Musing on a couple of maps

Seven states voted for reproductive freedom -- that's significant. It's particularly good to see Missouri among the places where abortion rights won; at every level, the state is blood red Republican, but women still had their say.

The losses in South Dakota look to have been about strategic/tactical misfires. The Florida loss, where abortion freedom got 57 percent of the vote, came from the state's unusual 60 percent requirement to pass a measure. Look for more GOP states to try to implant that.

But all in all, this was more demonstration that women, of all political inclinations, don't want the state telling us what we may do with our bodies. 

All these initiatives don't make legal abortion safe though. With the Republicans in power across the federal level, it's a sure thing that many of them will come after reproductive health care... To be continued. ...

• • •

Meanwhile, here's a picture of the fact that elections mostly don't end in split verdicts any more. The states in yellow each have one US Senator from each party. The others are solid Blue or Red.

... only Maine, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will send a split-party delegation of one Democrat and one Republican to the Senate. That is the lowest number since Americans began directly electing senators more than a century ago.

Yet there's still some mixing at the presidential level. Michigan, Georgia and Arizona went for the the Reps this time, but they send two Dem Senators to Washington. 

We know why Maine is a mixed bag -- Susan Collins refuses to go away. She's safe until she retires. In 2026, Dem Senators in Georgia and Michigan will be up for re-election. Can Dems put any other states in play? Possibly North Carolina, but winning back the Senate will be a stretch.

Women making it happen

As any number of commentators are reminding us today, polls don't win elections. Still, the election commentary world is thrown off by this bombshell:

Can it be true? Seems mighty unlikely given all recent past history in the Hawkeye state. Iowa used to be a swing state, but since voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012 has turned solidly Republican. Still, the Des Moines Register-Selzer poll reported out here is thought to be one of the best in the business and now says Harris has climbed into a four point lead.

Jess Piper is a rural Democratic organizer in neighboring Missouri, who lives only three miles from southern Iowa. She's a popular visiting speaker to embattled rural Democrats in both states. And she reports the lay of the land. The DM poll doesn't surprise her.

... I spoke in Davis County, Iowa almost two years ago. We met at the fairgrounds in the building next to the Swine Pavilion. I was asked to come and speak on state politics including Kim Reynold’s school voucher scheme and the Iowa abortion ban. I sat down to another potluck with midwestern sushi — a pickle slathered with cream cheese and rolled up in a piece of ham, sliced into little sushi rolls. I washed it down with lemonade and made sure to snag a Scotcharoo before I spoke.

The abortion ban was the topic of conversation with the women in this group, and I have news for those politicians going around thinking that abortion bans are only relevant to women of child-bearing age…they are wrong.

Women know that abortion bans impact every part of our lives. We know bans drive OBGYNs out of our states making any gynecological care difficult. We are losing women’s healthcare in states with bans. Rural women are hit particularly hard with an abortion ban.

... Here’s the thing that a lot of pollsters have been getting wrong: they don’t think abortion will be the reason that older women choose to vote for a Democrat. And I know that isn’t true. I have talked to hundreds of folks on the ground in places like Iowa. I’ve spoken to so many women.

Abortion may be seen as a political strategy to some, but it is life or death for women and girls.

... I know that the women are making it happen. Boys, look away while I tell a funny story. Recently, I was at an event with [rural podcaster] Fred Wellman…he doesn’t speak at small rural events as often as I do. He said of this particular event: “This is running so well. We are on time and there is a schedule of events and food too.”

I told him. “You know why, right? Women organized the event.” He laughed and then realized how truthful I was. I then told him about the one event I have attended in the last two years that was organized by a man. I knew it as soon as I arrived because there was no water, no coffee, and no sweet treats.

True story.

Women are taking the lead in this election and it’s because we have everything to lose. Our lives are on the line. Our children and grandchildren will suffer the consequences of a Trump win.

Women will organize events and knock doors and make calls and participate as election judges and create GOTV events and we will also feed you. We will give you information and warm your belly. Women are driving this election and it’s being done in a particularly feminine fashion.

This is the year of the woman. The stars have aligned. I am optimistic but a little scared. Excited but pragmatic....

Piper is working to pass the initiative to make abortion legal in her home state. Criss-crossing her own state, she's cautiously hopeful about that proposition too.

