Preserve Women’s Rights; Fuck the Filibuster!

Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, the two ‘Democratic’ senators who have done everything within their power to undermine the Biden administration’s agenda and the will of the majority of the American people, are once again telling us we can all go fuck ourselves.

Instead of doing everything they can to uphold a woman’s right to abortion, they again choose to uphold the filibuster, the means by which the Southern segregationists could prevent any type of civil rights legislation from passing. Isn’t it ironic that this most unusual circumstance of taking away a right will disproportionately affect women of color and those without the means to travel to the states who actually care about the health and wellbeing of their residents with uteri?

I don’t know who is paying Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema to repeatedly refuse to do the right thing for the American people. I hope that whatever they are being paid for this abandonment of their duties to represent their constituents’ best interests is worth it.

Joe Manchin in particular has spent his entire time in the Senate as a giant conflict of interest. His coal company makes his refusal to enact any reasonable climate legislation blatantly self-serving, while the citizens of West Virginia, listed as the 47th out of the 50 states in terms of health care, 45th in education, 48th in the economy and dead last in infrastructure, are denied the benefits that Manchin doesn’t feel they are deserving enough of to vote for them. He instead thinks that his constituents are all drug addicts, spending their child tax credits to get high. He holds his fellow West Virginians in very low regard.

In fact, Manchin and Sinema’s refusal to eliminate the filibuster for Biden’s Build Back Better agenda further shows both their distain for the value of women and the things that women need for their lives. Much of the BBB included the biggest investment in the care industry in history, most of which would have benefitted the women in the country to whom these care activities inevitably fall. Child care, elder care, universal pre-school and the child tax credits helped raise millions of children and their families out of poverty, yet neither of these senators could find it within themselves to eliminate the filibuster in order to let the majority, voted in by the people, do what they people want them to.

Arizona is poised, upon the overturning of Roe, to ban most abortions after 15 weeks without any exceptions for rape or incest only to save the woman’s life; providers could face up to five years in prison. Kirsten Sinema thinks that this is just fine for Arizona’s women.

West Virginia recently passed a law outlawing abortion because the fetus may develop a disability, meaning that anyone who has abnormal genetic testing results would be forced to carry that pregnancy to term. The state is going to make abortion providers ask women if they are having an abortion because the fetus might be disabled, then turn in those women who say that they are. Providers who do not do so could be subject to losing their licenses to practice medicine. Joe Manchin wants his constituents to be forced to give birth to babies with disabilities in a state that is at the very bottom of the rankings for healthcare, education and infrastructure, all things that a disabled child and their family needs in abundance. But sure, Joe, uphold the filibuster at the expense of the women and their forced children.

We are at an inflection point that I never thought I’d see again in my lifetime. The Republicans have gerrymandered and schemed successfully to allow them to wield minority tyranny over the majority who voted against them. They have fully given themselves over to the Evangelical White Nationalists they courted for decades, finally allowing them to let their freak flags fly. There is only one thing left for us to do.

Vote like our lives depend upon the results, because, for half the population of our country, they really do. Vote in every election, because it is the state governments who are enacting these state-by-state abortion restrictions. Vote on every election, because they are not going to stop here. They are already attacking marginalized groups, including trans kids who in any one state can be no more than a couple of dozen kids at most. They’ve been doing this because we’ve let them get away with it. No more.

I am a straight White woman, a mother, grandmother, and former nurse. I will not sit idly by while a minority of mostly White, mostly male religious zealots try to force their beliefs on the rest of us.

You cannot sit idly by, either. Because one day they’re going to come for you, too.

Better believe it.

How Dare They?!?

In an earlier post, I’ve shared my abortion story.

Without Roe v. Wade, I would not be where I am now, with my two grown children and new grandson Luke.

I would have become a single mother at the age of 16, without a high school diploma or the assistance of the father. He was my boyfriend for months before I became pregnant, but, like most males, deemed the pregnancy and it’s outcome as not his problem or his responsibility.

It is of course obvious that the extremists who have been pushed onto the court by Republicans over the last several decades, especially the last 3, have now reached the critical mass that will allow them to force their theocratic views onto the majority of Americans who DO NOT AGREE WITH THEM.

