access to contraception and safe abortion services to protect women’s health and lives.
The mission of Women on Web is to provide safe, accessible and affordable online abortion care to women and people around the world. We work to catalyze procedural and legal change in abortion access through telemedicine, research, community outreach, and advocacy. We strive for a world where safe abortion care is accessible for all women and pregnant people, with respect and dignity.”
I love headlines like I’m sure the situation was more nuanced than this but this is just a funny situation to imagine it’s like a real life political cartoon
The worst part is that it’s even LESS nuanced than the headline makes it seem. I assumed that she felt threatened by the people with chalk, but no.
someone wrote “susie please, Mainers want WHPA -> vote yes, clean up your mess” (WHPA=women’s health protection act)
And Susan Collins got home, saw it, called the police because of the “defacement of public property”, police came and noted it wasn’t a threat, and public works washed it away.
I hope all GOP / Pro-Live representatives are ready to get a good hard taste of their own medicine. This is NOTHING compared to what the people walking into Planned Parenthood have to face. This is NOTHING compared to what abortion healthcare providers go through. March in their streets. Stand outside their houses. People who lack respect and compassion deserve none in return. Can’t wait for these fucks to enjoy a fraction of what they and their base has been dishing out for the past 30 years. May they reap what they sowed and die hated.
(1) Abortion services are essential to health care and access to those services is central to people’s ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the United States. Abortion access allows people who are pregnant to make their own decisions about their pregnancies, their families, and their lives.
(2) Since 1973, the Supreme Court repeatedly has recognized the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability, and to terminate a pregnancy after fetal viability where it is necessary, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care professional, for the preservation of the life or health of the person who is pregnant.
(3) Nonetheless, access to abortion services has been obstructed across the United States in various ways, including blockades of health care facilities and associated violence, prohibitions of, and restrictions on, insurance coverage; parental involvement laws (notification and consent); restrictions that shame and stigmatize people seeking abortion services; and medically unnecessary regulations that neither confer any health benefit nor further the safety of abortion services, but which harm people by delaying, complicating access to, and reducing the availability of, abortion services.
(4) Reproductive justice requires every individual to have the right to make their own decisions about having children regardless of their circumstances and without interference and discrimination. Reproductive Justice is a human right that can and will be achieved when all people, regardless of actual or perceived race, color, national origin, immigration status, sex (including gender identity, sex stereotyping, or sexual orientation), age, or disability status have the economic, social, and political power and resources to define and make decisions about their bodies, health, sexuality, families, and communities in all areas of their lives, with dignity and self-determination.
(5) Reproductive justice seeks to address restrictions on reproductive health, including abortion, that perpetuate systems of oppression, lack of bodily autonomy, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism. This violent legacy has manifested in policies including enslavement, rape, and experimentation on Black women; forced sterilizations; medical experimentation on low-income women’s reproductive systems; and the forcible removal of Indigenous children. Access to equitable reproductive health care, including abortion services, has always been deficient in the United States for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) and their families.
(6) The legacy of restrictions on reproductive health, rights, and justice is not a dated vestige of a dark history. Presently, the harms of abortion-specific restrictions fall especially heavily on people with low incomes, BIPOC, immigrants, young people, people with disabilities, and those living in rural and other medically underserved areas. Abortion-specific restrictions are even more compounded by the ongoing criminalization of people who are pregnant, including those who are incarcerated, living with HIV, or with substance-use disorders. These communities already experience health disparities due to social, political, and environmental inequities, and restrictions on abortion services exacerbate these harms. Removing medically unjustified restrictions on abortion services would constitute one important step on the path toward realizing Reproductive Justice by ensuring that the full range of reproductive health care is accessible to all who need it.
(7) Abortion-specific restrictions are a tool of gender oppression, as they target health care services that are used primarily by women. These paternalistic restrictions rely on and reinforce harmful stereotypes about gender roles, women’s decision-making, and women’s need for protection instead of support, undermining their ability to control their own lives and well-being. These restrictions harm the basic autonomy, dignity, and equality of women, and their ability to participate in the social and economic life of the Nation.