A love story from Texas

Jessica Valenti chronicles Abortion Every Day on a substack. It's an exhaustive and exhausting labor of love for women and for freedom. She knows why she fights on.

Today, the Harris campaign put out what I think may be the most powerful political ad I’ve ever seen. Please know before you watch that it is extremely distressing and graphic. But for good reason—it demonstrates exactly what abortion bans do to American women. ... this is why Republicans are losing and will lose.

They think they can talk about abortion as if it’s some shallow side issue. As if calling women ‘single issue voters’ will make us forget that the ‘single issue’ is our lives.

 This election is about all our lives.

Lovely ladies with their minds set on freedom

 

Renee Bracey Sherman (l) was in town yesterday, promoting her new book, Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve. The author was joined by Lateefah Simon (r), the next Congressperson from California's District 12, the East Bay seat from which Barbara Lee is retiring. 

There was plenty of wisdom, plenty of determination, plenty of delight, and plenty of laughs to share.

More good calls, this time into Pennsylvania

Alongside workers in the hospitality industries -- hotels, airports, etc. -- organized by their union UniteHERE, volunteers have been calling the battlegound state of Pennsylvania this week. Specifically, the state capital Harrisburg. It's a learning experience.

Obviously, our main aim is supporting VP Kamala Harris, but there's more at stake here. Such as, the state's Congressional District 10.

That race is between far right Republican Scott Perry, the sitting Congressman, and Democratic newscaster Janelle Stelson, whose 38 years on TV give her a lot of recognition. The candidates are attracting national attention for good reason: their differences tell us so much about what this election is about.

The Los Angeles Times' David Lauter highlighted this contest in a column entitled "All politics local? Not in this election". 

... The former head of the House Freedom Caucus, Perry is one of the few members of that far-right group to represent a closely divided district, rather than one that is solidly Republican.

Since first being elected in 2012, Perry has won five times, but in recent years, his district has grown more Democratic. Republicans have lost ground in the suburbs of Harrisburg, the state capital, and across the Susquehanna River to the west, where the growing population of Cumberland County is increasingly Democratic.

As the district has changed, Perry has become an increasingly uncomfortable fit.

According to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot, he took a prominent part in meetings with Trump advisors on efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. In 2022, FBI agents seized his cellphone as part of the investigation into the election plot. In 2023, after Republicans took control of the House, he was one of the 20 far-right lawmakers who repeatedly held up Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s election as speaker.

His opponent, Stelson, worked for 38 years as a television reporter and anchor for stations in the area. That’s given her wide, favorable name recognition.

“The viewers have gotten to know me as a trusted, nonpartisan voice,” she said during the debate, contrasting her pragmatism with Perry, whom she characterized as “the chief obstructionist” in a Congress that has accomplished little.

A former registered Republican, Stelson says she decided to run for office after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe vs. Wade and ended the nationwide guarantee of abortion rights.

Stelson repeatedly hit Perry for his past backing of a nationwide abortion ban without exceptions.

The decision over ending a pregnancy should be left to women and their doctors, she said.

“There’s no reason why Scott Perry knows better than they do what to do with their own bodies in their most intimate decisions.” ...

It's hard to knock off a sitting Congressperson, but just maybe, thanks to women rebelling against being told what to do and support like the national phonebank, Stelson may pull an upset. 

Phone banking isn't glamorous or even always fun, though often interesting. But when enough of us work together, we win.

Good news for women in Georgia and beyond

Via Jessica Valenti at Abortion Every Day:

A Georgia judge has struck down the state’s 6-week abortion ban! In an absolutely epic ruling, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney didn’t just repeal the law—but eviscerated it as forcing women to be “human incubators.”

“Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote. Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy, even taking into consideration whatever bundle of rights the not-yet-viable fetus may have.

…It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from The Handmaid’s Tale to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb any more so than society could–or should–force them to serve as a human tissue bank or to give up a kidney for the benefit of another.”

I mean, wow. (McBurney even added in a footnote, that “it is generally men who promote and defend laws like the LIFE Act.”)

We needed our occasional win, especially in a state where women can't put abortion on the ballot for a popular vote. It may take a little while to learn whether Judge McBurney's rule survives appeals.

Ten states will be voting on reproductive freedom this year. Wherever abortion has been put to vote, so far we win.

