complaints, condescending twatbags, healthcare, law, politicians, politics, rants, social welfare, stupid people, YouTube

Matters of life and death…

The featured photo is of Bill wearing a t-shirt that says in German, “Life is too short to drink shitty beer…” If only that was our biggest problem!

Last night, I had a rather strained chat with Bill. I was feeling kind of fed up and put out, as he told me when his next week long business trip is planned. After twenty years of this, you’d think I’d be used to hanging out alone in big houses. But, to be honest, the older I get, the harder it seems to be for me. I think Arran’s cancer and COVID-19 have made me more eager to get out and do things. I used to be quite content to do things by myself. Not anymore.

Lately, I’ve been thinking that maybe I should take some solo trips. I hate the idea of wasting all this time in Europe, sitting at home with my proverbial thumb up my ass, waiting until we can do stuff together. Sometimes, it really feels like life is passing me by. I was trying to have this conversation with Bill. I could tell he was conflicted. He says he’d worry about my “safety”. Never mind that for thirty years, I pretty much did most things on my own. My own parents didn’t worry very much about my safety.

There was a time when this would be a non-issue. Twenty-one years ago, Bill put me on a plane to Jamaica so I could sing at my sister’s wedding. I got around just fine on my own, and came back safe and sound. But, since we became an official couple, it’s been a rare thing for me to do stuff alone. I know I’m capable and have the time, and we have the money. Maybe he’d like it more if I traveled with a friend, but I don’t have any local friends I want to travel with. The older I get, the more set in my ways I am.

So, we ended the chat without resolving anything. As I was about to fall asleep, I noticed a former co-worker had shared disturbing news out of South Carolina. I looked at the familiar photo of the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia, where I had once jogged regularly. Twenty-one representatives have sponsored a bill in South Carolina that would classify abortion as murder and make anyone who has an abortion eligible for the death penalty.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why people who are supposedly “pro-life” would want to execute other people for having abortions. It’s absolutely batshit nuts to me. Even more crazy is the fact that this bill was authored by Rep. Rob Harris, who is a fucking registered NURSE!!!!! Mr. Harris is also a member of the so-called “Freedom Caucus”– freedom for whom? Probably white, Southern, Protestant Christian, men who aren’t poor.

According to Rolling Stone:

The “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023” would amend the state’s code of laws, redefining “person” to include a fertilized egg at the point of conception, affording that zygote “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state” — up to and including the ultimate punishment: death.  

I went to graduate school at the University of South Carolina. I earned master’s degrees in public health and social work at that university, and worked for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control as a graduate assistant, both in healthcare policy and maternal and child health, and for the Bureau of Epidemiology. Twenty-two years ago, I didn’t get the impression that politics in South Carolina were that batshit crazy. I mean, yes, in the first job I had as a G.A., it was my job to track healthcare legislation.

I remember the controversies being about abstinence education, kangaroo meat (as in it was illegal), and chelation therapy. South Carolina had a big problem with teen pregnancy, as well as child abuse. One of my internships was working with Healthy Families South Carolina, part of Prevent Child Abuse. Because there were a lot of young people having babies they weren’t ready for, there was a big problem with child abuse, and other social ills.

And yet, this idiot Republican Representative Harris wants to put women to death for exercising dominion over their own bodies! It defies logic! And do we really need to imprison more Americans? Will that help them be able to stand on their own feet and pay their own bills in the long run? Will it be helpful for their children? And the answer, of course, is a resounding “NO”!

I don’t think Mr. Harris has a fucking clue about his constituents and what they face, his nursing degree notwithstanding. Not to mention the fact that making people who have abortions eligible for the death penalty will cost a lot of taxpayer money and back up the court system. We don’t even put disgusting child predators like Josh Duggar and Jared Fogle to death for their crimes, but Harris wants to execute women who might want an abortion because of rape or incest or some other, totally private reason? What a sick, misogynistic bastard he is! How in the hell did he go into nursing? ETA: I see that Mr. Harris has just an Associate’s degree. Well, that explains a lot.

I am glad to see that at least Rep. Nancy Mace, who is a Republican, is intelligent enough to speak out against this disturbing trend of criminalizing women for seeking abortion care. I lived in South Carolina, and I know of some of the issues there that its children face. I think Rob Harris needs his head examined and his ass kicked out of politics… and maybe the nursing profession, too. What a colossal anti-woman asshole he is!

I pondered those thoughts as I drifted off to sleep for a couple of hours. Then, this morning, I woke up and watched a video by Jessica Kent, who has a very popular YouTube channel. Jessica Kent famously had a baby while she was incarcerated in an Arkansas prison. She now makes a living producing videos on YouTube, Tik Tok, and the like about her experiences as a prisoner.

This morning, I listened to Jessica talk about a new idea that was proposed within a recent bill in Massachusetts. Lawmakers there have evidently determined that one way to deal with the shortage of donated organs, bone marrow, and human tissues is to offer prison inmates the opportunity to donate theirs in exchange for time off their prison sentences.

