Da pope and Mom's Day.

Liddiebug | Deposit Photos

Happy Mother's Day to everybody who is, was, has, or had a mother, perfect or im-, and including those with offspring who are or were persons of the nonhuman persuasion.

I think that covers everybody.

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This past week, Catholics got a new pope. Pope Francis, the first of that name (which I had forgotten 'til just now), died on April 21st, and Pope Leo XIV, formerly known as Robert Francis Prevost, was elected on just the second day of the conclave. I joked on Bluesky that it must have driven TV news outlets wild that the cardinals got the job done so fast. Here they'd barely settled on a name for their live team coverage and whomped up the graphics package, and it was all over.

If my take seems irreverent, remember that I'm Pagan. The head of the Roman Catholic Church doesn't have much of an effect on my life. I once worked with a guy who told a story about a conversation he'd had; the other guy asked him what he thought of the pope (different pope, obviously; this was decades ago) and my co-worker replied: "What's a Presbyterian supposed to think of the pope? He's the bishop of Rome!" 

That's pretty much where I am, too.

Anyway, a lot of Catholics have high hopes for this new guy. He's an American, for starters (from Chicago!), although his family background is about as melting-pot as they come. He's also a naturalized Peruvian and has served the church in that country for years. Most recently, he's been holding a top spot at the Vatican. Pope Francis seemed to like him, and it appears likely that he'll be as liberal as Francis was, although church approval for women in the priesthood and LBGTQ+ folks will probably still be a bridge too far. 

Another thing that's extremely unlikely to change is the Catholic Church's directive, shared by virtually all other Christian denominations, that its adherents should be fruitful and multiply. It's because the faith wants as many Christians as possible, either by birth or by conversion. Leo hasn't explicitly said how he feels about abortion since his elevation, but in the past he has taken the church's position against it lumping it in with euthanasia for good measure: "God's mercy calls us to protect every life, especially those society overlooks—the child yet to be born and the elderly nearing their journey's end".

That might look good on paper, but of course it sidesteps the question of practicality, especially in this country, where mothers receive so little social and financial support. And the people running our government right now seem hell-bent on making it even harder. So much for protecting every life.

At least he favors gun control.

But as I said above, I'm not Catholic. Catholics and members of other Christian denominations -- of every religion, actually -- have the right to believe whatever they want to believe and practice their religion as they see fit. As long as they don't force me to live by their rules.

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I mentioned above that Pope Leo is from Chicago. This meme is probably my favorite: 

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These moments of slightly irreverent blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

One step forward, several steps back.

First, happy Easter and happy Passover to those who celebrate. 

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Fair warning: This is a political post.

leszekglasner | Deposit Photos

This has been a week, hasn't it? Particularly for anyone who's interested in the future of abortion rights in this country -- which, given how polarizing the issue is, encompasses virtually everybody. (Back when Kevin's Watch had a political forum, the quickest way to get a bazillion comments on a discussion thread was to post something, anything, about abortion.)

We can all be forgiven if we have abortion-rights whiplash. First, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas ruled -- in an order jam-packed with antiabortion rhetoric where sober jurisprudence should have been -- that the federal Food and Drug Administration erred big-time 23 years ago when it approved mifepristone for medically-induced abortions. The same guy also cited the Comstock Act (which hasn't been enforced since the 1930s) in his ruling, saying pills for medical abortions should not be allowed to be sent through the mail. Taken together, those two points would appear to outlaw medical abortions in the United States altogether.  But within the hour, an Obama-appointed federal judge in the state of Washington ordered that the federal government keep the pills available in the 17 states whose attorney generals had filed suit in his court.

The Texas judge paused his ruling for a week to allow the Department of Justice to file a brief explaining why he's wrong. The DoJ is on it. And given the dueling rulings, it looks like the issue is going to be on a fast track to the Supreme Court. Given the current court, you might think that makes the Texas order a slam-dunk. But the high court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization -- handed down not even a year ago -- deliberately left abortion access to the individual states to decide; this guy in Texas has pre-empted that. Will the Supremes be willing to second-guess themselves so soon? I hope not. The patchwork of state laws that have resulted from Dobbs is bad enough.

