gilded age met gala happening while the supreme court overturns roe v wade. fuck
like we are being distracted by sparkles and glamour while our government actively enacts irreparable violence
okay so. just to provide more context/information:
1. this was not intentional timing to “distract us.” from what I’ve read, the court document was not supposed to leak at all. a formal ruling either way was- and seems to still be -expected in June or July
2. It is not yet a done deal. Roe v. Wade has not currently been overturned. as I understand it, what was leaked was a first draft that has not been voted on. it suggested that the majority WOULD vote to overturn the decision in question if it came to a vote right now, which is horrifying. but it’s not an announcement that the thing has already happened. it’s far from certain, scary as it undeniably is
3. anyone I see doing the whole “if you aren’t talking about this Horrible Current Event at all times, you are PART OF THE PROBLEM” thing is getting blocked. seriously. just because people talk about other things on the one (1) social media stream of theirs that you you see doesn’t mean they don’t care
We’re doing research for a story and we want to ask: Do you support a different candidate than your parents/kids/significant other in this year’s U.S. presidential election?
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Remember when they called us “Human Capital Stock?”
The for-profit adoption/fostering industry is so fucked. Evangelical Christians have played a hugerole in it, too; from the early 2000s to until around the mid-2010s, there was this huge push in the American Evangelical sphere to adopt babies and children from foreign countries as both a form of white Christian saviorism and to swell the numbers of the Evangelical movement.
There ended up being a lot of controversy surrounding the movement because it became very corrupt as there was lots of money involved. It turns out that many of the “orphans” these Evangelicals adopted weren’t actually orphans at all; they still had one or even both parents alive (and/or an extended family) and were just in an orphanage because their families couldn’t currently provide for them. Rather than provide money to these needy families so they could take their children home, these adoption agencies paid off officials (using money provided by the prospective adoptive parents, who tbf were usually in the dark about this) so they could bring the child to the United States and give them over to their new adoptive family.
There is so much corruption regarding inter-country adoption and there were so many scandals involving foreign children being abused by their American adoptive parents that many countries have actually cut off or severely limited adoptions to the United States. The number of foreign adoptions has dropped significantly since the early 2000s, not because of lack of interest but because other countries are rightfully wary of American for-profit adoption agencies.
And guess what? The exact same thing happened domestically prior to Roe v. Wade and the legalization of abortion and the invention of the birth control pill, along with second-wave feminism and the growing acceptance of single mothers and better working conditions for women (who can now work and support their children, even if it’s difficult). Google “the Baby Scoop Era.” Prior to these changes, single women would get pregnant and then basically be forced to give up their babies for adoption.
It’s pretty clear that Republicans want us to go back to that era, hence the fucking terrifying “domestic supply of infants” line. They want women to pump out babies who will then be adopted by Evangelical/conservative families and (hopefully) become Republican voters.
Well this language in the draft bodes very ill for ICWA and tribal sovereignty rights. ICWA, a law formed in response to the cultural genocidal policies of the US government where native children were taken from their families, is one of the most hotly contested in the courts right now. It’s as much of a judicial hot button as abortion rights and is seeing constant challenge with big oil legal teams and right wing think tanks like the Goldwater Institute bankrolling representation for these cases. Haaland v. Brackeen is set to be heard the the Supreme Court this term, challenging ICWA on the basis of racial discrimination and blatantly ignoring the shocking historical context and the legacy of abuse surrounding native children’s ‘adoptions’. Also conveniently pretending that ICWA based on racial identity instead of the legal definition of a sovereign citizen.
ICWA has come under intense scrutiny because of the shady and unsettling ethics of the for-profit, religiously motivated US adoption market. Because of Roe and International adoption restrictions for the already listed reasons, the US adoption market has—to put it in the worst terms—a supply problem when it comes to babies. Specifically, white-passing babies. Yeah, it’s gross. The adoption industry in the US is actively working to ensure the cultural perpetuity of the white, the wealthy, and the religious. For anyone not in that category, the idea of this goal shaping national law is deeply dystopian.
ICWA is also seen as the easiest path towards dissolving tribal sovereignty altogether, opening up native lands for oil and large business development. A businessman suing to develop on tribal land doesn’t exactly provide the same political cover as two white, well-off people crying on TV, claiming ICWA is tearing their family apart with racial discrimination, as these cases are often framed in the media.