On the surface, maybe this seems like a good idea… until you realize that people in prison are already exploited and basically enslaved. And some of those people are also innocent. Should we really be encouraging/coercing them to be living organ donors? Especially since they may not have the best environments for recovering from donating?

A lot of people think of incarcerated as less than human and deserving of whatever inhumane treatment they get… This seems a bridge too far for me.

Besides the potential health risks and ethical dilemmas of such an idea, there’s also a side that I didn’t hear Jessica talk so much about. She says most people in prison aren’t absolutely terrible humans… but there are incarcerated people who are, in fact, very dangerous and belong behind bars. Is it really a good idea to make such a person the reason why another person lives? Can you just imagine what might happen in such a situation? A very manipulative person with no scruples gives up an organ for someone, and then, once they are released, proceeds to find them and manipulate, threaten, and harass them for personal gain. I can see it.

But I think it’s more likely that the opposite will more frequently happen. Someone who is desperate to get out of prison will donate just so they can get out and go home. And there may be significant repercussions for making that decision. I don’t have a problem with allowing inmates to donate organs if it’s their idea, and it’s something they sincerely want to do for humanitarian reasons. Politicians offering a carrot on a stick to them to fix organ shortages and overcrowded prison conditions is something else altogether, and decidedly not right, in my opinion. I think that idea could potentially lead to disaster.

Besides… it appears that the time off the sentence isn’t enough to warrant the donation. There would be no financial incentive, of course, since that’s illegal. And the time off would be at least 60 days, but no more than a year. I think someone’s kidney or part of their liver is worth much more than that. Especially when we consider that, in the future, the people who donate may be very sorry they did so. What happens if the person’s other kidney, for instance, fails or is injured in an accident? What if they get shot or stabbed in the healthy kidney? It’s America, folks. That could really happen.

Then… after I watched Jessica’s video, I realized that my problems are pretty small and not very earth shattering. Yes, I hate sitting here alone for weeks on end, but at least I don’t have to worry about needing an abortion in South Carolina. And I am not, nor are any of my loved ones or friends, sitting in a prison cell anywhere… Even in liberal Massachusetts, prisoners are treated as less than human. And, even though my dog has cancer, and I watch him nervously every day to see if he’s suffering, at this point, he’s still happy to be with us. I don’t have any matters of life or death facing me, at this point in time. Bill will be home tomorrow, too.

So… I guess I’ll end this rant and get on with the day. Practicing guitar is less disturbing than reading the news is.

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controversies, healthcare, law, true crime

Florida attorney argues that fetus is being unjustly jailed…

You know how some people in certain states think that developing fetuses should have all of the rights to personhood that already born people get? I’ve noticed that some people have been doing their best to get over, based on that line of thinking. Personally, I have no qualms with it, since it offends me that some people value the unborn over the already born.

In fact, I laughed pretty hard last summer, when I read about, Brandy Bottone, a pregnant woman in Texas who contested a ticket for driving alone in the HOV lane. According to her, she wasn’t actually alone. I see that Brandy Bottone’s first ticket was dismissed, but then she got another one the following month for the same offense. The cop recognized her and asked when she was having her baby. She told him the baby girl would be born the next day, as he handed her another ticket.

When this situation first occurred, Bottone reportedly wasn’t trying to make a political statement. But then the question of what constitutes actual personhood really did make her wonder. When Roe v. Wade was overturned and Texas adopted very strict laws against abortion, some unintended consequences arose. One of them has to do with crime and punishment. Whether it’s a woman trying to get out of a moving violation citation, or a woman who has been accused of murder trying to get out of jail, denying pregnant people the right to bodily autonomy and acting like a developing fetus has rights means that there will be some new wrinkles in the laws.

Last night, I read another story addressing this phenomenon, when I stumbled across a Huffington Post article about Natalia Harrell, a pregnant woman in Florida who has been jailed since last July. Attorney William Norris filed an emergency petition last week on behalf of his client, Ms. Harrell’s fetus, currently at eight months gestation. Mr. Norris claims the Miami-Dade Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has not provided Ms. Harrell with adequate prenatal care.

Mr. Norris told NBC Miami:

“An unborn child is a person. A person has constitutional rights and one of them is the right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law.”

“I am asserting the right of someone who is a person who has not been considered in the decision to incarcerate his mother.”

According to the Huff Post article I read, Ms. Harrell has not seen an OB-GYN since October. Norris asserts that the corrections department has not provided sufficient prenatal vitamins or nutritious food. Ms. Harrell has not been taken to scheduled doctor’s appointments, and at one point, the pregnant woman was forced to sit in a 100-degree transport van that lacked air conditioning. Norris filed the petition when he was contacted by the baby’s father, who was concerned about his unborn child’s well-being.

Ms. Harrell has been incarcerated without bond since last summer. She’s accused of “fatally shooting fellow Uber passenger Gladys Yvette Borcela amid an argument after a night out in Miami.” Harrell’s trial is set to begin in April; she has pleaded not guilty.

It should come as no surprise that Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has argued for the petition’s dismissal on the grounds that there is no evidence that Ms. Harrell has been mistreated. Officials at the jail have also “disputed the allegations about its care for the inmate, saying in a statement that it’s ‘committed to ensuring all inmates receive professional, timely medical care and all appropriate treatment.'”

