Gilead Is Real: The War On Abortion And Women's Rights 2

[Cartmann99]

 

[47of74]

A couple FB friends dug up this old story from 2012 where a certain someone got arrested for DUI.

All I can say is glass houses, stones.

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

16 hours ago, 47of74 said:

A couple FB friends dug up this old story from 2012 where a certain someone got arrested for DUI.

All I can say is glass houses, stones.

How very “pro-life” of him to risk the safety of others on the road. 

[Cartmann99]

Businesses that help employees get abortions could be next target of Texas lawmakers if Roe v. Wade is overturned

Quote

With Texas poised to automatically ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, some Republicans are already setting their sights on the next target to fight the procedure: businesses that say they’ll help employees get abortions outside the state.

Fourteen Republican members of the state House of Representatives have pledged to introduce bills in the coming legislative session that would bar corporations from doing business in Texas if they pay for abortions in states where the procedure is legal.

This would explicitly prevent firms from offering employees access to abortion-related care through health insurance benefits. It would also expose executives to criminal prosecution under pre-Roe anti-abortion laws the Legislature never repealed, the legislators say.

Their proposal highlights how the end of abortion would lead to a new phase in — not the end of — the fight in Texas over the procedure. The lawmakers pushing for the business rules have signaled that they plan to act aggressively in the next legislative session. But it remains to be seen if they’ll be able to get a majority on their side.

The members, led by Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, laid out their plans in a letter to Lyft CEO Logan Green that became public on Wednesday.

Green drew the lawmakers’ attention on April 29, when he said on Twitter that the ride-share company would help pregnant residents of Oklahoma and Texas seek abortion care in other states. Green also pledged to cover the legal costs of any Lyft driver sued under Senate Bill 8, the Texas law that empowers private citizens to file lawsuits against anyone who assists in the procurement of an abortion.

“The state of Texas will take swift and decisive action if you do not immediately rescind your recently announced policy to pay for the travel expenses of women who abort their unborn children,” the letter states.

The letter also lays out other legislative priorities, including allowing Texas shareholders of publicly traded companies to sue executives for paying for abortion care, as well as empowering district attorneys to prosecute abortion-related crimes outside of their home counties.

Six of the 14 signers, including Cain, are members of the far-right Texas Freedom Caucus. How much political support these proposals have in the Republican caucus is unclear. House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, declined to comment. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott did not respond.

Since the legislative session is more than seven months away, Cain said in an email that “a quickly drafted and sent letter can hardly be said to reflect the pulse of my Republican colleagues.” He was confident, however, that his ideas would find some support in the Senate.

“Knowing that chamber and its leadership, I’m willing to bet legislation targeting this issue will be promptly filed in January,” Cain said.

But doing so would likely mean targeting companies that the state has wooed as potential job creators. Tesla, for instance, announced this month that it would pay for employees’ travel costs when they leave the state to get an abortion. Abbott celebrated the electric car company’s move to Austin last year and this year urged its CEO, Elon Musk, to move Twitter’s headquarters to Texas, too, if he completes his purchase of the social media firm.

Republican politicians have to tread much more carefully on abortion politics if Roe v. Wade falls, said Florida State University professor Mary Ziegler, who wrote a book on abortion law in the United States. Whereas in the past, lawmakers could pass any number of abortion restrictions that were bound to be struck down by courts, that backstop would no longer exist.

Ziegler said while a broad conservative coalition wants to ban abortions in Texas, there is disagreement over how aggressively to enforce related criminal laws or to attempt to prevent pregnant residents from leaving the state for the procedure. Republican politicians, therefore, have an incentive to remain quiet on the issue until they can determine which course of action is the most politically prudent.

“It’s not easy to be a Republican anymore,” Ziegler said. “Before, everyone was like, ‘Yes, let’s get rid of Roe v. Wade.’ Now, if you can do whatever you want, what is it that you want to do?”

Lyft did not respond to a request for comment. Several other large companies, including Amazon, Uber and Starbucks, have also said they would help employees or customers seek abortion care outside of Texas. None responded to requests for comment.

Concerns from the business community helped derail a push by Republican lawmakers to enact the so-called bathroom bill in the 2017 session, which would have required people to use the facilities that corresponded with their sex assigned at or near birth. Moderate Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, rebuffed requests from Patrick to make the bill a priority.

State Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, said that although Straus has since retired, she hoped a coalition of Democrats and centrist Republicans would form to block abortion-related laws that place new restrictions on businesses.

“There were opportunities for business-minded Republicans and business-minded Democrats to come together and prevent these kinds of extreme policies,” Howard said of Straus’ tenure. “I’m hopeful that will happen again. … We’re at a pivotal point here of doing severe damage that’s going to be hard to undo."

The Texas Association of Businesses, Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives and Greater Houston Partnership either declined to comment or did not respond to questions about the abortion-restriction proposals in the Republicans’ letter.

 

[NotQuiteMotY]

Quote

“It’s not easy to be a Republican anymore,” Ziegler said. “Before, everyone was like, ‘Yes, let’s get rid of Roe v. Wade.’ Now, if you can do whatever you want, what is it that you want to do?”

