#abortion rights

LIVE

aunti-christ-ine:

“Senator Joe Manchin just indicated he would not blow up the filibuster to codify Roe, saying he believes the filibuster is a check on power that preserves abortion rights. Without Manchin, the chance of passing Roe into law is pretty much zero.”

– Paul McLeod

"Tell me the truth, I'm ready to hear it" meme format from Raimi Spiderman 2 film. Mary Jane says that with pleading look on face while Peter Parker answers, "The Satanic Temple cannot help you get an abortion, and it does not deserve your support." Mary reacts silently, but crushed.

If you’re a fan of The Satanic Temple and you’ve had some lingering questions about TST’s promises, it’s long past time you got them answered.

[ID: “Tell me the truth, I’m ready to hear it” meme format from Raimi Spiderman 2 film. Mary Jane says that with pleading look on face while Peter Parker answers, “The Satanic Temple cannot help you get an abortion, and it does not deserve your support.” Mary reacts silently, but crushed. /ID]

The Satanic Temple cannot help you get an abortion, and it does not deserve your support

Legal opinions from the article:

In an email to Lead Stories on May 11, 2022, Ric Simmons, the Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer Professor at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, wrote that RFRA would not likely be a substantial enough claim:

Laws that ban or restrict abortion apply indiscriminately to everyone, so there would be no religious exemption to them under the first amendment, and it would be difficult to argue that obeying the law would create a substantial burden to exercising their religion (it may, of course, impose a substantial burden on women generally, but that is not RFRA’s test).

[Mark Tushnet, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law emeritus at Harvard Law School] wrote in detail to explain the full complexity of this issue

1. If the new member holds the beliefs associated with the Satanic Temple sincerely, and not opportunistically, she would be able to claim​ protection under the federal RFRA for actions against her by the federal government (not at all likely under current statutes because there aren’t many federal statutes regulating those who have abortions) and under state RFRAs where they exist (in about 20 states, I believe, but of course, you should check).

2. A sincere belief would trigger RFRA protections but that doesn’t mean that the action would in fact be protected. All RFRAs allow the government to override the religious belief for compelling reasons, and governments would certainly argue that protecting what they regard as human life is a compelling reason. I’m reasonably confident that the governments would prevail on that ground – so, in the end, I think it unlikely that joining the Satanic Temple would actually provide protection against prosecution for having an abortion.

3. In addition, the point in #1 about “sincerity” is important. Courts have been reluctant to find that a litigant isn’t sincere in asserting her religious beliefs, but everyone’s aware of the fact that the more personal benefit you get from the claim, the more likely it is that you’re not sincere in asserting what your beliefs are. I think there’s a decent change that many judges would find that people who joined the Satanic Temple recently and didn’t do anything else weren’t sincere – but again that might vary depending on what each individual member actually does.

Samuel D. Brunson, the Georgia Reithal professor at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, wrote in an email on May 11, 2022, that he’s “pretty sure that the Satanic Temple is positioning itself to challenge anti-abortion legislation in various states.”

The federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as most (if not all) state-level RFRAs don’t say that the government cannot infringe on a person’s free exercise rights under any circumstance at all. Rather, they say that to infringe on an individual’s religious practice, the government must have a compelling governmental interest and the law it enacts must be the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.

Is it possible that a member of the Satanic Temple can successfully challenge laws against abortion based on a religious belief in bodily autonomy? Yes, it is possible. But I suspect that the state would have the better argument.

As much as we want an easy, costless way to deal with potential anti-abortion laws in a post-Roe world, something that seems easy and slick and too cute by half is probably not going to work. Protecting a woman’s right to choose is, rather, going to require us to do the hard work of demonstrating, writing to representatives, and voting for people (at the federal and state levels) who will ensure that that right is protected.

the Satanic Temple’s approach is clever. And it highlights a real inconsistency among people who insist both on untrammeled religious liberty and prohibitions on abortion. But joining the Satanic Temple is unlikely to allow an individual in, for instance, Texas or Louisiana ignore state abortion bans.