However, Mr. Norris reminds us that Ms. Harrell has not yet been convicted of a crime; she has only been accused. He also adds, “she has a stand-your-ground immunity defense that her criminal attorney is going to assert. So her conviction is by no means certain.”

I am not familiar with the incident that put Ms. Harrell behind bars, however, I do think that if states are going to declare the unborn as persons with personhood, Norris’s petition ought to be examined. I know that on the surface of this case, some people will laugh. They want to grant rights to the unborn, as long as it suits their highly controlling and anti-woman agenda. But both the ticket situation and the more serious murder accusation highlight the unintended consequences that have come up since abortion has been pretty much outlawed in some places. An astute attorney is going to challenge the new laws, and rightfully so.

I do, however, have some concern that this kind of legal maneuvering could potentially backfire. More than once, I’ve written about how pregnant people inherently have different civil rights than non-pregnant people have. For instance, if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, and drinking a beer in a restaurant, there is a chance someone might call the police on you.

A few years ago, I blogged about Marshae Jones, a pregnant woman who was jailed because she got in a fight that resulted in her being shot in the stomach. Her baby did not survive. Police reasoned that since the woman hadn’t kept herself out of harm’s way, she was responsible for the unborn fetus’s death. The woman who actually did the shooting, Ebony Jemison, was not indicted; therefore, she remained free, while Jones was jailed and later released on a $50,000 bond. The charges against Jones were eventually dropped, but still, it’s pretty scary how easy it is for pregnant people to wind up incarcerated. And there have been other disturbing cases of women who have been incarcerated because of miscarriage after they’d allegedly done something that put the unborn fetus at risk.

So… what concerns me about Ms. Harrell’s case is that besides the murder charge, she might also be charged with endangering the welfare of a minor, child abuse, or something of that nature. Judging by the comments by MEN on the Facebook post about this story, I can see that a lot of MEN think that Ms. Harrell shouldn’t have any rights because she’s an irresponsible woman who put her unborn baby in danger. But if she’s been jailed since last July, that means she might not have even realized that she was pregnant! Moreover– I must reiterate– she has not yet been convicted. She has only been accused.

I think it’s unsettling to see how gleeful some people are to see others put behind bars. There are so many Americans who seem to rejoice in watching certain people lose their liberties. Personally, I don’t like to think of people rotting in prison, especially when they’re pregnant. Jails and prisons are not good places for anyone to be– especially those who are gestating a baby.

Jessica Kent, a popular YouTube v-logger, has heartbreakingly spelled out what it was like for her to be pregnant when she was in an Arkansas prison. She didn’t know she was pregnant when she got arrested. If you are interested in that subject, I highly recommend watching these two videos…

Jail and prison are not good places to be if you’re pregnant.
This video is HEARTBREAKING.

And again… lots of pro-life MEN, who seem to be very misogynistic and lacking in understanding about why a woman might want or need to have an abortion, are commenting on Ms. Harrell’s story. They’re fine with declaring the unborn a “person with rights” when it comes to putting pregnant women behind bars, but they don’t like to see the same logic used to get women out of legal trouble or released from incarceration. And I’d wager that the VAST MAJORITY of them want and expect the right to privacy when it comes to making their own medical decisions, right?

One particularly prolific Facebook commenter– a man named Nicholas– clearly thinks that late term abortions are very commonly done on a whim. That simply isn’t true; late term abortions are actually very rare. There aren’t very many doctors who will do late term abortions, and the ones who will do them are typically doing them in situations involving tragic medical complications that are no one else’s business. They are very expensive and traumatic, and they involve actually giving birth. So no, they aren’t done for “convenience”.

Moreover, if legislators want to grant rights to the unborn, then they should also make sure that pregnant people have all they need to give birth to healthy babies and be able to raise healthy children. That means access to nutritious food, competent medical care, and adequate rest and exercise for ALL pregnant people– including those who are behind bars. It sounds like Mr. Norris is arguing that his client, by virtue of still being in utero, is being denied his rights as a person– albeit an unborn one at eight months gestation. So yes, it’s good that someone is having a look at this dilemma.

While I don’t know the specifics of Ms. Harrell’s case or whether or not she’s guilty, and I do worry that this case could backfire, I also think that double standards are bullshit. If you want to incarcerate people for crimes against the unborn because they have personhood, you must also consider that the innocent unborn should not be incarcerated for crimes committed by their mothers. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this case.


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complaints, healthcare, law, money, politicians, politics, religion, social media, social welfare

Something I hadn’t thought about here on the “Road to Hell”…

I meant to write about today’s topic yesterday. It was inspired by a New York Times opinion piece I read the other day that pointed out some unintended consequences of our new post Roe v. Wade reality. But I got mired in a contentious Twitter conversation that led me astray and got me so pissed off that I donated money to the pro choice cause. Yesterday, I decided to write about that decision, instead of the new insight I gleaned from that very wise opinion piece, written by Tressie McMillam Cottom, a Black woman who is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, the author of “Thick: And Other Essays” and a 2020 MacArthur fellow. The piece she wrote, titled “Citizens No More”, really drove home some of the ways life for women in the United States could change if we don’t nip this anti-abortion nonsense in the bud.