There have been shenanigans this week on another hot-button issue: gun control. The Tennessee legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, voted to expel two of its members -- Black men who represent the cities of Memphis and Nashville -- after they and a third representative participated in a protest in favor of gun reforms following a mass shooting at a private school in Nashville. All three of the representatives are Democrats, but the one who wasn't kicked out is a White woman. The ousted legislators say their voters have been disenfranchised. The boards responsible for appointing new representatives for their districts seem inclined to send both men right back to their old seats. But if they do, legislative Republicans are threatening to pull their state funding. 

I can only shake my head. In poll after reputable poll, a majority of Americans support both access to abortion and stricter gun laws. Why Republicans are hellbent on enacting restrictions that most people in this country don't want is a mystery to me. The only thing I can think of is that while these fossils are still in control, they want to lock things down for their side before they're too old to govern and younger folks take over. That day is fast approaching. But it can't come soon enough for me.

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An update to my post of last week, wherein I was so excited to learn that Santa Fe has an arthouse theater that I saw two movies there in the same week: I'm glad I went when I did, because the facility's board of directors voted this week to shut it down, effective this weekend. There has been an outpouring of dismay about the abrupt decision on social media, and apparently there's an effort to raise funds in the community to reopen the facility. But still, I'm bummed. 

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Oh hey, one other thing: I'm going to be out of pocket for the next two weeks. See y'all back here on April 30th.

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These moments of head-shaking blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

What would Aunt Lydia do?

 

Stolen from Facebook / Artist unknown

Well! It certainly has been a week. 

On Thursday we learned from the January 6th committee that five or six sitting members of Congress had asked for presidential pardons for their roles in former President Trump's attempted coup. 

That headline was very shortly superseded by a Supreme Court ruling that makes it easier for gun owners to carry their weapons in public. Within hours, that headline was followed by the news that Congress had approved (and President Biden signed into law yesterday) a gun control bill for the first time in decades. Even though most Americans would view it as weak sauce, it's better than nothing. Among other things, the new law: requires background checks for 18- and 19-year-olds who want to purchase a gun; closes a "boyfriend loophole" that allowed some convicted domestic violence offenders to get hold of guns; stiffens penalties for people who buy guns for those who wouldn't pass a background check; and provides money to states for mental health treatment and for confiscating guns from those who've been deemed dangerous by a judge. Notably, it doesn't ban assault weapons like the AR-15. But hey, baby steps, I guess.

But even that news was overtaken on Friday by the release of the Supreme Court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, in which the justices overturned Roe v. Wade and then promptly left for the weekend. Liberals and progressives weren't surprised by the ruling -- after all, somebody at the high court leaked a draft in early May. But they were shocked -- okay, we were shocked -- by Justice Clarence Thomas's concurring opinion, in which he said he'd like to see decisions that legalized gay marriage and access to contraceptives reconsidered, too. The majority opinion attempted to reassure everyone that the court didn't intend to go after those decisions -- but the three justices nominated by former President Trump swore during their confirmation hearings that Roe was settled law, making this most recent claim somewhat less than trustworthy. (Observers have noted that Thomas made no mention of overturning Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriages. That's especially interesting, given that he's Black and married to a White woman -- with whom, by the way, the January 6th committee would like to have a chat, due to her involvement in Trump's coup attempt. But I digress.)

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'd attended a lecture -- a Q&A, actually -- given by Margaret Atwood, the author of The Handmaid's Tale. It occurred to me then that I had never read the sequel, The Testaments, so I did. I read the first book shortly after it was published in the '80s; it describes an America that has descended into a fundamentalist hellscape, with women forced to either submit to an arranged marriage or produce babies for the men running the place. The Testaments has been out since 2019, so the statute of limitations on spoilers has probably run; still, I'll try to avoid giving away the ending. Suffice it to say that the prime mover of this second novel, Aunt Lydia, remembers what America was like before Gilead, and is secretly doing everything she can to overturn the regime. 

I find today that The Testaments gives me hope. I don't believe we've hit rock bottom yet; things are going to get worse in the United States before they get better. But women are smart and resourceful. We won't tolerate attempts to make us give up the independence we've had for fifty years. To those who think Dobbs is the beginning of the end for liberal ideals, I say this: 

Just wait.