More:

doctorcurdlejr:

Alito also addresses concern about the impact the decision could have on public discourse. “We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work,” Alito writes. “We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”ALT

I find it very telling that Alito directly says not to consider the public reaction to their decision when it comes to overturning Roe v. Wade because it’s clear there will be much public unrest at the loss of a major reproductive right which lays the groundwork for a lot of other cases after.

The Court’s conservatives do not care about public unrest or popular opinion. They never have. They don’t see it as their job to respond to the will of the people because they’re not elected (and they’re not supposed to be! You don’t want judges to be elected!). The issue is that they don’t take modernity or 20th century trends into account.

Judges like Alito think their only role is to interpret the text of the Constitution and its amendments as they would have been interpreted when written, forever frozen in time, regardless of what the writer(s) intended. That’s what “originalism” or “textualism” or “Judges are like umpires” means. It’s all legal fundamentalism. In their minds, how dare a judge consider modern life or recent history when interpreting a word in a 200 year old document?? How dare a judge give wide (but rational) interpretations to a word or phrase in order to give people new freedoms??? They decry it as “judicial activism” and claim that new freedoms can only be decided by the elected legislature. (Remember, the legislative branch makes the laws; the executive makes regulation to enforce the existing laws but cannot make new laws.)

To the conservatives, if we want change then we need to add new words to the Constitution via the amendment process. And to do that, we need new executives and legislators — so we have to vote for the Democrats/liberals at every level. That’s how the conservatives got to this point! They held their nose and voted for every candidate with the ® next to their name for every election for 50 years.

In the meantime, get loud with your existinglegislators and executives, not judges. Protest, write letters, make phone calls. Donate time or money to organizations that are fighting back. Or run for office yourself! When the time comes, vote for President, Senate, House of Representatives, and your state Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and state legislators. Popular opinion may not sway the Supreme Court, but you might be able to oust some shitty state legislators. Or elect a state Attorney General who won’t prosecute women who miscarry. Ideally the Democrats will even keep the Senate and fend off Mitch McConnell for a few more years. And that could make the difference in protecting rights in your state, or even nationwide, while we fix this at the Constitutional level.

If you want to support reproductive rights and are looking for options other than Planned Parenthood, check out:

PlanCpills.org (access to and help with medication-based abortions)

Abortionfunds.org (this is the US National Network of Abortion Funds)

IfWhenHow.org (they do cool reproductive justice work, including a defense fund and support for people prosecuted for abortion)

Guttmacher.org (research and policy think tank for sexual and reproductive health — this one is worldwide, not US based)

Reproductiverights.org (legal advocacy — also global)

I have a First Amendment right to criticize the Supreme Court. Fuck you, Clarence Thomas, for saying, “We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don’t like,“ when you’ve been addicted to overturning fundamental rights precedent for your entire Court tenure.

I’ll be back to my usual BS about anime men and 90s music soon, but right now, I’ve got Constitutional law on my mind. Instead of ranting about unelected judges or old white men, fight back by learning their tricks! Understand how and why this leaked opinion’s bombshell isn’t about abortion. It’s about restricting rights that aren’t explicit in the Constitution. The leaked draft in the Dobbscase would absolutely endanger, to varying degrees, the right to:

  • Marry (same sex and/or interracial marriage)
  • Have children (adoption and sterilization)
  • Have certain kinds of consensual sex (sodomy)
  • Custody of children
  • Keep a family together
  • Purchase and/or use contraceptives (even if married)
  • Control the upbringing of your child (sending kids to parochial schools and/or homeschooling)
  • Refuse medical treatment
  • Maybe even some parts of the Bill of Rights like free speech if we go down the darkest timeline’s hardcore fundamentalist path.

Why? Because these rights all share an underlying analytical framework with the right to have an abortion pre-viability without an undue burden. These are all “fundamental rights” (that’s the legal term, not philosophical opinion) under the:

  • Fourteenth Amendment - aka the post-Civil War one that applies to state governments and has an explicit Equal Protection Clause AND Due Process Clause. Which fundamental rights are protected by which clause? The difference is mostly semantic, although choosing one clause over the other can put a spin on the case making a certain outcome more likely. The Supreme Court has also found previously that the 14th Amendment “incorporates” most of the Bill of Rights and applies those limits to state governments. The first 10 amendments otherwise apply only to the federal government. Without this Court-made interpretation of the 14th Amendment, your state government could absolutely stop your free speech, for example. It’s meant to limit racist states, basically.
  • Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment - Yep, double due process, because this one only applies to the federal government! But, fun fact, the Supreme Court has decided this due process clause should be read to “include” equal protection so the federal government is limited by equal protection too. Another Court-made protection that matters.
  • Ninth Amendment (it says the naming of certain rights in the Constitution should not be read as disparaging/prohibiting other rights retained by the people). There aren’t any Ninth Amendment rights, technically, but it’s validation that the Constitution CAN protect rights that aren’t explicitly written into the document.

