..the above aired yesterday. it started late so the video actually began at the 40 min mark. you quickly understand that the fight surrounding the abortion issue will be at the grassroots level. like black lives matter struggle. in the community. like indigenous movements struggle..in the community. and it will be a radical fight. like the post above ‘We Were Felons’.
..you can watch below.
Voting for Democrats has been a dead-end for abortion justice
quote:
To recap, the only two solutions that were offered by the roughly 30 speakers to our current predicament were voting and donating. Now, I do not aim to argue that voting and donating are inconsequential– to do so would be to ignore the practical purposes that they can serve for organizers. Nevertheless, I was dismayed to see the myopic lasering in on individual-level actions to what is clearly a systemic problem. The speakers offered very little analysis of how we got to this point, let alone a systemic critique of why we live in a system in which women and birthing people’s rights to bodily autonomy are up for grabs in the first place. The rally was telling of where consciousness is right now on the question of abortion rights, and just how much of a need exists for socialist activists to organize and lead a movement that can only secure a woman’s right to choose abortion– just like all other forms of health care– by overhauling this oppressive capitalist system. This is an immensely important opportunity to raise class consciousness, and we should not squander it.
While voting as a theoretical category may not be inconsequential–indeed, it is a right that socialists should fight for to preserve and expand to other realms, like the workplace– it remains true that voting for Democrats as a whole has proven to be a dead-end when it comes to protecting a woman’s right to choose. To be sure, part of this is due to the fact that the pro-choice movement has yet to resemble anything like the organized political force that anti-choice activists represent. Abortion rights organizations, including NARAL and Planned Parenthood, cling to lukewarm tactics like fundraising or phoning legislators even when a national emergency calls for a more militant mobilizing strategy.
But the historical record indicates that there are other, more fundamental problems with the Democratic party that transcend the problems plaguing their voting base. That problem is fundamentally one of using women’s bodies for cynical political gain, coupled with an underlying current of misogyny, rather than a willingness to take a principled stance on women’s equality.
The ruling in Roe v. Wade that gave women the right to choose was issued in 1973, and in the 49 years since, there have been ten years, including 2021 and 2022, when Democrats had control of the House, Senate, and the presidency (Vice President Harris’ vote as a tie-breaker in the Senate does give Democrats control of the chamber, despite it being split 50-50). There have been an additional 16 years when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and could have used that power to pass legislation codifying Roe. Even if a Republican president would issue a veto, passing a bill through Congress would have nevertheless been an excellent symbolic commitment to protecting something that is a fundamental prerequisite for gender equality. But in the years that have followed Roe, Democrats have built up a mottled history on their commitment to protecting abortion rights, replete with broken promises, inaction, and, at times, even the active obstruction or stigmatization of abortion.
The Democrats: A Failed History on Abortion Rights
One of the first major legislative gains of anti-choice advocates following Roe v. Wade was the Hyde Amendment, which passed in 1976 and took effect in 1980. Named after its author, Republican Henry Hyde, the amendment banned the use of federal Medicaid dollars to fund abortions. Hyde specifically tied the amendment to his anti-abortion politics, stating, “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman. Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the HEW Medicaid bill.” This amendment effectively meant that poor women who relied on Medicaid faced an enormous obstacle to obtaining an abortion if they could not readily furnish the hundreds of dollars that were needed to cover the cost of the time-sensitive procedure. It has also been supported by virtually every Democrat who has ever voted on a federal spending bill, and was enthusiastically supported by the first Democratic president after the passage of Roe v. Wade, Jimmy Carter.
When the Democratic nominee Bill Clinton campaigned for the White House in 1992, he did so with the mantra that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” a stigmatizing coinage that would continue to be taken up by Democratic politicians for decades. Hillary Clinton, for example, echoed in her 2008 campaign for president that “abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. And by rare, I mean rare.” While she would later tweak her message to only include “safe and legal” during her 2016 presidential campaign, she also went on to select Tim Kaine as her running mate, a politician with a mixed history on abortion rights and who maintained on the campaign trail that he was personally opposed to the procedure.
In Congress, Democrats have not performed any better. Mary Ziegler writes in her book After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate that “between 1973 and 1984, Democrats sponsored most of the anti-abortion legislation considered in Congress,” including then-senator Joe Biden. Before the House narrowly passed the Women’s Health Protection Act in September 2021, Democrats had only made disappointingly tepid attempts to codify Roe v. Wade via the Freedom of Choice Act. The bill was introduced in 1989 and 2004 in the Senate and in 1993, 2004, and 2007 in the House. In all cases, the bill was referred to committees without further action. It never even made it to a floor vote. These actions were ultimately perfunctory and performative, with the resulting effect of placing a woman’s right to her own body on the backburner of their political agenda.....
BREAKING: Supreme Court Effectively Ends Abortion Access in Much of the United States
Shortly after 10am E.T. this morning, in a devastating decision, the Supreme Court officially and effectively ended abortion access for people in about half of the United States.
The court’s ruling was 6-3, with Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissenting. “With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent,” they wrote.
The decision in the case known as Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health reverses long-settled laws established in the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision, and also Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
!
!!!
California Lawmakers Move to Make State a “Legal Sanctuary for Reproductive Choice”
California lawmakers have approved a bill to protect abortion providers and patients from civil suits in other states. Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan said the legislation is aimed at making California a “legal sanctuary for reproductive choice.” The vote comes as the nation prepares for the U.S. Supreme Court to issue a ruling in which it is expected to overturn Roe v. Wade.
To: Conservative leader Candice Bergen, and party president Robert Batherson
The Conservative party must affirm their support for abortion rights
Breaking: The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, opening the door for dangerous abortion bans in states across the U.S. [1]
While this horror unfolds south of the border, many Canadians are sounding the alarm that the problem is not so far away. Although abortion is decriminalized in Canada, there are huge gaps in access to abortion care. A small minority want to make it even harder — or ban it altogether — and they’re mobilizing within the Conservative party. [2,3]
Why is this important?
Right now, candidates are duking it out for Conservative party leadership. They’ve been urged by the party to stay silent about whether or not they support abortion rights. [4] But the public deserves to know where our major political parties stand on an issue as important as reproductive health care. Lives depend on it. [5]
So with your help, we’re going to pressure them to take a stance. If thousands of us sign a petition to interim Conservative leader Candice Bergen, and party president Robert Batherson, while the Roe v. Wade scandal is in the spotlight, we could force them to publicly affirm the party’s support for access to abortion and reproductive services.
If you agree that the right to an abortion shouldn’t be political, because access to safe, legal abortion is access to vital health care — add your name now.
The right to abortion access with Martha Paynter
This week on the site, rabble’s national politics reporter Stephen Wentzell reviewed Martha Paynter’s new book, Abortion to Abolition: Reproductive Health and Justice in Canada. This week, we’re sharing an interview between the two where Paynter dives into the misconceptions people have about access to abortion in Canada and the other threats facing reproductive justice in the country.
Paynter explains that Canadians generally view our country as the most progressive in the world with respect to abortion care. The truth, though, is that abortion access is poorly understood in our country, and so are the continual threats to reproductive justice in Canada such as sexual violence, gun violence, homophobia and transphobia, criminalization of sex work, reproductive oppression of Indigenous women and girls, privatization of fertility health services, and the racism and colonialism of policing and the prison system.
Abortion to Abolition: Reproductive Health and Justice in Canada tells the empowering true stories behind the struggles for reproductive justice in Canada, celebrating past wins and revealing how prison abolitionism is key to the path forward.....
It actually was a 5-3-1 decision as to Roe, but that's a minor point.
What is important to remember is that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, as has been repeated on here. They are one and the same. There is no difference between them.
It actually was a 5-3-1 decision as to Roe, but that's a minor point.
What is important to remember is that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, as has been repeated on here. They are one and the same. There is no difference between them.
Really.
Clinton would have appointed justices that would have made the decisions the court has made in the past few days?
Absolute nonsense.
..no one has argued they are the same. what has been said about the democrats has been very specific. and no one on this board has challenged any of it. that opportunity is still available. instead there is the "they are the same" bullshit.
I guess you should check with NDPP, at least, on that one.
What is important to remember is that there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, as has been repeated on here. They are one and the same. There is no difference between them.
..you weren't addressing ndpp when you made that comment. "repeated on here" meant this thread. you were addressing my posts.
When I said on here, I meant this site.
To bad that the US doesn't have a constitution with divisions of powers. Everything including their Justice system has devolved into partisan politics. In a properly functioning justice system you are not supposed to be able to tell how a Judge will decide a case based on their politics. That is just wrong and totally absolutely undemocratic. This same court has ruled that New York does not have the power to regulate gun owners. In the US a woman's body belongs to the state and not person can be told they cannot carry a loaded gun any place they want. The right to life ends at birth, after that you are on your own if you have to dodge bullets while going about your life.
While some of you think there is a difference between the parties the part you seem to be blind to is that the system is not a functioning democracy. You like to pretend that voting for a liberal Democrat will make a difference when what is needed is regime change. With this open carry ruling I think that the US took a giant step towards civil unrest. I wish that the citizens would demand a new constitution but unfortunately they have all been brainwashed into believing that their 245 year old constitution is the height of perfection and instead of trying to improve it US citizens argue over the intentions of dead people instead of the good of the people.
"The Supreme Court on Thursday declared for the first time that the U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense, handing a landmark victory to gun rights advocates in a nation deeply divided over how to address firearms violence.
The 6-3 ruling, with the conservative justices in the majority and liberal justices in dissent, struck down New York state's limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home. The court found that the law, enacted in 1913, violated a person's right to "keep and bear arms" under the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment."
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-strikes-down-n...
“While some of you think there is a difference between the parties “
Need I say more.
I definitely think there is little difference between the Republicans and Democrats when it comes to foreign policy. They may have slightly different takes on how to police the world but they both do seem to feel entitled to playing that role.
Of course we knew that once the Supreme Court was stacked with Republicans, many of the protections that are considered progressive like Roe vs Wade would be over-turned. RBG must be rolling in her grave.
When it comes to women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, environmental protections and union support, the Democratic record is much stronger than the Republican one.
I won't check with anyone who is willing to permanently sacrifice all rights held by workers, women, people of color, LGBTQ people and the poor, for the rest of eternity- since nothing that will be done if the GOP takeover Congress in 2022 and 2024 can ever be reversed, and all of it will be in place for the rest of eternity with no resistance of any sort being possible- in the name of his obsession with destroying the Democratic Party for the SAKE of destroying the Democratic Party.I guess you should check with NDPP, at least, on that one.
Yes, the Democrats are corrupt. Yes, they are cynical, Yes, they are militarist, even though there's no longer anything to be militarist about.
But there is no possible way that placing the goal of destroying the Democrats above anything else can ever, under any circumstance, produce a radical, transformative future- other than one that just keeps going radically and transformatively further and further and further to the right with no means of stopping it ever again.
Women have just been effectively stripped of all rights. LGBTQ+ people will be next with the same-sex marriage ruling is overturned and official homophobia clamped permanently in place.
It's simplistic and privileged to place destroying the Democrats, at this moment, before all other objectives.
Something else must be put in place to take the place of the Democratic Party, so that the half of the country that will be made powerless by a right-wing congressional takeover will have some chance of survival. Destroying the Democrats FIRST makes the creation of any post-Democratic Party alternative impossible. It makes organization and mobilization impossible- neither can happen in a place where those you'd seek to organize no longer have any rights.
It's the same thing as reducing the U.S. to Gilead from here on in.
Why even pretend any other outcome but the one I've described is possible?
And how can anyone still defend the refusal to focus first on getting electoral reform measures in place, so that the US is freed from the tyrannies of the FPTP and the Electoral College?
Of course, if someone is a defender of Putin, it's impossible for do that and be pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ, pro-worker, pro-equality or pro-justice, becaus no one can support a right-wing authoritarian like Putin and support anything progressive for the future at the same time
Mobilization, yes. Organization, yes. Destruction of the only current structure in which working politically for progressive change in the US is even remotely possible before an alternate is created to take its place? NO.
When the people who sit on a country's highest court seem to have lied to get appointed by the legislators you know that the problems in the US system cannot be changed with a few tweaks. This video is interesting and suggests that if the Democrats actually wanted to reverse this they merely have to appoint more Judges. The US constitution does have a fixed number so appointing three more Judges should solve the problem in the short term.
US citizens cannot even imagine that the constitution itself is at the heart of all the problems. This anti-democratic country doesn't even elect its President with a one person one vote system. A Cuban American living in Florida gets leverage while a voter in Seattle gets screwed.
The Democrats are so screwed!
Something else must be put in place to take the place of the Democratic Party
..and here lies the division of the left.
..and while we wait for this "replacement" the world doesn't stand still. and in this thread we should listen to what women on the ground are saying. the women that are engaged in the struggle in the communities. i have posted a few pieces on what this will/is looking like. it's important. like it's important to understand how it's the indigenous folks and the young who are leading the struggle around climate. it's not political parties!
Voting for Democrats in the US is like voting for Liberal's in Canada. Both are Hobson's choices no matter how one tries to delude themselves while holding their noses and voting.
“I do trust women enough to control when they allow a man to ejaculate inside of them and to control that intake of semen,” the Clearfield Republican told reporters at a news conference at the Utah Capitol on Friday.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2022/06/24/utah-republicans-take/
Democracy in action.
Can women in the US travel to Canada for abortions? It would be nice if Canada can offer these services to Americans, just not at the cost of Canadians being negatively impacted.
Lets start by offering proper women's health services to Canadian women in remote communities. We cannot cure America's problems. We are only a tenth of their population and we are under funding our services already. You have to realize that few if any poor women would have the resources to make it to Canada and then pay the costs. There is no room to meet the needs of middle and upper class American women.
Vatican Praises US Court Decision on Abortion...
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1540399443538845697
Joe Biden's pope and remnant of earlier evil empire.
Big protest against SCOTUS decision in TO today at US embassy.
WATCH: "With Roe overturned, Abby Martin's case to abolish the Supreme Court and what history shows about our power to defend our rights against these unelected lords."
https://twitter.com/EmpireFiles/status/1540412387869700096
[Multi-millionaire] "Nancy Pelosi just sent out her first email fundraising off the decision overturning Roe v Wade...."
https://twitter.com/AbbyMartin/status/1540404506952839168
..good martin video!
The decision to overturn Roe v Wade is a direct attack on bodily autonomy and freedom.
Join us this Sunday to stand in anger and solidarity with our siblings in the United States.
Roe Reversal is Business as Usual
https://fergie.substack.com/p/roe-reversal-is-business-as-usual
'This is the theatrical gamesmanship of an extant, bipartisan fascist beast, manufacturing yet again the illusion of struggle within Bourgeois boundaries.'
Lets start by offering proper women's health services to Canadian women in remote communities.
Yet services offered to women in remote locations, or even outside of large urban centers, seems non-existent.
It's almost like our government takes advantage of pro-choice beliefs for votes but doesn't want to lift a finger to actually do anything.
Federal government announces funding to expand access to abortion services
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/abortion-funding-expanded-roe-v-wade-1....
[Move comes a week after leak of U.S. Supreme Court draft decision on overturning Roe v. Wade]
Never waste an opportunity eh?
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday said landmark high court rulings that established gay rights and contraception rights should be reconsidered now that the federal right to abortion has been revoked.
Thomas wrote that those rulings “were demonstrably erroneous decisions.”
The cases he mentioned are Griswold vs. Connecticut, the 1965 ruling in which the Supreme Court said married couples have the right to obtain contraceptives; Lawrence v. Texas, which in 2003 established the right to engage in private sexual acts; and the 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which said there is a right to same-sex marriage.
Thomas’ recommendation to reconsider that trio of decisions does not have the force of legal precedent, nor does it compel his colleagues on the Supreme Court to take the action he suggested.
But it is an implicit invitation to conservative lawmakers in individual states to pass legislation that might run afoul of the Supreme Court’s past decisions, with an eye toward having that court potentially reverse those rulings.....
..at the heart of the abortion issue is men trying to control women.
Overturning Roe: Slavery, Abortion, Maternal Mortality and the Disparate Effect on Women of Color
MICHELE GOODWIN:
The decision itself, just as we saw with the leaked draft, has many errors, omissions. It has a selective, if not opportunistic, reading of American history. It does not center — in all of its claimed originalism, in all of its claimed textualism, interestingly enough, it avoids the 13th Amendment. It even avoids the first sentence of the 14th Amendment.
And here’s what my New York Times piece was about. It was that when Congress abolished, through the ratification of the 13th Amendment, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, they were not abolishing that just for Black men. They very well understood that involuntary servitude for Black women in the United States meant involuntary sexual assaults, rapes and then the reproduction after that, as Black women were forced to labor not only in the fields, but also labor under the weight, a different kind of shackling of slavery, which was sexual subordination and reproduction.
This was very well known. The abolitionist in Congress who led the way for the 13th Amendment spoke and wrote about this. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner was nearly beaten to death in the halls of Congress two days after giving a speech about the raping of Black women. Sojourner Truth spoke to it. I mean, it was clear. The New York Times, there were articles about it. So the very idea that there was no one thinking about involuntary servitude as being consistent with involuntary reproduction is just absurdist. It was written about everywhere. Everyone knew this as being one of the devastating effects of American slavery. And it was abolished with the 13th Amendment. And then, later on, with the 14th Amendment, it was still recognized that Black women were psychologically, physically and reproductively still being harmed in Southern states. Their children were being denied citizenship. Their children were being snatched and taken away from them. And the 14th Amendment was therefore then ratified.
None of this is given any kind of reading by the originalists and textualists on the Supreme Court, who seem to ignore all of that and have now rendered us to a country where there are free states, where individuals can be free in their bodies, and also those where it is nonfree. And one can’t help but understand this as being so consistent with the patterns of slavery and Jim Crow in the United States......
..from above
quote:
MICHELE GOODWIN: Well, I’m glad that you mentioned that, because what is also alarming in this opinion, and also in the draft opinion, is how it gives no regard to facts, concurrent facts. The United States ranks 55th in the world in terms of maternal mortality. It is not in league with Germany, France, its peer nations. Instead, it’s in peer company with nations that still publicly lash and stone women.
