I am a 72-year-old woman and spent a good part of my life at non-profits working for reproductive rights. Pig Alito's opinion spits on everything that matters and grinds it into the dust. I am enraged and terrified. No man has any idea what it's like to be a woman in this sick and evil country, but you're correct that the right will soon be coming for men who are not White, straight and Christian. I have come to loathe men who shrug off women's lives as though we are nothing.
Conservatives are by definition illiberal and reject the very concept of rights, especially those claimed by women because women are the cause of "original sin" and if they cannot act in accordance with god's will they should suffer the consequences, have a baby and deal with it. Conservatives are not good people, they never have been and have always been the problem.
Conservatives are terrible people, but what we are dealing with now is a wave of vicious reactionary monsters who put old-line conservatives in the shade. It is horrifying to be female and know that we are are hated for merely trying to be more than baby machines.
I fully agree. I haven't seen an episode, but it is getting to be "The Handmaid's Tale". Conservatives have been working toward this for a long time. They are truly horrible people.
Alito's opinion nullifies the very concept of rights:
"The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision"
as there is no constitutional reference to any unenumerated rights, such as the right to marry the person of your choice, or wear the clothing of your choice, etc. All unenumerated rights have been argued under enumerated rights that do not reference them, such as the right to engage in consensual sex acts under the "right to privacy" under the Fourth Amendment. Therefore, every single unenumerated right is threatened by conservatives because they are, well, not enumerated.
The fact is that the Ninth Amendment explicitly protects unenumerated rights but has been ignored by all in arguing rights cases. That must end. James Madison argued against including a Bill of Rights for precisely to avoid Alito's argument because the government wasn't empowered to control women. However, many argued that people like Alito would argue against certain rights precisely because they weren't enumerated and so Madison added the Bill of Rights and the Ninth Amendment to protect them.
Alito and conservatives in general have no point and are just dead wrong. If these clowns do repeal Roe v Wade a future court will recognize the inalienable right of a women to control her own life that includes abortion without any state interference until the fetus' brain develops the capacity for mind. Conservatives are the internal threat and they must be marginalized.
I don't understand why nobody mentions that the abortion issue is a RELIGIOUS issue, and this country is based on THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE! That should be the focus here. The Christian Right is a religious movement and should NOT be involved in any legislation. Not everyone in America is a Christian!! The Christian Right extremists are behaving much worse than anything they ever accused Muslims of. SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM GOVERNMENT, people!
You are correct in all that you wrote. No the draft is not equivalent to the government controlling women's bodies. The difference is that with a draft notice comes a tour of duty - that tour ends in 2-4 years. When a woman is forced to have a child she is not prepared or ready for then it is a minimum 18 year tour of duty. I was put in that position at 19 because I was ignorant and made one stupid mistake. I was forced into a marriage that turned physically, emotionally and mentally abusive. Then after finding the courage and/or desperation to get out before I was killed I found myself with a child to support. Raising that child also became a severe challenge that I had to deal with while working 2 jobs to support us - hours in therapy that did no good, hours in courtrooms and with a probation officer attempting to prevent a lifetime of incarceration and/or crime for my child. I struggled to get an education while all of this was happening but I kept at it. It took me until into my early 50s to finally make decent enough money to stop working 2 jobs. Now I am retired and I am alone. The child who I struggled to keep on the straight and narrow, teach there are consequences for bad behavior, worked so hard to guide into becoming a happy, productive citizen decided that I am not worthy of being a family member and has turned my 2 grandchildren against me. This is now my reality. Even though I did everything in my power to provide a good life, I'm certain that the financial and time constraints on me did not help matters. I am confident that I accepted my responsibility fully and did everything within my power to raise my child, but I can't help wondering if my story would have ended better had I been given the right to decide my own fate instead of one forced on me by a bunch of men who decided I was good for nothing but breeding.
Women today are truly in danger of becoming degraded into voiceless breeding mechanisms. I’m 60, and although I’m beyond the age of reproduction worries, I fear for my daughters, and grand daughters. And then, what’s next? Banning all birth control, too? Take away our right to vote? Make all women fearful breeders, and any too old for that task be relegated to the streets, as beggars?