So, how do we decide what is, legally, a fundamental right protected from federal AND state government interference? And which Amendment and clause do we use to give life to that right?


It turns out there’s no strict test. Really! Each fundamental right is established slowly over time, based on a variety of factors. It was kept flexible by design, so rights can be added and expanded. That’s what drives conservatives mad, because they want hard & fast rules. And that’s what this Dobbs draft opinion attacks. The “holding” in the draft — meaning the most important, binding legal part — says “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by ANY constitutional provision, including…the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The draft opinion then follows a three-part structure explaining:

  1. “the standard our cases have used in determining whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to ‘liberty’ protects a particular right.” This is a specific reference to the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”
  2. Whether [abortion] is rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition and whether it is an essential component of what we have described as ‘ordered liberty.’” This distinction between “liberty” and “ordered liberty” is invented by the Supreme Court, as the 14th Amendment just says “liberty.” But it’s been used for a long time and isn’t controversial.
  3. Whether a right to obtain an abortion is supported by other precedents.


Do you see the judicial sleight of hand?


There wasn’t a unified test for finding a “fundamental right” implicit in the Constitution. But this opinion immediately dismisses the equal protection clause (calling it inapplicable to abortion), and the 5th and 9th Amendments (saying Roe didn’t consider them so the Court must ignore them now), leaving only the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment as the basis for finding a fundamental right. Having isolated this clause, the opinion then goes straight for the heart of it, saying fundamental rights can be found only if the right is objectively, deeply rooted in history, because that subset of “ordered liberty” is the ONLY kind of “liberty” the Due Process Clause is capable of protecting. This slashes the scope of the clause and establishes a high bar that hasn’t been required in other cases.


The draft isn’t subtle about it either.

“In interpreting what is meant by the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to liberty, we must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what that amendment protects with our own ardent view about the liberty that Americans should enjoy.” Then the draft says it seeks to “set the record straight” on Roe’s “faulty historical analysis,” even though that wasn’t the test used by the Roe court and the subsequent cases supporting Roe. (And, FWIW, the 66-page Roe opinion contains literally dozens of pages of historical analysis, including notes on how abortion and infanticide was practiced by ancient Greeks and Romans. Dobbs dismisses it all as “irrelevant”.)


Instead of any strict test, Roe recognized that the pre-existing Constitutional right of privacy was “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” (There’s our “ordered liberty” again! See, RoeandDobbs look at the same precedent and come out with completely different conclusions, which is not supposed to happen! But I digress.) Pre-Roe, the existing privacy right guaranteed a “zone of privacy” encompassing marriage (though only hetero at the time), procreation, contraception, child rearing & education, and more. Roe reasoned if all other rights in that zone could not be infringed by the federal or state government in any way, then the Constitution should extend a right protecting abortions from almost all government interference “pre-viability,” meaning before a fetus could survive outside a pregnant person.


Why viability? Because the government interest in the fetus needs to be BALANCED with the “separate and distinct” interest in “preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant [person].” Both fetus and pregnant person must be considered.

Simply put, “the pregnant [person] cannot be isolated in her pregnancy. She carries an embryo, and later a fetus…” Abortion is different from other fundamental rights in that we inherently have a clash of competing rights, and that’s why abortion is not, and never has been, a complete, unfettered right throughout the whole pregnancy. It’s also why there must be exceptions for the life or health of the pregnant person. In achieving this balance, Roe said it

“need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”

On the flip side, Roe said federal and state governments could regulate abortion once they had “-“a rational basis” for the regulation AND a “compelling government interest” in the health, safety, and welfare of the fetus; aka after the fetus is viable apart from the pregnant person. The “rational basis” part just indicates the level of justification needed to uphold a law from a constitutional challenge. “Rational basis” is the bottom level of justification, and it means the government law/regulation almost always wins — in which case, the only check on government overreach is elections. (If you don’t like a law that is constitutional, vote the bastards who wrote it out of office.)


