Republicans Backed Into a Corner By Sex Fiends

Making women subservient is more than a fetish

When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos are the same as babies in the eyes of their Lord, Republicans initially rushed to claim that they weren’t opposed to In Vitro Fertilization. Lots of upstanding ladies of the right said they’d built their families using that method. Dear Leader even said it was okay.

But now, the truth weighs down upon them. The medieval morality masters behind the scenes have invoked their anti-science doctrine, and those brave IVF supporters on the right are fading into the woodwork. The sex fiends have spoken: there will be no attempt by GOP leadership to address a topic of concern to most Americans,

The Alabama ruling isn’t just a threat to potential parents seeking to have a child using IVF after exhausting other options, but to cancer patients about to face months of grueling chemotherapy or radiation who are worried about their future fertility. 

Republicans have been arguing that “life begins at conception” for decades, never mind that the concept is not to be found anywhere in the Bible. The people who wrote the scriptures had no clue about the science of reproduction, a trait continuing even today in the feeble minds of too many jurists and legislators.

The beginning of life theory is a mid-20th century fabrication of blended religion and pseudo-science. Scientists and providers of reproductive health care know that they are not creating life in the laboratory. They don’t see the failure of an embryo to develop or fail to survive cryopreservation as a human death. In the continuous nature of human life fertilization represents only one key step. 

This mythology about when life begins is purely a religious tenet. And now the rest of society is supposed to obey this dictum. One hundred twenty five Republicans in congress signed on as co-sponsors of the “Life at Conception Act” which would have banned VF.

The proof of how hypocritical Republicans are will come today in the US Senate. Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth will bring a bill she authored to federally protect IVF treatments to the floor and ask for unanimous consent to pass it.

Bringing the bill up for approval by unanimous consent is the fastest way to ensure those protections. All it needs to pass is for no Republican to block it. Trust me, at least one of these vassals will do just that. In 2022, when Duckworth tried to bring it up for approval, GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi was the nay-sayer..

Banning a method used by 84,000 people last year to try and grow their families is just one more step along the road to submission for women in the post Roe future.

Challenging the legality of birth control is now being articulated in many quarters. Already the Supreme Court is being asked to reverse the 1980 FDA approval of drugs used in medical abortions. Rolling back no fault divorce (which cut the suicide rate among women by 20% and decreased incidents of domestic abuse) is already a popular subject among the MAGA literati. 

Lisa Needham from Public Notice on the inevitability of the next steps against women’s reproductive health choices:

• Elected officials in states that have banned abortion have openly mocked those people who have come forward with horror stories of being refused abortions even as they developed sepsis or faced the possibility of permanent future infertility. Doctors have no clear guidance on when they can terminate a pregnancy to save the life of the pregnant person, leaving them vulnerable to prosecution. People who currently have frozen embryos have no idea what to do with them, and nor do clinics. If the hardest-line anti-choice people get their way, access to birth control will become as spotty and politicized as access to abortion is now. 

• This type of amorphous fear is a feature, not a bug, of the post-Dobbs landscape. When the entire spectrum of reproductive health is murky, and the threat of prosecution looms large, doctors won’t perform abortions or IVF treatments. Patients won’t seek abortions even as their health deteriorates to a level that could result in death. People who can get pregnant will have their lives narrowed to nearly nothing as they try to sidestep the landmines of an ever-shifting jurisprudence over their bodies. 

• And that’s exactly the way conservatives want it, no matter their current feeble attempts to get out from under an IVF disaster of their own making. The GOP made common cause with the worst people in the country on this issue, and now we’re all stuck with the consequences. 

Ultimately, what is going on is about sex, one of the most powerful drivers of human behavior. The judicial rulings that allowed the act to occur with less fear of consequence are based on the right to privacy. It’s foundational to present-day roles in society, and the natural outcome of a people’s development in a (more) democratic environment.

A “strong father” mentality about how things should be is at the root of non-democratic political systems, and depends on the illusion of individualism being the same as freedom. “Taking” of privacy is key to restoring the medieval order of things, one where power was allocated along the lines of a patriarchy. Today’s fascists are merely recycled versions of yesteryear’s monarchists with a paint job.