For a long time, I have been writing about the potential negative health consequences that could arise in the wake of making abortion illegal. What I hadn’t considered, though, is that criminalizing abortion will likely also affect women in the workplace. Tressie McMillam Cottom spelled it all out in her opinion piece. She writes:

I grew up choosing where and how I work because Roe v. Wade gave me many of the same basic rights of personhood as men, for example. Millions of women have, to different degrees, been able to do the same.

I agree. It was the same for me, my entire life. I was born months before abortion became available to all women in the United States. My whole existence, I’ve known that if I ever needed or wanted to have an abortion, I could get one. In fact, I grew up in southeastern Virginia, and I distinctly remember that Hillcrest Clinic, an abortion clinic that opened in Norfolk, Virginia the year after I was born, used to run radio ads on the station I listened to before school every day. I remember hearing the commercials about how a woman could access safe, compassionate care if she wanted to terminate a pregnancy. It was not a big deal to me, because I heard those ads all the time. I never thought twice about them.

Here’s a news clip about the Hillcrest Clinic, an abortion clinic that used to operate in Virginia when I was a young woman.

Then came the 1990s, and I remember reading in the news that abortion clinics were being bombed and doctors who performed abortions were being targeted, harassed, and in at least a couple of instances, murdered. Dr. Barnett Slepian was one abortion provider who was executed in 1998 by a gun toting anti abortion zealot. Another was Kansas physician Dr. George Tiller, who was shot in both arms years before he was finally murdered in 2009. On December 31, 1994, 22 year old John Salvi came into Hillcrest Clinic and opened fire, shattering the doors, but not injuring or killing anyone. The day prior, Salvi had stormed into two abortion clinics in Massachusetts and opened fire, killing two receptionists and wounding multiple clinic employees and volunteers. In many of the violent cases involving abortion providers being assassinated, pro-life zealots justified the killings, claiming they were “saving the unborn babies”. It seems ridiculous to me that highly trained physicians who simply wanted to help women were killed by people claiming to be “pro-life”. But life in the United States is often kind of confusing and odd, isn’t it?

I was a young woman in the 90s. Fortunately, I was not sexually active at the time, and I never had any gynecological issues, so I never needed to consider taking birth control, let alone having an abortion. But I knew that if I ever did need abortion services, and I was still living in Virginia, I could go to the Hillcrest Clinic in Norfolk.

The years went on, and lawmakers did more and more to restrict abortion access and discourage women from ending their pregnancies. They passed new laws, forcing clinics to upgrade their facilities to the point at which they were almost like hospitals. Hillcrest Clinic finally got to a point at which they could no longer operate. Ironically, it was because fewer women needed or wanted to have abortions, probably because they were getting educated about sex and had access to effective contraception. Hillcrest Clinic closed its doors in 2012, after serving the community for about 40 years.

Along came 2002. I finished graduate school and got married. Getting pregnant at a bad time was never an issue for me. But the same could not be said for my peers. I do know some women who did seek abortion care, and none of them have regretted their decision. I know they are living productive lives now, with families they formed when they were ready to be parents.

Now, with this new reality of conservatives trying desperately to force women to give birth, those choices are in jeopardy, even for women who never get pregnant. Tressie McMillam Cottom explains:

With Roe v. Wade toppled, we do not have the same rights in all labor markets. In a global market, an empowered worker is one who can migrate. With Dobbs, women cannot assume that we can safely work in Idaho the same way that we can in Oregon or Washington. I cannot negotiate wages or time off with an employer with the same risk profile as those who cannot become pregnant. An employer who offers lower pay in a state with abortion care indirectly benefits from women’s inability to take our labor on the open market across the nation. Thanks to a rogue court, women’s lives are now more determined by the accidents of our birth than they were a week ago.

Those accidents of birth include circumscribing women’s lives by making them dependent upon corporate beneficence. Some companies, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, immediately issued statements that they would offer reimbursements to employees for traveling for abortion services. The largess of Dick’s and other companies is noteworthy. But it requires women to disclose their health status to a boss they have to hope is well meaning. That says nothing of also hoping that corporate management or leadership does not change. Well-meaning employers can come and go. They also vary in how well meaning they are in terms of pledges of their employee support.

Those two paragraphs made me stop in my tracks. All along, I’d been focusing on health and happiness. It never occurred to me to consider how not being able to access abortion could affect women in the workplace, even in states where abortion access is guaranteed (for now). I also hadn’t considered that the companies who offer women help in getting abortions would also be requiring those women to discuss their private healthcare decisions with their employers. And, as the article also points out, some companies, such as Starbucks, have placed conditions on their offers of assistance. From the article:

 [Starbucks noted that] it cannot guarantee that benefit to workers in unionized stores. Union drives at Starbucks have increased worker power. Many of those workers are women and people who can become pregnant. Potentially attaching support for abortion care to non-unionized labor is a perfect example of why corporations should not be arbiters of human rights.