It really cannot be overstated exactly how much lasting harm the Roberts court will cause in these upcoming rulings. The structural weakness of the senate as a legislative body, especially in the context of increasing polarization, ensures that any laws that might ameliorate the effects of these rulings will die on the floor. Executive orders have their uses but we’ve seen EOs with actual case precedent get struck down as unconstitutional by the courts during the pandemic, EOs that demonstrably fit within the authority of the executive branch! So what hope is there for any EO that might even just hint at overreach? This country is about to look drastically different, very quickly.
If you live in a state that is likely to repeal, are able to conceive, and especially if you are sexually active, you need to have a plan for avoiding pregnancy and a plan for if that plan fails, and the time to make it is now, not this summer when everyone around you is panicking.
Birth control access shouldn’t be affected by this decision, but look into longer acting and more effective methods, like IUDs (99.995% effectiveness typical and perfect use) and subdermal implants (99.995% typical and perfect) over things like the pill (99+% perfect, 91% typical) or condoms alone (98% perfect, 82% typical) that are less effective and easier to lose access to, and use both a barrier method like a condom and a hormonal method if you can. Planned Parenthood has a list of methods sorted by effectiveness here. Plan B lasts about a year, and is considered effective for 72 hours after sex but drops exponentially in effectiveness as time passes: if you don’t reliably have a spare $50 and access to a pharmacy that stocks Plan B or ellaOne, buy a back up Plan B when you’re able to to ensure you can take emergency contraceptives as soon as possible for the best results.
Start tracking your cycle now: medication abortions are the only ones that can be self managed and are only possible up to 11 weeks after the start of your last period. Not after conception, after the first day of your last period.The effectiveness of medication abortion drops after 8 weeks pregnant, and some sources will say it’s only effective up to week 10. If your next period is late and there’s even a miniscule possibility you could be pregnant, take a pregnancy test immediately (the dollar store ones are the same as the expensive pharmacy tests). Don’t wait to see if it shows up a couple weeks late or if next month’s comes: by the time you reach your first missed period, you’re already considered 4 weeks pregnant, and you need as much time as possible to coordinate an out of state abortion or a self managed abortion. Waiting for two missed periods puts you at 8 weeks pregnant, almost at the point where you need to start altering dosages for medication abortion to be effective. Don’t cut it that close: it’s better to waste a dollar on a test than have to seek out a second trimester abortion.
Have a plan for how you will get an abortion, both within the first 10 weeks and after. For early abortions, you will be able to self manage. Plan C,Aid Access,medicationabortion.com,Women on Web, and Women Help Women can all help you obtain the medications you need or information about how to use them, either by mailing them directly or by connecting you to resources: bookmark these.
For abortions past 10 or 11 weeks, things are more complicated, but they are not hopeless. You need to have a plan, though. Do you know where the nearest abortion clinic in a pro choice state is? Do you know how much that abortion will cost and how you will get that money, both for the clinic costs and the cost of travel, accommodations, and two to four days of lost wages? Do you know if they do in-clinic abortions (the only option after 10 weeks) or just medication abortions? What’s the latest they can go? Look into local abortion funds or access support organizations. More will emerge as need increases, but scoping them out now will save valuable time and give you peace of mind. Some of the resources linked in the last paragraph may be able to help connect you as well.
Again, I’m not trying to incite panic here, but things are not looking good when it comes to abortion access in the United States, and you need to be prepared. Time is of the essence when it comes to abortions, even without restrictive bans, and having information and a plan before you lose access and especially before you get pregnant buys you time.
a piece of information that’s not as widely known but that is pretty important - most emergency contraceptives decrease in effectiveness for people over a certain weight. from planned parenthood’s website:
Plan B may not work if you weigh 155 pounds or more.
ella may work less well if you weigh 195 pounds or more.
planned parenthood lists IUDs as a form of emergency contraceptive that is also an option for 5 days after having sex. it’s a form that is not impacted by a person’s weight and it is over 99.9% effective if put in within those first 5 days.
