complaints, condescending twatbags, politicians, politics, poor judgment

Your next fetus could be the POTUS, therefore abortions should be outlawed…

The featured photo is a screenshot of Garrett Soldano and his corn fed Michigan smile…

Last night, as I was preparing to go to sleep, I took a look at the Recovery from Mormonism messageboard to see if anyone had posted anything interesting. Sure, enough, someone posted a link to an article about a Republican from Michigan who hopes to be the next governor.

The man in question, Garrett Soldano, is facing some heat because of a comment he made regarding sexual assault survivors who get pregnant. Mr. Soldano, obviously rabidly pro-life, said to April Moss on her conservative Face the Facts podcast:

“And so what we must start to focus on is not only to defend the DNA when it’s created, but, however, how about we start inspiring women in the culture to let them understand and know how heroic they are? And how unbelievable that they are?”

“That God put them in this moment and they don’t know that little baby inside them may be the next president, maybe the next person who changes humanity, may get us out of the situation in the future,” Soldano added, per a video of the conversation that Heartland Signal tweeted Monday. “We must always, always protect that DNA and allow it to have a voice.”

Sigh… I wonder if it’s ever crossed Garrett Soldano’s mind that telling people that their developing fetus might grow up to be a President of the United States might not be a comfort? Especially since some presidents turn out to be corrupt, cruel, and power mad, and they openly try to overthrow the government… Also, while a pregnant person may very well be gestating someone great, the opposite could also be true. What if, for instance, Charles Manson had been aborted? Or perhaps Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot… or Vladimir Putin?

Fuck this guy. He’s not saying anything we haven’t heard, but it’s surprising how tone deaf his views are about women and sexual assault. I’m glad he doesn’t have any daughters.

Of course, even if those infamous men had been aborted, it’s likely that other people just as horrible might have been born in their places. The truth is, every person is unique, and you just never know what you’re going to get when you make a baby. But one thing is for certain. A fetus conceived in rape can, and probably will, traumatize its mother. I might be able to agree that it’s not the fetus’s fault it was conceived in an act of violence, and there is the potential that the fetus may wind up being a blessing to all. However, I still maintain that Soldano, as a cisgender male, will never have to worry about the burden of gestating a baby, so he probably ought to be much quieter about this particular issue.

Apparently, Soldano the 100 percent “pro-lifer”, decided to open his mouth about how pregnant rape victims should not get abortions because his mentor, who was adopted, found out that his birth mother had been gang raped in a subway station. According to NBC News:

It kind of like tore out his heart when he found that out, but then he started to really appreciate and understand what his birth mother went through, that she had the courage to deliver him,” Soldano said, adding that his mentor went on to help thousands of people improve their lives.

Given Soldano’s brand of “help”, I wonder if everyone agrees that his mentor had helped people improve their lives. And also, I wonder if the reason his mentor’s birth mother was so “courageous”, was because she couldn’t access abortion services. Abortion wasn’t legal everywhere when I was born in 1972. It wasn’t until the following year that Roe v Wade was decided by the Supreme Court. I’m not even in menopause yet, so I assume it’s likely that Soldano’s mentor’s birth mom might not have had the option to terminate. Not surprisingly, a lot of people are truly “sickened” by Soldano’s comments, which come across as very Handmaid’s Tale.

State Senator Erika Geiss rightly responded:

“We should be inspiring women who’ve been raped to press charges & we should have a system that takes them seriously,” Geiss tweeted. “We should have a world where men don’t think they’re entitled to women’s bodies. We should have a world where ppl respect #ReproRights.

