#pharmaceutical abortion

[boreal-sea]

Who is Tim Walz?

Kamala Harris has apparently picked Tim Walz as her running mate. He seems good, based on his record. He's also responsible for the widely spreading "Republicans are weird" meme I've seen quite a lot of.

He has a good record. Just like I did for Kamala Harris in a post that has become quite popular, I will do a simple review of things I like from Tim Walz' political history. Again, as with Harris, this is just from his Wikipedia page. Let's go!

House of Representatives

Opposed increasing troop numbers in Iraq

Co-sponsored a bill to raise Minnesota's minimum wage

Voted for stem cell research

Voted to allow Medicare to negotiate pharmaceutical prices

Voted against the act to Prohibit Federally Funded Abortion Services

Voted to advance the ACA

Has received a 100% rating from many progressive organizations like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU

Was a member of several caucuses, including the LGBT Equality Caucus

Governor of Minnesota

Signed into law police reforms after the murder of George Floyd

Had Minnesota join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, meaning that all of the state's electors will vote for whichever candidate wins the popular vote nation-wide.

Under his governance, Minnesota passed laws for requiring paid leave, banning non-compete agreements, cannabis legalization, abortion rights, universal free school meals,

Political stances

Pro cannabis

Against bailout bills that loan taxpayer money to large banks and auto manufacturers

Was a former teacher for many years, and is very pro-education and supporting public schools. He is against merit pay for teachers (this is a good thing), and supports lowering tuition costs

Used to be pro-gun, but after Parkland he changed his mind, and as Governor he signed a bill mandating universal background checks

Pro-LGBT - has voted for LGBT rights many times, including as Governor, where he signed bills banning conversion therapy and protecting gender-affirming care

Supports veterans rights and support

Supports abortion rights and women's rights

I am going to copy-paste the entire section for his views on the Israel-Hamas war, because I don't want people claiming I am taking anything out of context. Overall, he has views that echo my own in many ways:

Walz condemned Hamas's October 7 attacks in Israel and ordered flags to be lowered to half mast in the following days. After the 2024 Minnesota Democratic presidential primary, in which 19% of voters cast "uncommitted" ballots, Walz took a sympathetic view toward those doing so to protest President Biden's handling of the war in Gaza, calling them "civically engaged". Of the protests against U.S. funding of the war in Gaza, Walz said: "This issue is a humanitarian crisis. They have every right to be heard... These folks are asking for a change in course, they're asking for more pressure to be put on… You can hold competing things: that Israel has the right to defend itself, and the atrocities of October 7 are unacceptable, but Palestinian civilians being caught in this… has got to end." Walz also said he supports a ceasefire in Gaza.[100]

[draquus]

As a poor, semi-disabled, almost-40-year-old woman, everything having to do with my uterus is kind of terrifying. I worry about getting pregnant again. I worry that I'll never have a daughter. I worry about how I would manage if I did have more children. I just had a period where I was bleeding so much I thought I might have to go to the ER, and my doctor says it was most likely either a miscarriage or a sign of impending menopause, and both of those ideas are so contradictory and so connected and so emotionally fraught. It's rough right now.

The worst part is living in a world where 95% of the advice on how to manage all these difficulties is violence. Your uterus is causing you problems? Burn it, cut it, twist metal into it. Make it inhospitable to life. Take the nurturer of life and make it a wasteland, but don't stop sending children there. Kill the children you're afraid of losing. Feed your anxiety on the blood of innocents.

There's this idea that birth control and abortion make women free and strong and independent. That anyone who would dare subject women to inconvenience and even danger is a horrible, controlling abuser. That this is how we make strong, bold women.

Let me tell you something. I have seen strong, bold women. Women who don't hide their miscarriages, but actually talk to each other and support each other. Women who are not dependent on surgeries and pharmaceuticals, but actually understand how their bodies work better than some doctors. Women who have husbands who are invested in the health and lives of their wives and children. Women who suffer, and endure, and come to the other side full of joy.