TheDobbs draft finds that, of course, abortion is NOT a right “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions” because “tradition” criminalized abortion. The fact that abortion was criminalized at all stages of pregnancy in the majority of states in 1868, when the 14th Amendment was ratified, means we don’t have a protected Constitutional right to abortion today. Because history. The Court ignores the minority of states that didn’t criminalize early abortions or didn’t actively prosecute abortion. The Court ignores that these anti-abortion laws were written at a time when women couldn’t vote or serve in public office. It doesn’t matter that medical science has advanced. Because history. It doesn’t matter if atheists or some religions, like Reform Judaism, don’t believe life begins at conception. It doesn’t matter that attitudes and laws about abortion changed in the 20th century. Because history.


In short, Dobbs stands for the proposition that “fundamental rights” have gone too far. “These attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s “concept of existence” prove too much. Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like.” ……Well, why can’t there be a fundamental right for an adult to engage in whatever type of work they want, including sex work? The government could still impose regulations on sex workers as long as such regulations are necessary to achieve a compelling government interest, and are narrowly tailored to that interest. A very high level of justification, yes, but not impossible. Oh, but our Nation’s Puritan history….. /s


As if that’s not enough, there’s one more “gotcha” lurking in the draft. Remember where I said “rational basis” means the government almost always wins? Well, the Dobbs opinion would move the standard from “government almost always loses” to “government almost always wins.” Going forward,

“rational basis review is the appropriate standard for … challenges [to abortion laws]. As we have explained, procuring an abortion is not a fundamental constitutional right because such a right has no basis in the Constitution’s text or in our Nation’s history. … It follows that… [a] law regulating abortion, like other health and welfare laws [that do not touch fundamental rights], is entitled to a ‘strong presumption of validity.’”

This section does do a good job of specifying “abortion laws” rather than “Fourteenth Amendment” generally. BUT note the logic flow: abortion is not a protected fundamental right—> because history!!—> government can regulate abortion pretty much unchecked except for elections.

This is unequivocally a framework that could be used to roll back rights.


It’s true the new rule might not actually be used this way. Dobbs says, “[W]e emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” These kinds of limiting statements appear with some frequency in Supreme Court decisions, and they can stop a case from being used as precedent. But they’re not always binding, especially where the limiting language isn’t baked expressly into the legal “holding” of the case. In Dobbs, the “holding” is that no fundamental right to abortion exists under any part of the Constitution, including the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because history. That holding is too broad for my comfort level.


The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board argued that there is no risk to other fundamental rights because rights like gay marriage and contraception are so integral to our lives and so non-controversial as to withstand any challenge. …. Hmmm, I’mma let YOU decide if you believe that’s true. This Atlantic article argues that abortion is different from other fundamental rights because abortion causes harm to a “non-consenting” fetus…but Roe expressly recognized this fact as part of its viability analysis and attempt to balance rights of fetus AND pregnant person, yet Dobbs proposes to eviscerate Roe anyway. I suppose it’s not a shock that conservatives aren’t interested in any balance for the pregnant person; they’re the same people who disregard the rights of shooting victims in the face of the right to bear arms. Then again:

“To look at the act which is assertedly the subject of a liberty interest in isolation from its effect upon other people is like inquiring whether there is a liberty interest in firing a gun where the case at hand happens to involve its discharge into another person’s body.” — conservative Justice Scalia’s Casey abortion dissent quoting Justice White (who was nominated by JFK but frequently ruled with the Court’s conservative bloc)

Yeah, my head hurts too, so let’s wrap up with one last paragraph before the conclusion: Fundamental rights don’t require two consenting parties; for example, using contraception, refusing medical treatment, or choosing to homeschool your child. The same Atlantic article also mentions “reliance,” meaning the Supreme Court is more hesitant to overrule precedent if it would upend advance planning of great precision. For marriage, that’s true — a sudden invalidation of millions of marriages would be catastrophic. But just as Dobbs says that’s not true for abortion (“getting an abortion is generally unplanned activity”), it’s not true of other fundamental rights either (eg, for consensual sex/sodomy laws, I can imagine someone saying, “well just stop having that kind of sex”). The point stands that the proposed Dobbsframeworkcould make other fundamental rights vulnerable.