• • •

The apparently tireless Jessica Valenti has a book released today from Penguin Random House  on the ongoing struggle: Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win.

We are incomplete if we cannot control out bodies.

Walz rocks

Yesterday I wore this t-shirt (a product of the Lincoln Project, a para-campaign by disaffected Republicans supporting Harris-Walz) while walking laps around a small San Francisco lake. It was a lovely, warmish day and there were lots of other exercisers and strollers doing the same. 

The t-shirt reproduces a moment in Tim Walz' VP speech at the Democratic Convention: 

When it comes to reproductive rights, Walz says Minnessotans have a golden rule: “Mind your own damn business.”

Reactions to the shirt were interesting. Folks coming the other way don't always appear to read what you've got on your chest -- but some do. (I do read them, routinely.) 

The first woman who appeared to read it grimaced scornfully. That's interesting I thought -- and continued to tune in. 

One of the features of walking around a lake is that you start seeing the same people repeatedly going the other way if you are moving a smidgen faster than they are. As people came by on second and later passes, I began to receive smiles. It was clear that some groups had chatted about what this slightly dire message might mean. I was a little surprised that quite a few recognized the quote.

Tim Walz is a fine communicator and he's demonstrated a way for an older white man to speak out on reproductive freedom. Go Tim!

He's got it ...

... I could not love this more. A 93 year-old man in Oklahoma bought a billboard declaring, “Women, the Republican party does not respect you…vote Democrat.” When a local news outlet asked Burt Holmes why he bought the billboard, he said, “Because I think women can win the next big election in the country if they will get out and vote.” Burt knows what’s up! -- via Jessica Valenti, Abortion Every Day

I can't believe we have to go through this again

But we do.

On this 2-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, handing control over women's bodies to crackpot legislators and political hypocrites, this political ad seems about right to me. 

A timely reminder

And then, this:

I don't see women putting up with this indefinitely

A cry from rural Missouri.

Donald Trump did this

Jessica Valenti thinks Arizona will be seen as a tipping point.

... It’s like they’re rubbing our noses in it.

Gone is the pretense that Republicans want to pass abortion bans to protect women’s health, or that they’re enacting laws in service of some grand morality. With this ruling, the GOP made clear what their end goal is: forcing women back to a time when we weren’t full citizens, and when we could be married off as children to any 50-year-old lech who decided he wanted us.

To endure that insult, after two years of watching stories about little girls forced into childbirth and women mandated to deliver dead babies, is too much for anyone to take. Especially women. 

And that’s the thing that Democrats would do well to remember as we close in on November: The danger abortion bans pose to women’s health and lives makes us afraid, but what makes us furious is the affront to our humanity.

It’s that anger that politicians campaigning on abortion rights need to tap into. The foremost feeling driving American women on abortion rights isn’t fear—it’s humiliation. It is demeaning, incredibly so, to watch as statehouses full of men decide that women were better off in a time when we had no choices, about anything.

If Democrats want to motivate women, they should talk less about how dangerous abortion bans are, and more about what that danger means: that to Republicans, our lives don’t matter. Instead of talking about how women are losing their rights, remind voters why that is: because Republicans don’t want women to have any.

If we learn anything from the Arizona tipping point, let it be that.

Let's make Valenti correct in November.

Donald Trump hopes he's found a way to slice the baby in half

Trump's recent video claiming he's found a way to escape the trap he set for Republicans and himself by appointing anti-abortion Supreme Court justices is pretty much a dud that will satisfy no one.

He can't both boast that he set the stage for overturning Roe v. Wade and also claim he wants to preserve the freedom of the states to regulate abortion as they choose. It's gooble-de-gook. I hope media keep pushing him on whether he'd enforce existing prohibitions on mailing abortion drugs (the Comstock Acts - if GOPers get control, you are going to have to learn about this legal remnant.) Meanwhile anti-arbortion absolutists like Mike Pence fear he is betraying them (as of course he would if it helped keep him out of jail.)

But to me the most interesting comment on Trump's declaration came from Heather Cox Richardson. She suspects that his political handlers had him announce his "position" in a carefully produced video because they don't trust him not to wander from his talking points if they let him loose.