My heart bleeds for them and their difficulty in trying to decide just how repressive and punitive toward women they can be without backlash. /s

Edited May 24, 2022 by NotQuiteMotY

[47of74]

The shit sheet Washington Examiner made it sound like the whole of the church was coming together to support Salvatore.  NCR however said so far only a few Bishops have come out in support of Salvatore.

Quote

So far only a small minority of U.S. bishops have come out publicly in support of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s May 20 announcement that he is barring Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving Holy Communion in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, her home diocese, until she repudiates her long-standing advocacy of abortion.

There are 194 dioceses and archdioceses in the U.S. Here is a list of those bishops who have spoken in favor of Archbishop Cordileone’s action, as of May 21.

Sounds like these bishops are hitting rock bottom and continuing to dig.  I responded to a few tweets from these bishops saying if they ever expected me back they may want to check the temperature in hell first.

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

23 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Businesses that help employees get abortions could be next target of Texas lawmakers if Roe v. Wade is overturned

 

Yes, Texas, go ahead and pass that legislation. Let’s see how well it works out for the state. 

 

23 hours ago, NotQuiteMotY said:

My heart bleeds for them and their difficulty in trying to decide just how repressive and punitive toward women they can be without backlash. /s

“I pushed for something that has been shown to be unpopular with the majority of voters and now that I got it, I am shocked- SHOCKED- to find out that I am quite unpopular with a majority of voters! Now I am being asked to take it all even further in ways that are likely to really anger the voters! Who could have predicted people drunk with power would abuse it in ways that may make me uncomfortable?”

[Cartmann99]

 

[Cartmann99]

The Anti-Abortion Movement Weaponizes Women Against Women

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There are staggering numbers of women helping to drive the anti-abortion fight. Currently at the center of the action is Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch. She petitioned the Supreme Court to review Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which, according to the recently leaked court opinion, will result in Roe v. Wade being overturned. Fitch uses her own story of raising three children as a divorced, single working mother to justify her anti-abortion position: that overturning Roe will “empower” women, giving them a chance to “redirect their lives.” Fitch disregards the fact that the majority of women who seek abortions are already mothers and that working parents in the United States are disadvantaged by the lack of government-mandated parental leave and subsidized child care.

As a result, motherhood is more likely to empower women who have the financial and social means to succeed in this role. For many women, having children, or having more children, increases their financial needs and makes regular employment more difficult, pushing them into poverty, which the child welfare system often conflates with neglect. Far from being empowered, these women experience the humiliating intrusion of investigations to determine their parental fitness and custodial rights.

Beyond Fitch’s blindness to the actual experience of many mothers in this country, what is so insidious about her position is that it rests on the assumption that only motherhood truly empowers women. It extends the traditional conception of motherhood as the only natural position for women and the only acceptable realm within which to assert power, leaving power in all other realms primarily to men.

The notion that we must have children to fully realize ourselves reflects a view of women as fundamentally incomplete. We are not sufficient on our own but can gain value as an extension of a man or by becoming a mother. Through self-sacrifice and care of others, we can be made whole. Our role as subservient caregivers determines not just our identity but our humanity. For anti-abortion activists, an embryo or fetus is more important than the woman whose body it resides in, and her life should be sacrificed for it. This clump of cells is more human than she is.

Women and girls have long been taught that we are only as good as what we provide to others. The residue of these messages plagues me even after significant efforts to educate myself about where they come from and to disentangle them from my sense of self-worth.

As a psychologist and parent of two young children, I spend the bulk of my day caring for others. These are meaningful activities and certainly challenge me to grow in valuable ways. But what challenges me the most is not doing for others but allowing myself to just be. Trusting that I am enough as I am to have value and rights.

My struggles are mirrored by so many of the women I see in therapy, who feel they must meet others’ needs before voicing their own, shrink themselves to make room for others, and not burden anyone by their existence. They wonder why they lack confidence, and they blame themselves.

These challenges often get worse with motherhood; many women feel that they lose themselves as their needs are subsumed by those of their children. Women who become mothers show declines in psychological health compared with women of the same age who are not mothers. They have higher rates of depression, and those rates increase with added life adversities (poverty, divorce, underemployment), which are more prevalent among women of color. Women with children are also at higher risk of intimate partner violence and are less likely to leave abusive partners than women without children.

The messages that lead women to internalize a sense of inferiority come from all the usual sources—the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions (particularly mothers), wage gaps (which widen substantially when women have children), and fights over women’s rights to govern their bodies—but also directly from other women.

Our society weaponizes women against women. For Fitch to ascend the ladder of the conservative political structure, she had to make herself useful in a way that members of the male majority can’t: As a woman on their side, she lends them credibility in the fight to take away women’s rights. Worse, Fitch transforms their intentions to assert dominance and control into a message that, through submission to authority and acceptance of the position conferred on us by men, women can be empowered.

Like our worth, our power has traditionally been determined by our relationships to men and our roles as mothers. This is how women perpetuate the idea that our lives are about deference and self-sacrifice. That in losing ourselves through the care of others, we find ourselves—as we ought to be by patriarchal standards. And having children is a way to justify our existence.