So basically, people who can get pregnant will have to decide what’s more important to them– access to abortion services, or worker’s rights.

I noticed in the comment section that most people were arguing about the morality of abortions. It seemed that very few had bothered to read Tressie McMillam Cottom’s opinion piece, which I thought was very sobering and kind of scary. I decided to leave a comment that people really should read her piece. If you click the link in this post, you should have free access to the link, as I am a New York Times subscriber and allowed to gift ten articles per month. If you are a person of childbearing age and can get pregnant, you might want to consider what is at stake. It will affect all women who work, unless it’s obvious that you’re beyond childbearing. Then, you’ll just experience age discrimination. 😉

I want to also bring up another alarming news article I read yesterday that complements Tressie McMillam Cottom’s piece. According to the Washington Post, some Republican lawmakers are trying to draft legislation that could block pregnant people from crossing state lines. Again, I’m gifting the link to this article, since I am also a Washington Post subscriber. From the article:

The National Association of Christian Lawmakers, an anti abortion organization led by Republican state legislators, has begun working with the authors of the Texas abortion ban to explore model legislation that would restrict people from crossing state lines for abortions, said Texas state representative Tom Oliverson (R), the charter chair of the group’s national legislative council.

“Just because you jump across a state line doesn’t mean your home state doesn’t have jurisdiction,” said Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel for the Thomas More Society. “It’s not a free abortion card when you drive across the state line.” (Figures it’s a MAN who said this. I hope he goes straight to Hell.)

I read about this development yesterday, after having yet another fruitless discussion with two older pro-life people on Twitter– a man and a woman, both of whom were conservative, and both of whom clearly never really stopped and thought about what eliminating abortion will mean to women, and American society as a whole. The first person who took me on was an obviously conservative man, who basically said that people who get pregnant by accident should be forced to gestate. He was kind enough to allow abortion for rape and incest cases. For everyone else it was, “she made her bed and now she needs to lie in it.”

I noted that he seemed to think pregnancy should be a punishment. He disagreed, arguing that birth control can prevent pregnancies, and “personal responsibility” should trump a gestating person’s right to make healthcare decisions about their own body. I tweeted to him that I didn’t think he’d really thought very long or hard about the abortion issue at all. I could have come up with a laundry list of my concerns, to include healthcare privacy and the fact that women in many states will have to prove their need for certain obstetrical procedures. Instead, I wrote that it doesn’t seem wise to me to force people to be pregnant when they don’t want to be, because it could mean that they won’t take care of their prenatal health. And fetuses would be developing in someone who might be very depressed and unwilling to seek medical care. That could then lead to babies being born with medical conditions that might have been prevented if the pregnant person had simply been more “responsible”.

I won’t even go into the huge list of reasons why this mindset isn’t fair to women. Men seem to forget that their health is never affected by pregnancy. It’s just their livelihoods that are potentially affected. What I was really thinking of, though, is that pregnant folks might soon find themselves in a different class of people, with fewer civil rights. This guy on Twitter was insisting that he didn’t think pregnancy should be a punishment, as he was also clearly pointing out that people should be forced to gestate. And, I’ll bet if I pressed him, asking him what he thought should happen to pregnant women who don’t seek appropriate medical care (which, of course, they would have to pay for), he would say the women should go to jail. Sounds pretty punishing to me. Now, granted, he didn’t actually say that during our discussion– which went on for much too long– but I’ll bet money that he would get there. Americans seem to LOVE to see people go to prison.

This isn’t an empty threat. I looked up forced prenatal care yesterday. It has happened. The link leads to one case from 2000, but there are others, and that Washington Post link I provided is about how some extremists would like to make it illegal for pregnant people to cross state lines. That sounds very punitive to me, and it would likely discourage people from seeking medical care. Another unintended consequence is that there will be some women who will stop having sex with people– particularly men– who can get them pregnant. I’ve already seen at least one Reddit thread from a man who is upset that his girlfriend is on a sex strike because of the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

In an earlier blog post, I shared Jessica Kent’s very distressing video about her experience giving birth while she was incarcerated in Arkansas. If we don’t do something about these wackos who are trying to criminalize abortion, there will be more women who experience the hell of being pregnant behind bars. It won’t be good for women OR those precious babies. And, things are already getting shitty in Texas. Yesterday, I watched this woman’s heartbreaking video about the horrible trauma she experienced, trying to take care of her miscarriage in Texas last year.

This video is absolutely horrifying. My heart breaks for her. She had a lot of trouble accessing prenatal care, too.
Sharing this again for those who missed it. This could be a reality for many more women if the pro-life zealots get their way.

The other person who engaged me yesterday was an older woman who had many of the same arguments the man did. She was very condescending to me, and kept preaching about personal responsibility. I didn’t tell her that I was SUPER responsible when I was younger. I was a virgin until two weeks after my wedding day, and was 30 years old when I finally had sex for the first time… with a man who’d had a vasectomy. I also didn’t tell her about my background.