The video did, though, make an enormously interesting and unintended point: Trump is communicating with voters outside his carefully curated bubble almost exclusively through videos, even on a topic as important as abortion. At rallies, his speeches have become erratic and wandering, with occasional slurred words, and observers have wondered how he would present to more general audiences. It appears that his team has concluded that he will not present well and that general audiences must see him in carefully curated settings, like this apparently heavily edited video.

At some point, he's going to have to talk about this -- or so obviously dodge that it becomes clear to all that he's a damaged, fearful old guy who is loosing it.

Simon Rosenberg reminds us that Trump is best understood as a desperate, faltering old criminal.

It’s my view that once it becomes understood Trump is no longer ahead we will start to get a more honest assessment of the strength and weaknesses of the two candidates; that this perception Trump is ahead and strong have masked his historic awfulness, and the clear problems with his campaign and his party. For in my view Trump is weak, not strong. He’s struggling to raise money. He’s facing an unprecedented revolt inside his party, causing a potentially fatal splintering of his coalition. MAGA lost in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023, and lost the big early 2024 bellwether, NY-3, by 8 points!!!!!!!!! The RNC is in disarray and months behind Biden organizationally without enough time to make it up. Many prominent Republicans in Congress are retiring, quitting and abandoning ship. ...

Trump may be in the process of ousting another Speaker. His agenda is much further away from the electorate than before. His performance on the stump is significantly degraded, far more impulsive, erratic and disturbing. He wears more make up than a drag queen. He keeps losing and getting humiliated in court. He’s an adjudicated rapist. He committed one of the largest financial frauds in American history. His new company is already failing. He stole America’s secrets, lied to the FBI it all, and shared those secrets with others. He tried to end American democracy for all time in 2021 and has promised to finish the job if he gets back into the White House. He and his family have corruptly taken more money from foreign governments than any family in US history.

He is singularly responsible for ending Roe, stripping the rights and freedoms away from the women of America, and yesterday endorsed the most severe abortion restrictions in the states, which are without doubt, the most extreme policy enacted in America in many generations. He’s the ugliest political thing we’ve all ever seen, and all of this ugliness and structural weakness is being largely dismissed because the perception that he leads in polling makes him “strong.” ...

He's not strong. He's a crook who is running for President to escape the law ...

Abortion on the ballot in Florida -- where's Trump?

The decision of the Florida Supreme Court to allow a vote on a citizen initiative inserting a right to abortion in the state constitution raises many interesting possibilities.

According to Ballotpedia:

The initiative would provide a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability (estimated to be around 24 weeks) or when necessary to protect the patient's health, as determined by the patient's healthcare provider.

Everywhere, even in red states like Ohio and Kansas, such "right to abortion" measures have won popular majorities when offered to the electorate. We, the majority, really don't want the Supreme Court telling legislatures they can mess with our bodies! 

The Florida measure faces a slightly more difficult hurdle than these other reproductive rights efforts. Instead of a mere majority, state rules mean that the pro-choice side needs 60 percent to win. Polls show this as tough, but possible. 

So now Florida politicians and Floridians are going to have to figure out how to navigate a campaign in which abortion rights are center stage.

Democrats and the Biden campaign are teasing that this measure puts the state in play for Democrats. Seems improbable; the state Florida Dem party is a mess, Republicans have a 800,000 person registration advantage, failed GOP presidential aspirant Ron DeSantis won the place by 20 points in 2022. But Democrats can and should have a great time demanding that Republican candidates state a clear position on the abortion measure. It divides their base. Even Republican voters will be giving the measure a small majority according to polls, while Dems and Indies do the rest; the anti-abortion side will be rabid.  

And then there's Florida resident Donald Trump. Where does he stand? Anywhere he can escape the question, apparently. According to Aaron Blake in the Washington Post:

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee has responded to this development with all the political certainty of a college freshman running for class president. And his hemming and hawing — even after effectively locking up the Republican nomination — speaks volumes about how much this sudden liability of an issue looms over the GOP’s 2024 hopes.

Trump’s campaign initially put out a statement Monday saying merely, “President Trump supports preserving life but has also made clear that he supports states’ rights, because he supports the voters’ right to make decisions for themselves.”

It’s great to support the democratic process — something that isn’t always a given with Trump — but that statement basically says nothing about his own view on the issue at hand. And when asked for more specificity Tuesday about Florida’s six-week ban, Trump played a familiar card: I’ll tell you later.