My anxiety doesn't make me stronger, it makes me weaker. Fighting it, doing the hard thing, being humble and asking for God's help, that's where the actual strength is. When I say my kids are a blessing, I don't mean that in an easy, #Blessed, happy-go-lucky looks good on Instagram way. I mean it in the way food is a blessing, health is a blessing, LIFE is a blessing. You know it most when it's the hardest to come by.

We live in a world that tells us to quietly kill so that we never have to face death. Death to self, death of self, death of children, death of our own bodies as they age. But death is so much more terrifying when you let it lurk in the corners. It's powerful when it hides in the shadows. But look it in the eye? Well, you can't do it alone. But when you find you're not alone, that's when you can begin to be brave.

[im-not-an-object-ok]

For three months this year, I bled nearly every day. My doctor doesn’t know why. Google doesn’t know why. The condition is simply called “postmenopausal bleeding,” and medicine’s best guess as to the cause is that the postmenopausal hormone-replacement therapy I started last November suddenly made my endometrium, the lining of the uterus, “unstable.” All scientific knowledge added up to “If it’s still happening in six months, get back in touch.” (I’m still bleeding intermittently, and I don’t know why.) This is the kind of massive medical shrug that anyone with female anatomy has probably encountered.

Despite major advances for women over the past 100 years—the invention of the contraceptive pill, greater access to safe abortions—much of female biology is still woefully underserved by science. There are reasons for this, most notably the historical exclusion of women from medical and pharmaceutical trials, partly because our awkward hormone cycles were thought to skew results. There’s also the fact that some scientists still project findings from research on men onto women, seeming not to realize that women aren’t just small men: Women are different down to the cellular level, meaning that many of our immune responses, experiences of pain, and symptoms (including, for instance, those that accompany a heart attack) may be different from men’s. Are you having a nasty, unexpected side effect from your medication? That could be because most drugs were developed with male bodies in mind. A 2020 review of 86 common medications, including antidepressants, cardiovascular drugs, and painkillers, found that women were likely routinely overmedicated and suffered adverse reactions nearly twice as often as men.

The lagging science is particularly apparent when it comes to periods and female hormones more generally—the subject of the anthropologist Kate Clancy’s new book, Period, a scientific and cultural history that purports to tell the “real story of menstruation.” Clancy’s book makes clear that a lack of data is to blame for many of the ills that women and girls face concerning their reproductive health, like doctors’ failure to diagnose painful conditions such as endometriosis.

My severe endometriosis was discovered only when I was 41, accidentally. For decades, I had been given prescription-strength painkillers, and my doctor never seemed to wonder whether the amount of pain I was in was abnormal. When I published an essay about my menopausal depression in 2018, a deluge of women wrote to tell me that when they were going through something similar, their doctors had told them they were imagining their brain fog or panic attacks, or had put them on antidepressants that didn’t work because many depression drugs are inadequate to treat the symptoms of fluctuating estrogen.

[the-greatest-fool]

I basically only post and read posts in my bubble aside from occasionally scrolling through Real Tumblr, but people’s takes about US politics on this website are fucking unbelievable. They talk about our government as if it didn’t save us from a pandemic-induced financial collapse, pump trillions of dollars into public works, not to mention substantially invest and rein in pharmaceuticals, and is instead some sort of ultra-neoliberal-corporate kitty shooting machine.

Like let’s be for real. Do they…know what the government does? How it works? Do you know what a conservative is? Do you know what an authoritarian is?

Because a system of government whose citizens are all lucky it has had continuous peaceful transfer of power for centuries could very well have its greatest norm violated—that those who reject its legitimacy must be rejected—and we don’t blink an eye.

Because the first major investment against climate change, coupled with life saving investments into healthcare, cancer research, and drug costs could be shredded by indiscriminate fiscal conservatives who don’t care if we die in forest fires, cancer from pollution, lose insurance because we’re jobless, or, apparently, all die in a fricking plague.