I'm a 72 year old male. I lived in Israel for 8 years. I was a soldier and stood shoulder to shoulder with women soldiers, as Israel's policy is for women to be soldiers or cops or other occupations that could be life threatening. True equality. It's also one of the best armies in the world. Where is it written, who gave men the right to tell a women what to do? It's not in the bible, I ought to know, I've read it in Hebrew, Latin and English! I truly believe, that any legislation or law, that concerns women, should be decided by women. Period! Not men suffering from geezer disease.
I agree completely. It calls for a "well regulated militia". We've got one, it's called the National Guard. The NRA's spin doctors have convinced the weak minded that any fool has a right to carry weapons. Why should they care when school children, Country Western music fans, clubbers and other innocents are gunned down?
I'm really serious if Roe v wade is done away with then there has to be a move to abolish the interpretation of the second amendment that allows individuals the right to carry arms. they can't have it both ways. Either both stay or both go!!
This is only the beginning. Next will come same sex marriage, then interracial marriage, then voting rights although that one has largely been already hijacked, freedom of religion and freedom from religion, and who knows what else the fringe has in mind.
Grew up in CA, college graduate, retired and living in FL. Done working full time, support over 30 charities and volunteer when I can. 2 kids & 4 grand kids. Avid diver and fisherman. Terrible at golf!
See South Africa - a history and UK History - yes woman were enlisted - not only men. Woman worked in factories and Munitions stations during the war -1st and 2nd. Woman worked in field hospitals tending war wounded - look at Florence Nightingale - North Africa -Italy- SA War Angolan Conflict - Vietnam etc. Both played a pivotal part in military conscription.
My apologies. I stand corrected. My knowledge of South African history was limited to what little was taught by the U of CA when I was 19: Nelson Mandela, diamonds and racism. Can you recommend a history book so I can catch up?
Ex PE 60's,70's,80's FB Group, book called Long Walk to Freedom, The Young Mandela, SA a history FB Page. I was born and brought up in SA all my life and grew up under the Apartheid Era, and saw the struggle on both sides of the colour bar. On PBS Channel their is often a history channel depicting the struggles. See movie 12 years a slave or Amistad - the struggle for people of colour - Trevor Noah program and show and his book by Trevor Noah. I grew up at the same time as did Trevor Noah from South Africa. America and the Civil rights movement mirrors that of the struggle faced in SA.
Called Born a criminal. Also Obama - Tales from my Father. Long walk to freedom by Nelson Rholihlahla Mandela and his time on Robben Island. SA a history. The group ex PE 60's70's80's group on Facebook has interesting posted articles on South Africa and its history. I am heading home for a visit end of June this year after so.e 17+ years of being an ex-pat South African abroad. Once a South African always a South African. I love Trevor Noah. Watched him at the correspondents' dinner.
Emailed you an attachment of a South Africa guidebook by DK Eyewitness Travel guides. Got it online. The guide that show you what others only tell you. Has great SA History in it. Hope you get my emailed attachment.
Uncle Eskow. Could you pull a public service by reining in your wayward wanna be barrister nephew, Brian? (or is he now. meh. he made me block him on tha olde bird app with his obvious delusions. Pretty soon he'll sell his soul to an Orthodox Zionist international terrorist just like Bibi, I fear.)
What? I honour my Jude blut. Reform, though. It's decidedly not anti anything, what I am asking you. I don't wanna catch tale of Brain suicide bombing a mosque, he's gone that far off the rails. fr
Kahlil Gibran said, "Our children are through us but not of us." The same is true of my nephew. He's family and I love him, but he has his own road to trod and it is not my own.
Old, Ugly, Angry men forcing their will on us. These are the representatives not of public opinion but of those creeps and pervs females of every age but especially younger ones had to make sure they were not suddenly alone with, and even younger males were targeted. Even worse these molesters and rapists were priests, fathers,uncles, friends of the family, older siblings of a friend you visited, married men who sought opportunities when their wives were looking the other way. It’s unconscionable that females are again being abused by a group of old men with no real concern for anyone except their own hypocrisy and pretense that they are concerned for anyone but themselves.
This conversation is a lot of echoes inside the silo. I am a white man who has supported a woman's right to choose all of my adult life. Even beyond voting, I've put my money where my mouth is. I've phone banked, knocked on doors & faced hostility as a volunteer in a conservative state. Not solely for reproductive rights -- although they've been front & center for every candidate I worked for -- but a wide slate of issues -- the very ones you say will be most endangered by an emboldened right wing court.
