#abortion action missouri

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Anna Spoerre at Missouri Independent:

A campaign to enshrine abortion rights in Missouri’s constitution said Friday that it collected more than 380,000 signatures in just three months, more than twice the likely total needed to qualify for this year’s statewide ballot.  The coalition, called Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, is hoping to put on the November ballot a measure that would legalize abortion up to the point of fetal viability. Since June 2022, nearly every abortion has been illegal in the state with the exception of medical emergencies. 

In order to put a citizen-led constitutional amendment before voters, the campaign had to collect signatures from 8% of voters in six of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. That total equates to more than 171,000 signatures.  The campaign on Friday morning announced they officially turned in 380,159 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State’s office. A breakdown of how many signatures came from each district, which will ultimately determine if they met the threshold needed to qualify, was not provided. But the coalition said they collected signatures from each of Missouri’s counties and congressional districts. “Hundreds of thousands of Missourians are now having conversations about abortion and reproductive freedom; some are sharing their own abortion stories for the very first time; and all are ready to do whatever it takes to win at the ballot box this year,” Mallory Schwarz, executive director of Abortion Action Missouri and spokesperson for Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, said in a statement. “Together, we are going to end Missouri’s abortion ban.”  

The effort kicked off 90 days ago, requiring a massive undertaking to reach the May 5 signature deadline. The coalition is led by Abortion Action Missouri, the ACLU of Missouri and Planned Parenthood affiliates in Kansas City and St. Louis. [...] Around the same time the abortion campaign was announced, a separate coalition organized to oppose them. That group, called Missouri Stands with Women, spent the past few months leading a “decline to sign” campaign, urging people not to sign the initiative petition. So far, they’ve been vastly out-fundraised by Missourians for Constitutional Freedom. “Out-of-state Big Abortion supporters think the fight is over,” Stephanie Bell, with Missouri Stands With Women, said in a statement Friday. “They could not be more wrong when it comes to standing up for life in Missouri.”

With more than 380,000 signatures across the state of Missouri submitted, despite harassment from anti-abortion extremists with their "decline to sign" intimidation campaign, the pro-abortion rights Missourians for Constitutional Freedom group is highly confident that their ballot measure will qualify for the November ballot.

[archiveofkloss]

april 1, 2024 / st. louis, missouri

karlie kloss and her family joined missourians for constitutional freedom and abortion action missouri today to collect signatures for reproductive rights and abortion access 🤍

[sirfrogsworth]

I was hoping this election would be a wake up call to the Left. I thought maybe people would start to realize we need to stop eating each other and organize and build power.

But I feel like it made things worse. Hopefully that is just a trauma response and we'll get our shit together eventually, but I am disheartened by the current infighting.

I'm also seeing people recommending guns. The reason the NRA didn't want the CDC to study gun violence is because they know guns aren't actually that great for self defense. And you are more likely to be the victim of your own gun than to stop any violence from harming you. One study showed a gun is about as effective as literally doing nothing.

Then I see people talking about "revolutionary organizing" and my first thought was that leftists would all end up just shooting each other.

We have the best ideas. I believe that very much. When you present lefty ideas to regular folks in their simplest form—without mentioning Marx or using stigmatized buzzwords—people are like, "wow, that sounds great!" Even Missouri voted for abortion and raising the minimum wage despite re-electing Josh Fucking Hawley.

Our ideas are our power. We need to stop fighting each other and start talking to people about how these ideas can help them. We need local representatives. We need to start running for city council, school boards, and state government.

All we have left is the long game. It's time to stop demanding performative action that has no tangible benefits and start playing that long game.

[mariacallous]

The overturning of Roe v. Wade and this term’s Supreme Court abortion cases have understandably kept attention riveted on abortion. But while the abortion battle rages on, people are losing sight of the second front of the war to secure women’s reproductive autonomy: birth control.

As state abortion bans proliferate in the post-Roe era, the use of reliable birth control to prevent unintended pregnancies is more crucial than ever. Moreover, defenders of reproductive rights now must guard against an additional challenge—the offensive far-right conservatives are mounting against contraception.

Unplanned pregnancy is more common than most people realize. According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 42% of all pregnancies are unintended, meaning that the pregnancy was either unwanted or seriously mistimed.

While abortion is an important line of defense in preventing unplanned parenthood, it should be a last resort. The easiest way to prevent unplanned parenthood is to prevent an unintended pregnancy from occurring in the first place.

There are compelling reasons to support the use of effective birth control. A long and robust economic literature has shown that improving access to contraception reduces maternal morbidity and mortality. It also leads to healthier babies, less child poverty, better living circumstances for children, and improved educational and career opportunities for women.

In addition, birth control offers the most politically unifying approach to secure women’s reproductive autonomy. While just over one-third of the U.S. public doesn’t think abortion should be legal under any or most circumstances, nearly 9 in 10 approve the use of contraception, including 86% of Republicans. Birth control is also a more effective way to reduce abortion incidence than current state-level abortion bans which so far have not translated into fewer abortions nationwide. But if unplanned pregnancies essentially disappeared, there would be vanishingly few abortions.

And yet, despite birth control’s benefits and broad popularity, some conservatives are now targeting contraception.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas opened the door to these attacks when he argued that the same legal reasoning used to overturn Roe implies that “in future cases” the Court should “reconsider” Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark case that established the Constitutional right to contraception in 1965. Since then, legislation to ban or restrict access to certain forms of contraception has already been discussed or proposed in Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, and Missouri.

The Heritage Foundation as part of its Project 2025 initiative has called for a potential future Trump administration to restrict access to certain types of birth control. When asked about the topic in a recent TV interview, former President Trump said he was “looking at” policies that would restrict access, adding that “some states are going to have different policy than others.” He later walked back those comments, but many of Trump’s actions as president, including his decision to halve the patient capacity of the Title X program that provides affordable birth control and related services, foreshadow what may be his real intentions.

Senator Chuck Schumer recently led an effort to codify the right to contraception nationwide. All but two Senate Republicans present voted against the measure.

Central to Republicans’ attacks against contraception have been efforts by anti-abortion religious groups to falsely equate certain forms of birth control with abortion. That position is contrary to the consensus among medical experts that contraception, unlike abortion, does not terminate pregnancy and instead prevents pregnancy from occurring in the first place. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, for example, has stated: “None of the FDA-approved contraceptive methods are abortifacients because they do not interfere with a pregnancy and are not effective after a fertilized egg has implanted successfully in the uterus.”

Amid far-right attacks, defenders of women’s reproductive autonomy should focus more attention on effective contraception.

As a safe and virtually foolproof form of birth control, the surging popularity of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) which includes IUDs and implants is especially promising. For a typical couple using a condom, the risk of pregnancy within five years is 63%. For those relying on the pill, it is 38%. With a LARC, it is less than 4%. LARCs change the default so that users can “set it and forget it” without losing sleep over concerns about getting pregnant.

Many women are taking notice. The share of women using LARCs increased sevenfold between 2002 and 2018. LARCs are now the third most common contraceptive method used by women after sterilization and the pill. Early evidence suggests more women and men are seeking out effective contraception including LARCs in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Beyond the increased use of LARCs, the first-ever over-the-counter birth control pill hit the shelves of major drug stores earlier this year. That is important because nearly one-third of women using the pill say they have missed taking their dosage because they were unable to get their next supply in time.

But what more could be done?

Primary care physicians should screen all women of reproductive age for their pregnancy intentions to encourage patients who don’t want to get pregnant to focus on the risks of sex and their contraceptive options for reducing them. We also need to ensure all healthcare providers, not just doctors, are trained in the use of LARCs, have them on hand, and can provide same day insertion. Where these approaches have been tried, unintended pregnancy and abortion rates have both declined dramatically.

In addition, more funding for Title X is needed. One rigorous study has shown that eliminating cost sharing for low-income patients seeking birth control would significantly reduce unintended pregnancies and abortions and save more than one billion dollars in Medicaid expenses in the first year alone.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade was a Pandora’s box that unleashed an invigorated assault on women’s fundamental freedoms. As the onslaught intensifies, defenders of women’s reproductive autonomy must fight back to fortify the first and strongest line of defense in protecting a woman’s right to choose if and when to seek a pregnancy.

[justinssportscorner]

Dave Zirin at The Nation:

Harrison Butker resides at the bottom of the most majestic mountain in the National Football League: the least important player on the most important team. Butker is the placekicker for the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. He is very good at his job, but no matter how many field goals he sends through the uprights, he is the lowest-caste athlete in the locker room, somewhere behind the assistant strength coaches but ahead of the office interns. (Adam Sandler wrote the song “The Lonesome Kicker” for a reason.)

Yet, even though merely a kicker, Butker’s star is on the rise in spaces far from the football field. Looking like the handsome, dashing villain in a World War II film, he is no longer lonesome. Butker has a new home away from football at the right-wing edge of US politics. Earlier this year, Butker “very intentionally,” as he put it, announced his “traditional Catholic” views while delivering a commencement address at Benedictine College, a Catholic liberal-arts school in Kansas. Butker chided the women in the audience for their ambition and expressed the trad-Catholic doctrine that their only true happiness would be as a wife and fertile mother. He praised his own wife, Isabella, saying that she would be “the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother” and expressed his joy over the fact that she has embraced “one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”

Butker, true to his predicable anti-LGBTQ views and staunch anti-abortion activism, also criticized “liberal Catholic leaders,” whom he faults with “pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America.” He also attacked the “tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion” and cried out against “things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media,” which supposedly “all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.” Targeting the male graduates, Butker told them to “be unapologetic in your masculinity,” and to “fight against the cultural emasculation of men.” Happy graduation, everyone!

Butker wants to loudly and proudly spread the belief that the ills of the 21st century are rooted in the resistance of women to get married and “love, honor, and obey” (heavy on the “obey”) their husbands. If this all sounds familiar, it’s the gospel of JD Vance and his contempt for cat-owning single women as well as all women—let’s be real, white women—who don’t see themselves as born to breed. That Butker’s own mother, Dr. Elizabeth Butker, has been a medical physicist at Emory University’s department of radiation oncology since 1988 suggests that he needs less time giving speeches and more time in therapy.

[...]

Butker wants in on this gravy train. He has already garnered headlines for endorsing the insurrectionist cheerer and running enthusiast Senator Josh Hawley, who looks at Butker like Ingrid Bergman stared at Humphrey Bogart. Now, with that friendship in his pocket, he has started a political action committee to encourage Christians to vote for “traditional values.” Its name is UPRIGHT PAC.

[...] Kansas City Chiefs franchise owner Clark Hunt praised Butker for starting the PAC. Hunt’s family has existed in the shadowy right-wing margins of this nation’s politics for generations. (His grandfather the billionaire oil tycoon H.L. Hunt was a white supremacist, and his half-brother Lamar Hunt Jr. is helping to fund the opposition to abortion in Missouri.) [...]

It’s because of Kaepernick’s legacy—and the desire to bury it—that the MAGA GOP is so besotted with Butker. The NFL has traditionally been a cultural space where the right has found comfort, commonality, and votes. Yet there was Donald Trump in 2016 and 2017 calling for NFL boycotts and saying in a Huntsville, Alabama, speech that kneeling players are “sons of bitches” who should be fired. This created confusion among that All-American cross section of men who are NFL fans but also have their nose up Trump’s orange ass. Meanwhile, here is Tim Walz, Mr. Football, running out to the 50-yard-line. In Butker, the hard right—the Christian Zionists braying for the Rapture, the January 6 insurrectionists crying for the freedom to seize the Capitol—finally has a foothold among the NFL players, not just their bosses. Yes, there have always been right-wing players, generations of right-wing Christian quarterbacks, and even more than a few GOP politicians that have come out of the National Football League. But Butker is not just a part of the fellowship of Christian athletes wanting to do Bible study after Wednesday lifts. He sees himself as being in an ideological battle. I have to wonder, though, if he understands the unintended consequences of his political stances so supported by his boss.

Kansas City K Harrison Butker formed a far-right PAC called Upright PAC focused on anti-LGBTQ+, anti-abortion, and anti-IVF extremism.

[otherkinnews]

One of the anti-furry bills might become about religion in schools instead

(Orion Scribner originally posted the following article to the Otherkin News blog on Dreamwidth on February 25, 2024.)

Content warnings: Rated G. Mentions of abortion and transphobia.

Summary: Checking for updates on this year's three anti-furry bills in the US. None of them have progressed. The bill for calling animal control on furry students has a new sponsor. He wants to rewrite it. It would instead become a duplicate of his bill that says classrooms must display the Ten Commandments. The bill hasn't changed yet, so it's still an anti-furry bill.

I just checked for updates about the current status of all of the proposed laws (bills) in the US that are about furries or people who identify as animals. Anti-furry bills aren't based on anything that anyone in real life is doing: not participants of the furry fandom, not children pretending to be animals in the playground, and not people who really do identify as animals. Republicans say they wrote these bills because of an urban legend that schools provide litter boxes for students who identify as animals. According to fact-checkers Reuters and Snopes, no schools have ever done that. Republicans made up the urban legend and bills in parody of transgender students asking to use school restrooms. On the Otherkin News blog, we have previously written about all three of the anti-furry bills that are active, which you can read here and here. I searched on LegiScan to see if Republicans have introduced more anti-furry bills since then, but I didn’t find any new ones.

Two of the bills haven’t had any action since we posted about them before. Those are Mississippi HB 176 and Missouri HB 2678. They’re both still at 25% progression toward becoming laws. Their state government sites don’t say that hearings have been scheduled for them.

Oklahoma HB 3084 is also still at 25% progression, but some things have been happening with it. This is the bill where Republican Representative Justin Humphrey (he/him) proposed that students who are furries should be taken away from school by animal control. As of the 15th, the bill added a second sponsor, Republican Representative Jim Olsen (he/him). Olsen took Humphrey's place as the principal sponsor. Some other bills that Olsen sponsors are against abortion (OK HB 1537, HB 3013, and HJR 1046), and to allow children to not get vaccines (HB 2963 and HB 3249). Last year, Olsen sponsored some anti-transgender bills (HB 1011, HB 2177, and HB 2186).

On the 19th, Olsen proposed an amendment to HB 3084, the anti-furry bill. You can read his proposed amendment on Oklahoma’s site, or read it on a third-party site, LegiScan. This amendment would delete the entire text of the bill and replace it with an unrelated text. The text of this amendment is the same as another bill Olsen sponsored this month, HB 2962. It would no longer be about furry students at all. Instead, it would propose a law requiring public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. That would be unlikely to pass. In the US, public schools are government establishments, which prohibits them from displaying religious materials like that. I don't know what the advantage would be of duplicating the same text in two bills, or changing the topic of a bill so much. At this time, Olsen’s proposed amendment hasn’t been accepted. The bill’s current text is still what Humphrey originally wrote about furries.

On the 21st, the bill was withdrawn from the Rules committee. Then it was referred to the House Appropriations and Budget Education Subcommittee Committee. They haven't voted on it. I don’t see that they have scheduled a hearing for it. I'll keep watching for whatever happens next.

About the writer of this blog post: Orion Scribner (they/them) is a moderator on the Otherkin News blog.

[cryscal]

"In a double-blind poll conducted in October, voters preferred Harris’s policies to Trump’s when they weren’t told whose policies were whose. Read that again."

"Please know, all is not lost. This election wasn’t a blowout like Reagan’s 1984 result (he won by 18 points) or even Obama in 2008. Just over 2 points separated Trump and Harris. In many states, voters backed Trump but also backed ballot initiatives that are counter to the MAGA agenda: abortion rights, paid family leave, and raising the minimum wage. In Missouri, 12 percent of voters chose Trump and abortion rights. While the Democrats have an enormous hill to climb, they aren’t starting at the bottom of it."

So. Here we are. To rephrase what I said in my last Steady post, we have to pay attention. The CHOTUS's second term has to be the most scrutinized in history, every lie called out, every stomp on civil rights pointed at, every instance of putting the interests of the wealthy over the needs of the majority of Americans given the outrage it deserves, and EVERY action that could lead to impeachment investigated with utmost thoroughness. Because Trump will take those actions. We must be ready for them.

And how do we make sure that outrage and truth get disseminated? We find the Woodwards and Bernsteins of this generation who will dig for the truth buried underneath the steaming pile of MAGAt right lies and misdirection. They do exist. And if neither the money-muzzled news media or alt-right-infected social media will give them a platform, then folks, we'll just have to make one.

[plethoraworldatlas]

A pro-Israel lobby group's super political action committee trying to unseat progressive members of Congress who condemn the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip is this week pouring over a quarter-million dollars into advertising against Rep. Cori Bush.

Jacob Rubashkin of Inside Electionshighlighted on social media Tuesday that the United Democracy Project (UDP) is spending at least $216,310 on broadcast and $16,193 on radio.

Politicoreported that "data tracked by AdImpact show approximately $320,000 in ad reservations for cable, radio, satellite, and other formats" from the super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) through next week.

While the Missouri Democrat has three primary challengers as she campaigns for a third term in the 1st Congressional District, her top opponent in the August 6 primary is St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who is backed by AIPAC and Republican billionaires.

"UDP, AIPAC, and their extensive network of far-right billionaires, anti-abortion extremists, and GOP megadonors have been promising to spend millions in their effort to defeat me ever since they first bribed my opponent to enter this race," Bush said in a statement to Politico. "Unfortunately for them, organized people beats organized money, and our community is ready to show that St. Louis is not for sale."

Bush delivered a similar message on social media, responding to Rubashkin's post.

[tomorrowusa]

A GOP state representative named Jamie Ray Gragg wants to make it a felony in Missouri for teachers or other school employees to use pronouns preferred by trans students. And that's just part of Republican Gragg's Missouri House Bill 2885.

A new bill introduced in the Missouri legislature would put teachers on the sex offense registry if they “contribute to social transition” of a trans youth- including pronouns, haircuts, information, and more. It would make the actions of the teacher “contributing to social transition” a class E felony. House Bill 2885 was introduced by Republican State Representative Jamie Ray Gragg (District 140 Christian County), a first term lawmaker who has previously publicly expressed strong anti-LGBTQ+ viewpoints as well as being anti-abortion rights.

Gragg represents Missouri House District 140 in the southwestern part of the state where he got more than three-quarters of the vote when he ran in 2022. This place would probably elect Donald Trump as Supreme Being if they had a chance. So challenging him in an election would not be productive.

But it is a good idea to try to elect more Democrats to the legislature from more competitive districts in Missouri.

Find out who represents you. If it's MAGA Republicans, contact your local Democratic Party and ask how you can help replace those far right Republicans with Democrats.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

[transformationsproject]

Arkansas SB43, a drag ban bill, passed in the Senate and is now going to the Governor for signing. As a reminder, this bill was amended to remove any reference to drag and is now essentially a public nudity ban. Drag bans restrict access for folks who are gender non-conforming in any way. They loosely define drag as any public performance with an “opposite gender expression”, as sexual in nature, and inappropriate for children. This also pushes trans individuals out of public spaces.

Missouri SB598 is an under-18 gender-affirming healthcare ban intro'd yesterday. Arkansas SB199 was intro'd and sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. A medical malpractice bill restricting gender-affirming care for youth. It has a hearing tomorrow 2/8 at 10am in Rm 171. Tennessee HB1378, an under-18 gender-affirming healthcare ban, was assigned to the Health Subcommittee. Montana HB303, a "religious exemption" bill that would allow healthcare discrimination against trans folks, was scheduled for a third hearing. Healthcare bills go against professional and scientific consensus that gender affirming care saves lives. Denying access will cause harm. Providers are faced with criminal charges, parents are threatened with child abuse charges, and intersex children are typically exempted.

Tennessee intro'd 2 school bills: HB1269, a misgendering bill and HB1414, a parental rights bill. Arkansas HB1156 has passed committee and is on the house floor. In Virginia HB1387 and HB2432 passed committee this morning with amendments and are on the house floor Schooling bills force schools to misgender or deadname students, ban instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, and make schools alert parents if they suspect a child is trans. They remove life-saving affirmation and support for trans youth.

Texas HB1952 was filed yesterday. This bill forces a designation of male or female on birth certificates determined by sex assigned at birth. Sex designation bills make it harder for trans folks to have IDs, such as birth certificates, match their gender identity. They can force a male or female designation based upon sex assigned at birth. Some ban a non-binary “X” marker or require surgery to qualify for ID updates.

Virginia HB1387, a K-12 and collegiate sports ban, passed in the House today and is now moving to the Senate. An action item for next week: Nebraska LB575 has a hearing scheduled for Monday 2/13 at 1:30 pm in Room 1525. This bill bans access to locker rooms and bathrooms consistent with gender identity, in addition to banning trans athletes from school sports Most sports bills force schools to designate teams by sex assigned at birth. They are often one-sided and ban trans girls from playing on teams consistent with their gender identity. Some egregious bills even force invasive genital examinations on student athletes.

The following bills are all in committee in Oklahoma as of today: OK SB30 (forced outing/misgendering bill), healthcare bills OK SB129, OK SB250, OK SB252, OK SB345, OK SB613, OK SB614, OK SB408 (sex definition bill), and OK SB731 (abortion bill with sex definition language)

It's not too late to stop other hateful anti-trans bills from passing into law. YOU can go to <http://transformationsproject.org/> to learn more and contact your representatives

[leaves-lilies-and-esther]

Reasons we still need feminism (in the US!)

Because out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, only 25 perpetrators will be incarcerated (RAINN)

Because our politicians feel comfortable saying that "if it's inevitable, just enjoy it" (Clayton Williams) and "when you're a star, they let you do it" (Donald Trump)

Because female survivors are routinely accused of lying, even though only 6% of rape accusations are false (meaning that 9/10 are true) (Lisak et al 2010).

Because the US is one of the only countries in the world without maternity leave

Because Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Texas all have abortion restrictions modeled on the scientifically inaccurate heartbeat bill (Scientific American)

Because women are already being prosecuted for miscarriages as a result of these rules- even when experts can't prove that their actions caused the stillbirth (google Marshae Jones, Brittney Poolaw)

Because in Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Florida, and Texas, you cannot get divorced while pregnant. Meanwhile, the leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide because of domestic violence (Healthline).

Because women are frequently blocked from getting their tubes tied because they're young/haven't had enough children/ are unmarried. Men never share similar stories

Because people are already advocating against contraception. Idaho's No Public Funds for Abortion Act includes Plan B. Missouri Republicans tried to ban public funding for IUDs and contraception (along with many other examples from Slate)

Because women's pain is not taken as seriously by doctors- 25% less likely to be prescribed opioids for acute abdominal pain, and 2x more likely to be diagnosed as 'mentally ill' for complaining of heart disease (Washington Post)

Because the "husband stitch" is a thing

Because women are routinely under-represented in clinical trials for medication, and get less effective healthcare as a result (The Guardian).

Because pads/tampons are taxed like luxuries

Because roughly 58% of Americans have viewed porn (Institute for Family Studies). We know this fuels sex trafficking. Moreover, exposure to violent pornography makes boys 2-3 times likelier to commit sexual assault (Rostad et al 19).

Because attending strip clubs and similar establishments is still relatively normalized, even though 90% of sex workers want to leave immediately but are unable to (National Organization for Men Against Sexism). Because sex workers are more likely to be homeless, are frequently assaulted, etc.

Because women aren't educated about their bodies to the extent that only half were told about birth control (Forbes). Because my health classes never discussed pelvic exams or breast self-exams. I bet yours didn't either.

Because magazine images are photoshopped until the models don't even look like the models.

Because women are sold a false image of their bodies to the extent that they feel uncomfortable leaving the house without makeup, and 46% of girls worry regularly about their appearance as compared to 25% of boys (Mental Health Foundation).

Because we're told that over-sexualizing yourself at a young age is 'empowering', even though it has outcomes such as depression, disordered eating, and reduced productivity (New York University).

Because we're more likely to encourage our daughters to break gender norms than we are to encourage boys. We still view the feminine as inferior.

Because in 78% of films, the main character was male. And even when the movie is about women, the majority of the dialogue goes to men (Vox).

Because women are 28.7% of the house of representatives in 2023 (Wikipedia) despite being like 51.1% of the population. Because the US has never had a female president.

Reblog and add your own.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Daniel Marans at HuffPost:

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) lost her Democratic primary on Tuesday, shrinking the ranks of the House’s left-wing “Squad” and delivering another major victory to the pro-Israel and business-friendly groups that backed her challenger. Wesley Bell, the St. Louis County prosecutor, defeated Bush. Since Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, which includes all of St. Louis and many of its northern and western suburbs, is overwhelmingly Democratic, Bell is all but assured of a seat in Congress come November.

Bell’s victory over Bush marks the second “Squad” member in recent months to fall to a challenger heavily funded by pro-Israel groups. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who, like Bush, ousted an incumbent in 2020, lost his race to Westchester County Executive George Latimer this past June. Justice Democrats, the left-wing group that backed Bush’s first successful run, cast the race as yet another referendum on the power of big money to decide elections. “This race is about the future of our democracy and the soul of our Democratic Party, frankly,” Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, told HuffPost on Monday. “This is a question about whether we want to let a handful of Republican mega-donors dictate the outcome of Democratic primaries, or do we want to move forward to elect more nurses and everyday people to represent the community’s best interests.”

Bush, an ordained pastor and registered nurse, indeed faced a massive fundraising deficit. As Andrabi noted, Bell had the support of some local Republican donors — and many national megadonors from both parties, through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Super PACs supporting Bell outspent those supporting Bush by a more than 3-to-1 margin. Spending by pro-Bell groups included about $8.6 million from AIPAC’s United Democracy Project, $1.5 million from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s Mainstream Democrats PAC, $1.4 million from the crypto-industry-backed FairShake PAC, and nearly $500,000 from the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. Bush made national waves with her July 2021 sit-in on the U.S. Capitol steps to draw attention to the expiration of the federal government’s COVID-19-era eviction moratorium. Her action got results; President Joe Biden responded by extending the policy, though the Supreme Court stopped it a few weeks later. Later that year, in a bid to shore up support for abortion rights, Bush spoke on national television — and in a House hearing — about her experience getting an abortion after being raped at age 17.

Bush’s allies — and she retains the support of many local elected officials — see her as an authentic tribune of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was born in Ferguson, Missouri, following the police killing of Michael Brown in 2014. Unlike many other Democrats in Washington, Bush continues to embrace calls to “defund the police.” Bell, who also got his political start during the Ferguson protests and unseated a more conservative incumbent prosecutor in 2018, has, by contrast, disappointed many of his former fellow activists. They fault him for declining to prosecute Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Brown, and for not more rapidly reducing the county’s jail and prison populations, even as he points to the creation of a conviction review unit and the expansion of drug diversion programs.

[...] Finally, Bush has been among the most outspoken critics of Israel in Congress, particularly after Israel invaded Gaza in response to Hamas’ terror attack on Oct. 7. She was not only an early advocate for a ceasefire, but has also accused Israel of genocide ― a charge that remains highly disputed. And in an interview with The New York Times out on Monday, Bush expressed ambivalence about describing Hamas as a terrorist group, though her campaign later walked it back. “Would they qualify to me as a terrorist organization? Yes,” Bush told the Times. “But do I know that? Absolutely not.” Bush’s stances cost her the support of Susan Talve, a progressive St. Louis rabbi who leads the only synagogue in Bush’s district. But they also unsettled some other allies who see her national profile as a distraction from the needs of the high-poverty, majority Black district.

In the battle of activists rising from the Ferguson protests in #MO01, incumbent Rep. Cori Bush (D) goes down in defeat to AIPAC-backed St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell (D) in the Democratic Primary. Bell is favored to win this November.

[archiveofkloss]

karlie kloss for the washington post: “Abortion should be on Missouri’s ballot this fall”

Democrats and Republicans may not agree on much these days, but since Roe v. Wade was overturned, many of us have found common ground: protecting reproductive freedom. The truth is, an overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a woman’s right to choose.

Abortion has been on the ballot in some form in seven states since the Supreme Court struck down Roe. In all of them — from blue Vermont and California to deep-red Montana and Ohio — voters have said loud and clear: Bans off women’s bodies. Many other states will hopefully have their say on abortion rights in November. One is Missouri, my home state

Growing up in St. Louis with three sisters and a dad who is a doctor, I didn’t see reproductive health as a political issue. It was real life. And policymakers were making women’s lives harder by limiting access to care. Even under Roe, it became virtually impossible to get an abortion in Missouri because of strategically placed hurdles to accessing care and requirements so narrow that eventually only one abortion clinic remained open in the entire state. Then the Trump administration appointed justices to the Supreme Court who ultimately overturned Roe. Minutes later, Missouri became the first state to ban abortion without exceptions for rape or incest — only for a few medical emergencies such as “imminent death.”

If their first tactic for chipping away at our rights was at clinics, their next target is the ballot box. Missouri now has the chance to protect it. Missourians for Constitutional Freedom is working to get an abortion amendment to the state constitution on the November ballot. But anti-choice Republicans are trying to make it harder for that to happen by weakening direct democracy.

First, Missouri’s secretary of state tried to add overtly partisan and misleading language to the ballot initiative to restore abortion rights. Thankfully, the Missouri Supreme Court stopped him. Now state Senate Republicans are overriding 200 years of precedent by significantly raising the threshold for constitutional amendments to pass. Under their new scheme, a simple majority of voters statewide would no longer be enough to pass an amendment. Instead, an amendment would need to win a majority in five of the state’s eight congressional districts (five of which are deeply conservative).

This is all part of a nationwide playbook to rip away our freedoms. In Kansas, antiabortion politicians tried to confuse voters with convoluted language on an abortion referendum. In Ohio, they tried to make it harder for a majority of voters to change the state’s constitution to protect abortion rights. Their efforts failed spectacularly, but that isn’t stopping lawmakers in Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida and Montana from trying similar tactics. Activists in those states are trying to give voters a voice on abortion this November, and politicians are trying to silence them.

For most people, reproductive health care isn’t about politics — it’s deeply personal. It’s fundamentally about freedom, dignity and bodily autonomy. That’s why I’ve been engaged on this issue since I was a teenager. In 2012, I trained as a clinic escort to protect patients arriving for appointments at Planned Parenthood in St. Louis. Years later, I became involved with the incredible team at CHOICES in Carbondale, Ill. — across the state line from Missouri — and dozens of other clinics. When Roe fell, these clinics were overwhelmed. To help fill the gap, I launched an organization called Gateway Coalition to direct funding to various Midwest groups to provide accessible abortion care. And I continue to learn from organizations such as the Abortion Bridge Collaborative Fund advisory council and Abortion Care Network.

Karlie Kloss gathers signatures for the Missouri Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment with a volunteer from Abortion Action Missouri in St. Louis in March.

Through clinic visits and meetings with providers, center operators, and movement leaders across the country, I’ve learned how desperately patients need abortion care and what clinics go through to provide it. Clinics are being closed down, doctors are being blocked from providing care, and women are being forced to carry pregnancies against their will.

The Missouri I know supports freedom. Missourians know that decisions around pregnancy — including abortion, birth control, IVF and miscarriage care — are personal and private, and should be left up to patients and their families. As a mother, sister, daughter, friend and someone who cares deeply about the dignity of others, I’m working toward a future where everyone has the freedom to access abortion affordably and on a timeline that meets their needs. The Missouri Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment is an important step toward that future. We have to pass it, and then we have to build on it. I’m committed to staying in this fight until abortion is safely and affordably available for every patient nationwide.

If you agree that patients, not politicians, should make their own health-care decisions — or simply that a small minority should not prevent a majority from winning at the ballot box — make your voice heard this election cycle.

If you’re in Missouri, that means signing the petition for the Missouri Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment by May 5, volunteering to gather signatures from others and then voting for the ballot initiative in the general election. Across the country, that means showing up at the polls when politicians try to twist the rules to serve their anti-choice agenda. And, this November, it means voting for candidates for president and Congress who will codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law — and rejecting those promising to further restrict our reproductive rights.

Our fundamental freedoms are on the line — the right to abortion, and now, the right to have our voices heard at the ballot box.

[oracleofmania]

Hey, this is factually incorrect. All of these rights were won through voting actually on top of action.

Women literally got the right in by people voting the 19th amendment, which was in turn passed by senators who were campaigned on giving women the right to vote. Women's right to contraception was won through court, which was done because they were able to put a president into office who could fill the empty seats and that was done via voting.

Queer rights, famously was done through voting and getting the right Supreme Courts in place to do away with Sodomy laws and granting the right to marry.

Also Obama didn't hand over a Supreme Court Judge. The conservatives blocked him, McConnell who has been elected via voting blocked him.

RBG didn't retire because she didn't want to and she thought she'd live longer than she did. If only we could vote to remove Supreme Court justices but you don't believe in it.

Obama didn't codify Roe V Wade because he thought it was a precedent that wouldn't be overturned, which was promised by the Supreme Court justices.

And you're right it is fuckef that biden did that and Obama did that, but the point still stands. Good things come from voting. Missouri got medicaid expanded from voting, it also got weed, Wisconsin got free school lunches by voting, Many states were able to protect abortion rights because they showed up in the polls

Like you're making me defend fucking useless democrats here. Also your call to direct action is some Kettle calling Pot shit because i highly doubt you're doing any direct action.

Here I have a question for you from leftist to leftist:

Why is the left allergic to having any wins or having any easier time to do their political goals?

Also bold of you to assume people who vote don't take direct action? It seems that they do, and do so more than people who sit and argue to not vote and pull the "Leftists be like: voting isn't effective, firebombing a Walmart is and they don't firebomb the Walmart"

Anti-voting rhetoric will be the death of the left. Literally.

Not a single fucking Republican voted to protect roe. It was fucking overturned in the first place bc trump got three Supreme Court appointments.

Every fucking thing wrong in this country is almost certainly the result of Republicans being in power. In 2020, Texas cut half of the polling places in black neighborhoods, and doubled them in white ones, regardless of population. It was Republicans bitching about mail in voting, and constantly, constantly fearmonger about voter fraud. Literally, their platform is about making civil rights harder to practice.

Would you like to know why? It’s because Republican politicians know better than anyone that higher voter participation means higher republican loss.

But what do I see from the online left, champions of the oppressed?

“Voting doesn’t do anything, the parties are the same, the system is rigged, etc, etc”

Don’t sit here and tell me you give a fuck about marginalized people if you aren’t ready to march your ass to the voting booth and vote out the party actively stripping their rights away.

Protest, donate, community build, unionize, and vote, vote, vote.

By the time direct action is the only option, it will be too fucking late.

[mariacallous]

Beginning in 2022, there were state referenda in six states and in every one—even very conservative states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana—they passed by comfortable margins. Seeing a way to increase the number of women able to get an abortion and avoid unfriendly courts and state legislatures, the pro-choice movement went into action and placed a referendum on the ballot in Ohio in 2023 (which won easily) and then placed referenda on 10 more states for 2024. Some of these states—Colorado, Maryland, and New York—were blue states where Harris was expected to win. The referenda were expected to pass easily and did. They also passed easily where Trump was expected to win—in the deep red states of Montana (57.6%), Missouri (51,6%,) and Nebraska (55.3%.) In Florida, it did not pass, but that’s because although it got 57.1% of the vote, the legislature raised the bar for winning to 60%. South Dakota was the only state where the pro-choice referenda lost.

In the two swing states with abortion on the ballot, Arizona and Nevada, the referenda won easily, with 61.4% of the vote in Arizona and 63.8% of the vote in Nevada. What is clear from the outcomes in those states is that many people figured they could have their cake and eat it too—so to speak. They could vote to keep abortion legal but then vote for Trump for president. In Arizona, Harris so far only has 46.8% of the vote, meaning that 14.6% of the voters voted for the pro-choice position on abortion and for Donald Trump. In Nevada, Harris has so far received 47.2% of the vote—meaning that 16.6% of the voters voted pro-choice and for Trump. In many states voters have had a way to protect abortion rights while voting for Republican candidates.

...

By the time of the actual election, the gender gap had been cut in half and Harris’ lead among women had plummeted. A method for protecting abortion (the referenda) had reduced the need for voters to elect pro-choice candidates since they could still vote to keep abortion legal.

Women favored abortion rights but not Harris

[greatwyrmgold]

Lawmakers in several states have already initiated or indicated plans to alter or nullify certain results. Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are moving to undercut the authority of the incoming Democratic governor, Republicans in Missouri are taking initial steps to reverse voter-approved abortion protections, and Democrats in Massachusetts are watering down an attempt by voters to hold the Legislature more accountable.

(Many other examples are mentioned in the article, and these are given more detail, especially the North Carolina BS.)

Activists have to let voters know that attempts to ignore or overrule their actions at the ballot box are direct assaults on representative government, she said, yet many of these attempts often go unnoticed by voters. To people who are struggling to pay for food or housing, “the concept of democracy feels very vague,” she said.