Belief systems propagated by various religions integral to such power structures were based on the notion that suffering was necessary for redemption (and advancement) and connection with a supreme being. This is being revived by evangelical grifters who are at the core of the MAGA movement.

There is good news here, but it depends on the ability of pro-women advocates to get the truth out to voters.

Via the New York Times:

• A new national poll conducted by Americans for Contraception and obtained by The New York Times found that most voters across the political spectrum believe their access to birth control is actively at risk, and that 80 percent of voters said that protecting access to contraception was “deeply important” to them. Even among Republican voters, 72 percent said they had a favorable view of birth control.

• When voters were told that 195 House Republicans had voted against the Right to Contraception Act, 64 percent of them said they would be less likely to support Republican candidates for Congress, according to the poll. And overall, the issue of protecting access to contraception bolstered voters’ preference for Democrats by nine points, giving them a 12-point edge over Republicans, up from three.

• The survey found that birth control access was especially motivating to critical groups in the Democratic coalition, including Black voters and young people, who are currently less enthusiastic about the election.

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Wednesday News to Peruse

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The $25B Kroger-Albertsons Merger Is Going to Fail by Matt Stoller at the BIG Newsletter.

• What’s the gist of the complaint? Well, the two giant chains compete against each other aggressively right now, benchmarking prices against each other, offering promotional pricing discounts to lure shoppers, checking the freshness and quality of each others’ produce, and remodeling stores where there is competition, including extra services like pharmacies. They also hire each others’ workers, and unions, such as the United Food and Commercial Workers, get better collective bargaining agreements by playing the two chains off each other. If Kroger and Albertsons merged, all that goes away.

• And the government has evidence, including quotes from executives, and lists of dozens of cities where prices are likely to go up. (I’ve included that list in the post-script after this piece.) Indeed the merger is so egregious that CNBC’s Jim Cramer, who has spent a lot of time bashing FTC Chair Lina Khan, said Kroger has no shot of winning. Beyond that, the government got what looks like a good draw in terms of the judge, it was assigned to a Biden-appointee, Adrienne Nelson, who has a background in public service.

• While the case is simple to understand, it’s also a novel application of antitrust law. The FTC is making the first ever merger challenge on labor grounds. The government is arguing not only that prices will go up and that workers will have lower wages if Kroger and Albertsons combine, but that unions will get worse collective bargaining terms if it goes through. That’s never been done before. The FTC is also using the new merger guidelines they recently crafted with the help of thousands of citizens, including you.

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As measles spreads, ‘herd stupidity’ grips Florida by Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times

• Ladapo tried to justify the decision to let unimmunized children exposed to measles go to school by asserting that the vaccination rate is high enough.

• But as epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina observed on her blog, Your Local Epidemiologist , while the vaccination rate in Florida is just over 90%, that’s “not high enough — because measles is so contagious, the threshold for herd immunity against measles is 95%. This means there are pockets in the school, other schools, and a community that measles could burn through.”

• To put it another way, Ladapo’s appeal to the principle of “herd immunity” is outweighed by the herd stupidity of the anti-vaccination movement that he is a part of.

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How a proposal to keep opinions off UC websites could dangerously restrict speech  opinion by Ty Alper at CalMatters

• Many faculty of all political stripes, myself included, often bristle when departments issue statements on controversial topics. They are often performative. They can chill minority views and serve as political litmus tests, which is particularly dangerous in a university setting. Our 2022 recommendations included a number of steps departments should take to guard against these concerns, including being more judicious about issuing statements in the first place.

• But here’s the thing: it’s much more dangerous to prohibit speech altogether. What is happening at the University of California is what often happens when those with governmental power reactively move to suppress views they dislike. They create hastily-drafted restrictions that are overbroad, vague, rife for abuse and chilling.

• And, like this policy, they are usually disguised in “viewpoint-neutral” language. We should not be fooled.