Word. Guys like Garrett Soldano are surprisingly, and apparently hopelessly, out of sync with the other half of the population who can get pregnant and don’t want to be forced to birth for any reason, but ESPECIALLY after a sexual assault. I don’t think Mr. Soldano has even considered just how truly horrifying and devastating sexual assault is. He’s never even thought about it, has he? I’ll bet he’s one of those guys who think that women should just lay back and relax when they are attacked by men, since sex is supposed to be “fun”. I’m just shaking my damn head at this… I’ll never understand the psyche of some men. It’s just revolting. He probably also thinks that rape doesn’t often result in pregnancy, since, as the late Representative Todd Akin once said during his 2012 Senate campaign that “legitimate rape” rarely results in pregnancy. Akin said “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

I’m so sick of clueless men running for office and getting elected. I would be grateful that I don’t live in Michigan, but alas, I am a Texas resident, and the stupidity of male conservative politicians regarding abortion is even worse down there…

What a smarmy idiot. He hits all of the hot button conservative issues, just like all of the others do. YAWN.

Just for shits and giggles, I turned on Ms. Moss’s video. April Moss is a former meteorologist who left her job at CBS 62 Detroit last year because she disagreed with pandemic mitigation measures. Right off the bat, she thanks Mike Lindell, the famous drug addict turned My Pillow Guy. Lindell is a hero to Trump supporters, of course, and he was all about keeping Trump in power, even though Trump tried to overthrow the government. But then Moss brings on Garrett Soldano, her super conservative guest, who says that the liberals are ruining the country and he wants to fix that.

Soldano says that Gretchen Whitmer “must be stopped”, and that “critical race theory” is “absolute hot garbage”. He wants to “take our schools back”… and it sounds a lot like Mr. Soldano is all about freedom, as long as it’s freedom for white, conservative, religious (Christian) people like him. I should mention that his family homeschools, so obviously his children aren’t being “poisoned” by their teachers’ influences. (eye roll) It sounds to me like he’d prefer children to be taught by robots.

So then I visited Garrett Soldano’s official Web site, where users are invited to text “Freedom” to 33339 to join. Next, I see he’s modeling himself after Donald Trump, with a “drain the swamp” promise. I think Mr. Soldano would do well to realize that Trump was defeated and impeached twice. Some people still think Trump is awesome, but a lot of people think he’s a dangerous psychopath. Maybe it would be better for up and comers to present themselves as a bit less like Trump. But also… it’s disingenuous for a politician to use the word “freedom” as he proposes that pregnant people should be forced to birth.

In April Moss’s podcast, Soldano mentions that he doesn’t care if people get vaccinated against COVID-19, and he wants to get rid of the mask and vaccine mandates. So he’s yet another one of those conservative “freedom loving” guys who cares a hell of a lot about freedom, but only as it applies to people like him. And he conveniently ignores that the COVID-19 mandates aren’t just an issue in the United States. The pandemic is a worldwide thing that has nothing to do with conservatives or liberals in the United States. Unfortunately, I don’t think the average Trump lover thinks about issues beyond his or her own backyard.

Garrett Soldano who waxes poetic about his impoverished upbringing as the son of a school bus driver and an Army dad, is a chiropractor. He’s also written a book called God’s True Law, which is a guide to raising successful children. I wonder what qualifies him to write such a book. It doesn’t sound like he’s a very experienced or evolved person, and he’s just parroting the same shit we’ve heard from all of the other Trump clones. But at least he hasn’t yet bragged about grabbing anyone by the pussy…

Well… I suppose I’ve complained enough about this. Time to get on with the day. It’s Thursday, which means I have to vacuum. But my copy of Maus arrived yesterday, so maybe I’ll start reading that. Hope everyone has a good day. Tomorrow, my sweetass will be home again. I just hope Garrett Soldano doesn’t get elected, but given that the Michigan race for the governor’s seat is so crowded, he’s probably going to be left in the proverbial dust. But then, I thought the same thing about Donald Trump, back in 2015…

Standard
healthcare, law

One brave Texas physician has already defied the new abortion ban…

The featured photo was taken at a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio, where Bill and I lived before we moved back to Germany, and where our absentee ballot votes go when it’s election time.