The “could” IS the problem. Because someone in some red state will almost certainly use this new framework to probe the limits of rights we thought we had. Perhaps the rights will stand; perhaps not. That uncertainty IS the damage. Re-litigating and re-assessing what has already been decided. Constantly worrying if rights we took for granted for decades will be taken away. Even if we do ultimately keep our fundamental rights, this Supreme Court is inviting them to be challenged, and is going to make us fight HARD for every last scrap.

jelliebeanbitch:

hey just so everyone knows, It Was A Draft

the supreme court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is not official yet. someone leaked a draft of the opinion that the members of the court have been circulating and revising (the draft was created by justice samuel alito).

which is insane by the way. it’s the first time that a draft of a supreme court decision has ever been leaked in the entire history of this country.

it makes perfect sense to feel grief or panic or dread or sadness or anger or whatever you’re feeling right now. this is fucking terrible and scary. just for the sake of avoiding misinformation, i wanted to clarify this because i think a lot of the headlines have been misleading, and the info gets even more misconstrued when it’s rephrased on social media and stuff

It is a draft, yes. But to downplay it as that is still dangerous. As OP mentions, this leak is unprecedented, meaning someone inside the Court is sufficiently alarmed, and that’s NEVER happened before. The terrible and scary part isn’t just that Roe may be overturned — that’s been done since 2016 — but in HOW the Court is considering doing it. If the leak is real, then the rationale the Court is using would also wipe away 100+ years of civil rights protections across a variety of subject areas, not just abortion. It would dramatically reduce the power of the federal government and put significantly more power in the hands of states. The leaked draft shows the Court using the same logic as was used to uphold slavery (and later overturned, but they’re possibly reviving it). That the highest court in the United States is even considering such a sweeping ruling is an affront to our freedom and cause for alarm, because it would bring much of our existing Constitutional law framework into question. It means this Court is unbound by anything that’s come before. THAT is why someone got scared and leaked the draft. So no, it’s not a final or official decision, but it’s incredibly important because you need to know the kinds of things this Court is thinking. Don’t fall for their press statements or the non-binding parts of the final opinion where they promise this is only about abortion. It’s not.

Photo of zines on a clear shelf: Who Is Fit for Motherhood: Why Abortion Is Not the Only Reproductive Right, Why Is the Government Like This?, ¿Por Qué el Gobierno es Así?, Abortion Positive Coloring Book for Hard Times, and What Is This Thing Called M.E.?ALT

Click here to read five downloadable zines from Barnard Zine Library about reproductive justice (four are in English and one is in Spanish).

100% free to read - no need to sign up or log in. Original tweet here by our friend Jenna Freedman from the Barnard Zine Library.

whatbigotspost:

dostoyevsky-official:

all the right-wing judges besides clarence thomas were picked by bush and trump, meaning the decision to overturn roe v wade was made by two presidents who never won the popular vote

Source. It’s like so bad I can’t even think straight. Don’t let anyone pretend the US is a democracy.

HOMILY for 4th Tuesday of Easter

Acts 11:19-26; Ps 86; John 10:22-30

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!

gardening-tea-lesbian:

Original thread:

https://mobile.twitter.com/DianaMiller5/status/1522278413096132609?cxt=HHwWgoC53deJnKAqAAAA

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.

silver-tongues-blog:

whatevercomestomymind:

bruja-del15:

and i oop-

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

outforawalkb1tch:

to-worlds-more-beautiful:

weirdlylyricalnotes:

teacupsandtimelords:

odinsblog:

Finally, some goodnews.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/health/abortion-pills-fda.html

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]

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/15/1064598531/the-fda-could-permanently-lift-some-restrictions-on-abortion-pills

Adding a link that isn’t blocked by a paywall

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.

bronwynofhighbrite:

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.

metalheadsforblacklivesmatter:

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?

-fae

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