The 33-year-old Watts, who had not shared the news of her pregnancy even with her family, made her first prenatal visit to a doctor’s office behind Mercy Health-St. Joseph’s Hospital in Warren, a working-class city about 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of Cleveland.
The doctor said that, while a fetal heartbeat was still present, Watts’ water had broken prematurely and the fetus she was carrying would not survive. He advised heading to the hospital to have her labor induced, so she could have what amounted to an abortion to deliver the nonviable fetus. Otherwise, she would face “significant risk” of death, according to records of her case.
That was a Tuesday in September. What followed was a harrowing three days entailing: multiple trips to the hospital; Watts miscarrying into, and then flushing and plunging, a toilet at her home; a police investigation of those actions; and Watts, who is Black, being charged with abuse of a corpse. That’s a fifth-degree felony punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.
They are. What did Democrats do to stop this?
Nothing.
They raised $80,000,000 off of Roe repeal instead.
Well, people did stop this in Ohio, specifically. Local organizers recently successfully petitioned to put abortion rights (which Republican representatives had been threatening) on the ballot statewide - voters got it passed, alongside marijuana legalization, all while facing (and continuing to face) significant antagonism and legal backlash from “elected” Republicans in the 2nd most gerrymandered state in the union.
Both parties suck, I’d go so far as to say both parties frequently do outright evil shit, but they are not the fucking same, and even if they were, that has yet stop people from coming together to get involved and improve their communities themselves. Observing politics near exclusively at the federal level tends to obscure that reality. I accept that this sort of doomerism can come from a place of ignorance, so I offer you suggestion: if you want things to get better, go help. Go find out what groups are actively working to induce local- or state-level government reform, or who are working to directly improve the lives of marginalized people in your community, and go help them. You can’t exactly stop fed-level Dems from being useless hypocrites, but you can get involved with groups in your community to help with the work of bringing about positive change - and while that is harder than stewing about the state of things, it actually gets results.
I feel like I might’ve gotten a little off topic with this, but I just see this sentiment of “both parties are the same (so let’s completely abandon electoralism)” so often online right now and I find it so exhausting and unconstructive.
Yes, actually doing something to fix the problem is exhausting and unconstructive. Let’s just continue to eat shit, instead. Much easier.
Just edited the followup reply to clarify what I was trying to say- I don’t think it’s what you thought it was, and I can see how it was unclear
Wait, why is raising money your problem here? TFG sells cut up pieces of fabric from a mug shot suit and NFTs to make money…
The only thing I’d relent on is that Dems trusted a Supreme Court decision to confer abortion rights, talk about Dems being dense, why rely on the highest court in the land to set precedent? How funny they couldn’t foresee 6 Republican installed Justices tearing it out decades later, one (Alito) referencing a guy’s treatise from 400 years ago.
Yeah, definitely the same…
I’m not seeing the narrative on Democrats trusting SCOTUS here, Roe was decided in 1973 under the Ford administration. The next Democrat president Jimmy Carter was highly christian & saw only to uphold the law despite disagreeing with it & only viewed expect in the life of the mother. Congress from the 70s-90s still depended on Southern Democrats for any Democratic majority & they were very much opposed to supporting Roe. Even as you get to Bill Clinton he later loses congress to a Republican majority.
Best cases were first term Democratic presidents Clinton & Obama who were both in no position to swing for the fences on large issues that would split their own party(Untested in Obama’s time) & who would both see Republicans sweep majorities in congress at re-election time . We are only at this level of support due to hard work of Democrats over the years to rebuild after losing southern voters but it comes at great risk of losing the Senate. Clinton & Obama use to be able to count Ohio & Florida as blue states.
The game of getting consensus & then even winning a legislative victory is tough out there.
Appreciate you adding this context, I was a child in Clinton’s administration so the nuance escaped me.
I read, before replying, that Dems made very loose efforts to codify but it didn’t get the support (on the same side of the aisle) it should have.
You dropped this /s
It’s a good question. Democrats are the primary force capable of not letting this happen … but they did.
They had the presidency and Congress.
They had the power to hold up the entire legislative agenda until Roe was codified if they wanted.
Instead, they just raised money and did nothing else.
No I didn’t.
I’m honestly surprised you all saw Democrats use Roe repeal to raise money and otherwise didn’t do jack shit to try and stop it even though they had the presidency and control of Congress.