Women like Fitch, and there are many, are not likely to give up their alliance with this power structure, because it has put them among the oppressors rather than the oppressed. But millions of women—and trans and nonbinary people—suffer as a result. We have been taught to accept the forces of oppression rather than struggle against them, and that if we suffer, it’s our own fault for wanting more than the role afforded to us. That is the kind of “empowerment” Fitch is advocating: empowerment through submission and compliance with a system that benefits wealthy white men above all. Empowerment that comes at the expense of women’s agency, autonomy, and humanity.

In our fight for abortion rights, women must help one another see ourselves as human first. Only then can we choose whether to become mothers.

 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

13 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

My struggles are mirrored by so many of the women I see in therapy, who feel they must meet others’ needs before voicing their own, shrink themselves to make room for others, and not burden anyone by their existence. They wonder why they lack confidence, and they blame themselves.

These challenges often get worse with motherhood; many women feel that they lose themselves as their needs are subsumed by those of their children. Women who become mothers show declines in psychological health compared with women of the same age who are not mothers. They have higher rates of depression, and those rates increase with added life adversities (poverty, divorce, underemployment), which are more prevalent among women of color. Women with children are also at higher risk of intimate partner violence and are less likely to leave abusive partners than women without children.

I spent my childhood hearing from my mother how she sacrificed for us children.  She is a deeply unhappy, bitter woman who had a very large family when she (as she has made clear many times) would have been very happy ending her childbearing after her first two (boy and girl.)  I realize had she been able to do so I would not have been born.  She was pregnant from a few weeks after the wedding pretty consistently over the course of 20 years (with multiple miscarriages as well as several live births.)  I am lucky because somehow I knew I didn't want to be a mom who always told my kids that I was "sacrificing" for them or made them feel guilty about having them so I found joy in having my kids; however, I definitely put everyone else's (not just kids' and husband's) needs above mine for far too long.  When I finally realized I had to stop not just for my sake but also so my kids learned that mothers are humans too, my own mother tried to shame me for doing things for myself and expecting my husband to step up to the plate.  How perfectly peachy for women like Lynn Fitch or even me who happily and willingly choose to become mothers and amidst the frustrations and challenges, find joy in it.  How fantastic it is that she, like me, apparently had the ability to choose to  have children she could support and raise while working outside the home.  But the important word there is CHOOSE.  How absolutely arrogant and obnoxious to assume that just because her situation is good other women want to be mothers or have the same circumstances that allow for them to become mothers.   I have no doubt that if my mother had been able to have control over her reproductive life, she wouldn't be the same angry, unhappy, bitter woman she is today and my two oldest siblings wouldn't have had a childhood where they were indentured into parenting their younger siblings at far too young.  Perhaps they wouldn't have had a childhood filled with being told their mother was sacrificing for them.  Perhaps they would have had a mother who laughed more, yelled less, and didn't make them feel like their existence was a burden.  Lynn Fitch and her ilk should never, ever ask any woman to become a shell of herself by forcing her to bear a child. 

[Cartmann99]

I'm waiting for a Republican to tell us that ectopic pregnancies or having a medical condition that makes pregnancy a life-threatening condition are judgements from God.

Abortion opponents take risks by dropping exceptions for rape, incest, and the mother’s life

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For example, over the past few months, Oklahoma has passed three laws restricting abortion. The latest one, signed by the governor May 25, bans abortion beginning at fertilization, which would, at least in theory, ban both in vitro fertilization and many forms of hormonal birth control. (The Oklahoma bill's sponsor says that is not the law's intent.)

During debate in the Oklahoma Senate on the strictest of the bans, Republican Sen. Warren Hamilton said he did not think the measure went far enough because it allowed abortions in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, a life-threatening medical emergency in which an embryo is growing outside the uterus.

That has horrified some medical professionals. "The fallopian tube and other places a pregnancy can implant cannot support a pregnancy," Dr. Iman Alsaden, an OB-GYN and medical director of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, told reporters at a news conference May 19. "If you continue to let these pregnancies happen, there will be no viable baby afterwards. What will happen is [the fallopian tube] will burst and people will bleed to death."

At the same time, an increasing number of state legislatures are contemplating bans that do not include exceptions for the health (as opposed to the life) of the pregnant person or for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. Testifying on her bill in Ohio, GOP state Rep. Jean Schmidt in April told lawmakers that a child resulting from rape would be "an opportunity for that woman, no matter how young or old she is, to make a determination about what she's going to do to help that life be a productive human being."

 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

20 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

I'm waiting for a Republican to tell us that ectopic pregnancies or having a medical condition that makes pregnancy a life-threatening condition are judgements from God.

Abortion opponents take risks by dropping exceptions for rape, incest, and the mother’s life

 

I already posted my experience but I will clarify that under this analysis, I very well could have been denied the treatment I tried to resist but ultimately accepted because depending on the doctor, it may have been ruled a "health" issue versus a "life" issue at the time of the surgery.  I was at risk of hemorrhage or sepsis, both of which (especially the first) at any time but as either had not yet happened, I could see certain doctors saying it was a "health" issue because neither of those issues had yet actually occurred.  Taking it further, even if either of those problems arose, unless my life was actually on the line, a doctor could even claim that it would still be a "health" issue.  Sure, I would probably lose some or all of my reproductive system and probably be hospitalized but hey, at least that doctor wouldn't have had to perform a surgical procedure on a grieving woman whose child had died in utero weeks prior.  I only wish I was being hyperbolic.  It really does appear that some lawmakers are actually requiring a woman's life to be in very real jeopardy to have a procedure that could prevent her from becoming very, very ill and potentially losing reproductive organs even during a very much wanted pregnancy.  I cannot fathom how sick someone has to be to think this kind of torture is "moral" and "pro-life."  

[Alisamer]

20 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

I'm waiting for a Republican to tell us that ectopic pregnancies or having a medical condition that makes pregnancy a life-threatening condition are judgements from God.

Abortion opponents take risks by dropping exceptions for rape, incest, and the mother’s life

 

I agree. I don't get why anyone with a brain would learn what an ectopic pregnancy is and then decide that ending that pregnancy is a bad idea. It is literally like banning the removal of an infected appendix before it ruptures.

Nobody questions that if your appendix is inflamed and infected and at risk of rupture, you should have surgery to remove it. It's just an automatic thing. Waiting until after it ruptures is potentially deadly and makes the surgery much more difficult and risky, and recovery more difficult. 

An ectopic pregnancy creates basically the same situation, except much more deadly. The fallopian tube is enlarged and at risk of rupture. Waiting until after it ruptures to remove it is incredibly risky. With the appendix it's an infection, with the fallopian tube it's a zygote lodged in the wrong spot. A ruptured appendix MIGHT kill you, but ectopic pregnancies can and DO kill very quickly.

And that zygote? It's dying either way. No matter what you do, no matter how long you wait, that "baby" is going to die. The only question is whether the mother goes with it or not. 

Apparently Republicans would prefer a dead pre-born baby AND a dead mother, instead of just a dead "baby" that is, frankly, just a clump of cells at that point. How is it "pro-life" to extend the "life" of a small clump of dying cells for a few days when by doing so you are killing an already-grown, already born woman with family, friends, possibly children... Sure if that zygote was a wanted pregnancy, it'll be mourned probably. But it's death isn't going to leave children motherless, a workplace missing a key worker, a partner bereaved, etc. 

And I don't even want to talk about the "pregnancy from rape is an opportunity..." whatever. "No matter how young or old"? Really? Unfortunately I'm sure there's a pregnant 9-year-old somewhere who is terrified, and who would like Jean Schmidt to stuff that "opportunity" where the sun never shines. 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

1 hour ago, Alisamer said:

And I don't even want to talk about the "pregnancy from rape is an opportunity..." whatever. "No matter how young or old"? Really? Unfortunately I'm sure there's a pregnant 9-year-old somewhere who is terrified,

I followed the case of "Lucia", the 11 year old Argentinian girl who had been repeatedly raped by her grandmother's paramour and who had been repeatedly denied an abortion.  I won't go into all the horrific details about the lies told by the government (including that she wanted to keep the child) but eventually, when she was at 23 weeks, testimony from doctors who made clear she her life was at serious risk if the pregnancy continued, a court ordered the end of the pregnancy.  Because of the length of gestation and her very small body size, a c-section had to take place so she actually gave birth to a live child.  The quote from the doctor who performed the surgery, Dr. Cecilia Ousset, shocked and deeply saddened me:  

"The child played with dolls,” she said. “When I saw her my legs trembled, it was like seeing my youngest daughter. The little girl did not fully understand what was going to happen.”

I was reminded of Lucia when I read @Alisamer's post.  "Lucia" had gone to the hospital months prior with abdominal pains and upon finding out she was pregnant, asked for the doctors to "take out what the old man put inside me."  Inside of an early termination, she ended up with a c-section.  There are many other details too intensely infuriating to post but I cannot understand the cruelty.  These lawmakers want to claim America is the best of the best first world countries but here we are, comparing potential cases to a nightmare case in Argentina knowing that if things don't come to a serious halt very soon, young girls in this country could be "Lucia"s.  

[Smash!]

How can anyone still claim the US is a democracy and moreover „the land of the free“ when extremist anti abortion laws get signed in so many states and children die in schools on an almost weekly basis.

[Ozlsn]

On 6/3/2022 at 5:16 AM, Cartmann99 said:

an opportunity for that woman, no matter how young or old she is, to make a determination about what she's going to do to help that life be a productive human being."

So what are Republicans and "pro-life" advocates like Jean Schmidt doing to help women who already have children they are having trouble supporting? What are they doing to provide affordable medical for these children and adults? What are they doing to assist children and adults who need additional care and support? What are they doing for the children in foster care, and how are they supporting families? What are they doing to make these children safer and more secure in their communities by taking action to reduce gun violence and reduce systemic inequity?

Fuck these hypocrites annoy me.

[WiseGirl]

"Florida Synagogue Sues Over State's 15-Week Abortion Ban, Argues it 'Violates Religious Freedom"

https://people.com/health/florida-synagogue-sues-over-states-15-week-abortion-ban-argues-it-violates-jewish-law/

[GreyhoundFan]

"This Texas teen wanted an abortion. She now has twins."

Quote

CORPUS CHRISTI, Tex. — Brooke Alexander turned off her breast pump at 6:04 p.m. and brought two fresh bottles of milk over to the bed, where her 3-month-old twins lay flat on their backs, red-faced and crying.