“We’ll be making a statement next week on abortion,” Trump said.

Translation: I really don’t want to talk about this, and I need to figure out my position.

... Of course, it’s no secret what’s really going on here. Trump fears this issue; he has repeatedly suggested that Republicans lose elections by going too extreme on it. .. .Trump clearly doesn’t want that to happen to him. But it’s not as if he can spend the next seven months punting on this issue. And the fact that he still doesn’t have a good, ready-made answer a month after wrapping up the GOP nomination suggests that perhaps there just isn’t one.

We need to continue to demand that the media ask Trump where he stands. 

And, if we can, to help Floridians Protecting Freedom win their campaign.  

• • •

Florida was the venue for one of my best 2020 election experiences. That pandemic year, I locked myself down at home working on the UniteHERE national phone bank. Early on, we took a few shifts calling sympathetic Floridians who someone thought might need help with how to navigate voting procedures. (Like most red states, Florida makes voting a confusing jumbles of procedural rules.)

One young woman I reached answered her phone while partying after work with her buddies in a bar. (I don't know why she answered her; people just do sometimes.) She wasn't much interested in talking about voting mechanics -- but then decided she'd test me.

"If I put my phone on speaker, will you call out to all the people in the bar?" she asked.

"Sure," says I.

So she yelled she had someone with a message. 

I hollered at the top of my lungs: "Fuck Donald Trump!" Great cheers ensued. 

I hope they all figured out how to vote ...

• • •

Sure hope the Florida campaign wins. If the new constitutional provision fails, that sharp-eyed observer of all legal perversions, Slate's Mark Joseph Stern warns that the Florida Supreme Court might decide to declare the fetal personhood of all embryos, banning not only all abortions, but also IVF and other pregnancy medical treatments. Scary times.

They should have to know what they do

I had several possible posts lined up for today -- but then I ran across this video by way of Jessica Valenti's essential Abortion Every Day.

Eva Burch, an elected Arizona State Senator, felt called to explain to her colleagues that she was about to have an abortion to end a wanted, but nonviable, pregnancy. This nurse-turned-officeholder describes viscerally the hoops her state's abortion laws put her through, as well as the law's requirement that her doctors read her a script full of false "information" about the procedure

This is an amazing speech and well worth a few minutes of your life. This mother of two wanted children who is hoping to have more is a brave, articulate spokesperson against lies and ignorance.

“I don’t think people should have to justify their abortions. But I’m choosing to talk about why I made this decision because I want us to be able to have meaningful conversations about the reality of how the work that we do in this body impacts people in the real world.”

• • • 

The desperate struggle at the highest ranks of the political system to hold on against MAGA and fascism tends to obscure truly heartening developments within the lower ranks of the Democratic Party. A new generation of smart, young, often female, often "of color," sometimes queer, political up-and-comers begin to give us a glimpse of new leadership. Eva Burch is one on rhese, for sure.

We like IVF and many medical fertility interventions

It turns out that availability of In Vitro Fertility offerings is so popular that even Donald Trump is running away as fast as he can scamper from the decision by Alabama judicial theocrats that frozen 7-cell embryos are people.

Alabama U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville is merely confused. I suspect he's backtracked, but this was his first reaction.

“Yeah, I was all for it. We need to have more kids, we need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do.”

All forms of medical assistance with fertility are very popular. In 2020, Republicans knew this:

The polling on IVF is such that even former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway advised Republicans to support the procedure. As Alice Ollstein wrote in Politico, polling from Conway’s firm found:

86 percent of all respondents supported access to IVF, with 78 percent support among self-identified “pro-life advocates” and 83 percent among Evangelical Christians.

According to Pew, a very substantial number of us have direct experience of or proximity to various fertility treatments. This is not rare. Or cheap as the data suggest.

Click to enlarge.

Research describes a general, global decline in fertility. 

Over the past half-century, the world has witnessed a steep decline in fertility rates in virtually every country on Earth. This universal decline in fertility is being driven by increasing prosperity largely through the mediation of social factors, the most powerful of which are the education of women and an accompanying shift in life’s purpose away from procreation.

In addition, it is clear that environmental and lifestyle factors are also having a profound impact on our reproductive competence particularly in the male where increasing prosperity is associated with a significant rise in the incidence of testicular cancer and a secular decline in semen quality and testosterone levels.

