Southern fascist laboratory strengthens

The two most powerful state Democratic leaders were arrested in Tallahassee in an act of civil disobedience after leading a prayer circle after sunset: The sunset showdown was set early in the day, hours before the Florida Senate would pass a 6-week abortion ban on a largely party line vote….. …The coalition of Florida Now,Continue reading “Southern fascist laboratory strengthens”

‘The kind of thing that could get them fired and charged with a felony’

Gilead, thy name is Idaho. The University of Idaho’s general counsel issued new guidance on Friday about the state’s near-total abortion ban, alerting faculty and staff that the school should no longer offer birth control for students, a rare move for a state university. University employees were also advised not to speak in support ofContinue reading “‘The kind of thing that could get them fired and charged with a felony’”

‘Abortion is legal in this country’

It begins: In Oklahoma, clinics have stopped operating because the state passed a new ban, even though it clearly conflicts with Roe. “We haven’t had abortion for two and a half weeks,” said Susan Braselton, a clinic escort and a board member of the Roe Fund in Oklahoma, which helps patients finance abortions…. …The onlyContinue reading “‘Abortion is legal in this country’”

Pleasure is worth dying for: ‘Happening’

Our political culture — nationally and globally — is so fucked that I can’t imagine Happening moving an anti-abortion audience. Destroying them maybe. Set in the early 1960s when le nouvelle vague of Godard and Truffaut did not generate a corresponding liberalization of France’s brutal abortion regime, Happening follows Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei), a literature studentContinue reading “Pleasure is worth dying for: ‘Happening’”

Florida gets serious about hating women

Last night Florida (the state with the prettiest name!) inched closer to a rightist colony that punishes women for lacking the insurance to visit the gynecologist and for being born with systems unable to register a pregnancy before the new deadline. On an almost party-line vote, the state senate approved House Bill 5, aka theContinue reading “Florida gets serious about hating women”

The party of male white supremacy

“The animating impulse of Trump’s campaign — the beating heart of “Make America Great Again” — was a defense of traditional hierarchies,” Jamelle Bouie writes in today’s NYT, seventy-two hours after Bret Stephens wore garlic to protest millennial disgust for lazy thinkers like him.”

Alabama abortion law: ‘guilt women into submission’

I gave up using “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in prose and aloud. Besides the clumsiness of the prefix, I refused to let my opponents define the terms of the debate. Instead, I use abortion supporters or abortion opponents, or, for the latter, assholes.