Running on four hours of sleep, the 18-year-old tried to feed both babies at once, holding Kendall in her arms while she tried to get Olivia to feed herself, her bottle propped up by a pillow. But the bottle kept slipping and the baby kept wailing. And Brooke’s boyfriend, Billy High, wouldn’t be home for another five hours.

“Please, fussy girl,” Brooke whispered.

She peeked outside the room, just big enough for a full-size mattress, and realized she had barely seen the sun all day. The windows were covered by blankets, pinned up with thumbtacks to keep the room cool. Brooke rarely ventured into the rest of the house. Billy’s dad had taken them in when her mom kicked them out, and she didn’t want to get in his way.

The hours without Billy were always the hardest. She knew he had to go, as they relied entirely on the $9.75 an hour he made working the line at Freebirds World Burrito, but she tortured herself imagining all the girls he might be meeting. And she wished she had somewhere to go, too.

Brooke found out she was pregnant late on the night of Aug. 29, two days before the Texas Heartbeat Act banned abortions once an ultrasound can detect cardiac activity, around six weeks of pregnancy. It was the most restrictive abortion law to take effect in the United States in nearly 50 years.

For many Texans who have needed abortions since September, the law has been a major inconvenience, forcing them to drive hundreds of miles, and pay hundreds of dollars, for a legal procedure they once could have had at home. But not everyone has been able to leave the state. Some people couldn’t take time away from work or afford gas, while others, faced with a long journey, decided to stay pregnant. Nearly 10 months into the Texas law, they have started having the babies they never planned to carry to term.

Texas offers a glimpse of what much of the country would face if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this summer, as has been widely expected since a leaked draft opinion circulated last month. If the landmark precedent falls, roughly half the states in the country are expected to dramatically restrict abortion or ban it altogether, creating vast abortion deserts that will push many into parenthood.

Sometimes Brooke imagined her life if she hadn’t gotten pregnant, and if Texas hadn’t banned abortion just days after she decided that she wanted one. She would have been in school, rushing from class to her shift at Texas Roadhouse, eyes on a real estate license that would finally get her out of Corpus Christi. She pictured an apartment in Austin and enough money for a trip to Hawaii, where she would swim with dolphins in water so clear she could see her toes.

When both babies finally started eating, Brooke took out her phone and restarted the timer that had been running almost continuously since the day they were born. She had two and a half hours until they’d have to eat again.

Brooke and Billy first met at the downtown skatepark with a big group of friends, one clear night in May of last year. They didn’t talk that first day, but Brooke noticed how effortlessly Billy dropped into the quarter-pipe, the way his blond hair flipped out from underneath his red beanie. She followed him on Instagram, and her stomach did a little dance when she saw that he followed her back.

Soon, they were spending almost every day together, throwing themselves into the Gulf of Mexico waves on Padre Island and watching the sun set over the pier. At the skatepark, he’d help her do the tricks she’d been scared to try alone.

“Pinkie promise me you’ll do it,” he’d say, all blue eyes and dimples, as she peeked over the edge of the ramp. Once he hooked her little finger, there was no backing down.

Billy was different from the other guys Brooke knew. He held her hand in public and introduced her to his dad. When she took him to the mall, he grinned each time she stepped out of the dressing room, telling her how good she looked in each new crop top she tried on. He made her feel pretty. “I wasn’t used to feeling like that,” Brooke said.

Brooke took the pregnancy test at 11 o’clock on a hot night at the tail end of the summer. When the two pink lines appeared, she looked over at Billy, then slid onto the bathroom floor, finally connecting the signs she’d ignored for weeks.

The nausea she’d chalked up to food poisoning. The two missed periods. That moment a few weeks back, when Billy put a hand on her stomach and asked if she was sure she wasn’t pregnant.

Leaving Billy in her bedroom with the pregnancy test, Brooke grabbed her keys and drove to her best friend’s house, where they sat on his bed and examined her options.

She could always get an abortion, she told him. Then he reminded her of something she vaguely remembered seeing on Twitter: A new law was scheduled to take effect Sept. 1. Brooke had 48 hours.

The abortion clinic in South Texas, two and a half hours from Corpus Christi, had no open slots in the next two days, with patients across the state racing to get into clinics before the law came down. When Brooke called, the woman on the end of the line offered the names and addresses of clinics in New Mexico, a 13-hour drive from Corpus Christi.

In the meantime, the woman said, Brooke could get an ultrasound somewhere nearby: If she was under six weeks, they could still see her.

“We’re gonna see how far along it is,” Brooke texted her dad, Jeremy Alexander, later that night. “See if abortion is an option.”

“What’s the cut off date,” he asked.

“They just passed a law today!!” she responded in the early hours of Sept. 1, referring to the ban that had just taken effect. “What are the f---ing odds I believe it’s 6 weeks.”

“Fingers crossed????” her dad said.

Brooke found a place that would perform an ultrasound on short notice and scheduled an appointment for 9 a.m.

Whenever a new client walks into the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend, they are asked to fill out a form. After all the usual questions of name, date of birth and marital status comes the one that most interests the staff: “If you are pregnant, what are your intentions?”