But toward the end of our chat, she wrote that she has a four year old granddaughter who was conceived accidentally. Her granddaughter is the light of her life. And you know, that’s really lovely. I’m happy for her. I wrote that I hoped her granddaughter never needed to have an abortion, which is sometimes necessary for health reasons. And I hoped that her granddaughter wouldn’t lose some of her healthcare privacy rights, due to her sex. The woman wrote back that my concerns about healthcare privacy were “ridiculous”. All I can do is shake my head… as Randy Newman sings, “I’m dead, but I don’t know it…” I think that observation would apply to this woman’s brain.

Clever song. I think this could be the state of women’s healthcare privacy and freedom very soon.

But instead of sharing the link to Randy Newman’s song, I wrote that my concerns about privacy are NOT ridiculous, and a lot of us are very concerned about it, and with good reason. Then I bid her a good night, because I was tired of tweeting in circles and felt my time would be more productively spent cleaning the lint out of my belly button or something.

Well… I could go on. I am kind of rueing exploring Twitter, because now I get exposed to some real twits besides Bill’s ex wife. But at least it gives me another source for my blog, right? And since I mentioned Ex… here are a couple of her most recent comments. I could start a blog that focuses on the inanity of Ex’s Twitter feed. For your amusement…

My daughter is 19, a HUGE fan of yours(read your book), along with TMNT; she wants to be a voice actress more that ANYTHING! Rob, how can I encourage her? I can’t afford acting school in NY, though she was accepted! Please, any advice for a mom who just wants to support a dream?!

Omg … my eyes…. My ears… make it stop! It’s like reliving the day I sang “If” by Bread in 1981 at a school talent show with, literally, the sweetest and kindest guy in the world! Except, alas, it was never to be… still love him with all my heart!!

She once sang “The Sweetest Thing” by Juice Newton to Bill. To this day, he can’t abide that song.

So ends today’s rantings. Hope it provides food for thought.

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true crime

An update on an old true crime story…

In October 2013, when Bill and I were still living in Texas, I spontaneously wrote a blog entry about a memory from my days at Longwood University (then Longwood College). I reposted that entry in 2020, and it still frequently gets hits. When I look on Google, I see that my post is at the top of search results about Frederick West Greene, a man who, along with a “friend”, murdered a classmate over an insult, buried him, and didn’t tell a soul what happened until a couple of years had passed. I wouldn’t have known anything about Greene if not for a chance encounter when I was in college in the spring of 1992.

A friend of mine introduced me to her cute male friend from her high school in tiny Franklin, Virginia. His name was West, and he was a cadet at Virginia Military Institute, which was at that time still an all male college. My dad was a VMI graduate, as was my uncle and several of my cousins. Several family members worked at VMI back in the day, too, although no one does now. That may be why I paid particular attention to my friend’s friend. I recall that she really seemed to like West very much.

On August 14, 1992, then 20 year old Greene was arrested and charged with capital murder, robbery, and use of a firearm. Greene and his friend, Michael Jervey, fatally shot their 17 year old classmate Trent Whitley, then buried him on a farm owned by Jervey’s parents. For two years, no one knew what happened to Whitley. But Mr. Jervey eventually confessed to the crime. Two days later, Greene was arrested.

I remember my friend talking about it. She was in utter shock and disbelief, as the gruesome details about her former friend and classmate came out to the public. I remember her saying, her voice filled with anguish, “How could he do that?” I didn’t know it at the time, but she had spent a lot of time alone with this man who was a murderer. There’s no doubt in my mind that she realized he was capable of anything. I’m sure it made her blood run cold to think about it. It’s entirely possible that she could have been one of his victims, under certain circumstances.

Below is a newspaper clipping from VMI’s student newspaper about Greene’s arrest when it happened.

Wow… the years have passed so fast…

I am not close to the case involving Greene. I’m not from Franklin. I just happened to know one of West’s high school classmates, who went to college with me. I have a mind that stows memories very efficiently, and I like to write about things that happened long ago. Maybe it’s my way of preserving the past. My days at Longwood were pretty good, most of the time. I still have many friends from that time in my life, and I even still talk to some of my old professors. I find true crime a fascinating subject, too. That’s really the only reason I brought up West Greene on my blog. I’m glad I wrote that post, since it got me back in touch with my old classmate. We’re still in touch now, even though she eschews Facebook (good for her). She does follow this case closely, because she still lives near Franklin, and many people there know the families and victim involved in this crime.

Google tells me that Greene’s father, Frederick West Greene, Jr., died January 18, 2019. Greene’s father, who went by the name Fred, was himself employed as a warden at one of Virginia’s many prisons. He was living in Brevard, North Carolina when he passed.

Recently, my friend let me know that Mr. Greene was recently released from prison on parole. I see from a cursory Google search, Greene was granted release on May 11, 2019. Although Greene was sentenced to a long prison stint, and Virginia abolished parole consideration for felonies committed in 1995 or later, Greene’s crimes were committed before 1995. Virginia now requires felons to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences, but parole is still granted in some situations. He now lives in Brunswick, North Carolina, and on January 4, 2022, was charged with assault by strangulation. His mugshot appears here. It appears that Greene still has some violent tendencies. It surprises me that Greene was allowed out of prison in Virginia, and that he is evidently still free in North Carolina after allegedly committing a violent crime. How is this not a violation of Greene’s parole?