Abortion is probably the last thing I want to write about today. That’s why I reposted four book reviews. Trust me… this is a topic I’m getting really tired of revisiting over and over again. I feel like this issue should have been settled about fifty years ago. But it’s hot news right now, and too many people seem to think it’s right to deny women this basic right to determine what happens to their own bodies. So here I am, writing about this again…

Actually, today’s post may be a bit more upbeat than outraged. One of the first news items I read this morning was in the Washington Post. It was about San Antonio based OB-GYN Dr. Alan Braid, who wrote an op-ed about how, on September 6, 2021, he violated Texas’s new abortion ban law. A woman received an abortion from him. Although she was still in her first trimester, she was further along in the pregnancy than six weeks. According to the article:

“I understand that by providing an abortion beyond the new legal limit, I am taking a personal risk, but it’s something I believe in strongly,” Alan Braid, a San Antonio OB/GYN, said in an op-ed in The Washington Post. “I have daughters, granddaughters and nieces. I believe abortion is an essential part of health care. . . . I can’t just sit back and watch us return to 1972.”

As I read that part of the article, all I could think of was– wow… what a BRAVE man. This is a man who cares about women and women’s health. He’s put himself at great risk. I would say that not only is his career at risk, but his very life could be at risk. He practices medicine in a state where just about anyone is allowed to carry a gun, and there are many religious nuts running amok.

I had to read Dr. Braid’s op-ed for myself, so I clicked the link in the article I read about it. In his opinion piece, Dr. Braid explains that he started practicing medicine on July 1, 1972. I was eleven days old on the day Dr. Braid began taking care of women’s health. I will be 50 on my next birthday. This is a man who has been in his field for a LONG time, and has seen and done a lot.

Dr. Braid graduated from the University of Texas medical school, and during his time as a med student, he was taught that abortions are an “integral part” of women’s health care. However, when he began practicing, abortions were effectively outlawed. It was only legal for a pregnant woman to get one if a psychiatrist certified that she was suicidal. I find that limitation curious, given that some women have medical issues that would also call for terminating a pregnancy for the sake of her health.

In those days, if a woman wanted an abortion, Dr. Braid would advise her to travel to a state where abortion was legal– California, New York, or Colorado. Some would go over the border to Mexico, which incidentally just recently decriminalized abortion. That’s interesting, isn’t it? It used to be, people from Mexico would come to the United States for medical care; but now, thanks to the extremely high prices of medical care and ridiculous laws such as Texas’s S.B. 8, Mexico may soon see more American women coming into the country for medical care.

As of September 1, 2021, Dr. Braid found himself in a similar situation that he faced in 1972. A 42 year old woman came to see him. She was pregnant, though she already had four children, three of whom were under age 12. Dr. Braid told her she should go to Oklahoma, a nine hour trip one way. He even told her he could help with the funding. The woman said, “Who’s going to take care of my kids? What about my job? I can’t miss work.”

Dr. Braid wrote:

Though we never ask why someone has come to our clinic, they often tell us. They’re finishing school or they already have three children, they’re in an abusive relationship, or it’s just not time. A majority are mothers. Most are between 18 and 30. Many are struggling financially — more than half qualify for some form of financial aid from us.

Several times a month, a woman confides that she is having the abortion because she has been raped. Sometimes, she reports it to the police; more often, she doesn’t.

Texas’s new law makes no exceptions for rape or incest.

And I have noticed that Texas is also doing nothing to help pregnant women, either. I have not read or heard of any child or family friendly policies being put into place to help pregnant women get the care they need. I have not heard for a push for better sex education or making contraception widely available, easily affordable, and accessible to everyone. I have heard a lot of slut shaming, though.

Yesterday, I read another article about this new law. The focus was on Johnathan Mitchell, the main architect of this legislation that violates women’s self-determination and privacy. Mr. Mitchell is a graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois, a very conservative Christian school. I knew about it before I heard about Mitchell, since I once worked with a guy who attended there. It was back in the 1990s. I remember my co-worker was very smart, even though he was selling ice cream at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia. He was also VERY Christian. Anyway, I digress… except to say that I know Wheaton College is a prestigious, selective school, but it’s also a school for Christians.