From there, the team sorts each client into one of three groups:

If they’re planning to have the baby: “LTC,” likely to carry.

If they’re on the fence: “AV,” abortion vulnerable.

If they’re planning to get an abortion: “AM,” abortion minded.

The Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend, which advertises itself as the “#1 Source of Abortion Information” in the region, is one of thousands of crisis pregnancy centers across the United States, antiabortion organizations that are often religiously affiliated.

When Brooke showed up with her mom for her appointment, she had no idea she’d walked into a facility designed to dissuade people from getting abortions. She also didn’t know how much significance her form held for the staff: By signaling that she wanted an abortion, she became their first “AM” of the Texas Heartbeat Act.

Brooke heard about the center from her mom’s friend, who knew she needed an ultrasound. This place offered them free. Brooke felt a sense of calm, sitting in the waiting room, lulled by its decorative throw pillows and soft watercolors of ocean scenes.

The advocate assigned to her case, Angie Arnholt, had been counseling abortion-minded clients at the pregnancy center for a year. While many of the center volunteers signed up only to talk to “LTCs” to have happy conversations about babies their clients couldn’t wait to have, Arnholt, a 61-year-old who wears a gold cross around her neck, felt called to do what she could to help women “make a good decision,” she later told The Washington Post.

Back in a consultation room, Brooke told Arnholt all the reasons she wanted to get an abortion. She had just enrolled in real estate classes at community college, which would be her first time back in a classroom since she dropped out of high school three years earlier at 15. She and Billy had been dating only three months.

Sitting across from Brooke and her mom, Arnholt opened “A Woman’s Right to Know,” an antiabortion booklet distributed by the state of Texas, flipping to a page titled “Abortion risks.” The first risk listed was “death.”

As Brooke listened to Arnholt’s warnings of depression, nausea, cramping, breast cancer and infertility, she tried to stay calm, reminding herself that women get abortions all the time. Still, Brooke couldn’t help fixating on some of the words Arnholt used: Vacuum suction. Heavy bleeding. Punctured uterus. (Serious complications from abortion are rare. Abortion does not increase the risk of mental illness, breast cancer or infertility, according to leading medical organizations.)

Starting to panic, Brooke looked over at her mom. When she found out Brooke was pregnant, Terri Thomas told her daughter to get an abortion. While she was a devout Christian, going to church a few times a week and twice on Sundays, she had her own views on this particular issue.

Thomas had her first kid at 20, she said, just as she was transferring out of community college with hopes of starting law school. If the timing had been different, she said, she might have been a prosecutor. Instead, she hopped from one retail job to another: Bath & Body Works to Walgreens to Home Depot.

Growing up, Brooke said, she bounced back and forth between her mom’s house and her dad’s, depending on who was the more stable parent at the time. Her happiest years as a kid were spent with her dad, she said, on a tree-lined street with a ping-pong table in the garage and a trampoline in the backyard. But then Brooke’s dad started using cocaine.

While Alexander has been sober for a few years now, he said, back then he couldn’t kick the habit. Around the time he stopped paying all the rent, and sewage started backing up in their toilets, Brooke moved back in with her mom.

With her mom, Brooke always felt like she was tiptoeing. If Brooke forgot to turn off the lights or do the dishes, Thomas would start yelling. Thomas felt she had every right to respond that way, she said, because she was the “hen” in her henhouse.

Arnholt ushered Brooke into the ultrasound room, where Brooke undressed from the waist down and lay back onto an examination table, looking up at a large flat-screen TV.

As the ultrasound technician pressed the probe into her stomach, slathered with gel, Brooke willed the screen to show a fetus without a heartbeat. The technician gasped. It was twins. And they were 12 weeks along.

“Are you sure?” Brooke said. “Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Thomas recalled saying as she jumped up and down. “This is a miracle from the Lord. We are having these babies.”

Brooke felt like she was floating above herself, watching the scene below. Her mom was calling the twins “my babies,” promising Brooke she would take care of everything, as the ultrasound technician told her how much she loved being a twin.

If she really tried, Brooke thought she could make it to New Mexico. Her older brother would probably lend her the money to get there. But she couldn’t stop staring at the pulsing yellow line on the ultrasound screen.

She wondered: If her babies had heartbeats, as these women said they did, was aborting them murder? Eventually, Arnholt turned to Brooke and asked whether she’d be keeping them. Brooke heard herself saying “yes.”

Brooke walked out of the pregnancy center that day with an ultrasound photo and a handful of lollipops that Arnholt promised would help with her morning sickness.

Arnholt and the ultrasound technician each followed up with Brooke a few times over text. Brooke scheduled what the pregnancy center called a “prenatal appointment,” where she sat through another ultrasound, then dropped by for a parenting class, earning “points” she redeemed for a package of diapers.

After that, Brooke didn’t go back to the pregnancy center. She said the class felt like a waste of time. Instead, she turned to Billy. Within a few weeks, Brooke and Billy had a plan. He would join the Air Force as soon as he graduated from high school. Brooke would wait for him to finish basic training, then follow him wherever he got assigned.

Soon they were debating baby names. Surrounded by their friends and families one afternoon in October, Brooke and Billy fired gender-reveal cannons into Thomas’s backyard, unleashing two giant puffs of pink smoke.