In 2016, the Supreme Court’s own record showed that women were 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. Once we flash what this looks like in terms of race, then we really get a sense of the horror that’s behind all of this, and again with the Supreme Court deciding that it would pay no attention to it. So, in Mississippi, we’re looking at 118 times — Black women more likely to die 118 times by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion. According to Mississippi’s own data from their Department of Health, a Black woman — 80% of the cardiac deaths in that state occur to Black women. Black women don’t make up 80% of the female population in the state but are 80% of the cardiac deaths during pregnancy. And nationally, they’re three-and-a-half times more likely than white counterparts to die due to maternal mortality.
But, Amy, that’s not all. If you actually look at certain counties within these anti-abortion states, then you see that Black women may be five or 10 or 15 times more likely to die by being forced to carry a pregnancy to term than by being able to have the medical care of an abortion. And it’s just that glaring and alarming. And what’s so stunning about it is that the Supreme Court gives no consideration to this data.
The guy kneeling with the 'Abortion Kills Children' sign is Conservative MP Arnold Viersen. https://ourcommons.ca/members/en/arnold-viersen(89211)/roles… It's not pearl clutching, or Canadian-angling, or whatever to worry that what's happened in the States can happen here. These people are already in Parliament.
Coalition of Leftists, Activists, and Unions Bring 20,000 Out for Abortion Rights in NYC
The day that nine unelected Supreme Court Justices — a gang of misogynists, religious fanatics, ultra right-wing racists, and the staunchest defenders of capital — decided to overturn the right to an abortion, tens of thousands in New York City flooded the streets to voice their rage.
Over 20,000 people gathered in Washington Square Park and marched to Times Square and Bryant Park, past Democratic Party officials’ offices, GOP offices, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, chanting “not the Church, not the state, people must decide our fate.” Block after block of protesters brought traffic to a halt on both sides of the street on a busy Friday night in Manhattan. Truck drivers making their nightly deliveries honked horns in support and people leaned out of cars to raise a fist in solidarity as protesters marched through the lines of traffic.
The march, which took the streets without the “permission” of NYPD and the city, was marshaled by activists forged in the Black Lives Matter movement and other struggles. “We keep us safe!” the crowd chanted, knowing that the police do not. The march was dotted with green, an echo of the marea verde that won the right to an abortion in Argentina and decriminalized it in Colombia and Mexico and across Latin America. At least a dozen protesters were arrested by the NYPD as the march ended in Bryant Park, after staging a sit-in at one of New York City’s busiest intersections......
Rudy Giuliani slapped by worker angry over abortion ruling at Staten Island supermarket
quote:
Giuliani said he had just gotten out of the men’s room at the store on Veteran’s Road and was being greeted by a bunch of supporters when he was suddenly hit from behind — an incident caught on surveillance video obtained by The Post.
“All of a sudden, I feel this ‘Bam!’ on my back,” Giuliani said. “I don’t know if they helped me not fall down, but I just about fell down, but I didn’t.
“I feel this tremendous pain in my back, and I’m thinking, what the — I didn’t even know what it was,” he said. “All of a sudden, I hear this guy say, ‘You’re a f–king scumbag,’ then he moves away so nobody can grab him.
“And he says, ‘You, you’re one of the people that’s gonna kill women. You’re gonna kill women,’ ” Giuliani said, quoting the suspect, who now faces assault charges. “‘You and your f–king friend are gonna kill women.’ Then he starts yelling out all kinds of, just curses, and every once in a while, he puts in that woman thing.
” ‘You guys think you’re saving babies, but you’re gonna kill women,’ ” the worker continued to rage, according to Giuliani, also a lawyer for former President Donald Trump.....
..looking at the video attached to the above story the guy tapped giuliani.
A good reminder that your rights aren't guaranteed. They need to be maintained and at times fought to preserve.
I wonder if Hillary Clinton is still laughing at her deplorables comment now.
If Hillary had chosen Supreme Court judges instead of Trump this atrocity would not have happened.
If Biden had been the nominee in 2016, if Ginsburg had retired in 2014. If Kennedy had not retired in 2018. A lot of ifs. BTW, Sandra Day O'Connor, who Alito replaced in 2005, is still alive.
An abortion ban law from 1849—when slavery was legal—just went into effect in Wisconsin. And because the Republican-controlled state legislature refuses to repeal that law, the Democratic governor is vowing to pardon those convicted under the law.
https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1541492279386558465?s=20&t=1c6dc...