For years, the Supreme Court (which is neither supreme, nor a court. Discuss.) has gradually pushed this platform to the front. With the Masterpiece Cake case, the Roberts’ court decided that it wasn’t discrimination to refuse to provide your service to a same-sex couple because your magical sky god says its a ‘sin’ versus being none of your fucking business. Apparently, the Roberts’ court has no recollection of the churches that used to say black and whites intermarrying was also a sin.

This is the same “Supreme Court” that is also poised to tell a school district to reinstate a coach who was encouraging his players to join him in prayer on the 50 yard line, although his case claims he was just praying silently alone. That isn’t what it looked like when he brought in the media and local politicians to join him, but maybe it’s just me.

It’s been clear to those of us not under the thrall of right-wing media that there is one fundamental issue that should be driving all of us to the polls, and that is this:

Republicans will not stop until they have rolled back all of it. Contraception, same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, and any other rights that have been explicitly or implicitly enjoyed by all of us until now are under threat by a radicalized, extremist, theocratic Republican party bent on holding and swinging their minority power to squash all dissent & maintain their illegitimate grip on power.

A vote for any Republican is a vote against the rights of women, LGBTQ people and frankly anyone who does not agree with their draconian proposals. If anyone who reads this cares about someone who has or used to have a uterus, you have no excuse for continuing to cast your vote for “low taxes” or “small government” for any candidate with an “R” after their name.

I do not want to live in a country where a small, radicalized and extremist group of unelected, lifetime-appointed ‘judges’ can chose to take away rights that they don’t like because of their religious beliefs. These ‘originalists’ claim their reasoning is based on the fact that the word ‘abortion’ isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, which exposes once again their rank hypocrisy. Automatic weapons aren’t mentioned in their hallowed document, either, but the court said that they were legal anyway.

This is blatant religious misogynism, a dystopian Handmaiden’s Tale of a future where any male can decide to impregnate any female with impunity, forcing rape and incest victims to carry their rapist’s baby to term. They are forcing all people with uteri to suffer the consequences to their bodies that pregnancy causes against their will. Those of us who chose to terminate a pregnancy also chose to avoid those consequences; this outrageous decision by these religious zealots says that their religious dogma holds more sway than the freedom to chose what happens inside our bodies. Ironic, given their refusal to uphold vaccine or mask mandates to protect everyone from a deadly pandemic.

Those of us who can become pregnant should all have the individual liberty to decide when, or even if, we want to be or remain pregnant. This is one of the most important decisions anyone makes for themselves; for these extremist, Catholic judges to impose their religious belief about when they think that life or “personhood” begins is not the American way. We are a country founded on the belief that there is a separation between church and state. With the extremist super-majority placed on the court by Republicans, that separation isn’t just erased, it’s reversed.

Freedom of religion is not the goal for Republicans; their ultimate dream is to force their Christian White nationalism on all of us. While the population as a whole has grown less religious, with the majority choosing “None” when asked their religion, the Christian White nationalist part of the Republican party continues to shove their beliefs down the throats of the rest of us.

We need to fight back for freedom from religion. It is imperative that we do whatever we must to put into office people who are professed to be atheists or agnostics, without any religious affiliation at all. It is too easy for those who profess to be religious to use that religiosity as a shield they can later claim prove that the liberties they’re trying to claw back from millions of Americans are just ‘moral issues’ or ‘not mentioned in the Constitution”. What they are, to be honest, is full of shit.

Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett should be impeached and removed from the court for lying during their confirmation hearings about ‘stare decisis’ and ‘Supreme Court Precedent’ as something that they respected and would abide by. Thomas should be impeached for refusing to recuse himself from January 6 cases that he knew his wife could be entangled with. And Alito is another example of why there needs to be term limits in the Supreme Court.

All of us who acknowledge that the overturning of Roe is an absolutist stance against the bodily autonomy and liberty of every person with a uteri and those who love them to decide their future. Therefore, it’s mandatory to remind everyone we know who plans to vote for a Republican that their vote supports the destruction of our democracy and the subjugation of women into forced pregnancy and motherhood.

George Carlin, whose death I still mourn a little, had a bit back in the day about the “preborn”, and how the religious right was so very worried about the lives of the preborn right up until they take their first breath. After that, “you’re on your own”. That’s still the case – no Republican will vote for anything to help support these babies or their mothers – not child care, SNAP benefits, or anything else that could help those without the means to raise their children.

They prefer to force them to have the children, then watch them all suffer. Apparently, the cruelty really is the point.

