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reproductive rights
Women, We Will Not Capitulate to the Likes of Trump, Musk, and Hegseth!
The slogan “We won’t go back” is even more essential right now.
Jan 05, 2025
For the last 48 hours, one of the most horrifying quotes I have read during the past decade—and the Trump boys have provided a lot of material—is one from the pastor of one of the worst people on the planet: Pete Hegseth. This quote is haunting me. Hegseth is a strong supporter of an unordained pastor from the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, Doug Wilson—Hegseth’s whole family is heavily involved in this far-right outfit, his kids being brainwashed daily, as they are taught this nonsense in their “school.”
Here are the words of this “man of God.”
“The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasure party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” The alleged failure of women to submit leads men to the “dream of being rapists” deprived of the “erotic necessity” found in women’s submission. Wilson also believes God created women “to make the sandwiches” and thinks giving women the right to vote has led to a long, sustained war on the family.
These men are trying to do the impossible: create 1950s stay-at-home wives when the super-rich have made it impossible for the working class, and even the middle class, to survive on one income as they could in 1952.
We need to worry here. A lot. This ideology must be nipped in the bud! Anyone can see what this guy, and Hegseth, and any of the other rapists attending his church believe: that God loves them for committing rape. The implications of this toxic talk is pretty obvious: If you, like U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz, and a number of the other good ol’ boys have raped a woman, you can now pat yourself on the back because you are doing God’s work. If we allow it, these men will be weakening the already poorly enforced laws protecting women from sexual violence, destroying rape kits in police stations, and attempting to force women to have the babies from the rapes. In some legal cases, rapists have demanded rights to raise the child—and judges have sometimes sided with violent rapists.
Women have fought long and hard for the few rights we thought were safe. The Trumpers overturned the big one—the right to reproductive care—and are bullying large companies into eliminating “DEI,” much of which was helpful for women in career options. More Trumpers than the creepy Doug Wilson have questioned women’s right to vote. In some of the most egregious cases of women’s oppression in Texas and a few other states, the right of child-bearing-age women to cross state lines is being stolen from them, as well as the most basic right to healthcare as more women bleed out in hospital parking lots—and we will hear less and less about these cases as the states responsible are trying to keep the state-sponsored murders of young women quiet.
Women got together in the late 1960’s and rose up, because many of us grew up in a moment of great change: Women were out in the streets protesting the Vietnam War and were an integral part of the civil rights movement. We were not going to be secretaries in polyester suits making coffee for the boss. The book Our Bodies, Ourselves taught many of us a tremendous amount about our own selves that we never had access to before: what is healthy in a cycle, a pregnancy, a miscarriage, a relationship, a woman’s life. We created safe spaces for women to gather. Women were not able to access credit without a male cosigner as recently as 1974. This includes a mortgage—so as recently as 50 years ago, a woman could not purchase a home without a male cosigner. With a seriously few exceptions, all the doctors were male, so women really were on their own unless they lived in one of the very few families where sex talk was acceptable.
The best aspect, by far, of the Harris campaign was the focus on women’s rights. Too bad Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t care about the rights of the women in Gaza—she might have won the election. The slogan “We won’t go back” is even more essential right now. These men are trying to do the impossible: create 1950s stay-at-home wives when the super-rich have made it impossible for the working class, and even the middle class, to survive on one income as they could in 1952. The Trump-Musk economic plan is basically to impoverish anyone who is not already struggling or who is not in the highest earning class. The Musk dream of every white woman producing a plethora of babies is never going to happen unless they are able to create a Handmaid’s Tale-type situation: compulsory breeding. And Elon Musk has implied that is exactly what he is shooting for.
Women: no capitulation! Rape is a crime. Rape destroys lives, rape creates unwanted and unloved babies. Rapists are violent criminals—their wealth, class, race, ethnicity are irrelevant. Men who violently rape women are all guilty of a major sin. Rape is not a sacrament.
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More Than 120 House Democrats Call On Biden to Ratify ERA
"Solidifying your legacy on equal rights with a final action on the ERA would be a defining moment for the historic Biden-Harris administration and your presidency," said the lawmakers.
Dec 16, 2024
With weeks to go until President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office with a Republican trifecta in the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, more that 120 Democratic lawmakers on Sunday called on President Joe Biden to take a crucial step toward protecting millions of Americans from Trump's far-right MAGA agenda by ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment.
The ERA was passed by Congress in 1972, and met the requirement for it to be ratified by three-fourths of U.S. states in 2020, when Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment.
Yet during his first term, Trump and the Republican party blocked the implementation of the ERA, claiming that since nearly 50 years passed in between the amendment's passage and the meeting of the ratification requirement, the threshold was not achieved by the deadline set by Congress.
"No Republican would care about" the deadline, said journalist Emma Vigeland, "if roles were reversed."
Citing the U.S. Code, Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus for the Equal Rights Amendment—led their colleagues in telling Biden that the national Archivist, Colleen Shogan, is required to certify an amendment "when the National Archives and Records Administration receives official notice that a proposed amendment to the Constitution has been approved by enough states."
All Biden has to do to ratify the amendment, which would explicitly outlaw sex and gender discrimination, is direct Shogan to publish the ERA, said the lawmakers.