Sometimes, a tiny change in the political process comes along that makes you realize just how far things have come — a change that’s both substantive and symbolic. Something like this terse, six-paragraph memo from the FTC, a deceptively anodyne wrapper for an explosive moment:
Here’s the crux: “The FTC and DOJ will host a series of listening forums to hear from those who have experienced firsthand the effects of mergers and acquisitions beyond antitrust experts, including consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, start-ups, farmers, investors, and independent businesses.”
If you aren’t chest-deep in weird antitrust lore, this probably seems like it’s par for the course. But believe me, this is a hell of a moment — a moment of restoration, a return to a vital, long-dormant principle in American governance: the idea that corporations should not be allowed to ruin the lives of the people around them.
This was the idea behind antitrust in the first place. As Senator John Sherman said to Congress as he labored to pass his landmark antitrust law in 1890: “If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life.”
“If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade.”
This was the foundation of American antitrust: the idea that companies of a certain scale would, by dint of that size, be in a position to exercise the autocratic control of a monarch, and return America to a tyrannical monarchy cloaked in the pretense of industry.
For nearly a century, this was the bedrock of antitrust enforcement, the idea of “harmful dominance” — that companies could attain a scale that made them a danger to the very idea of democratic control and legitimacy.
Rich people seethed and chafed and schemed to overturn this. They wanted to rule as if they were kings, wanted to avoid the scourge of what Peter Thiel calls “wasteful competition” (“competition is for losers” — P. Thiel). They bankrolled and promoted a deranged conspiracist named Robert Bork — Nixon’s solicitor general — who advanced a truly bizarre theory of antitrust.
Bork was a conspiracist, whose book “The Antitrust Paradox” maintained the historically unsupportable nonsense that what Sherman, Clayton and the other legislators behind America’s antitrust laws really wanted was to block “harmful monopolies” and leave the “efficient monopolies” to grow and rule, as benign kings:
Now, this is untrue. It’s not just untrue, it is unhinged. No reading of either the laws in question or the debates preceding their passage supports this idea. It is a fantasy, alternate history. A lie. But it was a convenient lie, because if it were true, then all the rich people promoting Bork’s fringe theory could create monopolies and rule as kings.
Ronald Reagan bought it. After a failed bid to put Bork on the Supreme Court — he failed his confirmation hearing so spectacularly that anyone who self-immolates in DC is said to be “borked” — Reagan adopted his antitrust theories. They spread around the world thanks to other monsters of the era, Thatcher, Mulroney, Kohl, Pinochet.
The idea infected the judiciary: the cushy Manne seminars, held every summer at a luxury resort, flew in 40% of the Federal bench for indoctrination seminars on Bork’s theories. These judges learned that the only people who should be consulted on antitrust matters are economists, specifically the kind of economist who trades in the kinds of highly abstract, inscrutable mathematical models that Bork and his University of Chicago colleagues specialized in.
Whenever a merger was in question, the companies could pay a Chicago economist to build a model that proved that the merger was “efficient” and thus good for “consumer welfare.” If that merger resulted in prices skyrocketing — the one thing “consumer welfare” was supposed to concern itself with — those same economists could be paid to produce a new model to prove that the price increase wasn’t the result of a monopoly — it was due to oil prices, or labor prices, or the phase of the moon.
Pre-Bork, everyone who was harmed by a monopoly had standing to seek redress from a regulator. If monopolies resulted in pollution, or unsafe working conditions, or corruption, or the annihilation of a city’s character or a town’s way of life, the people affected could tell their stories to a regulator and expect that their experiences would be factors in the calculus as to whether to prosecute the monopoly.
But after Bork, the only people whose input mattered was Chicago-style economists whose mathematical models couldn’t be interrogated by laypeople. They became court sorcerers to the competition regulators, and when petitioners came before the regulator, they would slaughter a goat, read its steaming guts, and pronounce that “consumer welfare” was doing fine. If the petitioner had the temerity to say that they read something different in the offal, the sorcerer could smirk and dismiss them: “Look who thinks he can read the economy in the guts of a goat? He didn’t even get a economics degree from the University of Chicago!”
For 40 years, antitrust has been a coma, sleeping while monopolies formed in every sector, destroying our planet, our regulatory integrity, our national prosperity, our public safety and the confidence of people in their democracies.