On a different timescale, we should also recognize that the increased prosperity associated with the demographic transition greatly reduces the selection pressure on high fertility genes by lowering the rates of infant and childhood mortality.

Whether this seems a good or bad thing often depends on whether you are or care about women in poor countries. 

In all this discussion of mediated fertility, something that gets lost is the role of medical interventions which enable LGBTQ+ folks to have children. It's substantial, as I know from living in my queer community. The judicial theocrats wouldn't like that either.

There's something about the women

The Gallup demographic research organization finds that: "Liberal ID Has Increased Most Among Young and Senior Women"

Women of all age groups grew more likely to identify as liberal between 1999 and 2021 before drawing back slightly from that position since then. But the steepest increases in liberal ID occurred among women at either end of the age spectrum.

From 1999 to 2013, about three in 10 women aged 18 to 29 consistently identified as liberal, after which the figure rose (a bit unsteadily) to 44% by 2020. The percentage liberal receded slightly to 41% in 2022 and 40% in 2023. The resulting 11-point increase in young women’s liberal identification since 1999 has made what was already the most liberal subgroup of women even more liberal.

Fourteen percent of women aged 65 and older identified as liberal in 1999, but this rose to 21% by 2013 and 25% by 2023, also an 11-point increase overall. Senior women in 1999 were the least liberal female age group, whereas today, they are as likely as middle-aged women to identify as liberal.

Presumably, Republicans' successful efforts to ban abortions is a factor in this. It's obvious why the youngest cohort might be rapidly becoming more liberal; their lives and families are directly impacted as legislators take over what health decisions they are permitted to make. Youth doesn't take such preemptive constraints gladly.

The over-65 set has also been gradually but very steadily becoming less conservative. Though the trend long predates the 2022 Dobbs decision allowing states to ban abortion, these women retain the memory of what life was like before Roe v. Wade, if not themselves, for their mothers.

Gallup concludes:

... a widening of the ideological gaps between men and women over time has been due to women becoming more liberal at a faster rate than men, rather than women and men moving in different ideological directions

From where I sit, we're dragging the country, slowly, in a more humane direction. There really is something about the women.

Speaking up. Speaking out.

Jessica Valenti writes the essential newsletter Abortion Every Day. And she does mean every day. Each day she collects the catalogue of horrors that the Republican push to seize complete control of women -- our bodies, our healthcare, our family choices, our lives -- is inflicting on ordinary people.

This week she answered a call to come to Washington to explain it all to a group of Senate Democrats. (Good idea; even friends and lovers of women can't be trusted to understand the realities and implications of women's plumbing.) From her prepared testimony:

Right now, there is a quiet but well-funded campaign led by the most powerful anti-abortion groups in the country that is focused entirely on pressuring and forcing women to carry doomed pregnancies to term.

They’re not only trying to do away with exceptions for nonviable pregnancies—they’re trying to eradicate prenatal testing altogether. It’s a lot easier to force women to carry a dying fetus to term if they never get diagnosed to begin with.

When I tell people about this, the question I get asked most often is why? Why would anyone want to deliberately create a world where women are forced to be “walking coffins”?

It is inexplicable, until you understand that this has nothing to do with families or babies, but enforcing a worldview that says it’s women’s job to be pregnant and to stay pregnant, no matter what the cost or consequence.

... In a moment when we’re hearing so many extreme horror stories, it can be difficult to get back to that foundational cruelty: that to force someone to be pregnant against their will, for any reason, at any point, causes profound existential harm.

Abortion is healthcare, but it is also freedom. That’s why every abortion denied is a tragedy. And, increasingly, Americans understand that. They don’t want the government involved in their decisions about pregnancy at any point.

You can view her entire (7 minute) testimony here:

We are the majority ...

Busy today, preparing to return to the Left Coast at the end of the week. But thought I'd share this nifty graphic displaying some important statistics.

The struggle for reproductive healthcare can be won. Pass it on.

The Republican Party has thrown down on hating women and freedom

No watching the Republican debate for me ... I don't feel the need to see the also-rans posture and squabble. Barring an act of God, we'll have forgotten most of them by next spring.

But we should be very clear on what they ALL agree on: