The reactionary right believe that "fetal personhood" is a thing. Trump would make it so in a second term, thus criminalizing ALL abortions everywhere in the United States.
If you are to the right of Scalia on anything you know you have truly fallen off the edge. You have found the abyss. You have traded legal scholarship for pure, naked right wing ideology. And you have no place on the bench, if for no other reason than you are a walking talking proof that Madison didn't go far enough with the First Amendment.
We have no further to look for the long standing definition of personhood than the Vatican nation. The very entity that is now trying to redefine what was already defined many centuries ago. As someone who was steeped in Vatican theology for 11 yrs including theological college, it was drummed into us that the definition of a person is a rational being. Angels are persons. There are 3 persons in one God. That may not be the scientific view but it most definitely was the traditional view of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. BTW they're the only major group that still supports the Arizona Supreme court's recent ruling that the state can enforce a 160-year-old near-total abortion ban passed in 1864.
In fact a Vatican sacrament is predicated on "age of reason" personhood. That sacrament is Confirmation. "The National Conference of Catholic Bishops, in accord with the prescriptions of canon 891, hereby decrees that the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Latin rite shall be conferred between the age of discretion and about sixteen years of age, within the limits determined by the diocesan bishop..." The "age of discretion" is the age in which a person is able to distinguish between right and wrong. In other words the ability to reason.
Vatican surrogates like Leonard Leo/Federalist Society/Extreme Court would have us believe that a person can be anything that's convenient to their ideology whether it be a fetus, corporation, embryo etc. But that's not in keeping with their Vatican theology for millennia.
Thank you, Craig, for this. It irks me to no end that the radicals have subverted Catholicism this way. I'm worried about the Pope's health and who his replacement might be...the Leo faction, I believe, is not without influence in Rome.
Dude! It's Tuesday already? The poem about the two-headed calf is in my head again! Happy May...
Here's an image for you to hold: January 20, 2025. The crowds are jubilant, massive. And Dark Brandon's hand is on the Bible....keep it in your head, and feed it well!
What is really behind this anti abortion movement? Please help me out here. I know for many of the common man and woman, it’s religion or as they construe religion. It use to be, for the most part that religious people or non religious didn’t feel it was appropriate to force their views into law. And other than the Catholic Church, most men in power were not obsessed by abortion. At least that was my recollection from the mid 70s and up until recently.
And we know men in power, church and otherwise, are often corrupt and money is usually the bottom line. So why this…more babies in less than ideal homes and downright abusive homes, more born into poverty, more medical care needed that’s not available to them, more minority babies and therefore more minority adults eventually, which they don’t want and more legal woes for doctors and heathcare providers.
So it can’t be all religion. There has to be an undertone of money in this somewhere. What am I missing?
We were discussing this is our Five 8 production meeting last week. It's not obvious, whatever it is. On a macro level, they want the population to increase...all this talk of low birth rate...that's good for the economy for a lot of reasons. It's about controlling women, primarily...I think most of the men who are ardent antiabortion zealots are misogynists. It might also be about creating kompromat on people, and/or arresting people...these things help bring about dictatorships. But I think the Leo crew genuinely believe the fairy tale about this.
But ultimately, the policy is a huge huge HUGE waste of money. Among all the other worse things.
I love reading about what a bunch of men think about women having a parasite that must be painfully expelled after most of a year. At least Amy Coney Barrett speaks from experience. Pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting are unimaginably (for those who haven’t experienced it, including ALL MEN) life-changing, painful, and if chosen, glorious. Men cannot begin to imagine what it is like to be pregnant and give birth.
I get that the column is about fetal personhood. A fetus is at its simplest a parasite in a woman’s body. For those of us who want to reproduce, pregnancy can be the most powerful, meaningful, and holy experience of our lives. I’ll repeat: you cannot begin to imagine what it is like.
Thank you Greg for providing an excellent example of why the phrase “we’re pregnant” is so ridiculous, and why men need to STFU about abortion. It is simple: if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one.
Thanks for this, Abby. You're right about the parasite analog, of course. And also that we dudes cannot begin to imagine what it's like to be pregnant, let alone give birth...and for that reason, should cede the floor to women on this issue, now and forever.
People we might replace the ridiculous "unborn person" conceit with "pre-humanhood": under no matter what regimen, nobody ascribes humanity to an actual tadpole, let alone a phylogenically recapitulated ontogene...
I like this Prevail rant today, Greg. But my head has been elsewhere all morning. I did not realize Mueller She Wrote had her own substack. In case you are interested, here's her latest article: The Facts About Merrick Garland:
THANK YOU, LYNELL!!! This information on DOJ and Garland is exactly what I have been looking for! I knew that the Trump administration appointees would be blocking the insurrection investigation, and I trusted Garland to do all he could to clean them out or work around them to get the facts and convictions, but, wow, I had no idea how bad it was and may still be: The FBI and even Congress obstructing justice. May have to subscribe. Thanks.
Afternoon, MP! Glad you thought this article was useful! For some reason, I am of the belief that Greg knows the author of Mueller She Wrote and will weigh in on what is being said in the article. Still, I'd like to see it get posted on LFAA and Today's Edition. Feel free to do so if you want.
I think Greg has hosted her on one of his podcasts a while back. "I'm Allison Gill - Mueller, She Wrote on Twitter - CEO of MSW Media, and host of The Daily Beans, Jack, and Cleanup on Aisle 45 podcasts."
Thanks, Lynell. Allison has done a terrific job on this for many years now.
My beef with Garland isn't what he did but how he did it. If correcting the injustices under Trump was a priority for him, I never felt that way. His rare press conferences were not reassuring, and neither was his propensity to appear neutral by going harder after non-criminal presidents than criminal ex-presidents. Part of the job, a big part, is communication, and he SUCKS at that. If he didn't, people wouldn't be complaining about him all the time.
There is but one argument that negates all this very logical, informed, scientific, humanistic and common-sensical reality. It’s about Religion. The thing that every Supreme Court Member (now and in the past) swore in their “protection of the constitution”, to leave OUT of the conversation. The one thing that is indeed specifically left out of the Constitution, that is by “separation of”, and alas the very thing that being “personal interpreter of God” keeps making its way into decisions about and for a “free” people who are supposed to live unencumbered by its tentacles.
And yet it’s never brought up. Never considered as reason for the over reach, let alone the judgement. Not in conversations about abortion, where the abiding reason for the “anti” part , originates and remains flatly steeped in said origin. Not questioned as to its convention of the beginning of personhood, and the facts from which it basis that convention. Never, yes never in court, never in the media, never in factually proven articles of science. That side isn’t even mentioned. The whole of the religious boogeyman remains in the conversation, unidentified.
We are a society who pays Holy Rollers large fortunes to conjure up their own God’s rendition of “what life should be” and even though our constitution delivers us from the inherent evils there in, we do not heed the stop sign that was brilliantly placed for our protection in this new world order they called The United States of America.
Separation of Church and state means, we can look at science for answers, for our protection, for our common good, for our health, for progress. Not to the heretical mess offered us by myriad sects we are literally protected FROM.
IN-OUR-CONSTITUTION.
Until the gravity of the meaning of that protection is recognized, and the hand slapping for crossing the line becomes mainstream (and we stop fearing that, really-God will get me for this) none of the fallacy of a rational argument will stop or even slow down. Because we don’t dare to categorize the muddled separation between church and state, as sacred, therefore clarifying it. This mess that should be moot will continue.
An excellent point, Marc, and very well put. Thank you. I will add that when one DOES bring up religion -- say, during Amy Covid Barrett's confirmation hearing -- their side gets very indignant. It's very Trumpy, actually, the response.
It seems to me the most important right a fetus has is to be wanted. Those of us who have fathered and raised a child know that, during the nine months the mother is literally attached to the future person, we dealt with an acceptance of responsibility/—knowing we had the ability to run the other way, but didn’t, out of a sense of shared hope for that future person. Doesn’t the mother have the same right, to want the outcome that has been set in motion? Why, in the minds of the right-wingers, does the fetus have more rights than the mother does?
The answer to your rhetorical question is, Because the fetus might be a boy, and therefore must be protected regardless of harm to whatever women are involved. They are disgusting misogynists, period.
lovely, if scary, discussion. I really like the idea of "withdrawal of assistance" because it does emphasize the idea of viability as a measure in addition to what I've always said: once the fetus CAN live outside the womb, a balancing between its right and the mother's must take place, even if the fetus isn't yet actually outside. That is not, needless to say, that the balance always tilts to the fetus.
I was going to castigate you for the name tag labeling the blastocyte Fred, when it should be some gender fluid name like Leslie. After all, no one can tell whether it will grow up to be male or female or maybe both or neither. But since it is a bovine blastocyte, the tag should probably read "Elsie or Elmer, we will eventually find out."
Ha! Believe it or not, that did cross my mind, the name on the tag. There was a meme going around a few months ago about how embryos are non-binary, and what will the GOP do when they realize that? I just used the funniest name for a blastocyst that popped in my head. No offense to the Freds out there!
Fuck these political Christian Fascists. Isn't there a law for impersonating a doctor? This is a war on women. In there views, rape is the fault of the sinning female. Husbands can rape and abuse their wives. It's their god-given right. It's in Project 2025. They won't spend $1.00 for policies to support children and their families. Not one. They will put a woman in prison for an abortion, but not the man who raped her. The whole goddamn Republican Party wants to drag women buy their hair into the 18th century.
This country is at a crossroads similar to when Jefferson Davis ordered the assassination of Lincoln and Andrew Johnson was Davis's puppet in charge. The world would look very different today if every slave received their 40 acres and mule. Generational wealth would of have been a real thing. These mother fuckers will turn us into Hungary and worse. They don't care about the children. It's a ring to climb on the ladder of dictatorship.
Thanks, Greg. One of the strongest arguments against 14-A fetal "personhood" is embedded right there in 14-A. If we're calling a cluster of stem cells a "person," that "person" is entitled to the *precisely* equal protection of the law. That means that if you "kill" such a "person," it must be treated by the law exactly the same as if you killed a person who, say, lived next door or worked in your office.
If it is done with intent and premeditation -- which would cover just about every abortion -- it is *murder* pure and simple. It would likely have to be considered "aggravated" first-degree murder, since it's certainly premeditated, the "victim" is completely defenseless, and there's no passion or provocation involved. So we're looking at life without parole or the death penalty (also a big hit with the same Leotards who are so het up about protecting life.
Just for fun, since the vast majority of cases will involve the participation of doctors and/or a clinic, equal protection treatment will demand prosecution for felony-murder (the woman), as well as conspiracy to commit murder.
That is the logical and unavoidable outcome of their "fetal personhood" argument. That outcome will *not* include the ending of abortion -- nothing, historically, ever has. So they'd better prepare by building a thousand or so new women's prisons, complete with enormous death rows. And lay in a big supply of gurneys, syringes, and death cocktails. Not very popular, I should think -- with women or men or orphans. "Be careful what you wish for," however, seems to be entirely lost on these crusading zealots.
Thanks for this extrapolation, Jon. I think that IS what they want, women locked up, released only when they want. It's disgusting and it's misogynist and it has to be stopped.
Women, doctors, nurses, clinic directors, pharmacists, receptionists.... If they're persons, then it's murder and extremely rare is the abortion-murder without accomplices and co-conspirators. And we thought Bush v. Gore was a perversion of equal protection!
"Government statistics show the US pregnancy-related death rate has returned to its pre-pandemic level, with about 680 women succumbing to pregnancy-related conditions before or shortly after delivery in 2023. The figure reached 1,205 in 2021, the highest point in more than a half-century. CDC researcher Donna Hoyert said the tapering off of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be a major contributor to the decline. Full Story: CBS News"
Sometimes, I'm drawn to click a link in your column that interests me and/or baffles me. In this one, "settled public meaning" did that in the paragraph about "persons" including unborn fetuses in the womb in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was ratified. So, I read portions of the downloaded paper by Joshua Craddock on whether 14A prohibited abortions. At one point, he decided to quote 14A and took the time to italicize all of the times the word "person" was used.
The 14th Amendment starts, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States...." Somehow, (I can't imagine how he got away with it) he completely ignored the third word while italicizing the first two. BORN is a thing, isn't it? If it's NOT, as the rabid assholes on the far right want us to believe, then what are we to do about places, forms, government agencies, employment applications, credit card applications and a whole HOST of other crap I've sifted through throughout my life that asks for my BIRTH DATE? Is this all going to change now too? Will people need to know the date they were conceived rather than the date they were born? Will everyone be nine months old when emerging from the womb? Will we get to vote at what would be considered now, 17 years and three months? 20 years and three months for drinking? Would a twin subsuming another twin in the womb be charged with murder? SO MANY STUPID FUCKING QUESTIONS!!
It seems every time I turn around there's some new fucking, mindless, quasi-religious, obtuse bullshit coming from the right. Why are we having to have this discussion? Why do the "small government" people keep wanting to reach into bedrooms and the uteruses of women? They are trying, using the 14th Amendment no less, to FORCE women to carry every pregnancy to term, no matter the consequences for the mother, the fetus/child, or any other consideration, and ONLY so on the Last Day they can look God in the eye and say, "I helped save babies from MURDER!" I would call these people jokes, but jokes are supposed to be funny, not enrage normal thinking people. The 14th Amendment should be enforced so that women are equally protected under the law, as are men, not used as a cudgel to force women to do something men are not required to do. Instead, this shit goes on for decades and nothing definitive is done. In my eyes, and I'm a gay man of 66 who has no dog in this fight, an abortion is a MEDICAL PROCEDURE. Fetuses become babies when they can live on their own outside of the mother's body. If a child is BORN and then killed, it's murder unless there are some REALLY extenuating circumstances, of which I couldn't imagine. BORN. It's right there in 14A and like so many other things, is conveniently ignored by right-wing purists when necessary for some whacked out argument they want to have to own the libs. Fuck them! Vote every single one of them out of office. Every. Single. One.
I always love your comments, Steve, but this one especially. These are the same people who ignore the words "well regulated" right there at the top of the Second Amendment. Alito in particular just cherry picks arcane medieval case law to justify the outcome he's already determined he wants. It's a joke, but a Republican joke, so not funny.
Trump is being held accountable and reminded of his attacks on freedom. The Democratic National Committee had a plane fly over Mar-a-Lago with a banner that read "Trump's Plan: Ban Abortion, Punish Women." Just F**King Vote 🗣 - FL Dems
Nikki Fried, Chair of FL Dems does a good job. If it hadn’t been for all the Cubans in Miami, she’d be Governor. I shook her hand at one of her 2022 election rallies, and choosing Charlie Crist was a big mistake. She’s a native Floridian from Palm Beach. #TakeBackFlorida 🌊
Hello Bossie. Great arguments. If I were a woman Republican I’d immigrate burn my MAGA hat are campaign for Joe.
If I were a woman congresswoman I’d work on ways to support mothers in need of Childcare. Medicare. Income. Housing.
Just read a great book Our Best America by William Serle.
Billserle. Com
Thanks, Bill!
If you are to the right of Scalia on anything you know you have truly fallen off the edge. You have found the abyss. You have traded legal scholarship for pure, naked right wing ideology. And you have no place on the bench, if for no other reason than you are a walking talking proof that Madison didn't go far enough with the First Amendment.
I know, right? If Scalia is a moderate, oh boy...
We have no further to look for the long standing definition of personhood than the Vatican nation. The very entity that is now trying to redefine what was already defined many centuries ago. As someone who was steeped in Vatican theology for 11 yrs including theological college, it was drummed into us that the definition of a person is a rational being. Angels are persons. There are 3 persons in one God. That may not be the scientific view but it most definitely was the traditional view of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. BTW they're the only major group that still supports the Arizona Supreme court's recent ruling that the state can enforce a 160-year-old near-total abortion ban passed in 1864.
In fact a Vatican sacrament is predicated on "age of reason" personhood. That sacrament is Confirmation. "The National Conference of Catholic Bishops, in accord with the prescriptions of canon 891, hereby decrees that the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Latin rite shall be conferred between the age of discretion and about sixteen years of age, within the limits determined by the diocesan bishop..." The "age of discretion" is the age in which a person is able to distinguish between right and wrong. In other words the ability to reason.
Vatican surrogates like Leonard Leo/Federalist Society/Extreme Court would have us believe that a person can be anything that's convenient to their ideology whether it be a fetus, corporation, embryo etc. But that's not in keeping with their Vatican theology for millennia.
https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/canon-law/complementary-norms/canon-891-age-for-confirmation#:~:text=The%20National%20Conference%20of%20Catholic%20Bishops%2C%20in%20accord%20with%20the,and%20with%20regard%20for%20the
Thank you, Craig, for this. It irks me to no end that the radicals have subverted Catholicism this way. I'm worried about the Pope's health and who his replacement might be...the Leo faction, I believe, is not without influence in Rome.
It worries me too.
Dude! It's Tuesday already? The poem about the two-headed calf is in my head again! Happy May...
Here's an image for you to hold: January 20, 2025. The crowds are jubilant, massive. And Dark Brandon's hand is on the Bible....keep it in your head, and feed it well!
You bet 😎
Somehow, it is. I've lost all track of time! I know it's Tuesday because the classic rock station plays two songs in a row by the same artist...
Oh, I'm going to visualize THAT, Meemaw!
Yeah brother, we will prevail!
What is really behind this anti abortion movement? Please help me out here. I know for many of the common man and woman, it’s religion or as they construe religion. It use to be, for the most part that religious people or non religious didn’t feel it was appropriate to force their views into law. And other than the Catholic Church, most men in power were not obsessed by abortion. At least that was my recollection from the mid 70s and up until recently.
And we know men in power, church and otherwise, are often corrupt and money is usually the bottom line. So why this…more babies in less than ideal homes and downright abusive homes, more born into poverty, more medical care needed that’s not available to them, more minority babies and therefore more minority adults eventually, which they don’t want and more legal woes for doctors and heathcare providers.
So it can’t be all religion. There has to be an undertone of money in this somewhere. What am I missing?
We were discussing this is our Five 8 production meeting last week. It's not obvious, whatever it is. On a macro level, they want the population to increase...all this talk of low birth rate...that's good for the economy for a lot of reasons. It's about controlling women, primarily...I think most of the men who are ardent antiabortion zealots are misogynists. It might also be about creating kompromat on people, and/or arresting people...these things help bring about dictatorships. But I think the Leo crew genuinely believe the fairy tale about this.
But ultimately, the policy is a huge huge HUGE waste of money. Among all the other worse things.
I love reading about what a bunch of men think about women having a parasite that must be painfully expelled after most of a year. At least Amy Coney Barrett speaks from experience. Pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting are unimaginably (for those who haven’t experienced it, including ALL MEN) life-changing, painful, and if chosen, glorious. Men cannot begin to imagine what it is like to be pregnant and give birth.
I get that the column is about fetal personhood. A fetus is at its simplest a parasite in a woman’s body. For those of us who want to reproduce, pregnancy can be the most powerful, meaningful, and holy experience of our lives. I’ll repeat: you cannot begin to imagine what it is like.
Thank you Greg for providing an excellent example of why the phrase “we’re pregnant” is so ridiculous, and why men need to STFU about abortion. It is simple: if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one.
Right between the eyes, abbyinsm...I like it!
Thanks for this, Abby. You're right about the parasite analog, of course. And also that we dudes cannot begin to imagine what it's like to be pregnant, let alone give birth...and for that reason, should cede the floor to women on this issue, now and forever.
People we might replace the ridiculous "unborn person" conceit with "pre-humanhood": under no matter what regimen, nobody ascribes humanity to an actual tadpole, let alone a phylogenically recapitulated ontogene...
"Prehumanhood" is very good, Andrew. I like that.
I like this Prevail rant today, Greg. But my head has been elsewhere all morning. I did not realize Mueller She Wrote had her own substack. In case you are interested, here's her latest article: The Facts About Merrick Garland:
https://muellershewrote.substack.com/p/the-facts-about-merrick-garland
THANK YOU, LYNELL!!! This information on DOJ and Garland is exactly what I have been looking for! I knew that the Trump administration appointees would be blocking the insurrection investigation, and I trusted Garland to do all he could to clean them out or work around them to get the facts and convictions, but, wow, I had no idea how bad it was and may still be: The FBI and even Congress obstructing justice. May have to subscribe. Thanks.
Afternoon, MP! Glad you thought this article was useful! For some reason, I am of the belief that Greg knows the author of Mueller She Wrote and will weigh in on what is being said in the article. Still, I'd like to see it get posted on LFAA and Today's Edition. Feel free to do so if you want.
I think Greg has hosted her on one of his podcasts a while back. "I'm Allison Gill - Mueller, She Wrote on Twitter - CEO of MSW Media, and host of The Daily Beans, Jack, and Cleanup on Aisle 45 podcasts."
Oh, yes, Allison is both my friend and, as the CEO of MSW, the network host of my PREVAIL podcast. She's awesome.
The FBI is headed by a guy Trump hand-picked after firing the guy who was investigating him. I mean...
Ya, duh. Darn.
Thanks, Lynell. Allison has done a terrific job on this for many years now.
My beef with Garland isn't what he did but how he did it. If correcting the injustices under Trump was a priority for him, I never felt that way. His rare press conferences were not reassuring, and neither was his propensity to appear neutral by going harder after non-criminal presidents than criminal ex-presidents. Part of the job, a big part, is communication, and he SUCKS at that. If he didn't, people wouldn't be complaining about him all the time.
There is but one argument that negates all this very logical, informed, scientific, humanistic and common-sensical reality. It’s about Religion. The thing that every Supreme Court Member (now and in the past) swore in their “protection of the constitution”, to leave OUT of the conversation. The one thing that is indeed specifically left out of the Constitution, that is by “separation of”, and alas the very thing that being “personal interpreter of God” keeps making its way into decisions about and for a “free” people who are supposed to live unencumbered by its tentacles.
And yet it’s never brought up. Never considered as reason for the over reach, let alone the judgement. Not in conversations about abortion, where the abiding reason for the “anti” part , originates and remains flatly steeped in said origin. Not questioned as to its convention of the beginning of personhood, and the facts from which it basis that convention. Never, yes never in court, never in the media, never in factually proven articles of science. That side isn’t even mentioned. The whole of the religious boogeyman remains in the conversation, unidentified.
We are a society who pays Holy Rollers large fortunes to conjure up their own God’s rendition of “what life should be” and even though our constitution delivers us from the inherent evils there in, we do not heed the stop sign that was brilliantly placed for our protection in this new world order they called The United States of America.
Separation of Church and state means, we can look at science for answers, for our protection, for our common good, for our health, for progress. Not to the heretical mess offered us by myriad sects we are literally protected FROM.
IN-OUR-CONSTITUTION.
Until the gravity of the meaning of that protection is recognized, and the hand slapping for crossing the line becomes mainstream (and we stop fearing that, really-God will get me for this) none of the fallacy of a rational argument will stop or even slow down. Because we don’t dare to categorize the muddled separation between church and state, as sacred, therefore clarifying it. This mess that should be moot will continue.
An excellent point, Marc, and very well put. Thank you. I will add that when one DOES bring up religion -- say, during Amy Covid Barrett's confirmation hearing -- their side gets very indignant. It's very Trumpy, actually, the response.
It seems to me the most important right a fetus has is to be wanted. Those of us who have fathered and raised a child know that, during the nine months the mother is literally attached to the future person, we dealt with an acceptance of responsibility/—knowing we had the ability to run the other way, but didn’t, out of a sense of shared hope for that future person. Doesn’t the mother have the same right, to want the outcome that has been set in motion? Why, in the minds of the right-wingers, does the fetus have more rights than the mother does?
The answer to your rhetorical question is, Because the fetus might be a boy, and therefore must be protected regardless of harm to whatever women are involved. They are disgusting misogynists, period.
Pregnant women should, and must, have that right.
lovely, if scary, discussion. I really like the idea of "withdrawal of assistance" because it does emphasize the idea of viability as a measure in addition to what I've always said: once the fetus CAN live outside the womb, a balancing between its right and the mother's must take place, even if the fetus isn't yet actually outside. That is not, needless to say, that the balance always tilts to the fetus.
I was going to castigate you for the name tag labeling the blastocyte Fred, when it should be some gender fluid name like Leslie. After all, no one can tell whether it will grow up to be male or female or maybe both or neither. But since it is a bovine blastocyte, the tag should probably read "Elsie or Elmer, we will eventually find out."
Ha! Believe it or not, that did cross my mind, the name on the tag. There was a meme going around a few months ago about how embryos are non-binary, and what will the GOP do when they realize that? I just used the funniest name for a blastocyst that popped in my head. No offense to the Freds out there!
Well, too bad you didn't think of Fred(a)
Fuck these political Christian Fascists. Isn't there a law for impersonating a doctor? This is a war on women. In there views, rape is the fault of the sinning female. Husbands can rape and abuse their wives. It's their god-given right. It's in Project 2025. They won't spend $1.00 for policies to support children and their families. Not one. They will put a woman in prison for an abortion, but not the man who raped her. The whole goddamn Republican Party wants to drag women buy their hair into the 18th century.
This country is at a crossroads similar to when Jefferson Davis ordered the assassination of Lincoln and Andrew Johnson was Davis's puppet in charge. The world would look very different today if every slave received their 40 acres and mule. Generational wealth would of have been a real thing. These mother fuckers will turn us into Hungary and worse. They don't care about the children. It's a ring to climb on the ladder of dictatorship.
Well said, Lisa. Every word.
Thanks, Greg. One of the strongest arguments against 14-A fetal "personhood" is embedded right there in 14-A. If we're calling a cluster of stem cells a "person," that "person" is entitled to the *precisely* equal protection of the law. That means that if you "kill" such a "person," it must be treated by the law exactly the same as if you killed a person who, say, lived next door or worked in your office.
If it is done with intent and premeditation -- which would cover just about every abortion -- it is *murder* pure and simple. It would likely have to be considered "aggravated" first-degree murder, since it's certainly premeditated, the "victim" is completely defenseless, and there's no passion or provocation involved. So we're looking at life without parole or the death penalty (also a big hit with the same Leotards who are so het up about protecting life.
Just for fun, since the vast majority of cases will involve the participation of doctors and/or a clinic, equal protection treatment will demand prosecution for felony-murder (the woman), as well as conspiracy to commit murder.
That is the logical and unavoidable outcome of their "fetal personhood" argument. That outcome will *not* include the ending of abortion -- nothing, historically, ever has. So they'd better prepare by building a thousand or so new women's prisons, complete with enormous death rows. And lay in a big supply of gurneys, syringes, and death cocktails. Not very popular, I should think -- with women or men or orphans. "Be careful what you wish for," however, seems to be entirely lost on these crusading zealots.
Thanks for this extrapolation, Jon. I think that IS what they want, women locked up, released only when they want. It's disgusting and it's misogynist and it has to be stopped.
Women, doctors, nurses, clinic directors, pharmacists, receptionists.... If they're persons, then it's murder and extremely rare is the abortion-murder without accomplices and co-conspirators. And we thought Bush v. Gore was a perversion of equal protection!
When does life begin? None of your (legislator's) business.
"Government statistics show the US pregnancy-related death rate has returned to its pre-pandemic level, with about 680 women succumbing to pregnancy-related conditions before or shortly after delivery in 2023. The figure reached 1,205 in 2021, the highest point in more than a half-century. CDC researcher Donna Hoyert said the tapering off of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be a major contributor to the decline. Full Story: CBS News"
Amen!
Sometimes, I'm drawn to click a link in your column that interests me and/or baffles me. In this one, "settled public meaning" did that in the paragraph about "persons" including unborn fetuses in the womb in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was ratified. So, I read portions of the downloaded paper by Joshua Craddock on whether 14A prohibited abortions. At one point, he decided to quote 14A and took the time to italicize all of the times the word "person" was used.
The 14th Amendment starts, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States...." Somehow, (I can't imagine how he got away with it) he completely ignored the third word while italicizing the first two. BORN is a thing, isn't it? If it's NOT, as the rabid assholes on the far right want us to believe, then what are we to do about places, forms, government agencies, employment applications, credit card applications and a whole HOST of other crap I've sifted through throughout my life that asks for my BIRTH DATE? Is this all going to change now too? Will people need to know the date they were conceived rather than the date they were born? Will everyone be nine months old when emerging from the womb? Will we get to vote at what would be considered now, 17 years and three months? 20 years and three months for drinking? Would a twin subsuming another twin in the womb be charged with murder? SO MANY STUPID FUCKING QUESTIONS!!
It seems every time I turn around there's some new fucking, mindless, quasi-religious, obtuse bullshit coming from the right. Why are we having to have this discussion? Why do the "small government" people keep wanting to reach into bedrooms and the uteruses of women? They are trying, using the 14th Amendment no less, to FORCE women to carry every pregnancy to term, no matter the consequences for the mother, the fetus/child, or any other consideration, and ONLY so on the Last Day they can look God in the eye and say, "I helped save babies from MURDER!" I would call these people jokes, but jokes are supposed to be funny, not enrage normal thinking people. The 14th Amendment should be enforced so that women are equally protected under the law, as are men, not used as a cudgel to force women to do something men are not required to do. Instead, this shit goes on for decades and nothing definitive is done. In my eyes, and I'm a gay man of 66 who has no dog in this fight, an abortion is a MEDICAL PROCEDURE. Fetuses become babies when they can live on their own outside of the mother's body. If a child is BORN and then killed, it's murder unless there are some REALLY extenuating circumstances, of which I couldn't imagine. BORN. It's right there in 14A and like so many other things, is conveniently ignored by right-wing purists when necessary for some whacked out argument they want to have to own the libs. Fuck them! Vote every single one of them out of office. Every. Single. One.
I always love your comments, Steve, but this one especially. These are the same people who ignore the words "well regulated" right there at the top of the Second Amendment. Alito in particular just cherry picks arcane medieval case law to justify the outcome he's already determined he wants. It's a joke, but a Republican joke, so not funny.
Trump is being held accountable and reminded of his attacks on freedom. The Democratic National Committee had a plane fly over Mar-a-Lago with a banner that read "Trump's Plan: Ban Abortion, Punish Women." Just F**King Vote 🗣 - FL Dems
Genius!
Nikki Fried, Chair of FL Dems does a good job. If it hadn’t been for all the Cubans in Miami, she’d be Governor. I shook her hand at one of her 2022 election rallies, and choosing Charlie Crist was a big mistake. She’s a native Floridian from Palm Beach. #TakeBackFlorida 🌊