The so-called pro-life crowd does not care about the health and well being of women, and they quit caring about the child the moment it’s born. They are pro-death penalty, anti-gun control, anti-universal health care, and never met a war they didn’t love. These measures are all about the subjugation of women. Period.
I'll go further. They are pro controlling women. They are pro women are property and not people. They are anti equality, anti justice, and anti freedom.
And many times, it condemns both mothers and forced-birth children to a lifetime of poverty. The cost of raising a child to adulthood is becoming hugely unaffordable.
Obvious because the founders of the movement were and now-a-day leaders of this movement are all men… so a very small minority of the population - white, male, conservative Christians - have imposed their will on everyone else. And as the saying goes, they have no skin in this game. They certainly aren’t going to die of a miscarriage. This is the most mean, cruel, authoritarian movement in my lifetime.
No skin in the game? How about evicerating a randomly selected forced birther every time their dumbfuckery gets a woman killed? Now they have skin in the game.
I did not get enough sleep last night, or the last three nights. So coffee is my religion.
When I first started to read this article, I thought that the religious conclusion reached by the judge would not hold up. And then Hemant ddressed the problem: “That may be the most significant aspect of this ruling. While conservatives want to pretend they’re protecting life, what they’re actually doing is privileging certain religious beliefs over others. They believe the law should fall on the side of whatever the hell white evangelicals and conservative Catholics want— everyone else just needs to deal with it.”
And that is the real problem. It is privileging one group groups religious beliefs over the religious beliefs of other people or the non-beliefs of other people. The same argument applies to gay marriage, sodomy laws, blue laws, or laws guaranteeing that your church can take over a public street on Sunday morning because your parishioners need a place to park: your religious beliefs should not hold sway over my beliefs and my life. Believe whatever you want, but keep your goddamn and goddamning religious beliefs out of my life. Purely theological concerns have absolutely no place in the laws governing a free society that guarantees freedom of religion.
No religion requires anybody to get an abortion. That’s the problem I had with the judge's ruling. But if their religion does not forbid them, someone else’s religion should not be able to forbid them either. The whole Kim Davis fiasco was privileging her religious beliefs over the belief of people who were simply seeking a legal marriage license from the state. And the hypocrisy of saying that it was fine for her to violate the clear Commandments— GOD HATES DIVORCE— of her religion while claiming that someone else’s marriage which she does not participate in is also a violation of her religious beliefs…
I believe you've hit it, Ben. Too much of the law surrounding the issue of pregnancy has been driven by people with a religious agenda and axe to grind. As I've said elsewhere, such agendas fail to recognize the facts on the ground, never mind that hidden desire by some men to usurp women's control of their own bodies.
It would seem that there is a need to SECULARIZE pregnancy ... and this ruling is a healthy start in that direction.
For a while, I've been wondering when the Jewish belief that life begins, not at conception, but at BIRTH, would figure into a judicial decision regarding access to abortion. I am enormously pleased to learn that that belief has factored into such a ruling and even more so that it has happened in as red a state as Indiana.
It would seem as though the judges in the Hoosier State have more sense than its politicians. So much the better.
Ironically, original Roe came pretty close to the earlier centuries Christian belief that it occurred at 'quickening' i.e. when the foetus starts to kick and move. Full rights in first trimester and state's rights in last trimester, with the middle being squishy.
I am not sure whether that folk belief had anything to do with their ruling, but it's interesting that they did it in a similar way.
Abortion was a fake issue in response to US v. Bob Jones University. Period. Then, they invented terms like 'unborn babies', got away with it so extended it to 'unborn children'. I guess 'unborn teenagers' didn't have the same emotional effect. Now, they're attacking history by rebadging it as Critical Race Theory. It's insidious.
"“Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act was never intended to equate taking the life of an unborn child with religious expression in our state."
Hey, dumbass. The belief that a zygote is an unborn child with full humanity and full human rights IS A RELIGIOUS ONE. NOT EVERY RELIGION FUCKING AGREES WITH YOU. NOT EVEN EVERY CHRISTIAN AGREES WITH YOU.
Anti-abortion activists and legislators are willing to let people suffer and die IN ORDER to prevent abortion care OR miscarriage management. It has always been about control and the cruelty is the point.
Glad to see someone finally challenging the Christo-fascists instead of just compromising with them, but I don’t believe law or rationality will stick at this time.
Indeed, the casualties ARE piling up, with no thanks to SCOTUS and their disastrous ruling in the Dobbs case. I realize that it is unlikely, approaching impossible, that those on the Court who ruled in favor of Dobbs should be forced to face and endure the consequences of their actions.
But of course, the Court, like religion, is deemed to be separate and immune from such correction. More's the pity.
It MIGHT be possible with an engaged and concerned Congress, but we have no such thing available to us in the here and now. Our government borders on being utterly broken and in desperate need of serious repair.
That's going to be a hard one for them to justify, especially since the plaintiffs include practicing Jews. Will this get them to drop the "see we're not really Nazis" mask of Judeo-Christian values? The cruelty is the point. They want to force conformity into their very narrow little boxes, regardless of how much active harm it causes.
The only justification I can think that they might be able to apply is animal cruelty statutes that prohibit certain types of animal sacrifice. Although they do like to rule up their base by comparing abortion to human sacrifice, I don't think they are quite ready to make that claim in court where they need evidence of motive. Not to mention they would have to justify why one potential life is more important than an actual one. They would need to demonstrate why a fetus should be granted a right that no other human has, the right to use another's body without permission.
The Satanic Temple's Seven Tenets allow for abortion for any reason, framing it as a religious right. TST might see a surge in membership from Indiana.
At some point or other, the courts are going to have to say it out loud: Religious "law" does not, cannot, and WILL NOT supersede secular law. Religious law fails to recognize the scientific facts which tell us what is viable and what is not, never mind the rights of those women who bear the risk of pregnancy. Stipulated that the great majority of pregnancies are at least reasonably successful, but there is also the matter that the US has earned a D+ in prenatal care, according to US News & World Report.
Women deserve BETTER, INCLUDING the right to terminate their pregnancies.
The Nat-Cs have unironically been pushing bans in Sharia law. They do recognize that religious law shouldn't supersede secular law if that religious law isn't theirs.
That’s the great majority of known pregnancies are successful. But to be pedantic, or however you want to classify it, every single pregnancy, no matter how successful, negatively affects the health of the pregnant person. Even if their body bounces back to their pre pregnancy size, every system of a person’s body is damaged by each pregnancy. Sometimes it’s just small changes, sometimes it is large changes that threaten their lives for years. But no one talks about that. Also, we never know which pregnancy won’t be successful and will take the life of the pregnant person, so we shouldn’t be forcing people into the risks they are not willing to take just because the death cult wants more children to molest.
True. Considering all the crap surrounding pregnancies which may be termed legitimate and illegitimate, more than a little niggling should damned well be acceptable.
The court said that out loud in 1878, in Reynolds vs. US: "to permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances."
Unfortunately, Alito is on a crusade to un-say it in as many rulings as possible.
Not the same SCOTUS, but here's two Hugo Black quotes from Engel v. Vitale (1962) which shows that SCOTUS continued to get it right up into the modern era.:
"[The Establishment's Clause's] first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion."
"Another purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand."
Hmm, human sacrifice; like jeezyboy supposedly was a human sacrifice for redeeming humanity for all its sin. Which of course is the whole goddamm fucking basis of their death cult.
They don't really talk about the human sacrifice aspect of the Easter story. Kind of like they know that acknowledgement of that would highlight how morally bankrupt their whole belief system is.
I bring it up all the time, including the fact that they participate in symbolic ritual cannibalism. What do they think the phrase eating my body and drinking my blood actually means! I realize a lot of Christians don’t know the meaning of words, but you would think that the Christians would understand THAT PHRASE at least. On the other hand, never underestimate the level of stupidity of the average MAGAS!
I will never forget when my buddy Bob Heinlein got me aware of the whole "cannibalism" thing in Stranger in a Strange Land. That was a bit of a wake-up call! 😁
While I welcome the result, I think the judge's reasoning is shaky and won't stand up on appeal. Just because a person's religion PERMITS abortion doesn't mean it REQUIRES it. The decision to abort is still a personal one, and that's what the law was aimed at.
I'd still like to see a challenge based on the 4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…" Seems to me that prohibiting abortion is an unreasonable seizure of a person's bodily security — the ability to do with it what one will, free of governmental interference.
Yesssss.... but what would happen if the state were to pass an Act to grant personhood from the moment of conception rather than birth? That "person" would have the same Constitutional protection. There are obvious problems but I think it could happen.
I am still a big fan of the US Constitution and believe we should have something similar over here. Incidentally, the UK Parliament has finally decided that having hereditary members is not a good thing and passed an Act to abolish them. It has now been passed to King Charles before it becomes law. Parliament has no sense of irony.
Foetal personhood would end IVF treatment in the state or explode the cost and surgical reqirements up by 10-fold. A lot of rich white Christian women use IVF. So it's very unlikely; the GOP would lose too much of their bases' support by passing it.
A few state legislators in different places have sponsored such bills, because they know it sounds good to some of their more fanatic base (and, let's face it, it's theologically consistent with their other claim). But no Republican-controlled state legislature has even let these bills come to a floor vote, let alone pass them. I think Georgia came closest - a guy sponsored a bill that said foetuses get personthood except in vitro ones, because "they're not in a woman." Making it plain to everyone that (a) this was about control of women, and (b) just how hypocritical they were willing to be. But his bill went nowhere.
I can think of few proposed bills that would be more stupid than one creating personhood for blastocysts, zygotes, embryos, and fetuses. Such a bill, were it to become law, would completely ignore the liabilities inherent in the process of pregnancy, never mind utterly disregarding the right of a woman to control her own body ... or do I have to mention unimplanted, fertilized ova, spontaneous miscarriages, and all the aberrations which can be visited on a nine-month sublease?
Challenges to such a law in the courts would swamp those systems in the time it would take to talk about it, never mind the emotional toll it would take on the women subjected to that foolishness.
The very thought of such idiocy just twists my gut.
"Just because a person's religion PERMITS abortion doesn't mean it REQUIRES it."
SCOTUS has bent over backwards not to challenge the sincerity of religious beliefs....when it benefits conservative causes. Remember in the Little Sisters case, the nuns insisted that that merely 𝑓𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑎 1-𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚 to request an exemption was against their religion. Filling out the form! Is there anything in RCC theology that supports such a claim? No, nothing at all. But SCOTUS agreed with the nuns that they had this sincere belief, and not only applied it to them but made it a general conclusion that the government cannot require *any* religious entity to fill out a form to get an exemption (IIRC, it was for what health care they had to provide to employees).
So clearly they've accepted more ridiculous things than this. Does it mean they'll be consistent and support their own logic when it leads to a liberal outcome? No. But I will hope that their own past logic showing up in the plaintiff's brief will at least make them less likely to grant cert, allowing the local ruling to stand.
It's about time other religious [and non-religious] people's rights were upheld and protected with the same zeal applied to fundie christianity. Using the state's religious freedom act was a perfect choice. Bravo!
All those euphemistically-named 'religious freedom' bills were only ever intended to boost fundie christian nationalism. But they couldn't come out and say that without getting sideways with the constitution, so christian nationalism was hidden behind vague references to 'religious freedom.' Now, the CNs are finding out what real religious freedom means. As the Founders, like Jefferson and Madison, intended.
The religious freedom bills are all centered on their religious freedom to ignore the laws of the land and discriminate against people they don’t like (mainly black people [because their sincerely held religious beliefs are nothing but white supremacy] but LGBTQ and women are large targets for them). They already had freedom to practice their religion.
Exactly, Val! These bills were about promoting a certain POLITICAL POV under the guise of religion. The people who wrote and passed these bills wanted not religious freedom, but the freedom to be public with their bigotry and racism and not face any consequences.
OT: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse explaining the many ways the seizure of Fulton Co. GA voting records was contrary to normal search warrant procedures. About 6 minutes long.
Reasonable medical care should not be held hostage to having a 'religious belief.' So this is a bad fix to a bad problem.
However, it's probably the most likely fix to work. That "show how a religious exception is less deserving than a rape exception" logic is elegantly tuned to use Alito's own logic against the anti-abortion position. It feeds directly into his concept that if exceptions to general rules are made at all, religions must have the opportunity to participate in those exceptions.
Will it hold up with SCOTUS? Well I'm not sure it'll even get to them. But the conservative justices are excellent at doublespeak and even just completely ignoring lower court arguments and case evidence when it suits them, so I cynically expect they'll deny their own reasoning to reach the conservative outcome they want.
The so-called pro-life crowd does not care about the health and well being of women, and they quit caring about the child the moment it’s born. They are pro-death penalty, anti-gun control, anti-universal health care, and never met a war they didn’t love. These measures are all about the subjugation of women. Period.
Which is why, of course, we call them: PRO-FORCED-BIRTH. They've earned that moniker, and they damned well should own it.
I'll go further. They are pro controlling women. They are pro women are property and not people. They are anti equality, anti justice, and anti freedom.
Indeed, a bunch of scared little boys who can't deal with being equal with the women who deserve both respect and love. Seriously pathetic.
Precisely. It's a big fucking deal when it comes to a fetus, but once the child is born, screw them - they're on their own.
And many times, it condemns both mothers and forced-birth children to a lifetime of poverty. The cost of raising a child to adulthood is becoming hugely unaffordable.
The land of Mike Pence, where women go by 'Mother.'
I sometimes playfully call my gal "Mom" here and there, and of course, "Grandma" when her grandkids are around ... but "Mother?!?" In a word: UGH! 😝
That is soooo creepy on so many levels!😳
Obvious because the founders of the movement were and now-a-day leaders of this movement are all men… so a very small minority of the population - white, male, conservative Christians - have imposed their will on everyone else. And as the saying goes, they have no skin in this game. They certainly aren’t going to die of a miscarriage. This is the most mean, cruel, authoritarian movement in my lifetime.
“ … they have no skin in this game. They certainly aren’t going to die of a miscarriage.“
This is something that should be repeated regularly. Shouted out very loudly.
No skin in the game? How about evicerating a randomly selected forced birther every time their dumbfuckery gets a woman killed? Now they have skin in the game.
That’s the UNTIDY STATES OF AMERICA in a nutshell.
… 🦘🦘🦘
Imagine that, freedom of religion being for non-Christian nationalists.
I'm trying to imagine it but failing.
Welcome to Gilead.
I did not get enough sleep last night, or the last three nights. So coffee is my religion.
When I first started to read this article, I thought that the religious conclusion reached by the judge would not hold up. And then Hemant ddressed the problem: “That may be the most significant aspect of this ruling. While conservatives want to pretend they’re protecting life, what they’re actually doing is privileging certain religious beliefs over others. They believe the law should fall on the side of whatever the hell white evangelicals and conservative Catholics want— everyone else just needs to deal with it.”
And that is the real problem. It is privileging one group groups religious beliefs over the religious beliefs of other people or the non-beliefs of other people. The same argument applies to gay marriage, sodomy laws, blue laws, or laws guaranteeing that your church can take over a public street on Sunday morning because your parishioners need a place to park: your religious beliefs should not hold sway over my beliefs and my life. Believe whatever you want, but keep your goddamn and goddamning religious beliefs out of my life. Purely theological concerns have absolutely no place in the laws governing a free society that guarantees freedom of religion.
No religion requires anybody to get an abortion. That’s the problem I had with the judge's ruling. But if their religion does not forbid them, someone else’s religion should not be able to forbid them either. The whole Kim Davis fiasco was privileging her religious beliefs over the belief of people who were simply seeking a legal marriage license from the state. And the hypocrisy of saying that it was fine for her to violate the clear Commandments— GOD HATES DIVORCE— of her religion while claiming that someone else’s marriage which she does not participate in is also a violation of her religious beliefs…
That is the crux of the issue.
I believe you've hit it, Ben. Too much of the law surrounding the issue of pregnancy has been driven by people with a religious agenda and axe to grind. As I've said elsewhere, such agendas fail to recognize the facts on the ground, never mind that hidden desire by some men to usurp women's control of their own bodies.
It would seem that there is a need to SECULARIZE pregnancy ... and this ruling is a healthy start in that direction.
It’s a start.
I will say it here once again for this is a perfect spot to say it:
I AM UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO RESPECT ANY PART OF YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS/DOGMA! I AM UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO FOLLOW ANY OF YOUR RELIGIOUS RULES!
Exactly. Your religion, your beliefs, your life.
For a while, I've been wondering when the Jewish belief that life begins, not at conception, but at BIRTH, would figure into a judicial decision regarding access to abortion. I am enormously pleased to learn that that belief has factored into such a ruling and even more so that it has happened in as red a state as Indiana.
It would seem as though the judges in the Hoosier State have more sense than its politicians. So much the better.
I'm pretty sure the evangelical crowd sees themselves as the only people with the freedom of religion.
And it is well past time they were disabused of that notion, presuming such a thing is possible at all!
Dream on. “You can’t reason a man out of something he wasn’t reasoned into.” - Mark Twain
Actually, in SOME cases, you can. It just ain't easy and it just ain't quick, if it's going to happen at all.
They think freedom of religion means the freedom to choose between being a Baptist or a Methodist.
Northern Baptist? Great Lakes Convention? Synod of 1912?
Synod of 1879. Die heretic-
Likewise, Troublesh00ter,
Yeah, that whole Biblical question of, "When does life begin" is SO carefully hidden...
On the first page of the first book of the Bible. DARN hard to find!
(One more thing that is likely to be at least partially redacted, given time.)
Ironically, original Roe came pretty close to the earlier centuries Christian belief that it occurred at 'quickening' i.e. when the foetus starts to kick and move. Full rights in first trimester and state's rights in last trimester, with the middle being squishy.
I am not sure whether that folk belief had anything to do with their ruling, but it's interesting that they did it in a similar way.
Abortion was a fake issue in response to US v. Bob Jones University. Period. Then, they invented terms like 'unborn babies', got away with it so extended it to 'unborn children'. I guess 'unborn teenagers' didn't have the same emotional effect. Now, they're attacking history by rebadging it as Critical Race Theory. It's insidious.
Unborn voters?
That was me when I voted for Lincoln.
"“Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act was never intended to equate taking the life of an unborn child with religious expression in our state."
Hey, dumbass. The belief that a zygote is an unborn child with full humanity and full human rights IS A RELIGIOUS ONE. NOT EVERY RELIGION FUCKING AGREES WITH YOU. NOT EVEN EVERY CHRISTIAN AGREES WITH YOU.
Anti-abortion activists and legislators are willing to let people suffer and die IN ORDER to prevent abortion care OR miscarriage management. It has always been about control and the cruelty is the point.
Glad to see someone finally challenging the Christo-fascists instead of just compromising with them, but I don’t believe law or rationality will stick at this time.
The casualties are piling up.
Indeed, the casualties ARE piling up, with no thanks to SCOTUS and their disastrous ruling in the Dobbs case. I realize that it is unlikely, approaching impossible, that those on the Court who ruled in favor of Dobbs should be forced to face and endure the consequences of their actions.
But of course, the Court, like religion, is deemed to be separate and immune from such correction. More's the pity.
Agreed. The corrupt court should be held accountable. If ever should we regain some sort of power, this should be the first plan of action.
It MIGHT be possible with an engaged and concerned Congress, but we have no such thing available to us in the here and now. Our government borders on being utterly broken and in desperate need of serious repair.
All facts. No notes here ;)
We can’t all be like Mary now, can we?
Who would WANT to be "like Mary?!?" No woman I know!
𝐼𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑙𝑎𝑤 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑤𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑑𝑖𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑛𝑎𝑛𝑡. 𝐼𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑟𝑢𝑒𝑙. 𝐼𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑟𝑦. 𝐼𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙.
...
𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎 𝑅𝑒𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑟𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑡’𝑙𝑙 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑠. 𝐼𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑢𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ, 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑓𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑏𝑎𝑛.
That's going to be a hard one for them to justify, especially since the plaintiffs include practicing Jews. Will this get them to drop the "see we're not really Nazis" mask of Judeo-Christian values? The cruelty is the point. They want to force conformity into their very narrow little boxes, regardless of how much active harm it causes.
The only justification I can think that they might be able to apply is animal cruelty statutes that prohibit certain types of animal sacrifice. Although they do like to rule up their base by comparing abortion to human sacrifice, I don't think they are quite ready to make that claim in court where they need evidence of motive. Not to mention they would have to justify why one potential life is more important than an actual one. They would need to demonstrate why a fetus should be granted a right that no other human has, the right to use another's body without permission.
The Satanic Temple's Seven Tenets allow for abortion for any reason, framing it as a religious right. TST might see a surge in membership from Indiana.
At some point or other, the courts are going to have to say it out loud: Religious "law" does not, cannot, and WILL NOT supersede secular law. Religious law fails to recognize the scientific facts which tell us what is viable and what is not, never mind the rights of those women who bear the risk of pregnancy. Stipulated that the great majority of pregnancies are at least reasonably successful, but there is also the matter that the US has earned a D+ in prenatal care, according to US News & World Report.
Women deserve BETTER, INCLUDING the right to terminate their pregnancies.
The Nat-Cs have unironically been pushing bans in Sharia law. They do recognize that religious law shouldn't supersede secular law if that religious law isn't theirs.
We've said it before: Sharia law and Mosaic law look an awful lot alike, don't they?
Muhammad had Jewish and Christian texts to p̵l̵a̵g̵i̵a̵r̵i̵z̵e̵ borrow from. Is it any wonder that they look the same?
Same fucking coin, different sides!
Hypocrisy is lost on the right wing jesusfuckers!
That’s the great majority of known pregnancies are successful. But to be pedantic, or however you want to classify it, every single pregnancy, no matter how successful, negatively affects the health of the pregnant person. Even if their body bounces back to their pre pregnancy size, every system of a person’s body is damaged by each pregnancy. Sometimes it’s just small changes, sometimes it is large changes that threaten their lives for years. But no one talks about that. Also, we never know which pregnancy won’t be successful and will take the life of the pregnant person, so we shouldn’t be forcing people into the risks they are not willing to take just because the death cult wants more children to molest.
True. Considering all the crap surrounding pregnancies which may be termed legitimate and illegitimate, more than a little niggling should damned well be acceptable.
2nd year of medical school, our professor started the 1-year class with this statement: “pregnancy is a pathological state and women die of it”.
The court said that out loud in 1878, in Reynolds vs. US: "to permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances."
Unfortunately, Alito is on a crusade to un-say it in as many rulings as possible.
Not the same SCOTUS, but here's two Hugo Black quotes from Engel v. Vitale (1962) which shows that SCOTUS continued to get it right up into the modern era.:
"[The Establishment's Clause's] first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion."
"Another purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand."
Bloody hell. 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑠 might as well not even exist at this point.
Hmm, human sacrifice; like jeezyboy supposedly was a human sacrifice for redeeming humanity for all its sin. Which of course is the whole goddamm fucking basis of their death cult.
Not to mention the human sacrifices during COVID when God's fan club wanted to hold meetings that turned into superspreader events.
The human sacrifices of school children for their gun worship as well. They got real butthurt when one of their own was sacrificed for the cause.
As for Charle Kirk, the phrase: A PERSON WHO LIVES BY THE GUN, DIES BY THE GUN! (paraphrasing a well known quote).
As though it were much of a sacrifice. "Jesus had a bad weekend for your sins." 😝
They don't really talk about the human sacrifice aspect of the Easter story. Kind of like they know that acknowledgement of that would highlight how morally bankrupt their whole belief system is.
I bring it up all the time, including the fact that they participate in symbolic ritual cannibalism. What do they think the phrase eating my body and drinking my blood actually means! I realize a lot of Christians don’t know the meaning of words, but you would think that the Christians would understand THAT PHRASE at least. On the other hand, never underestimate the level of stupidity of the average MAGAS!
I will never forget when my buddy Bob Heinlein got me aware of the whole "cannibalism" thing in Stranger in a Strange Land. That was a bit of a wake-up call! 😁
For the forced birthers that usually show up in these threads: how many unwanted children have you personally adopted?
While I welcome the result, I think the judge's reasoning is shaky and won't stand up on appeal. Just because a person's religion PERMITS abortion doesn't mean it REQUIRES it. The decision to abort is still a personal one, and that's what the law was aimed at.
I'd still like to see a challenge based on the 4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…" Seems to me that prohibiting abortion is an unreasonable seizure of a person's bodily security — the ability to do with it what one will, free of governmental interference.
Yesssss.... but what would happen if the state were to pass an Act to grant personhood from the moment of conception rather than birth? That "person" would have the same Constitutional protection. There are obvious problems but I think it could happen.
I am still a big fan of the US Constitution and believe we should have something similar over here. Incidentally, the UK Parliament has finally decided that having hereditary members is not a good thing and passed an Act to abolish them. It has now been passed to King Charles before it becomes law. Parliament has no sense of irony.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxg76rgdp7o
Edit: missed capital.
Foetal personhood would end IVF treatment in the state or explode the cost and surgical reqirements up by 10-fold. A lot of rich white Christian women use IVF. So it's very unlikely; the GOP would lose too much of their bases' support by passing it.
A few state legislators in different places have sponsored such bills, because they know it sounds good to some of their more fanatic base (and, let's face it, it's theologically consistent with their other claim). But no Republican-controlled state legislature has even let these bills come to a floor vote, let alone pass them. I think Georgia came closest - a guy sponsored a bill that said foetuses get personthood except in vitro ones, because "they're not in a woman." Making it plain to everyone that (a) this was about control of women, and (b) just how hypocritical they were willing to be. But his bill went nowhere.
.
And I thought that was an illogical conclusion too far.
I can think of few proposed bills that would be more stupid than one creating personhood for blastocysts, zygotes, embryos, and fetuses. Such a bill, were it to become law, would completely ignore the liabilities inherent in the process of pregnancy, never mind utterly disregarding the right of a woman to control her own body ... or do I have to mention unimplanted, fertilized ova, spontaneous miscarriages, and all the aberrations which can be visited on a nine-month sublease?
Challenges to such a law in the courts would swamp those systems in the time it would take to talk about it, never mind the emotional toll it would take on the women subjected to that foolishness.
The very thought of such idiocy just twists my gut.
"Just because a person's religion PERMITS abortion doesn't mean it REQUIRES it."
SCOTUS has bent over backwards not to challenge the sincerity of religious beliefs....when it benefits conservative causes. Remember in the Little Sisters case, the nuns insisted that that merely 𝑓𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑎 1-𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚 to request an exemption was against their religion. Filling out the form! Is there anything in RCC theology that supports such a claim? No, nothing at all. But SCOTUS agreed with the nuns that they had this sincere belief, and not only applied it to them but made it a general conclusion that the government cannot require *any* religious entity to fill out a form to get an exemption (IIRC, it was for what health care they had to provide to employees).
So clearly they've accepted more ridiculous things than this. Does it mean they'll be consistent and support their own logic when it leads to a liberal outcome? No. But I will hope that their own past logic showing up in the plaintiff's brief will at least make them less likely to grant cert, allowing the local ruling to stand.
That is a better option to fight the jesusfuckers war on women’s bodily autonomy rights!
It's about time other religious [and non-religious] people's rights were upheld and protected with the same zeal applied to fundie christianity. Using the state's religious freedom act was a perfect choice. Bravo!
Yet more evidence of the undercurrent of Christian influence in American law. That all but unseen backdrop needs to be recognized and REMOVED.
All those euphemistically-named 'religious freedom' bills were only ever intended to boost fundie christian nationalism. But they couldn't come out and say that without getting sideways with the constitution, so christian nationalism was hidden behind vague references to 'religious freedom.' Now, the CNs are finding out what real religious freedom means. As the Founders, like Jefferson and Madison, intended.
The religious freedom bills are all centered on their religious freedom to ignore the laws of the land and discriminate against people they don’t like (mainly black people [because their sincerely held religious beliefs are nothing but white supremacy] but LGBTQ and women are large targets for them). They already had freedom to practice their religion.
Exactly, Val! These bills were about promoting a certain POLITICAL POV under the guise of religion. The people who wrote and passed these bills wanted not religious freedom, but the freedom to be public with their bigotry and racism and not face any consequences.
Yes, and the MAGAS are freaking out that other people’s rights are the same as theirs (MAGAS).
"Waaa! You mean we're NOT special?" It's like dealing with a bunch of overtired toddlers.
Toddlers are better behaved and are more willing to learn, unlike the right wing jesusfuckers!
OT: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse explaining the many ways the seizure of Fulton Co. GA voting records was contrary to normal search warrant procedures. About 6 minutes long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsjp9Jw7YVM
https://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/aB2z51P_700b.jpg
Sauce for the goose...
Reasonable medical care should not be held hostage to having a 'religious belief.' So this is a bad fix to a bad problem.
However, it's probably the most likely fix to work. That "show how a religious exception is less deserving than a rape exception" logic is elegantly tuned to use Alito's own logic against the anti-abortion position. It feeds directly into his concept that if exceptions to general rules are made at all, religions must have the opportunity to participate in those exceptions.
Will it hold up with SCOTUS? Well I'm not sure it'll even get to them. But the conservative justices are excellent at doublespeak and even just completely ignoring lower court arguments and case evidence when it suits them, so I cynically expect they'll deny their own reasoning to reach the conservative outcome they want.
That's the real hell of it. Religion should have NO RIGHT to interfere in anyone's medical decisions and especially those having to do with pregnancy.
Great news!
My religion also says I'm not allowed to out queer minors to their parents unless the queer minors are okay with it.
If one judge rules this way, they may think that judge is sick.
If two judges were to rule this way, they may think those judges are LGBTQ.
If THREE judges ruled this way, they might think it's an organization.
And if fifty judges ruled this way, they may think it's a movement.
And it would be.
🎶 You can get anything you want....🎶
♫♪ Excepting Alice... ♪♫