But as Stein’s Law has it, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Something has to give. A new crop of “neo-Brandeisians” — lawyers, economists, activists, workers — has sprouted, insisting that Bork’s ideas have failed us and that they need to be set aside.
One of the most prominent of these is Lina Khan. Today, Khan is the chair of the FTC. Five years ago, she was a third year law student (!), whose landmark law review article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” was a scorching indictment of Bork that tore through legal circles and upended orthodoxy:
Khan hasn’t been shy about her plans to restore American antitrust to its roots as a doctrine of economic liberty, in which workers and small business-people do not have the course of their lives determined by Sherman’s “autocrats of trade.”
She and the other top Biden antitrust enforcers — Tim Wu in the White House, Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ — worked to produce the Biden executive order on antitrust, a genuine landmark document specifying dozens of specific actions that the admin would take to blunt corporate power. Less than a year on, they’ve hit every milestone in that document.
In January, the FTC and DoJ announced that they would be reviewing the agencies’ merger guidelines — again, something that sounds like business as usual to a layperson but really marks an enormous shift in American politics. The new guidelines will make it much harder for big companies to grow by merging with each other or gobbling up little businesses before they can become competitors.
And now there’s this week’s hearings, in which the FTC and DoJ will hear from “who have experienced firsthand the effects of mergers and acquisitions beyond antitrust experts, including consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, start-ups, farmers, investors, and independent businesses.”
With the exception of “consumers,” these are the people who, for 40 years, have been laughed out of the room by antitrust enforcers. The people who have been told that they have nothing to say when it comes to the way that giant corporations undermine our quality of life, freedom of action, and economic chances.
This may sound like normal activity for a competition regulator (because it should be normal), but this is extraordinary. For the first time in a generation and a half — in ten presidential administrations — everyday people will get a say on whether corporate power should be blunted.
This is huge.
[Image ID: Norman Rockwell’s WPA painting ‘Freedom of Speech,’ depicting a working-class speaker rising to speak in a white-collar crowd at a town meeting.]
Online queers already posting their lukewarm takes on how the idea of a gay dude wearing a harness makes him unsafe to be around children while we are in the middle of a trans panic where our access to healthcare and public spaces is being denied on the principle that we are all “unsafe to be around children” like do you really not hear yourself
Seeing people within your own community go off about how they “totally support gay people but don’t wanna see them fucking in public” based on hypothetical scenarios they invented and got mad over and acting like seeing a shirtless dude in a pup mask on a leash is akin to being assaulted while social media is composed of nothing but calls to violence over trans/gay people existing in proximity to a child and new articles everyday that frame being alive as a trans woman as inherently predatory lmao
2. Is there a protest happening near you soon? Keep and eye out and go. Be loud.
3. Do you Live in a state that is either pretty 50/50 or solidly blue? SCREAM at your politicians to begin drafting legislation to protect abortion in your state now. You can’t rely on the federal government anymore, so make sure your state has it on the books.
4. Gear up for an ugly midterm election this Fall. Build momentum, build anger. Make sure all your friends are registered to vote. Whether or not this actually goes through, we need to get as many pro-choice people into state governments as possible ASAP.
5. Just cause an unholy amount of noise online. The majority of the country supports Roe v Wade. Don’t let the justices forget that.
6. Take care of yourself. You can not change the world alone, and if you feel that hopeless sick creeping in, please step back for an hour, a day, a week. The fight will be here when you return.
the best thing that we can do right now to fight for abortion rights is donating to your local abortion fund, especially in states with “trigger laws” or laws that will immediately take harsh measures to shut down abortion rights as soon as roe is overturned. If you don’t know your local abortion fund or states with trigger laws, here’s one in Texas,one in Louisiana,one in Georgia,one in West Virginiaandone in Mississippi (all states with such “trigger laws”). There’s so many more beyond the handful i just listed here but times like these are the time to donate and support the incredible work that these organizations do for their communities.
As someone around for 9-11 and the “NEVER FORGET NUMBER #1 GREATEST TRAGEDY EVER IN HISTURY” response to it I am in thrilled and invigorated by the fact that younger people just make amogus memes and TikTok nonsense about it. A huge chunk of America cared more about it than any entire genocide and thought you would cry learning about it. They hoped it’d make every generation patriotically angry forever and ever and want to join the military. Instead you Photoshop the towers into squidwards house and shit. Never stop lol
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.
Another consequence of overturning Roe: charging mothers who don’t provide the absolute ‘best’ environments for their babies.
In 2019, a pregnant woman gets into an argument, and the other person shoots her in the stomach 5 times - obviously the baby is lost. The pregnant woman (who got shot) was charge with negligent homicide for ‘bringing her baby to the fight.’ It took 7 months of protest for her charges to be overturned.
Now that Roe is overturned? Can a mother be sued if she doesn’t take folic acid pills and her baby is born with spina bifida? What about the mom who doesn’t realize she was pregant until the 2nd trimester, drank in the 1st, and decides to keep the child? If her baby is born with fetal alcohol syndrome, is she charged with negligence for not keeping her body in tiptop shape, even though she didn’t know she was pregnant?
These are not hypotheticals. If a woman’s body is no longer her body, but *always* either a potential or future baby carrier, then we’re in for a whole host of crimes against pregnant people.
Alito, in his draft majority opinion, says very clearly that he is seeking to overturn the Roe and Casey court decisions.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,“ Alito writes, according to Politico. "The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision….”
“According to Alito, "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”
No it hasn’t
The results of Roe v Wade have been 100% positive and a good thing for the nation
I am 100% pro Abortion
In fact when I look at the world around me, especially at the screeching dipshits who think (Using the term loosely) like Alito does the first thing that comes to my mind is “We really need for more people to have abortions”
[image description: screenshot of a Facebook post that contains an image and a comment on the image. The image is a screenshot of two tweets. Text of the tweets and the comment:
Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) tweets: So churches are not essential … but abortion clinics are essential. Got it.
José Alonzo Muñoz (@munozjose) replies: Correct. One is a needed medical procedure, and the other is a book club.
Lindiwe Ngwevela comments: Where nobody actually read the book.
[image description: meme with the caption “Me trying to figure out how a 12 year-old is ‘too young’ for comprehensive sex ed because it’s 'grooming,’ but if they are actually groomed, raped, and impregnated they are old enough to be forced to carry the pregnancy to term?” Below the text are four photos of the same blonde white woman, each with a different puzzled expression. Superimposed on each photo are images of complex mathematical computations, suggesting that the woman is thinking hard trying to understand the subject brought up by the caption. /end description]
in light of the texas abortion ban here’s a reminder to stop debating what counts as a human, baby, or life with pro-lifers because that is not a debate you can win. you can not win a philosophical debate about what counts as a person, and you will not change their minds.
what can be proven is that in no situation under united states law is an individual legally obligated to lend their body or organs for the sake of another life.
4.5 million people each year are in need of blood transfusion, the entire process of donating blood takes a little over an hour, it’s free, and a single pint of blood can save up to 3 peoples lives, but there is no legal obligation or requirement to donate blood in place.
it is illegal to take organs from deceased peoples’ bodies without permission. CORPSES. bodily integrity is prioritized by law, even after death.
it doesn’t fucking matter whether a fetus is a person, whether a fetus is alive, whether a fetus has a soul. it literally doesn’t matter. pro-lifers set up the argument through that lens (hence their name) to evoke empathy and pity and take the focus away from the actual process of pregnancy, which changes a person’s body FOREVER. that is not an exaggeration. whether the pregnancy is complicated and high-risk or totally smooth sailing, the birthing person will physically never be the same. if they’re lucky, they’ll come out of it with weight gain, differently shaped breasts, and changes to the cervix/vagina. if they aren’t, there’s a fucking laundry list of potential complications that could arise, that may eventually fix themselves, need surgical or therapeutic intervention, or never go away, like varicose veins, separation of the abdominal muscles, incontinence, prolapse, diabetes, postpartum depression, and chronic pain, just off the top of my head. and this makes no mention of the very real possibility of income disruption, as well as the financial cost of giving birth, and the chance of fucking death, which is even higher for underserved communities like black women.
there is no basis for a governing body forcing an individual to lend their body or organs for the sake of another life. that is the argument. period the end.