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These moments of bloggy upheaval have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed! And if you value your freedom, for gods' sake, VOTE!

Happy Domestic Infant Supplier Day?

Yeah. It's about abortion. 

Today is Mother's Day in the United States. This past Monday, somebody at the Supreme Court revealed the high court's take on motherhood by leaking to Politico a draft of the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The final opinion isn't due out until June or so. But this draft makes it clear that a majority of justices voted initially to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal across the country. 

Written by Justice Samuel Alito, the draft states that "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start." It goes on to say: "It is time... to return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives." Many pundits have interpreted that to mean that the Supremes want to kick the issue back to the states; in other words, state legislatures would be able to restrict, or end, access to abortion for their residents. And legislatures in conservative states are champing at the bit to do it.

But perhaps the most inflammatory statement in the draft -- other than that it would overturn Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe -- is a footnote that contains a quotation from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. If you've been wondering what that tweet in the screengrab above is about, here you go:

Nearly 1 million women were seeking to adopt children in 2002 (i.e., they were in demand for a child), whereas the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually nonexistent.

Yes, that's right: the Supreme Court appears set to champion the business of forcing women to bear babies they don't want so that others can adopt them.

Here's a link to the CDC report, which was released in 2008. The quote in the Supreme Court draft brief  can be found in the conclusion on page 16. The report is a statistical survey of adoption in America. What it doesn't do is suggest that women who can bear children ought to get cranking.

In fact, there are adoptable kids in America right now. Of the 400,000 or so kids in foster care on any given day, about a quarter of them are available for adoption. Why aren't those million women taking any of those kids? Well, as the CDC report states, women looking to adopt want a kid younger than two who is not disabled and isn't part of a sibling group. Note, please, that the average age of kids entering foster care is eight. 

Moreover, one-third of the available-to-adopt kids are of color. Now, I know there are white folks who would adopt a child of color; I know a few of them myself, and kudos to them. But the fact remains that a lot of people looking to adopt are in the market for cute white babies.

In any case, ending legal abortion isn't going to produce enough babies for every person looking to adopt to have one. The CDC says about 630,000 legal induced abortions occurred in the United States in 2019. But not all of them would have resulted in a live birth if they been carried to term. Women decide to abort for a multitude of reasons, after all.

Moreover, the Guttmacher Institute says there are fewer abortions now than there were when the decision in Roe was handed down. That's partly because fewer young women are becoming pregnant; in 2017, there were just 87 pregnancies per 1,000 American women between the ages of 15 and 44 -- the lowest level ever recorded.

Ending abortion isn't going to solve the adoption supply chain issue. Women will still end unwanted pregnancies; they did it before Roe, and they'll do it again if Roe is overturned. They just won't be able to do it as safely as they can do it now. Which ought to piss off every American woman, particularly those who claim to be pro-life.

One other thing: I saw a comment this week that the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought Roe was a bad decision. I had trouble believing it, so I looked it up. What Ginsburg thought was that Roe was decided on the wrong grounds. Instead of making it a privacy issue (that is, the decision on abortion ought to be between a woman and her doctor), Ginsburg thought it should have been based on the idea that women have the same rights as men.

I understand why she thought so. But here are two things to ponder: 1) the Supreme Court at the time Roe was decided was comprised of nine men (eight of them white) and zero women -- the likelihood that they'd accept an equal rights argument was probably vanishingly small; and 2) the right to privacy established by Roe was used later in a whole host of cases -- everything from the availability of contraception to interracial marriage to gay marriage. Would those decisions have broken the same way without Roe as precedent? It's hard to say. But with Roe gone, it's not outside the realm of possibility that these other rights could be in danger, too.

Anyway, getting back to the draft opinion in Dobbs: The leaker may have done us a favor. Assuming the vote doesn't change between now and when the final opinion is handed down, we have more time to remind everyone about the rights we're losing. The best way to fix this is for Congress to legalize abortion across the country -- and the only chance we have of that, given the current mess in Congress, will be to increase the percentage of Democrats in both the House and Senate. Keep that in mind when you get ready to vote this November.

Oh, right -- and happy Mother's Day.

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These moments of righteous blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Get vaxxed! And remember to vote!