It’s monsoon season in Arizona, and, although the storms were far away, I kept losing electricity and therefore my modem, for a couple of hours. So this diary is low on research, but I did want to express some of what I’m feeling this Fourth of July weekend.
This week was dominated by reactions to the Dobbs decision and the sixth publiic hearing of the July 6th committee that featured one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson — and ended with the easy-to-miss swearing in of our first black woman Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. I want to begin by applauding three women involved in these events — Liz Cheney, Cassidy Hutchinson, and Justice Jackson. This seems appropriate for the July Fourth weekend edition of WoW — these very different women who are fighting to preserve the ideas we are supposed to be celebrating on Independence Day. Honorable people can disagree on almost everything — Liz Cheney is a Cheney, for heaven’s sake, and Cassidy Hutchinson has worked for such Republicans as Ted Cruz and was an aide in Trump’s White House because she supported Trump. But both deserve a moment of honor as we go on with the fight to get our country back and make it better.
However, the week has mostly been about how we are losing freedom. Abortion bans, some dating back to the 19th or early 20th century, are becoming effective in too many states after the Dobbs decision. And it’s not just reproductive rights in jeopardy — Clarence Thomas’ concurrence made clear that sodomy laws may be revived, gay marriage once again left to the states, and the right to use contraceptives taken away. Cases will be filed in the next couple of years, without a doubt. The party of small government is looking to become a peeping Tom.
And state governments in many states like mine of AZ, are giving legislatures or others the ability to overturn election results, the kind of authoritarian takeover of power that led to January 6th. It’s ongoing. The coup hasn’t failed, it’s just readjusting its tactics.
President Biden has made a deal with Mitch McConnell that is terrifying:
President Joe Biden reportedly cut a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to appoint an anti-abortion judge in Kentucky, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Kentucky does not have any judicial openings but under the deal reported by the outlet, Biden would nominate Federalist Society member Chad Meredith, an anti-abortion attorney, when a vacancy comes up. Under the deal, McConnell agreed not to hold up Biden's future federal nominations, according to the report.
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Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates—East, whose region includes Kentucky, condemned Biden's deal.
"Lifetime appointments to federal courts for people with records like Chad Meredith are unacceptable and the reason we have lost the federal right to abortion," the group said on Twitter. "We deserve better."
Democratic Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Charles Booker called it a "deal with the devil."
www.salon.com/...
From a diary by SemDem:
This past Monday, a child abuse doctor in Ohio had a 10-year old rape victim in her office. She is six weeks and three days pregnant. She was obviously terrified, and instead of helping her, Ohio legislators turned on her. As soon as SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, Ohio outlawed all abortion after six weeks. The child discovered she was pregnant three days too late. There was no longer any access to an abortion clinic in the state, and there were no exceptions made for child rape. Even if there was a doctor who would take pity on this horrible situation, the doctor would be taking an extreme risk of prosecution—along with possibly the child.
The child abuse doctor called a colleague in Indiana and begged to take her in. For now, abortion is legal in Indiana, so the gynecologist agreed and the girl was sent to Indiana. This won’t be an option soon. The state of Indiana, unfortunately, is convening a special session in three weeks to discuss banning the procedure. Most people expect it to pass quickly in their Republican legislature.
www.dailykos.com/...
Prosecutors respond to laws that would have them enforce anti-abortion laws:
In a joint statement originally issued Friday, 88 elected prosecutors — mostly district attorneys and attorneys general — vowed not to prosecute abortions, calling the criminalization of abortion care "a mockery of justice."
The prosecutors come from counties in both blue and red states, including those with strict anti-abortion laws including Georgia and Texas. They collectively represent more than 91.5 million people from 30 states and territories as well as Washington, D.C., according to Fair and Just Prosecution, the group that organized and distributed the statement.
"Not all of us agree on a personal or moral level on the issue of abortion," they wrote. "But we stand together in our firm belief that prosecutors have a responsibility to refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions."
www.npr.org/...
Facebook and Instagram have begun promptly removing posts that offer abortion pills to women who may not be able to access them following a
Supreme Court decision that stripped away constitutional protections for the procedure.
Such social media posts ostensibly aimed to help women living in states where preexisting laws banning abortion suddenly snapped into effect on Friday. That's when the high court overruled Roe v. Wade, its 1973 decision that declared access to abortion a constitutional right.
Memes and status updates explaining how women could legally obtain abortion pills in the mail exploded across social platforms. Some even offered to mail the prescriptions to women living in states that now ban the procedure.
As UNFPA’s 2022 State of World Population report reveals, nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended, and over 60 per cent of these unintended pregnancies may end in abortion. A staggering 45 per cent of all abortions around the world are unsafe, making this a leading cause of maternal death. Almost all unsafe abortions currently occur in developing countries, and UNFPA fears that more unsafe abortions will occur around the world if access to abortion becomes more restricted. Decisions reversing progress gained have a wider impact on the rights and choices of women and adolescents everywhere.
The 1994 Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), signed by 179 countries including the United States, recognized how deadly unsafe abortions are and urged all countries to provide post-abortion care to save lives, irrespective of the legal status of abortion. It also highlighted that all people should be able to access quality information about their reproductive health and contraceptives.
As the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency and the custodian of the ICPD, UNFPA advocates for the right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so. The UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 3 related to maternal health, to which all UN Member States have committed, are at risk of not being met if unsafe abortions continue.
www.unfpa.org/...
In separate cases, two notorious child traffickers were sentenced this week. R Kelly got 30 years. Ghislaine Maxwell got 20 years. Now how about we start arresting the customers?
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Thanks to mettle fatigue, officebss, Angmar, Tara TASW, and elenacarlena contributed to this week’s diary — the WoW team continues to be great.