“I’m so happy I met you billy,” Brooke wrote in an Instagram post announcing her pregnancy. “Starting a family with you is gonna be one of the hardest things I’m ever gonna experience, but I’m glad I get to do it with you.”

Brooke started her real estate classes in early November, and she loved everything about going to school. When she showed up the first day in her favorite crop top and jeans, the cinder-block building “felt like an opportunity,” she said. Most days, she’d buy a Frappuccino from the vending machine and sit down in the chair she’d claimed as her own, opening her textbook to a page she’d already covered in yellow highlighter.

Brooke got an 83 on the final exam, the highest grade in the class.

She texted everyone she could think of who might want to hear the news: Billy, her brother, her mom, her dad, her grandpa. After three years out of school, she couldn’t believe she’d done so well. “I felt like, man, I must be really smart,” she said.

Throughout the fall, Billy was her biggest worry. He’d stayed pretty quiet back when she was deciding what to do about the babies. Just once, he told her he’d prefer to get an abortion, but would support her completely in whatever she chose. He’d thought about adoption, but Brooke wouldn’t even consider it.

“I don’t think I’m ready for this,” he’d told her. Billy was scared to lose what he described as “the freedom of being a teenager.” After he graduated, he’d planned to keep working at Freebirds, just enough hours to get by, so he could maximize his skate time and “just chill.” People respected Billy at the skate park. Whenever he geared up to film some tricks, everyone else cleared out of the bowl.

By November, Billy was paying all of Brooke’s bills. She’d stopped working at Texas Roadhouse after the smell of the meat and grease had been making her sick to her stomach. To swing Brooke’s $330 car payment, they applied for a WIC card and ate ramen or pancakes for dinner. When they overdrafted Brooke’s credit card, Billy worked double shifts until he could pay it off.

Brooke wanted to work, but she couldn’t hack a waitressing job. At seven months pregnant, she struggled to stay on her feet for too long and felt utterly exhausted by even the simplest tasks. She started falling asleep while doing her homework. Then she missed a class. Then another.

When she decided to drop out of real estate school, she couldn’t bring herself to tell her teacher. She convinced herself it wasn’t that big of a deal. They’d be moving away soon anyway, and the Air Force would pay Billy enough to support them both.

Brooke wedged her real estate textbook in a line of books on her dresser, between “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” and the fourth Harry Potter. Maybe she’d come back to it one day.

Anytime Brooke went out with the babies in public, she knew that people were staring. She was 18 and she looked 18, with rosy cheeks and curly blond ringlets tied together with a ribbon. As she struggled to maneuver her double stroller through the doors at Freebirds, she imagined everyone was judging her, writing her off as a clueless kid and a bad mom.

She was determined to prove them wrong. Somehow, mothering came naturally to Brooke. Whenever one of the babies started crying, Brooke would tick through her mental checklist: Was her daughter hungry? Tired? Did she need to be changed?

If it was none of those things, Brooke would pick up her daughter and hold her close, swaying from side to side, kissing the silky brown strands on the top of her head. Almost always, her baby would stop crying.

“I think they can smell me,” she said. “And that makes me feel so special.” Brooke knew the little things about her daughters that no one else would notice. Olivia had a higher-pitched cry. Kendall was harder to soothe. You could always tell when they were about to wake up, because they’d start to smile.

Looking at her daughters, Brooke struggled to articulate her feelings on abortion. On one hand, she said, she absolutely believed that women should have the right to choose what’s best for their own lives. On the other, she knew that, without the Texas law, her babies might not be here.

“Who’s to say what I would have done if the law wasn’t in effect?” she said. “I don’t want to think about it.” Brooke considered all that she’d lost: long nights at the skate park, trips to the mall, dropping $30 on a crab dinner just because she felt like it.

“I can’t just really be free,” she said. “I guess that really sums it up. That’s a big thing that I really miss.” She sat silently for a while, Olivia’s hand wrapped around her finger. “It’s really scary thinking that I wouldn’t have them,” she said.

There was only one way she could make sense of it, she said. Losing them now, as fully formed human beings, would be different from losing them back then.

All through the pregnancy, Brooke had planned to bring the babies home to her mom’s house, where they’d all live together until Billy made enough money to pay for a home. Brooke’s mom had promised to be there for them, back in the ultrasound room, and Brooke had believed her. But after a couple of weeks, Brooke started to feel like her mom could turn on her at any moment.

Thomas would remind Brooke that she was staying in her house rent-free, running the TV and AC all night without paying for electric. After Brooke left dirty dishes in the sink one night in May, she woke up to her mom yelling at her from the kitchen.

“You don’t get a prize for getting yourself knocked up and pregnant,” Thomas remembered saying. “I don’t know what you think I owe you, but you don’t get a prize for that.” Brooke told her, “You treat me like some random chick off the street. I’m your daughter.”

Thomas said she told her to find another place to live. Brooke packed up a few things and drove the babies to Billy’s dad’s house. Billy’s room wasn’t exactly where she’d imagined raising her daughters, with its stash of skateboard magazines and a giant Freebirds billboard behind the bed, advertising fountain drinks for 95 cents. But it was a place she was welcome.