I’ve learned from watching Jessica Kent’s excellent YouTube videos about her prison experiences that ex-cons have to adhere to strict conditions to stay out of prison. She has said on more than one occasion that if she messes up, she can easily land right back in the pokey. Jessica Kent actually comes across as a pretty good person, even though she’s been in prison. How is it that she has to walk a straight and narrow path, but that evidently doesn’t apply to every felon? I mean, Jessica didn’t kill anyone. West Greene did. But apparently, he’s out. I can’t explain it, but I will be watching to see what happens.

I would like to write more, but there isn’t a lot about this case open right now. Since I live in Europe, I have to use a VPN to access the old articles from my hometown paper, the Daily Press, and I don’t have a VPN set up on this computer. Suffice to say, I was surprised Greene was released. My friend says it’s possible he got out for compassionate reasons, as evidently his mother was very ill. Generally speaking, I am for humane treatment of people in prison. I think we have too many incarcerated people in the United States. But… I do draw the line at violent criminals who are unrepentant and liable to reoffend. I don’t know the circumstances of Greene’s recent arrest, but it does appear that he was arrested for being violent. I pray for the safety of those around him.

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law, Police, slut shamers

Woman takes pill on live television to de-stigmatize abortion…

Things continue to get weirder and weirder in the United States. A few months ago, Texas lawmakers passed a draconian bill that practically bans all abortions after six weeks’ gestation. Others states have jumped on the anti-abortion bandwagon, doing their best to outlaw what many women consider an important and fundamental right to have dominion over their own bodies. And yet, 49 years after Roe v. Wade allowed pregnant women to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, some people are still trying so very hard to rescind that right.

I have never made it a secret that I am pro-choice. I’m grateful that I’ve never been in a situation in which I’ve needed to consider having an abortion. At this point in my life, my need to be concerned about abortion on a personal level is pretty much over. I won’t ever be pregnant. I doubt I would have chosen to have an abortion, but I can’t say for certain that I wouldn’t have. I know women who are wonderful, loving mothers who have made that choice. I don’t think any less of them for choosing abortion. It’s none of my business. And as someone who has often felt unwanted and unwelcome, I might even say that given a choice, I might have even preferred it if my mom had made that decision when she was pregnant with me. I do know for a fact that I wouldn’t have been any the wiser. I simply would not have existed.

This morning over breakfast, Bill and I were talking about a news story that made national headlines yesterday— it was about a woman who took an abortion pill as she was debating abortion on Fox News. I suddenly realized that not only am I “pro-choice”… I could say that I’m actually rabidly pro-choice. I feel like it’s a personal decision that should always and only be made by the one “already born” person who will be directly affected by the pregnancy in question.

Pro-choice activist, Jex Blackmore, stuns when she takes a mail order abortion pill during a debate.

Detroit area pro-choice activist and former Satanic Temple spokesperson, Jex Blackmore, was squaring off with pro-life activist and attorney, Rebecca Kiessling, on Fox News 2’s segment, Let it Rip, when she took the little white pill that she said would “end a pregnancy.” Blackmore said, as she was arguing for the safety of mail order abortion pills, “I want to show you how easy it is, how safe it is, by taking it myself.” She held up the small white pill– mifepristone– which, when combined with a second pill– misoprostol– is used to end pregnancies before ten weeks’ gestation.

Blackmore stammered a little bit as she explained the pill to the host of the show, Charlie Langton, telling him that the pill is very safe and allows people to end their pregnancies in private. Then, Blackmore casually took the pill on live television, swallowing it with water.

Langton looked shocked and bewildered as he asked, “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

To that, Blackmore said, “I would say that this is going to end a pregnancy. This would be my third abortion.”

Take that, Rebecca.

The camera then panned to lawyer and pro-life activist, Rebecca Kiessling, whose eyebrows raised and face registered shock and disgust. Then, Rebecca started talking… her part of the video is not very clear, like she didn’t have a good Internet connection. It’s funny to me that Kiessling’s part of the debate was muddled, while Jex Blackmore’s part came through clear as a bell. It’s almost as if there was a divine intervention. Then, at the end of the debate on Fox News, Blackmore shared a Web site where viewers can access the abortion pills, which were recently and permanently approved for mail order by the Food and Drug Administration.

Blackmore later said that she decided to take the pill on television to help de-stigmatize abortion. Frankly, given that this was her third abortion, it’s clear that she doesn’t want to be a mother right now. I think that forcing someone like Blackmore to give birth would be ill advised. She is very nonchalant about taking the pill on television, which tells me that if she got pregnant, and was forced to remain pregnant, she would likely be just as cavalier about safeguarding the health of the developing fetus. And what would pro-lifers choose to do about that? Is it humane to a developing fetus to force it to grow in the womb of an unwilling person? Especially since the personal choices pregnant people make have a direct and potentially disastrous effect on the development of the fetus?

We can’t even offer affordable and accessible healthcare to people who have already been born. How can we force people like Jex Blackmore to take care of themselves in support of a developing baby? The answer is, we can’t… at least not without depriving them of their civil rights. I truly hope the United States doesn’t go down that dark, dystopian, Handmaid’s Tale road. What would stop Jex Blackmore from doing things that would harm the developing fetus? And do we really want to live in a country where people who are pregnant have different civil rights than everybody else does?

I’ll be honest. It does disturb me a little bit to hear that this was Blackmore’s third abortion. Personally, I would be trying not to get pregnant in the first place. Obviously, she doesn’t see pregnancy the way I might see it. Given that she is so relaxed about the process of taking the abortion pill, I think it’s best that she doesn’t gestate against her will. I also want to make it very clear that I’m not judging her, either. I don’t know anything about her or what her life is like. This absolutely should be her choice, and it should not be anyone else’s business. When I look at the outrage and disgust on Rebecca Kiessling’s face as another woman makes a personal choice with which she disagrees, I wonder if she even cares about Jex Blackmore as a person, rather than just a vessel for a developing fetus. Below is a screenshot of Kiessling’s public Facebook post:

Except it wasn’t yet a “baby”, Rebecca. At under ten weeks gestation, it was still an embryo… and it was not at a stage where it looked like a baby. And given your clear distaste for Jex’s “satanic” proclivities, why would you want to force her to bring a baby into the world? You obviously find her disgusting.

Let’s be real. The “abortion pill” is a hell of a lot safer than a coat hanger is in ending pregnancies. If people are really “pro-life”, they should absolutely care about the health, safety, and well-being of already born people ahead of potentially born people. And they should consider the potential consequences of trying to force someone who doesn’t want to be pregnant to gestate that fetus that they pretend to care so much about. I think it’s much more humane for everyone involved to allow safe and early pregnancy terminations, than deny abortions to those who want them and will stop at nothing to get them.

I care more about people who have already been born and are living outside of the womb. Of course, I would prefer it if people who don’t want to get pregnant could just avoid getting pregnant. But that’s not always possible. Sometimes people get pregnant against their wills. Sometimes people want to be pregnant, but need to have an abortion for medical reasons. Sometimes the developing fetus has a condition that would make being born cruel. There are so many life situations that people find themselves in that would make them consider terminating a pregnancy. None of those situations are my business, since I am not directly affected by them. I don’t think it’s right to judge people for making such a personal decision.

So, while I don’t think I’m like Jex Blackmore, and I don’t think I would make the choices she’s made, I stand for her to be able to safely end her pregnancies if she chooses. And while taking the “abortion” pill on live television may seem callous and cavalier to many people, when it comes right down to it, all she did was take a pill. She might as well have been taking aspirin. It’s a non-issue. I’d much rather see her do that, than throw herself down a flight of stairs, or see some back alley butcher, or have someone punch her in the stomach a few times… or use a coat hanger.

I do think it’s interesting, though, that so many people who are against abortion are Republicans. Do they not realize that Romania, a notoriously communist country banned abortions during the Ceausescu era? The end result of that campaign was a lot of sick babies, horribly neglected in orphanages, tragically some of whom could not bond with other people because they were not properly cared for when they were infants. The babies grew up to be adults who, if they were lucky, simply couldn’t love others. If they weren’t lucky, they ended up criminals. It also resulted in very high maternal mortality rates, and people facing prison sentences if they dared to even try to get an abortion or aided and abetted in someone getting one.

So many Republicans are totally against paying for social welfare safety nets. Do they not realize that forcing people to give birth will contribute to poverty? Would they really like to see more people needing government assistance? Or are they thinking that a woman who is poor should be forced to give up her baby to a more affluent, cisgender adoptive couple, again, a la Handmaid’s Tale? Who gets to decide that for them? I thought Republicans were for smaller government and more personal freedom. Apparently they don’t necessarily like less government interference if the person wanting freedom is a woman in her childbearing years.

Also… what should we do with pregnant people who either can’t or refuse to properly take care of themselves? Arrest them and put them in jail? Have Republicans considered how jail and prison affect the health and welfare of pregnant women and their developing fetuses? For those who wonder what it’s like to be pregnant while locked up– in the South, no less– have a look at Jessica Kent’s video below.

Prison is not a safe place to be pregnant.

Or this shorter video about a woman in Minnesota who had to give birth while incarcerated…

Jeez… this is so sad. But at least she got out of jail sixteen days later.

Granted, these two women were not incarcerated because they were wanting abortions. But if we criminalize abortion, their stories could become a lot more common.

So… count me among those who is in favor of the abortion pill, and allowing people to make these choices safely and uninhibited by “big brother” governments run by anti-women politicians. And while I might not necessarily agree with someone’s choice to have an abortion, I also realize that it should be the pregnant individual’s decision alone, since it’s their body, and they will be the one who is most affected by the choice they make. I think Jex Blackmore showed tremendous chutzpah, taking that pill on live television… especially given that it was Fox News. And the savage part of me delights in watching Rebecca Kiessling figuratively clutching her pearls over that decision, as she asks people to “pray”. Obviously, her opinions are mostly formed by religion, which is yet another thing that not everyone embraces. And thank God for that. 😉

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