But you're wrong on so much of what you write. Men don't just walk out of a war, dusting their hands off with their chests puffed out with pride. Most men ordered to fire a gun to kill a human being fail to execute the order, a crime punishable by court martial. Nor do you make much of PTSD, which soldiers suffered long before people knew what to call it. I had a friend who became addicted to heroin when he was attached to a "junk patrol," soldiers who succumbed to addiction because junk was everywhere & those young kids were scared to death.
Issues of bright line morality & politics are nowhere near as simple as you claim. Not just women, but a wide majority of Americans, support women's right to choose. Many other counterintuitive (at least to some progressives) fault lines exist as well. In 2020, a majority of white women once again voted for Trump, who had delivered on his promise to appoint judges who would overturn abortion rights.
A few years back, I was working late in the day in my small town, trying to persuade an unaffiliated voter to support a progressive governor's candidate. He was the exact kind of person we were trying to reach -- a low-income working man on the fence about which way he would vote. Trying to close the deal, I said "You & I are both white men, maybe we don't understand ..." I don't remember exactly what I said next, only his face hardening as he began to shut me out, & I knew I'd lost him.
It was my fault, of course. How did I know what he had seen or felt or suffered in his hardscrabble neighborhood?
In case you haven't looked past your own circle lately, Republicans have used PC like it was gold in recent campaigns. If we appeal to people's best instincts, we now have an issue that can help us win an election that seemed predestined to be a massacre before the Alito leak. Make it into a rage-driven campaign, dividing people, shouting down the usual suspects because of identity, & we'll get plastered again in 2022.
Outstanding analysis when the movement of culture and peoples is ordered by the sword in hand devoid of the liberty of a democratic functioning. The Yes, the barbarians have arrived and an uncompromising hostility at the heart of it
I am a 72-year-old woman and spent a good part of my life at non-profits working for reproductive rights. Pig Alito's opinion spits on everything that matters and grinds it into the dust. I am enraged and terrified. No man has any idea what it's like to be a woman in this sick and evil country, but you're correct that the right will soon be coming for men who are not White, straight and Christian. I have come to loathe men who shrug off women's lives as though we are nothing.
Conservatives are by definition illiberal and reject the very concept of rights, especially those claimed by women because women are the cause of "original sin" and if they cannot act in accordance with god's will they should suffer the consequences, have a baby and deal with it. Conservatives are not good people, they never have been and have always been the problem.
Conservatives are terrible people, but what we are dealing with now is a wave of vicious reactionary monsters who put old-line conservatives in the shade. It is horrifying to be female and know that we are are hated for merely trying to be more than baby machines.
I fully agree. I haven't seen an episode, but it is getting to be "The Handmaid's Tale". Conservatives have been working toward this for a long time. They are truly horrible people.
Alito's opinion nullifies the very concept of rights:
"The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision"
as there is no constitutional reference to any unenumerated rights, such as the right to marry the person of your choice, or wear the clothing of your choice, etc. All unenumerated rights have been argued under enumerated rights that do not reference them, such as the right to engage in consensual sex acts under the "right to privacy" under the Fourth Amendment. Therefore, every single unenumerated right is threatened by conservatives because they are, well, not enumerated.
The fact is that the Ninth Amendment explicitly protects unenumerated rights but has been ignored by all in arguing rights cases. That must end. James Madison argued against including a Bill of Rights for precisely to avoid Alito's argument because the government wasn't empowered to control women. However, many argued that people like Alito would argue against certain rights precisely because they weren't enumerated and so Madison added the Bill of Rights and the Ninth Amendment to protect them.
Alito and conservatives in general have no point and are just dead wrong. If these clowns do repeal Roe v Wade a future court will recognize the inalienable right of a women to control her own life that includes abortion without any state interference until the fetus' brain develops the capacity for mind. Conservatives are the internal threat and they must be marginalized.
I don't understand why nobody mentions that the abortion issue is a RELIGIOUS issue, and this country is based on THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE! That should be the focus here. The Christian Right is a religious movement and should NOT be involved in any legislation. Not everyone in America is a Christian!! The Christian Right extremists are behaving much worse than anything they ever accused Muslims of. SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM GOVERNMENT, people!