The next morning, Brooke woke up to a text from her mother. “I am by no means a perfect human or a perfect mom, but I love you no matter what,” she wrote. “You don’t have to stay over there.” Brooke would rather rely on Billy than her mom, she decided, though in her most anxious moments, she worried he might kick her out, too.

She often relived an argument they’d had one Saturday night in April, when they got a little too drunk and Billy finally talked about all the things he’d been avoiding. He didn’t really like the way his life was turning out, he told her. He didn’t want to join the Air Force. He just wanted to skate. “That’s not my fault,” she’d told him. “I didn’t get myself pregnant.”

At one point, she recalled, he suggested they try living apart. They were over that now, Brooke reminded herself as she hung up her clothes in Billy’s closet. She placed a bouquet of flowers on his desk and lit a candle, filling the room with a scent called “Forever Love.” Bit by bit, she would make Billy’s room a home.

Across town, a woman Brooke had never met would soon be sharing her story, holding up the twins as an antiabortion triumph, just two weeks after the leaked draft decision revealed a Supreme Court on the brink of overturning Roe.

The Coastal Bend Republican Coalition gathered on May 19 for its weekly meeting at a local barbecue joint. Over brisket and coleslaw, members listened to the speaker they’d invited for the evening: Jana Pinson, the executive director of the Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend.

To explain the center’s work, Pinson told a story about a girl who showed up with her mom on the morning the Heartbeat Act took effect, asking for an abortion. The mother and daughter “were so furious with us,” Pinson said, “so angry.” But as soon as they saw the ultrasound, she said, everything changed. “The moment we put that wand on her sweet belly and two babies popped up … it absolutely melted them.”

Last year, Pinson said, 583 abortion-minded and abortion-vulnerable women chose to continue their pregnancies after visiting their facility. At their banquet in March, with over 2,800 attendees from across the region, Pinson and her staff lit 583 candles. One of those was for Brooke.

Three weeks later, the babies stayed home while Brooke and Billy drove to the courthouse. Billy was about to leave for a five-month stint in basic training and technical school. For Brooke to qualify for military benefits, they had to get married.

At 11 o’clock on a Monday morning, they walked into a courtroom with an American flag behind the bench, Brooke in a flowery sundress, Billy in jeans. She’d looked around for white dresses on Amazon but couldn’t justify the $30: She was terrified she’d run out of money while Billy was away.

The loneliness scared her, too. She kept imagining the long nights alone in Billy’s house, trying to calm two crying babies without him. He wouldn’t have his phone at basic training, and she would hear from him mostly through letters. She knew she’d have to manage that little voice in the back of her head: What if he changed his mind about their life together?

Standing with Billy in front of the justice of the peace, Brooke told herself that, one day, they would have their “love story moment.” She would walk down the aisle in a wedding gown. Their friends and family would cry and cheer as she and Billy publicly declared how much they meant to each other.

“I, Brooke Alexander, take thee, Billy High, to be my wedded husband,” she repeated.

If it wasn’t for the Texas law, Brooke knew she might not be standing here. She’d probably be studying for her next exam, while Billy mastered some new trick on the quarter-pipe. She liked to think they’d still be together, spending their money on movie tickets and Whataburger, instead of diapers and baby wipes.

She told herself that alternate life didn’t matter anymore. She had two babies she loved more than anything else in the world. “I do,” she said, tears in her eyes. Brooke pulled out her phone once they finished the ceremony: 1 hour, 15 minutes. Time to grab some lunch and head home. The babies would be hungry.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[Ozlsn]

19 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Last year, Pinson said, 583 abortion-minded and abortion-vulnerable women chose to continue their pregnancies after visiting their facility. At their banquet in March, with over 2,800 attendees from across the region, Pinson and her staff lit 583 candles. One of those was for Brooke.

And where are these arseholes when the women need money for rent, diapers, food, medical expenses? Come to classes to "earn points" for diapers are you kidding me?!? Why aren't they out there demanding low cost housing, universal healthcare, 24 months paid parental leave, low cost/free childcare? Why aren't they out there agitating for low cost/free contraception??

I hope Brooke is able to go back to finish training as a realtor, and/or her relationship stays stable. But damn that story made me both sad and angry, and the bloody patronising, Lady Bountiful attitude of the clinic pissed me off the most. 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is the future if the rethugs take control of congress:

 

[BensAllergies]

I believe the Rep Kelly from PA is the one who allegedly gave a slate of false electors from WI and MI to Senator Johnson’s office to hand deliver to Pence.

 

Anyway, I came here to post that Roe has been overturned. It’s official.

“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

The opinion is 213 pages long…

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf

[Shrubbery]

Came here just to post the same thing 🤬

Meanwhile, Germany has just today of all days abolished its section 219b of the Criminal Code, meaning it’s now legal for doctors to inform about abortion procedures (I.e., what procedures a clinic offers, what they entail, etc.), something that’s been considered long overdue by the majority here.

My commiserations to all Americans .

[GreyhoundFan]

I have MSNBC on and of course Marjorie Taylor Greene is there parading around with the rethuglikans, celebrating the transition of the United States to Gilead.

[Destiny]

FUCK. I don’t know whether to cry, punch something, or both. I’m just sitting here shaking in rage after losing my breakfast. FUCK.