Mr. Mitchell wrote, in a brief for the Supreme Court:

“Women can ‘control their reproductive lives’ without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse… One can imagine a scenario in which a woman has chosen to engage in unprotected (or insufficiently protected) sexual intercourse on the assumption that an abortion will be available to her later. But when this court announces the overruling of Roe, that individual can simply change their behavior in response to the court’s decision if she no longer wants to take the risk of an unwanted pregnancy.”

Based on this comment, I’m assuming that Mitchell doesn’t believe that women can get pregnant as a result of rape and incest. I’m guessing he’s akin to Missouri Republican Todd Akin, who famously said “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Did either of these two men ever take a biology class? Have either or them ever studied sex education? Sure, women sometimes get pregnant because they, or their partners, or both parties were “careless”. But not all sexual intercourse is consensual and, in spite of what these men seem to believe, sometimes women DO end up pregnant afterwards.

Aside from that, sometimes pregnancy makes women very sick. Sometimes it even threatens their lives. I don’t understand why, in the age of healthcare privacy laws such as HIPAA, a woman should have to justify her need or desire for an abortion to anyone. But I haven’t heard or seen any provisions in the new Texas law that allows for that scenario, either. Instead, the law encourages neighbors to spy on each other and file lawsuits in healthcare situations that absolutely none of their business. What makes this law even more sickening is the fact that the people might theoretically sue haven’t suffered a personal loss due to a woman’s decision to have an abortion. But, by suing, they may stand to gain a financial incentive, which seems very unethical to me.

I will admit, however, that Mr. Mitchell is certainly correct that a woman can “refrain” (I hate that word) from having sexual intercourse. And, quite frankly, it would serve the men of Texas right if women went on a sex strike and denied them that pleasure. In fact, I hope Mitchell isn’t having sex and never does again. If I were his wife, I would certainly keep my legs closed around him. He should be deeply ashamed of himself.

In another article I read about this issue, author Chavi Eve Karkowsky writes:

“Every week, I see examples of morally necessary pregnancy terminations that, under the Texas law, could put doctors in legal jeopardy. In one case, a 14-year-old with brain damage had been raped by a caregiver. In another, my diagnostic ultrasound 15 weeks into a patient’s pregnancy showed that her fetus had developed an empty space where a brain should be and would not survive more than a few hours past birth. In another case, a patient, whose heart had become weak during her previous pregnancy and had never fully recovered, sought an abortion so she could live to care for her toddler.”

Can you even imagine? Can you fathom being a woman in any of those situations? Or a doctor? It’s sickening.

I totally get that many people find abortion distasteful and morally wrong. I find it distasteful, too. It’s probably not a choice I would make for myself, but I can’t say I would never make it. Because there are situations when it really is the right thing to do. I am lucky enough to be in a situation in which I could go elsewhere for an abortion if I needed one. I am also at a point in my life at which I won’t be affected by potential pregnancies.

However, this new law does open up a Pandora’s Box that could affect other people besides women of childbearing age. Who’s to say that, based on this precedent, lawmakers don’t try to screw with people’s healthcare privacy in other areas? What if a law was designed to deny vasectomies to men? What if we incentivized private citizens into reporting on the men who want vasectomies by offering a $10,000 bounty? That’s just one example off the top of my head. The same theory could easily extend into other controversial areas… say, gender reassignment therapy, or marijuana use, or euthanasia… I’m sure I could think of more if I tried.

Anyway, my hat is off to Dr. Alan Braid. I think he’s a hero. This may be one of the most lifesaving actions he’s ever taken in his entire medical career. I know he’s a good man. I knew it when I read this comment from him:

I have daughters, granddaughters and nieces. I believe abortion is an essential part of health care. I have spent the past 50 years treating and helping patients. I can’t just sit back and watch us return to 1972.”

What a dedicated, brave, inspirational, kind, and excellent doctor Dr. Alan Braid is. He deserves all of the respect and all of the support that is coming to him.

Standard