Because a foreign policy establishment that had finally reversed two decades of foreign intervention in favor of a normalization strategy aimed at reducing American foot presence, drone strikes, and indiscriminate killings is about to be replaced by the whims of a man who dropped the “mother of all bombs” on the Middle East, gave American soldiers up to Russian bounty hunters, extorted a foreign leader for political favors and arguably indirectedly resulted in that country being BRUTALLY INVADED BY AN IMPERIAL NEIGHBOR, is in the pockets of CCP-funded billionaires, and WANTS TO “FINISH THE JOB” IN GAZA.

Because a President who is against family separations and promotes a path for DREAMERs and more legal immigration and rights for unodcumented people could be replaced by a man who wants to separate families, PUT UNDOCUMENTED PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS, RESTRICT EVEN LEGAL IMMIGRATION, ESPECIALLY THAT OF MUSLIMS, AND SHOOT MIGRANTS.

Because a President who stopped a repeat of the Great Recession and the painful decade that followed it with strong fiscal stimulus which CUT CHILD POVERTY IN HALF BEFORE CONSERVATIVES MADE IT EXPIRE, then managed to cut deficits and presided over a decline in inflation, resulting in record high real wages (aka taking into account inflation) for workers is going to be replaced by a President who wants to TARIFF ALL FOREIGN GOODS by 15%, CUT TAXES FOR THE FILTHY RICH AND THE TAX ENFORCEMENT TO STOP THEM, INCREASE CHILD POVERTY AND UNINSUREDNESS by cutting gov’t programs, and HURT UNIONS which by every measure will lead to lower wages, higher prices, and more poverty and starvation.

Because a President who has pledged to sign a bill codifying Roe v. Wade (which has yet to be possible in recent memory, whatever these kids say), who enshrined the right to marry someone of the same sex or different race, who supports the Equality Act which would enshrine LGBTQ protections into the law, could be replaced by THE MAN WHO REMOVED AMERICA’S RIGHT TO ABORTION, whose Christian nationalist supporters want to END SEXUAL FREEDOM as we know it including TARGETING IVF AND BIRTH CONTROL, who wants to reverse LGBTQ discrimination law in favor of Christian bigots who hate queer and trans people, and who demonizes that community to win political support.

Ask yourself if you really think there’s no difference between the two. Ask yourself if a reasonable person given these facts would choose the latter. Ask yourself why you see so much propagandizing against the reasonable choice. Ask yourself why so many people seem to have opinions on this when they “don’t even go here”.

Maybe I’m just preaching to the choir here. Maybe people who say this inane stuff wouldn’t vote anyways. Maybe somehow we’re screwed anyways. Maybe people will stupidly vote third party and we’re fucked. Maybe this will get me attacked.

I don’t care anymore. If I have to see one more fucking post acting like we live under the fucking Evil Empire while a SELF PROCLAIMED DICTATOR is about to end the best streak of decent governance I’ve ever seen in a while, I just can’t anymore.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

I gotcha, dawg.

Well, there's lots I could say here, but perhaps the easiest thing to address is you yourself saying you want to remain anonymous so as not to get "in trouble" - I presume from Democrat Tumblr users(?)

In a democracy, you shouldn't have to be frightened to say who you voted for or the concerns you have about an election.

This present climate of fear of saying the wrong thing or using the wrong pronoun or is one of the things I find most refreshing about the Trump train: he's the only mainstream politician in America openly pushing back against Wokeness - which is a 21st rebranding of Political Correctness - which is in turn a perversion of the word "correct" to mean "in line with present party policy" that first appears in Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. Also the only U.S. mainstream politician against the present transgender madness (the castration, sterilization and brainwashing of children) and open borders. These are very commonsense positions necessary for any nation's survival that have massively widespread support amongst the majority of ordinary people, but no-one else in government was doing anything to represent them.