You are correct in all that you wrote. No the draft is not equivalent to the government controlling women's bodies. The difference is that with a draft notice comes a tour of duty - that tour ends in 2-4 years. When a woman is forced to have a child she is not prepared or ready for then it is a minimum 18 year tour of duty. I was put in that position at 19 because I was ignorant and made one stupid mistake. I was forced into a marriage that turned physically, emotionally and mentally abusive. Then after finding the courage and/or desperation to get out before I was killed I found myself with a child to support. Raising that child also became a severe challenge that I had to deal with while working 2 jobs to support us - hours in therapy that did no good, hours in courtrooms and with a probation officer attempting to prevent a lifetime of incarceration and/or crime for my child. I struggled to get an education while all of this was happening but I kept at it. It took me until into my early 50s to finally make decent enough money to stop working 2 jobs. Now I am retired and I am alone. The child who I struggled to keep on the straight and narrow, teach there are consequences for bad behavior, worked so hard to guide into becoming a happy, productive citizen decided that I am not worthy of being a family member and has turned my 2 grandchildren against me. This is now my reality. Even though I did everything in my power to provide a good life, I'm certain that the financial and time constraints on me did not help matters. I am confident that I accepted my responsibility fully and did everything within my power to raise my child, but I can't help wondering if my story would have ended better had I been given the right to decide my own fate instead of one forced on me by a bunch of men who decided I was good for nothing but breeding.
Women today are truly in danger of becoming degraded into voiceless breeding mechanisms. I’m 60, and although I’m beyond the age of reproduction worries, I fear for my daughters, and grand daughters. And then, what’s next? Banning all birth control, too? Take away our right to vote? Make all women fearful breeders, and any too old for that task be relegated to the streets, as beggars?
I'm a 72 year old male. I lived in Israel for 8 years. I was a soldier and stood shoulder to shoulder with women soldiers, as Israel's policy is for women to be soldiers or cops or other occupations that could be life threatening. True equality. It's also one of the best armies in the world. Where is it written, who gave men the right to tell a women what to do? It's not in the bible, I ought to know, I've read it in Hebrew, Latin and English! I truly believe, that any legislation or law, that concerns women, should be decided by women. Period! Not men suffering from geezer disease.
The second amendment makes no reference to an individual's right to carry arms so based on Alito's proclamation, that right has to be abolished too.
I agree completely. It calls for a "well regulated militia". We've got one, it's called the National Guard. The NRA's spin doctors have convinced the weak minded that any fool has a right to carry weapons. Why should they care when school children, Country Western music fans, clubbers and other innocents are gunned down?
I'm really serious if Roe v wade is done away with then there has to be a move to abolish the interpretation of the second amendment that allows individuals the right to carry arms. they can't have it both ways. Either both stay or both go!!
This is only the beginning. Next will come same sex marriage, then interracial marriage, then voting rights although that one has largely been already hijacked, freedom of religion and freedom from religion, and who knows what else the fringe has in mind.
Grew up in CA, college graduate, retired and living in FL. Done working full time, support over 30 charities and volunteer when I can. 2 kids & 4 grand kids. Avid diver and fisherman. Terrible at golf!
See South Africa - a history and UK History - yes woman were enlisted - not only men. Woman worked in factories and Munitions stations during the war -1st and 2nd. Woman worked in field hospitals tending war wounded - look at Florence Nightingale - North Africa -Italy- SA War Angolan Conflict - Vietnam etc. Both played a pivotal part in military conscription.
My apologies. I stand corrected. My knowledge of South African history was limited to what little was taught by the U of CA when I was 19: Nelson Mandela, diamonds and racism. Can you recommend a history book so I can catch up?
Ex PE 60's,70's,80's FB Group, book called Long Walk to Freedom, The Young Mandela, SA a history FB Page. I was born and brought up in SA all my life and grew up under the Apartheid Era, and saw the struggle on both sides of the colour bar. On PBS Channel their is often a history channel depicting the struggles. See movie 12 years a slave or Amistad - the struggle for people of colour - Trevor Noah program and show and his book by Trevor Noah. I grew up at the same time as did Trevor Noah from South Africa. America and the Civil rights movement mirrors that of the struggle faced in SA.