"Solidifying your legacy on equal rights with a final action on the ERA would be a defining moment for the historic Biden-Harris administration and your presidency," wrote the representatives, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), and James McGovern (D-Mass.).
Earlier this month, 46 U.S. senators joined the call for Biden to ratify the ERA.
As Trump has bragged about his hand in the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade and Republicans have advocated for a national abortion ban, reproductive right advocates have said that after being officially added to the U.S. Constitution, the ERA could be invoked by judges to overturn anti-abortion laws.
In Utah, a state-level ERA was invoked in September to place an abortion ban on hold.
"A constitutional guarantee against sex discrimination would strengthen the protection of reproductive rights, ensuring that people have the right to make decisions about their own bodies without political interference or unequal treatment," wrote the lawmakers.
The signatories noted that portions of the Civil Rights Act and Education Amendments protect people from government-based sex discrimination, but gender equality is still "vulnerable to changes in the political landscape, judicial interpretations, and shifts in public opinion" because the Constitution does not explicitly protect it.
"By adding the ERA to the Constitution, it would establish an unambiguous guarantee that sex-based discrimination is unconstitutional," wrote the lawmakers. "The ERA would help eliminate gender-based pay gaps, improve workplace protections, and ensure that gender biases no longer affect hiring, promotions, or job security. With the ERA enshrined in the Constitution, people who experience sex-based discrimination would have a clearer legal path to challenge discriminatory laws or policies. California's state ERA did just that, securing protections for women in the workforce and ensuring equal treatment in education and healthcare."
By directing Shogan to ratify and publish the ERA, they added, Biden would be throwing his unequivocal support behind an amendment supported by 78% of Americans, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center poll.
Biden said on August 26, Women's Equality Day, that he has "long supported the ERA" and called on Congress "to act swiftly to recognize ratification of the ERA and affirm the fundamental truth that all Americans should have equal rights and protections under the law."
But by simply "directing the archivist to publish the ERA," said the lawmakers, Biden would "leave an indelible mark on the history of
this nation, demonstrating once again that your legacy is one of expanding rights, protecting freedoms, and securing a more inclusive future for all Americans. We urge you to take this final, transformative step toward ensuring the full promise of equality for every person in the United States."
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Texas Lawsuit Against New York Doctor Tests Abortion Provider Shield Laws
"It is important to remember that Dr. Carpenter did nothing wrong," said one legal expert. "Texas is trying to apply its laws extraterritorially."
Dec 13, 2024
"Time for shield laws to hold strong," said one reproductive rights expert on Friday as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against an abortion provider in New York.
Paxton is suing Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT), for providing mifepristone and misoprostol to a 20-year-old resident of Collin County, Texas earlier this year.
ACT was established after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, with the intent of helping providers in "shielded states"—those with laws that provide legal protection to doctors who send abortion pills to patients in states that ban abortion, as Carpenter did.
New York passed a law in 2023 stipulating that state courts and officials will not cooperate if a state with an abortion ban like Texas' tries to prosecute a doctor who provides abortion care via telemedicine in that state, as long as the provider complies with New York law.
Legal experts have been divided over whether shield laws or state-level abortion bans should prevail in a case like the one filed by Paxton.
"What will it mean to say for the GOP to say abortion should be left to the states now?"
"It is important to remember that Dr. Carpenter did nothing wrong," said Greer Donley, a legal expert and University of Pittsburgh law professor who specializes in reproductive rights. "She followed her home state's laws."
The Food and Drug Administration also allows telehealth abortion care, "finding it safe and effective," Donley added. "Texas is trying to apply its laws extraterritorially."
In the Texas case, the patient was prescribed the pills at nine weeks pregnant. Mifepristone and misoprostol are approved for use through the 10th week of pregnancy and are more than 95% effective.
The patient experienced heavy bleeding after taking the pills and asked the man who had impregnated her to take her to the hospital. The lawsuit suggests that the man notified the authorities:
The biological father of the unborn child was told that the mother of the unborn child was experiencing a hemorrhage or severe bleeding as she "had been" nine weeks pregnant before losing the child. The biological father of the unborn child, upon learning this information, concluded that the biological mother of the unborn child had intentionally withheld information from him regarding her pregnancy, and he further suspected that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage or abortion of the unborn child. The biological father, upon returning to the residence in Collin County, discovered the two above-referenced medications from Carpenter.
In the lawsuit, Paxton is asking a Collin County court to block Carpenter from violating Texas law and order her to pay $100,000 for each violation of Texas' near-total abortion ban.
Carpenter and ACT did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.
Caroline Kitchener, who has covered abortion rights for The Washington Post, noted that lawsuits challenging abortion provider shield laws were "widely expected after the 2024 election."
President-elect Donald Trump has said abortion rights should be left up to the states, but advocates have warned that the Republican Party, with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, is likely to push a national abortion ban.
"The truce over interstate abortion fights is over," said legal scholar Mary Ziegler, an expert on the history of abortion in the U.S. "Texas has sued a New York doctor for mailing pills into the state; New York has a shield law that allows physicians to sue anyone who sues them in this way. What will it mean for the GOP to say abortion should be left to the states now?"
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