It took an outsider not in the pocket of the donors who own the arms companies and the oil companies and the media companies and the pharmaceutical companies and so on to actually push back against the status quo and have a thick-enough skin and good humour to not back down. That's who Trump is. Yes he's a flawed and sometimes buffoonish-like figure, but the fact that he is a bullheaded businessman has meant he's been able to look at America as an enterprise in decline that needs fixing and overhauling to make "great" again, and just charge through the red tape to do whatever actually needs doing.

The first Trump presidency was a time of democrats and other hysterical left-wing activists burning, looting and rioting in America, but on the global stage it was a time of relative peace: Trump invaded no country or started any new wars (the way Biden did only 6 weeks into his presidency), and there's no reason to think he will this time round either. He did nothing to incite the very silly January 6th free tour of the Capitol Building, but for telling people to be peaceful and go home he - the sitting president - was silenced and booted from every social media platform.

So much was made this election over abortion rights - and I myself have always been pro-choice - but he didn't (and has repeatedly stated he won't) ban abortion but simply made it an issue that individual states can decide for themselves, which makes sense given the range of opinions on that matter in different parts of the country. It's probably my least favourite aspect of his policies, but the fact that such a relatively trivial matter was placed front and center in the Democrats' campaign and all that the hosts of The View and other female media dross could talk about for a year just tells you how shockingly debased and distracted political discourse has become in the west.

I could go on, but rather than addressing one claim after another, I would suggest you simply make a list of all the things you can recall the media and the democrats claiming Trump has said or done, and then go look up the original unedited videos that the out of context soundbites have been taken from, and then ask yourself whether what they presented you with seems a fair and unbiased representation of any individual, and whether it seems reasonable to trust the people who relentlessly deceived you in this way. That would do more to broaden your point of view than anything I could say.

[morogwen]

What gets my goat about the whole anti trans conspiracy, that pharmaceutical companies are creating life long lab rats or life long consumers for monetary reasons, is that you have to believe that the people responsible are both infinitely intelligent to pull it off and yet infinitely stupid to do it to a marginalized group of people that has proven a very easy target to galvanize conservative politicians and voters against. If the evidence is being manufactured, why choose trans people? If the multitude of studies showed a particular form of care working for cancer patients, and every major medical organization supported it, it would be political suicide for any politician to go near it. That and you'd actually be able to reach more than the 1% of the population (people who are trans) that are living in places where gender affirming care is even legal.

But I'm sure such things are "what (((they))) want you to think", huh?

Edit: someone in reblogs really trying to blame trans people for roe v wade going down. But again, it doesn't make any sense. The overlap between people who oppose trans people and abortion is a nearly perfect circle. Why choose a very small and vulnerable group of people that it's insanely easy to galvanize support against?

Edit 2: no seriously you're telling me wpath had the foresight to know trump was coming, that Trump would be elected, that he would put 3 justices on the bench in 4 years, and that roe v wade would be struck down. It would be silly if people didn't actually believe it. But here we are, terfs arguing that the entire point of trans people is to harm "females" rights.

[fated-mates]

Elda Minger was the first romance novelist to put condom use on the page. When we spoke to her about the choice she made, she told us about the realities of the world before Roe, when abortion was neither safe nor legal. This remains one of the most powerful conversations we’ve had on Fated Mates, and we are so lucky that Elda came to talk to us.

As we watch women die throughout the country in the wake of draconian abortion bans, we hope you’ll listen to Elda, and make a plan to vote for this Tuesday.

-

Transcription:

I remember the reason I put in the condom, and this is funny 'cause I hadn't thought about this in years, this will sound like the Stone Age to you guys because you're much younger. I grew up in a town, I went to high school in a town of 1200 people. It was still very much a, I would call it a boy's town, like lots of hunting, fishing, ice fishing, skiing, sledding. Women were, you know, married young, had their kids and kind of disappeared is the only way I can put it. They disappeared. And marriage, I remember Jessie Bernard once said, a sociologist, she said, "Marriage is a great deal for men and children, but not so great for women." And I remember reading that and thinking, "Yep." When women did not have access to birth control, and biologically, the sex drive is strong. I had numerous friends who got pregnant, and back in the day, there was no abortion. If you could find a doctor you could go, you could get someone to do the job, and then if you started bleeding out, you went to the emergency room. And I had two friends, older sisters, they told me later on, it was like the most terrifying experience of their lives, which is why abortion must always be safe and legal. But you had two choices. And I had two girlfriends in high school who, their beginning of their senior year or summer of their junior year, whatever, they went to visit their aunt, and they came back and they looked gutted. And I never forgot the look in their eyes, like dead eyes, because they had had their baby and given it up for adoption, because that was the option or you cornered the guy and married him, and if he thought he was trapped, it was not a good marriage, and it usually ended up in divorce. So birth control back then, I worked at a drugstore and the condoms were in a glass case behind the pharmaceutical counter. You could only buy them if you were married. This is how bad things were. You know, when I look back, it's like God, it was like the Stone Age. But the thing was, I couldn't in good faith, and all the romances, the historicals of course, they would have sex and then she'd be pregnant and there'd be a big brouhaha, but in the end he would love the baby. But with a contemporary I thought, "I can't do this. I can't do this." And I had interesting parents because my mother is from Puerto Rico, staunch Roman Catholic, could not have the sex talk with me. So my dad was like, "This is very embarrassing, but we're going to have the sex talk, and I don't think I can look at you while we do this, but you need to be protected." And I remember he told me, "Teenage boys will do anything. They would do a knothole in a plank. You have to understand this about male nature. And he said, "They will tell you, "I love you." They will promise you the moon and you are a very romantic girl, and you will have sex with him. And Monday morning he will be telling all his friends at school and you will be brokenhearted." And that did happen to one of my girlfriends, where she gave it up to a guy, and she was the town pump for the last two years of high school, and she never had a boyfriend because she didn't dare. And I remember thinking, "God, that's awful!" But you know, my dad taught college and he said, "Many a woman's college career was derailed because some guy said, "I love you. I'll be with you forever." And she ended up raising the baby with her and her mom and dropping out of school. And he said, "I don't want that for you. I don't know how more plainly to put it." And I was like, "Got it, Dad. Got it." Because he was pretty, I mean he said, "I don't expect you to be a virgin when you're married. It's different times, but pick a man who likes women." And I was at 16, so stupid, 14, "Daddy, all men like women." And he's like, "No, they don't. Pick a man who really does like and treasure women." So when I approached Untamed Heart, I thought, "Okay, I've got to somehow put birth control into it." And I said to Vivian, "Can I do that?" And she said, "If you can figure out a way to make it work, I'm all for it."

[fbfh]

Tristin Dugray lore hcs

wc: 1k

warnings: mentions of broken/dysfunctional families, tristin's siblings both have drug problems, mentions of sexism and abortion (v briefly), mentions of cheating (also v briefly), tristin is not super close with his siblings, brief mention of DUIs (not tristin), I think that's it??

summary: lore on Tristin's family whipped up in my little plastic play kitchen by yours truly lol

a/n: I MISS HIM!!!! I SAW SOME GIFS THAT MADE ME SALIVATE!!!!! also!! in case it wasn't obvious the Dugray family is based on the real life Dupont family, just like how the Huntzbergers are based on the Sulzbergers

song recs: family jewels - Marina (ouch!), be here - palaye royale, everything is romantic - charli xcx

The Dugray family have made their fortune as far back as the American revolution, starting with immigrating to America and manufacturing gunpowder for the American soldiers

This eventually led to the Dugray family owning one of the largest and most established chemical manufacturing corporations in America, DuGray

They invented a number of household names like pyrex, teflon, styrofoam, and even superglue, and also make ppe for people who work with or around chemicals

A while back, they also acquired two bank chains on the east coast, one of which is for east coast businesses, and the other is expanding slowly across america. 

The Dugray family’s net worth is roughly 18.6 billion. I know. 