If your birth control fails, that’s your problem. If you’re a teen without the maturity, financial support or life skills to successfully raise a child, well, maybe you should have thought about that before you opened your legs. If you’re a single mom who’s barely able to provide for your already born children, well, I guess you should have considered that before your new boyfriend ‘stealthed’ you against your wishes and without your consent, impregnating you against your will. If you went to a party and had too much to drink, then discovered after the fact that you were raped, well, get used to the fact that you’re going to have a baby.

We have so much to do to fix this, and it’s going to take way more time than people are often willing to invest; we didn’t get here overnight. In order to bring our government and the Supreme Court to heel, we have to vote all Republicans in all elections out of office. Their party has become an extremist organization determined to impose their White Christian nationalism on the entire country, and the only option we have left is to eliminate them from politics and power.

Only after there is no longer any ability for the minority to continue to force their beliefs onto the majority of Americans can we hope to move our society forward in a way that benefits all of us, not just the few at the top who cling to power corruptly. Then, we may have the opportunity to right all that is wrong to move forward with a ‘more perfect union’.

If not, we will descend into something we will not recognize, with a resulting anarchy not seen in our lifetimes. This must not stand.

Only Two More Days

I’ve always been the person who walks into the room and then forgets why I went there in the first place, sometimes requiring a trip back to where I came from to jog my memory. Recently, it has gotten so much worse that I was actually starting to worry that I might have early-onset dementia. I was getting myself set to bring up my concerns during my next visit with my PCP when I read an article in The Washington Post about election stress disorder, something that wasn’t even a thing until Trump.

A therapist based in Washington, DC coined the term during the 2016 election, describing those with the disorder as having “continual worry and obsession with the election that spills over into all areas of your life.” Based on that, I suspect that there are millions of us in the US who have been suffering from the disorder continuously since Trump won the 2016 election.

Two days before the end of voting, record numbers of votes have already been cast all over the country, and it is reasonable to believe that many of these early votes are for Joe Biden and the Democratic ticket. The Republicans, who have based their electoral strategy since the Nixon administration on voter suppression and disenfranchisement, continue to file lawsuits in battleground states in order to stop the counting of legitimately cast ballots because they believe those votes will be for their opponent. Within those states with Republican legislatures and governors, it is not inconceivable that they could fraudulently interfere with the counting of ballots and appoint electors based on their own personal preference rather than on the will of the people of their states.

What is wrong with the Republicans as fellow Americans? How is it acceptable to them that the leader of their party has been using the bully pulpit of the presidency to spread disinformation about the security of our elections with his claims about vote rigging if he loses? The answer to that question, as has been the case for most such questions over the last four years, is that they don’t care how much damage they do to the foundations of our democracy if the end result is their continued hold on the reins of power. Not only have they placed their party over the country, they have placed themselves as a minority over us all as sole arbiter of how our country should run for decades to come, regardless of the will of the majority.

The Republicans have taken core principles of our democracy and twisted them into a means of oppressing those with whom they disagree. Freedom of religion does not mean you can use your religious belief to discriminate against someone who doesn’t follow those beliefs, it means we are each free to choose whether or not to have a religious belief at all. Your freedom of religion ends where it begins to infringe on my freedom to not follow any religion.

Religion, specificially christianity, has gotten entirely too enmeshed within our government, and we have under Trump (likely the most godless hypocrite to hold the office) watched helplessly as his appointees have boldly admitted that their faith is a huge factor in their policy and decision making. Mike Pompeo and William Barr proudly profess their catholic faith as if the bible doesn’t instruct them to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ and to be a good samaritan and help those in need. They, like many who profess to be devout are actually using their supposed ‘faith’ as a way of diverting the attention from their naked desire for power, not the most ‘christian’ way to lead.

Not in my lifetime had I ever been forced to worry every day about what awful thing the president and his administration was going to do, until this incompetent, malignant narcissist was inaugurated in January, 2017. I don’t want to have to waste any more of my life freaked out over something over which I have absolutely no control on my own, because all it does is create a constant level of anxiety 24/7 which gets elevated every time Trump does something no other president would have ever considered doing.

When is the last time a president used his the power of the presidency to spread lies about mail in ballots? What president in modern history has promoted conspiracy theories that have led some to take up weapons in defense of fabricated children? What other president has refused to denounce white supremacists? Which of the previous 44 claimed that all media is ‘fake news’? How many others have used their presidency to line the pockets of their personal company with millions of dollars in taxpayer funds? Who are the others who tried to extort an ally in need for disinformation against his political opponent by withholding military assistance? Which of the former White House residents have used the pardon power to reward their friends and to keep them silent? And find me another president who did done nothing while more than a quarter million Americans died over eight months from any cause.

Donald Trump is the absolute worst person ever to hold the office of the president in the history of our country, period. While some of the ones early on were just terrible, they had much less power and were therefore able to hurt a smaller number of humans overall. Trump has had much more of an opportunity to spread his awfulness all over the world. Millions fleeing wars, famines, climate degradation and despots have been further tortured by this administration’s clamping shut the gates to the country. Not only is this in and of itself unamerican (given that we non-indigenous Americans are the result of our ancestors coming from somewhere else), it is cruel, short-sighted and xenophobic. Now with this pandemic, instead of the United States working with the world to find a vaccine and treatment, he’s decided to go it alone out of his selfish world-view that it’s all about him. His inability to understand that the United States isn’t the same as a sole proprietorship company and therefore cannot be treated as if it is his personal fiefdom.

I’ve mailed postcards and letters to voters in Florida, hoping to encourage them to vote, only to find out that my daughter’s boyfriend hasn’t even bothered to register to vote in Florida! I’m tired of hearing young people complain about the government they have while they refuse to participate and vote in order to change things. Don’t leave the voting to old people and then complain about what the old people voted for. The only way for us to get a more progressive government is to vote more progressive people into office, and you cannot count on old people to do that (full disclosure – I am 62 and have voted Democratic my entire life). Young people, who have more to lose, need to quit complaining and start doing something – find others who feel like you and get them to run for something. It’s past time for you to act like adults and do the hard work – get us old folks out of office and show us what we should have done years ago.

I know Joe Biden isn’t the one you wanted to vote for in 2020, but you have only two choices this election. You can vote for democracy and choose the Democratic ticket, or you can choose authoritarianism and vote for Trump. The two-party system sucks, but it is what it is; wasting your vote on a third-party candidate only benefits Trump. There is no excuse for anyone who truly believes that we can do better as a society and as a country to do anything other than vote for Joe Biden for President.

My Abortion Story

I had the unfortunate pleasure of developing my secondary sexual characteristics (breasts, wider hips, etc.) at a very early age. By 11 years old, I had already had my first period, which in an of itself was a traumatic experience. My mother knew what was coming, because she took me to the pediatrician to have him examine the ‘lumps’ that had developed on my chest that I can still hear him explain to her…

“They’re breasts, Mother,” Dr. Brogan (Dr. Louie to us kids) pronounced.

I can’t remember what they spoke about after that, but surely she knew that menarche came next, right? After all, she too was a woman, and clearly had gone through puberty to have successfully had me, so what did she expect would happen next?

In any event, I found myself bleeding while on the toilet (as most girls do), and tried to get a better look at things by sitting on the edge of the tub with my legs spread so I could look at myself while simultaneously opening the door and screaming for my mom “Mon! I’m bleeding!!!!”

My grandmother came up the stairs first, and she turned to look at me in the bathroom as her head cleared the level of the floor. When she saw me, she started laughing, which only made me angry, since I was convinced I was dying.

“I’m bleeding to death, and you’re laughing at me!”

With that as my introduction into my sexual maturity, it’s no wonder I was completely unprepared to deal with Barry Weiner, a guy I knew from seeing him on The Steel Pier in Atlantic City. Barry was friends with Fred Richman (who had substituted for my freshman biology teacher for the last week before summer vacation) on whom I had a huge crush. Fred of course saw a high school freshman when he looked at me, while Barry saw a young woman, and that is how I lost my virginity.

Like every other teenager everywhere, I thought I knew things I had no clue about, and that became a real problem when sex entered the mix. I thought it was cool to hang out with guys who were at the very least 5 or 6 years older than I was, which at that time was 14. I had NO IDEA what the hell I was getting myself into and simultaneously lacked the wherewithal to extricate myself from the situation gracefully.

So there I was, in this seedy hotel room on Pennsylvania Avenue where many of the people who worked on Steel Pier spent the summer, lying in Barry Weiner’s bed, naked, trying to talk my way out of having sex with him.

“I’m a virgin.” This had to be a turn-off, right?

Nope.

“I’m 14 years old.” Jail-bate, so this will make him back off, right?

Nope.

I know! “I have my period.” How gross! That’ll work, for sure!

Nope.

So instead just telling him no, I don’t want to do this, or just getting up, putting my clothes on and leaving like an adult, I thought I had to let him do what he wanted to do (another example of how girls were raised to do what they were told, not what they wanted). And there, on that bed where who knows what else happened before me, I lost my virginity to Barry Weiner, diver from Steel Pier and friend of Fred Richman.

Afterwards, I wondered what all the fuss was about over sex. I don’t think I even knew about orgasms, and for sure didn’t learn about them that day! I felt dirty and used, but decided that I had no one to blame for the entire experience but myself for getting into the situation in the first place, so I said nothing to my parents. I was so underwhelmed by the entire encounter that I decided then and there not to do it again until I was much older. By the time I started to date Donald, I had learned that telling boys I was a virgin was the best way to keep their hands out of my pants, so I told him that, too. For reasons I still don’t understand, my ‘friend’ Rick told him that I wasn’t a virgin, and Donald used that to wear me down. That, along with my awakening libido, was all that it took, and I was off to the races.

Donald and I had sex every chance we got, all of it unprotected and without any consideration of things like ovulation. Like most teenage girls, I refused to contemplate the possibility that my active sex life could result in a baby, certain that it wouldn’t happen to me. A few months later my period was late, and I’ll always be glad that my mother was paying attention and figured out that I was pretending to have my period.

My mom, who had more balls than most men of her age, didn’t let me maintain the charade. She had me make an appointment at Planned Parenthood, where I went on my way home from school for my first gynecological exam and pregnancy test. Although I knew I was pregnant that visit, I lied to my Mom, telling her the test was negative and I’d have to go back if I didn’t get my period in the next two weeks if I still didn’t get my period. I wanted a little time to think about things before my parents started to pressure me about it.

During those two weeks, I dreamed about how Donald and I would have the baby and live happily ever after. It didn’t take long before the reality of what was on the line became much clearer, as Donald made it very clear that he wasn’t going to take any responsibility for a fetus I literally could not have made without his input. I hadn’t yet made a decision the day my mom pointed out that I wouldn’t be able to be a teenager anymore, missing out on dances, my friends and hanging out on Steel Pier over the summer pregnant. Having it pointed out so starkly made my decision easy, so I walked to the phone and scheduled the procedure to terminate the pregnancy.

My mom tried to get Donald’s family to pitch in on the cost of the abortion, but his mother also felt he had no responsibility for the unwanted pregnancy his sperm had been crucial in creating.

My mom accompanied me to my appointment, sitting in the waiting room until I was released to go back home. I wasn’t traumatized by the procedure, which was over in just a few minutes, believing then as I do now that the products of conception prior to extra-uterine viability are not a separate living being and therefore have no ‘right’ to life as such. This is of course my personal opinion, one that I cannot force on anyone else.

I didn’t choose abortion because I wanted to kill my baby; I chose abortion because I didn’t want to have a baby at all at that time. The fetus that was removed from my uterus was not a baby; it was a clump of cells with a bit of electrical activity in the area that may have developed into a heart had the pregnancy continued. At 15 years old, the future for myself and that potential baby was statistically poor, and the life that I’ve led since that 1974 decision, including the children I have now, would likely have been very different, indeed.

I went on birth control after that abortion because I try to learn from my mistakes. I stopped oral contraceptives only twice, both times to have planned pregnancies. Eventually, I chose to have my tubes tied in order to avoid the possibility of getting pregnant again. In the year 2020, it is unacceptable that either elective abortions or birth control should be either controversial or something that the government has any business regulating or legislating. Reproductive healthcare is women’s healthcare, and no one other than each individual woman and her physician should be involved in any decision or choice.

The Republican’s hypocritical insistence on ramming through another right-wing ideologue preselected by Leonard Leo and The Federalist Society to maintain their minority hold on our courts and our rights for decades to come is unacceptable. This is their last, desperate attempt to ensure they can continue to force their religious beliefs onto those of us who do not believe what they do. It is made more reprehensible because they know that they have no reason to be worried that the rights they want to deny to the majority will be unavailable to their own wives/daughters/girlfriends because those with the cash can have whatever they want, while those with the most to lose and the least ability to pay are literally screwed.

Vote. Vote. Vote.

Vote as if your life depends on it.

Vote.