Thank you. I'm already a fan of Trevor Noah. Watch the Daily Show every night. Didn't know Noah wrote a book. I'll look into it.
Called Born a criminal. Also Obama - Tales from my Father. Long walk to freedom by Nelson Rholihlahla Mandela and his time on Robben Island. SA a history. The group ex PE 60's70's80's group on Facebook has interesting posted articles on South Africa and its history. I am heading home for a visit end of June this year after so.e 17+ years of being an ex-pat South African abroad. Once a South African always a South African. I love Trevor Noah. Watched him at the correspondents' dinner.
Trevor Noahs' book from chapters, Indigo bookstores. Read the auto biography of Nelson R Mandela. Met him in person twice in my lifetime.
Emailed you an attachment of a South Africa guidebook by DK Eyewitness Travel guides. Got it online. The guide that show you what others only tell you. Has great SA History in it. Hope you get my emailed attachment.
Uncle Eskow. Could you pull a public service by reining in your wayward wanna be barrister nephew, Brian? (or is he now. meh. he made me block him on tha olde bird app with his obvious delusions. Pretty soon he'll sell his soul to an Orthodox Zionist international terrorist just like Bibi, I fear.)
What? I honour my Jude blut. Reform, though. It's decidedly not anti anything, what I am asking you. I don't wanna catch tale of Brain suicide bombing a mosque, he's gone that far off the rails. fr
Kahlil Gibran said, "Our children are through us but not of us." The same is true of my nephew. He's family and I love him, but he has his own road to trod and it is not my own.
Old, Ugly, Angry men forcing their will on us. These are the representatives not of public opinion but of those creeps and pervs females of every age but especially younger ones had to make sure they were not suddenly alone with, and even younger males were targeted. Even worse these molesters and rapists were priests, fathers,uncles, friends of the family, older siblings of a friend you visited, married men who sought opportunities when their wives were looking the other way. It’s unconscionable that females are again being abused by a group of old men with no real concern for anyone except their own hypocrisy and pretense that they are concerned for anyone but themselves.
This conversation is a lot of echoes inside the silo. I am a white man who has supported a woman's right to choose all of my adult life. Even beyond voting, I've put my money where my mouth is. I've phone banked, knocked on doors & faced hostility as a volunteer in a conservative state. Not solely for reproductive rights -- although they've been front & center for every candidate I worked for -- but a wide slate of issues -- the very ones you say will be most endangered by an emboldened right wing court.
But you're wrong on so much of what you write. Men don't just walk out of a war, dusting their hands off with their chests puffed out with pride. Most men ordered to fire a gun to kill a human being fail to execute the order, a crime punishable by court martial. Nor do you make much of PTSD, which soldiers suffered long before people knew what to call it. I had a friend who became addicted to heroin when he was attached to a "junk patrol," soldiers who succumbed to addiction because junk was everywhere & those young kids were scared to death.
Issues of bright line morality & politics are nowhere near as simple as you claim. Not just women, but a wide majority of Americans, support women's right to choose. Many other counterintuitive (at least to some progressives) fault lines exist as well. In 2020, a majority of white women once again voted for Trump, who had delivered on his promise to appoint judges who would overturn abortion rights.
A few years back, I was working late in the day in my small town, trying to persuade an unaffiliated voter to support a progressive governor's candidate. He was the exact kind of person we were trying to reach -- a low-income working man on the fence about which way he would vote. Trying to close the deal, I said "You & I are both white men, maybe we don't understand ..." I don't remember exactly what I said next, only his face hardening as he began to shut me out, & I knew I'd lost him.
It was my fault, of course. How did I know what he had seen or felt or suffered in his hardscrabble neighborhood?
In case you haven't looked past your own circle lately, Republicans have used PC like it was gold in recent campaigns. If we appeal to people's best instincts, we now have an issue that can help us win an election that seemed predestined to be a massacre before the Alito leak. Make it into a rage-driven campaign, dividing people, shouting down the usual suspects because of identity, & we'll get plastered again in 2022.
Outstanding analysis when the movement of culture and peoples is ordered by the sword in hand devoid of the liberty of a democratic functioning. The Yes, the barbarians have arrived and an uncompromising hostility at the heart of it