(8) The terms “woman” and “women” are used in this bill to reflect the identity of the majority of people targeted and affected by restrictions on abortion services, and to address squarely the targeted restrictions on abortion, which are rooted in misogyny. However, access to abortion services is critical to the health of every person capable of becoming pregnant. This Act is intended to protect all people with the capacity for pregnancy—cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with a different gender, and others—who are unjustly harmed by restrictions on abortion services.
(9) Since 2011, States and local governments have passed nearly 500 restrictions singling out health care providers who offer abortion services, interfering with their ability to provide those services and the patients’ ability to obtain those services.
(10) Many State and local governments have imposed restrictions on the provision of abortion services that are neither evidence-based nor generally applicable to the medical profession or to other medically comparable outpatient gynecological procedures, such as endometrial ablations, dilation and curettage for reasons other than abortion, hysteroscopies, loop electrosurgical excision procedures, or other analogous non-gynecological procedures performed in similar outpatient settings including vasectomy, sigmoidoscopy, and colonoscopy.
(11) Abortion is essential health care and one of the safest medical procedures in the United States. An independent, comprehensive review of the state of science on the safety and quality of abortion services, published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2018, found that abortion in the United States is safe and effective and that the biggest threats to the quality of abortion services in the United States are State regulations that create barriers to care. These abortion-specific restrictions conflict with medical standards and are not supported by the recommendations and guidelines issued by leading reproductive health care professional organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Society of Family Planning, the National Abortion Federation, the World Health Organization, and others.
(12) Many abortion-specific restrictions do not confer any health or safety benefits on the patient. Instead, these restrictions have the purpose and effect of unduly burdening people’s personal and private medical decisions to end their pregnancies by making access to abortion services more difficult, invasive, and costly, often forcing people to travel significant distances and make multiple unnecessary visits to the provider, and in some cases, foreclosing the option altogether. For example, a 2018 report from the University of California San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research group found that in 27 cities across the United States, people have to travel more than 100 miles in any direction to reach an abortion provider.
(13) An overwhelming majority of abortions in the United States are provided in clinics, not hospitals, but the large majority of counties throughout the United States have no clinics that provide abortion.
(14) These restrictions additionally harm people’s health by reducing access not only to abortion services but also to other essential health care services offered by many of the providers targeted by the restrictions, including—
(A) screenings and preventive services, including contraceptive services;
(B) testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections;
(D) referrals for primary care, intimate partner violence prevention, prenatal care and adoption services.
(15) The cumulative effect of these numerous restrictions has been to severely limit the availability of abortion services in some areas, creating a patchwork system where access to abortion services is more available in some States than in others. A 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office examining State Medicaid compliance with abortion coverage requirements analyzed seven key challenges (identified both by health care providers and research literature) and their effect on abortion access, and found that access to abortion services varied across the States and even within a State.
(16) International human rights law recognizes that access to abortion is intrinsically linked to the rights to life, health, equality and non-discrimination, privacy, and freedom from ill-treatment. United Nations (UN) human rights treaty monitoring bodies have found that legal abortion services, like other reproductive health care services, must be available, accessible, affordable, acceptable, and of good quality. UN human rights treaty bodies have likewise condemned medically unnecessary barriers to abortion services, including mandatory waiting periods, biased counseling requirements, and third-party authorization requirements.
(17) Core human rights treaties ratified by the United States protect access to abortion. For example, in 2018, the UN Human Rights Committee, which oversees implementation of the ICCPR, made clear that the right to life, enshrined in Article 6 of the ICCPR, at a minimum requires governments to provide safe, legal, and effective access to abortion where a person’s life and health is at risk, or when carrying a pregnancy to term would cause substantial pain or suffering. The Committee stated that governments must not impose restrictions on abortion which subject women and girls to physical or mental pain or suffering, discriminate against them, arbitrarily interfere with their privacy, or place them at risk of undertaking unsafe abortions. Furthermore, the Committee stated that governments should remove existing barriers that deny effective access to safe and legal abortion, refrain from introducing new barriers to abortion, and prevent the stigmatization of those seeking abortion.
(18) UN independent human rights experts have expressed particular concern about barriers to abortion services in the United States. For example, at the conclusion of his 2017 visit to the United States, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights noted concern that low-income women face legal and practical obstacles to exercising their constitutional right to access abortion services, trapping many women in cycles of poverty. Similarly, in May 2020, the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, along with other human rights experts, expressed concern that some states had manipulated the COVID–19 crisis to restrict access to abortion, which the experts recognized as “the latest example illustrating a pattern of restrictions and retrogressions in access to legal abortion care across the country” and reminded U.S. authorities that abortion care constitutes essential health care that must remain available during and after the pandemic. They noted that barriers to abortion access exacerbate systemic inequalities and cause particular harm to marginalized communities, including low-income people, people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people.
(19) Abortion-specific restrictions affect the cost and availability of abortion services, and the settings in which abortion services are delivered. People travel across State lines and otherwise engage in interstate commerce to access this essential medical care, and more would be forced to do so absent this Act. Likewise, health care providers travel across State lines and otherwise engage in interstate commerce in order to provide abortion services to patients, and more would be forced to do so absent this Act.
(20) Health care providers engage in a form of economic and commercial activity when they provide abortion services, and there is an interstate market for abortion services.
(21) Abortion restrictions substantially affect interstate commerce in numerous ways. For example, to provide abortion services, health care providers engage in interstate commerce to purchase medicine, medical equipment, and other necessary goods and services. To provide and assist others in providing abortion services, health care providers engage in interstate commerce to obtain and provide training. To provide abortion services, health care providers employ and obtain commercial services from doctors, nurses, and other personnel who engage in interstate commerce and travel across State lines.
(22) It is difficult and time and resource-consuming for clinics to challenge State laws that burden or impede abortion services. Litigation that blocks one abortion restriction may not prevent a State from adopting other similarly burdensome abortion restrictions or using different methods to burden or impede abortion services. There is a history and pattern of States passing successive and different laws that unduly burden abortion services.
(23) When a health care provider ceases providing abortion services as a result of burdensome and medically unnecessary regulations, it is often difficult or impossible for that health care provider to recommence providing those abortion services, and difficult or impossible for other health care providers to provide abortion services that restore or replace the ceased abortion services.
(24) Health care providers are subject to license laws in various jurisdictions, which are not affected by this Act except as provided in this Act.
(25) Congress has the authority to enact this Act to protect abortion services pursuant to—
(A) its powers under the commerce clause of section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States;
(B) its powers under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to enforce the provisions of section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment; and
(26) Congress has used its authority in the past to protect access to abortion services and health care providers’ ability to provide abortion services. In the early 1990s, protests and blockades at health care facilities where abortion services were provided, and associated violence, increased dramatically and reached crisis level, requiring Congressional action. Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (Public Law 103–259; 108 Stat. 694) to address that situation and protect physical access to abortion services.
(27) Congressional action is necessary to put an end to harmful restrictions, to federally protect access to abortion services for everyone regardless of where they live, and to protect the ability of health care providers to provide these services in a safe and accessible manner.
(b) Purpose.—It is the purpose of this Act—
(1) to permit health care providers to provide abortion services without limitations or requirements that single out the provision of abortion services for restrictions that are more burdensome than those restrictions imposed on medically comparable procedures, do not significantly advance reproductive health or the safety of abortion services, and make abortion services more difficult to access;
(2) to promote access to abortion services and women’s ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the United States; and
(3) to invoke Congressional authority, including the powers of Congress under the commerce clause of section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States, its powers under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to enforce the provisions of section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and its powers under the necessary and proper clause of section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States.
Yeah, the rioting was always theoretical. A fantasy entertained to sound cool, but rejected the moment it becomes more than a fantasy. It’s all ‘Stonewall was a riot’ and ‘remember these cool radicals who did cool shit’ until it’s time to put some actual skin in the game yourself and then anything impolite is a step too far.
Re: “Cool radicals who did cool shit”, this podcast.
As long as there’s been oppression, there’ve been people fighting it. This weekly podcast dives into history to drag up the wildest rebels, the most beautiful revolts, and all the people who long to be—and fight to be—free. It explores complex stories of resistance that offer lessons and inspiration for us today, focusing on the ensemble casts that make up each act of history. That is to say, this podcast focuses on Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Part One: The Jane Collective: Direct Action Abortion Access Works
May 8, 2022 • 75 min
Margaret talks with Samantha McVey about the more than a hundred women who provided safe, affordable abortion in pre- Roe v Wade Chicago.
I went into menopause the night Trump was elected, so I have no personal need for abortion access. But just KNOWING that someone else wants to have control over my body, my mind, and my LIFE is utterly enraging. There’s a bunch of things to do about this, but let’s boil it down to one simple guideline:
the “I believe in abortion only in extreme situations” people (especially women) truly baffle me because I genuinely consider “a human has another human growing inside of them and does not want to” to be a very extreme situation. to me that feels so deeply like an extreme emergency situation. I know this has been said before but it’s incredible to me that this does not feel innately horrifying and “extreme” to everyone.
ppl being like “abortion is okay only if you took all the “correct” measures first or if you were impregnated non-consensually” SHUT UP! abortion for “sexually promiscuous” people and sex addicts and ppl you call sluts and whores and people who have one-night stands and every single person who had sex because they felt like it! you do not have to reach a quota of suffering to “deserve” an abortion. abortion is not something you earn. abortion isn’t a moral thing like you protestants like to think it’s a fucking right and everyone deserves access to it and they don’t have to prove that they deserve it. pregnancy is not a punishment for sex and every single person deserves the right to terminate a pregnancy regardless of how they became pregnant. shut up
preached at a Novena at Our Lady of the Holy Souls, Kensal New Town
“It was at Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians.’” (Act 11:26) Before that, followers of Jesus were sometimes called “Nazarenes”, a term that, you might recall, terrorist groups in Syria had revived in recent times to brand us. But the origin of the word Christian was no less of a stigma. It seems that the people of Antioch had also first used ‘Christians’ as a derisive term, and this use of the word recurs time and again. The word ‘cretin’ for example, which means a stupid or insensitive person, comes from the time of the French Revolution when being called a crétin, a Christian, was used as an insult. But although people called us Christians (and still do) in order to dismiss us, or exclude us from the public sphere, the early Church took on the name ‘Christian’ as a badge of pride. For it means that we follow Christ, that we are anointed as he is with the spirit of Sonship, and so we are called to be little Christs in the world so that those who see us will see Him, our Crucified and Risen Lord.
Hence the Lord says plainly in the Gospel to those who ask him if he is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God: “The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me.” (Jn 10:27) To be called a Christian, therefore, and to be worthy of the title means that our behaviour has in some way marked us out as belonging to Jesus Christ, and it is a behaviour that should set us apart from others, making us distinctive and different and odd in an increasingly non-Christian world. Many will think us to be cretins because we are truly Christian.
To be truly Christian is not to be nice – not necessarily. It is, however, to love. For this is what it means to follow Christ our Good Shepherd. It means we follow him to the Cross where he showed a sinful world what love looks like. Thus we follow him also to the grave and beyond, into the evergreen pastures of eternal life, as he promises us in the Gospel. Loving and following Christ, however, does not mean just believing in private beliefs. No, it is clear from the context of today’s Gospel, and the example of the early Church, and the Martyrs and Saints, that from the very beginning, our belief in Christ, our listening to his voice, sets us up for public visible actions and choices that will bring us into conflict with the world, and that challenge a world that has grown cold and distant from God, from truth, from the good, and even from beauty. To love and follow Christ, therefore, means to love and defend the good and the true. So the Lord also said: “‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.” (Jn 15:20)
Consider, for example, the furore in the USA and on social media over the issue of so-called abortion rights – as if one could ever have a right to kill another human being, let alone the most vulnerable of all human beings, the baby in its mother’s womb. And so, for those who stand up for genuine human rights, beginning with the fundamental right to life, they have been called all manner of hateful and insulting names, and even been subjected to physical violence – for violence is the way of a people, blinded by sin and ignorance, who cannot actually cope with thinking and debating rationally about emotive topics. Thus the people of the world clamoured for blood and killed the King of Love. Thus, as we hear in the first reading today, the first Christians had come to Antioch because they had to escape fierce persecution in Jerusalem. And so we are opposed on many fronts in our time, but most especially against the sanctity of the family and authentic marriage.
Many, like sheep, will follow the strident voice of the world: one hears it in the opinions of politicians, celebrities, social media influencers; in popular books, on television, in universities, and all our favourite brands. All the more must we listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd who leads us to eternal life, who leads us into a deep love for God and his commandments, and so into a deep love for our neighbour, especially those who do not yet know God and who do not keep his word. St John of Avila, doctor of the Church whose feast falls today, would say: “The proof of perfect love of our Lord is seen in the perfect love of our neighbour”. It is this unified love that motivates us to be Christians, not only in name, but in deed, witnessing to the truth of the Faith in our very behaviour, even at the risk of being regarded as cretins. For to be a Christian is to love.
So, the response of Christians all over the world, whenever they have been confronted by hatred and violence and persecution has been to turn to Our Lady and to pray the Holy Rosary, a great prayer centred on God’s saving love. Back in 1571 when Christianity in Europe was imperilled, my holy confrere the Dominican pope St Pius V, called together the Christian people in Rome, gathered into the Rosary Confraternity, to pray the Holy Rosary. After the Muslim forces were successfully repelled because of these prayers, St Pius V added the title Auxilium Christianorum, Help of Christians, to the Litany of Loreto.
So in these days as you observe this Novena, as Dominican Promoter General of the Rosary, I say, thank you for praying the Rosary. And I pray that Our Lady will help us Christians today in our time, in our current struggles and challenges. May Our Lady help us to be Christians, to live up to our baptismal promises with courage, humility, and love. And so, by Our Lady’s prayers, may she amplify in our hearts and minds the voice of Christ, whom St John of Avila calls, “a great Friend”. May all come to hear God’s voice calling all peoples to friendship with him. For this, divine friendship, is what it means to be called a Christian – and we are proud to profess it in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Note, I am finding these threads on the twitter feeds of ICU nurses who are now dreading the horrors that Roe falling will bring to their hospitals. This, on top of the horrors that they’ve seen and continue to see because of the pandemic. They were already exhausted and hanging by a thread.
Boost this. Malicious fucking compliance y'all. Tie up their legal system with tens of thousands of cases. Burn their state government’s cash on this issue. Force them to play by the Nth degree of this idiotic rule.
i love uncivil obedience. follow the letter of the law so close that it shows just how ridiculous and unfair the law is
This is so great because if anyone is caught impeding or messing with these deliveries, it’s MAIL, that makes it a FEDERAL crime, whoever fucks with these packages gets charged FEDERALLY, they face up to five years in prison.
[ID: A tweet by @ nytimes that reads, “Breaking News: Women can get abortion pills by mail for pregnancies up to 10 weeks without seeing a doctor in person, the FDA ruled. The decision comes as the Supreme Court considers whether to roll back abortion rights or even overturn Roe v. Wade.” Attached is a link to the article and a screenshot of the title and subtitle of the article. The article was published Dec 16, 2021. The title reads, “F.D.A. Will Permanently Allow Abortion Pills by Mail” and the subtitle reads, “The decision will broaden access to medication abortion, an increasingly common method, but many conservative states are already mobilizing against it.” /end ID]
This is great but do remember to check if there’s a weight limit on the brand you take. Idk about abortion pills but I do believe you have to take two plan B if your above a certain weight.
This picture has been circulating all over social media and I have more to add:
Delete all period cycle tracking apps off your phone today.
Do not tell anyone why you want to take your trip, especially over text/apps.
Do not tell anyone the real state/destination of your trip.
Have everyone on your trip turn off their phones. Use written directions or a burner phone. Do not use burner phone to open any personal apps. Dispose of after trip.
Only use cash while purchasing ANYTHING on your trip.
Take “vacation” photos to post later. Be cautious of geo-tags/only post screenshots of the original photos.
Some people might say this is being extra or overly precautious, but this really is the reality we are facing. People have been imprisoned with murder charges in certain states- some for literal miscarriages. If you are a person that ends up in this situation, the state can and will use your data against you as evidence in court. Do not leave a paper trail. If they want to treat us like criminals, we’re gonna move like criminals.
This is a reminder that Roe v Wade wasn’t just about abortion.
It was about privacy.
It didn’t state abortion is legal.
It stated that you had the right to do whatever you want, and we can’t determine if you’ve had an abortion without invading your privacy.
To see how abortion bans are a violation of privacy look at the abortion cases in Texas. Neighbors are sueing neighbors because, “You were pregnant. You left the state. Now you’re not. That’s strange. I think you left to have an abortion.”
Do you WANT people in your business like that? Sneakily checking the addresses on your mail to see if you’re ordering abortion meds? To stalk you to the point where they can tell if you’re pregnant and when you’re suddenly not anymore? Companies going through your search history to see if you’re on abortion websites?
Really baffled why “abortion allows men to have low-stakes consequence-free casual sex” is considered to be like a negative downside to abortion rights, or like a potentially sinister bad reason to support abortion rights.
“Abortion allows women to have low-stakes consequence-free sex” is often the primary argument for why it should exist! Allowing people to plan parenthood, allowing them to pursue their natural urges for love and sex without necessarily having to make huge life-altering commitments to marriage or parenthood upfront.
Besides religious beliefs about the sanctity of life, this is the primary reason conservatives hate abortion. It makes fornication and delayed marriage a low-stakes choice for women. And conservatives hate that! They want women to get married young and be tied down into a family unit as early as possible. Normally, a pregnancy is a powerful force for compelling young women to do that. But abortion makes it optional and voluntary, and they do not like that!
I don’t understand why we would think it’s a bad thing that abortion offers men the same liberty.
Really baffled why “abortion allows men to have low-stakes consequence-free casual sex” is considered to be like a negative downside to abortion rights
Because these people are conservatives at heart, duh
So I know blaze posts are supposed to be silly, but I wanted to do a quick, overly-earnest one. Encryption and online privacy have been in the news this week and so a group I volunteer with is starting a monthly Encryption Training series for 2022, 3rd Mondays at 4-5pm PT, every month this year. It is open to anyone; each session will be half the same overview and half small-group help; the vibe is tactical tech support and it will be pretty interactive. The agenda is below. Please register here. Our first training is this 4-5pm Monday, May 16th, 2022.
Training Description: Are you or someone you love seriously considering how best to protect your private searches and personal information online, in light of current news?
To help our attendees navigate the encrypted tools, technologies, and good habits to protect their data and online activities, we will be hosting monthly 1-hour free Encryption Trainings for all of 2022. The training draw on the technologies highlighted in these 4 guides, amongst others:
Please come with your questions, ideas, concerns, and technical issues.
Agenda:
5 mins: Introductions from the trainers (the first month the San Francisco Bay Area Internet Society Chapter President will be teaching; if you would like to learn to run a training, please attend a meeting and volunteer)
25 minutes: Review key tools, technologies, and habits.
25 minutes: Small group help – we will partner attendees up to help evaluate and seek to address your specific encryption and privacy issue.
5 mins: Wrap-up.
You’re welcome to attend several trainings, but you should get what you need out of one.
Note: even though we are starting this series because of the U.S. abortion care context, the trainings are open to anyone from any nation who would like to join, and the tools are available internationally. If you have any requests – a training in a different language, at a different time, on a specific subset of information – please feel free to reach out to me.
PS: I have no interest in debating abortion care here. I spent 5 years as a volunteer clinic escort for Planned Parenthood and have testified in FACE Act cases; people I love are also pro-life. I’ll have discussions with them. But I’ll cheerfully block anyone who wants to pick a fight on this hellsite.
I love this!! For my fellow “prefer to learn by listening” ppl:
Here’s a 30min podcast episode about how you can help members of your community access abortion pills, which are FDA approved and safe and effective to self administer ♥️
It features an interview with the cofounder of Women Help Women/Self-Managed Abortion, Safe and Supported (SASS). They’re also safe and inclusionary for all bodies and identities :) They have secure servers to contact counselors for advice and a secure menstrual tracker app called Euki that teaches about birth control and using abortion pills safely!
Never forget that approx 20% of pregnancies self terminate, potential complications from abortion pills are the same as a regular miscarriage, and these pills being prescription-only has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with regressive puritanical reproductive health policies ♥️
It IS fucked up that we’re losing access to safe clinics. We SHOULD have the right to go to a doctor easily for abortion but even if we don’t: No more scaring each other about coat hangers!!! We don’t have to feel only scared and helpless! We can take care of each other. We should all learn this stuff. It’s basic info about our bodies and our health.
Note, I am finding these threads on the twitter feeds of ICU nurses who are now dreading the horrors that Roe falling will bring to their hospitals. This, on top of the horrors that they’ve seen and continue to see because of the pandemic. They were already exhausted and hanging by a thread.
Republicans from the US want to force women to give birth to children who will then be shot while going to school.
A woman is supposed to sacrifice her health and 9 months of her life to carry to term but a Republican can’t be inconvenienced by any sort of gun control.
They 100% care about fetuses more than about actual children. In their opinion an aborted fetus that doesn’t feel anything and doesn’t even know what existence means is more important than a child dying terrified at school.
FromThe Fight for Roe, one of 25 photos. Agnes Scott College student Jordan Simi (center) participates in a chant during a pro-abortion rights march and rally held in reaction to the leak of a draft U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion preparing for a majority of the court to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision later this year, in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 3, 2022. (Alyssa Pointer / Reuters)
for anyone who is currently panicked about the Supreme Court overturning roe v. wade:
it hasn’t happened yet.
what was leaked was an initial draft of the majority opinion: it’s the first indication of what the supreme court are leaning towards voting and why. (and by the way, these never get revealed to the public during current cases. this is a huge deal.)
“Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled. The court’s holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months.” (X)
it is vital that people understand that it hasn’t happened yet. and don’t get me wrong: this is still very bad. my point isn’t to give people a reason to stop caring. my point is, armed as we are with this leaked information, please please contact your state officials. support abortion rights initiatives as well as you are able.
send the Supreme Court every message we can that making this ruling would go against the public’s wishes. turn public favor vehemently against them.
this hasn’t happened yet. do not resign yourself to this future. do not panic. do not give up.
1. “If you don’t like abortion, then don’t get one.”
This concept doesn’t work on anti-choicers because they preach that abortion is murder and therefore needs to be banned as a societal moral statement.
2. “Abortion is legal.”
Anti-choicers know abortion is legal, that’s why they’re trying to make it illegal. This is essentially saying, “Abortion should be legal because it is already legal.”
3. “People will die if forced to get illegal abortions.”
Anti-choicersdon’t care if people die while “murdering little babies.”
4. “I hope all these ‘pro-life’ people have adopted children, support expanded welfare, support universal health care, etc… .”
That’s why anti-choicers constantly talk about how people with unwanted pregnancies have to “face the consequences” of their actions: they see children as consequences for bad sexual behavior. What happens after the child is born doesn’t matter, because the person who gave birth to it has already been sufficiently punished.
5. “I hope all these ‘pro-life’ people support access to birth control and comprehensive sex ed.”
See above. The anti-choice movement doesn’t support these things because it’s the sex, not the fetuses, that it truly cares about.
6. “Planned Parenthood does so much more than abortion / Abortions are only 3% of PP’s services.”
Planned Parenthood represents exactly what anti-choicers hate: the choice to have sex without becoming a parent. Abortion is the biggest offender, but it’s the whole concept of having sex “without consequences” (i.e. a child) that anti-choicers hate.
7. “Even if a fetus was legally a person, bodily autonomy would still prevail.”
DON’T GIVE THEM THIS GROUND! Embryos and most fetuses aren’t sentient, don’t have feelings or thoughts or sensations or are aware that they exist. They are not people. Letting anti-choicers have the “personhood” argument gives them enormous ground to shame pregnant people and pass laws restricting legal abortion out of existence. It also has disastrous consequences for people who have miscarriages.
So what does work?
Anti-choicers’ entire platform depends on emotional manipulation with the “protect unborn children” rhetoric. They absolutely hate having the conversation re-centered on what’s actually under attack: the rights of pregnant people, specifically their right to bodily autonomy.
Most of the listed arguments don’t work because they’re still focused on the supposed “rights” of the embryo or fetus. Never debate embryonic rights; always re-focus the conversation back on pregnant people’s rights.
Read up. Anti-choice arguments are like happy meal toys: there’s only about six of them, you just have to collect them all. Remember to focus every point back on how it affects pregnant people. (Start here)
Don’t get suckered into calling the anti-choice side “pro-life.” Call them anti-choice or at least anti-abortion. The movement does not support babies or life.
Abortion rights are important! Don’t play into the anti-choice side by talking about how “we all want the abortion rate to go down.” The abortion rate shouldn’t go down if it means more people are forced to complete pregnancies they don’t want.
States in the US passed 288 abortion restrictions between 2010-2015. Many people in the US now have to drive hundreds of miles to get to an abortion clinic. Abortion has become virtually inaccessible to the poor. Trump just reinstated the global gag rule and made the Hyde Amendment permanent. Anti-choicers have been out pounding the pavement every day to get abortion restrictions passed for years. Holding their hands and talking about how we can find common ground in “reducing abortions” doesn’t work. You have to fight them.
Just me crying in the bathroom so I don’t wake my partners with this, fuck.
So to sum up: CT and DC have passed laws making it illegal to extradite someone to another state if they are being charged in that other state for crimes pertaining to abortion or trans health care, and makes it legal to sue and get your money back if you are targeted by a TX-style “bounty” law. DC also includes “crimes” of consensual adult sex, gay and interracial marriage and cohabitation and providing or using contraception.
This is, as the thread explains, basically legal interstate warfare. CT and DC’s laws bar compliance with such laws.
This is, on one hand, kind of terrifying, because this is where we are now. It’s going to get worse long before it gets better.
On the other hand… holy shit, someone fucking did something.
Someone fucking did something real.
Okay folx so… this kind of tags has been fairly common on this post.
I’m glad people are checking, but! If you didn’t know, this is what it looks like now if you post a link to Twitter on Tumblr. And!
Here are the screenshots of CT’s amendment. The important stuff in the 2nd screenshot is what’s underlined. There is too much text for alt text, it’s on the link above, but the tl;dr is “it covers abortion and gender-affirming health care.” It has been passed and signed by the Governor as detailed on the ct.gov link:
So yes, this is very very real, and Tumblr changed how they display Twitter links - the thread had all of this info in it except for the link to The Hill. :)
Please reblog this version before I lose my fucking mind over people reblogging the original post saying “I haven’t checked this and I don’t know if it’s real.”
I cannot believe this is what we have to do now to keep people safe. Good God.
ALT