Also, the Huntzberger family’s net worth is roughly 21.7 billion. I know.

Tristin mentions at one point that he has a “matching set” of baggage with Paris, and we know Paris’s parents are not at all close to her, or each other

We also know that her father is the head of a pharmaceutical company, and when her parents divorced it was in the newspaper

So yikes!

Anyway the only family mentioned by name is Janlon Dugrey, his paternal grandfather (I’m assuming if Janlon was his mom’s dad he would have a different last name yk)

So OBVIOUSLY I had to flesh things out a little 

Looking at this family tree I made a while ago, Tristin has two older siblings: his oldest brother Royce, and his older sister and middle sibling Sutton

They’re both a bit older than Tristin, since his mom is their dad’s second wife

Truett DuGrey married Helena Holshire and had Royce, then Sutton

They divorced when Royce was around 7 and Sutton was almost 5 because Helena suspected Truett of cheating, and Truett suspected Helena of being a gold digger

Both were true

A couple years later, Truett is introduced to Blythe Ross while working on publicity for the banks his family as acquired 

Blythe and Truett didn’t necessarily get along, but she could handle him better than most other women he’s met 

They were actually introduced through Mitchum Huntzberger and his wife Shira, because Shira and Blythe are sisters

Surprise!

So Blythe gets pregnant and Truett can feel another Helena gold digger situation coming

That’s when Blythe tells him she can’t go to his work event because she has to go to a clinic

Truett stops in his tracks and realizes three things at the same time

Blythe is not in fact using a pregnancy to try and get access to his money

He loves his son Royce as much as he’s able to, but he’s already becoming apathetic and Truett can’t pass over the family business to someone with no drive or ambition

Royce is 10 by the way

Lastly, he realizes that this might actually be beneficial to him

So he convinces Blythe not to get an abortion and to elope instead

Once she gets her body back after the baby they’ll stage some wedding photos and claim it was from a little over a year ago so no one knows he had the baby out of wedlock

When she’s 18 weeks along, he schedules a private ultrasound to find out the baby’s gender

He tells her that if it’s a boy, everything will be fine

If it’s a girl, he’ll serve her annulment papers and nice fat alimony and child support checks to keep both of them out of his life

Blythe isn’t sure if she’s relieved or not when the doctors announce they’re going to be having a healthy baby boy, but Truett sure is

So he grows up watching his burnt out older brother and back bone of the family older sister navigate middle school and high school when he’s barely starting kindergarten

They don’t have any harsh feelings toward Tristin

Not really

They were just never that close yk

It’s like the pilot of umbrella academy, “we only see each other at weddings and funerals”

Except really, they only see each other when Truett forces them into whatever is going on with the family business, or to bail each other out of trouble

Royce is just waiting for his trust fund to kick in so he can fuck off and smoke weed in peace

Sutton is desperately trying to keep her image and life together while hiding her nicotine dependency and steadily growing pill problem from the public eye

And Tristin just wants to fucking feel something

His mom has been in and out of “med spas” and “wellness retreats” for so long he wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t recognize him, and the only time he and his dad talk is when he’s making charges go away

Sutton is engaged to this guy Clint

And he’s fine or whatever, Tristin hasn’t really talked to him much before

But he’s keeping his ear to the ground to make sure he treats his sister right

Sure Sutton can be condescending and a total control freak and act more like a mom than his actual mom

But she’s still his sister

So Sutton’s been off planning this huge wedding and trying to start some lifestyle brand for luxury dog beds and organic phone cases or something

Royce barely managed to keep his latest DUI for driving stoned under wraps but Truett still found out and sent him off to rehab

So Tristin starts high school at Chilton feeling almost lonelier than ever

Tristin aches for consistency, for stability

Thanks to Duncan and Bowman he sort of has that

And people like Paris that he’s literally been in school with since he can remember

It’s not that they’re particularly close, but he just likes that she’s always around when he’s going to and from class

There’s a few other people like that too, loose acquaintances that haven’t dropped out or transferred

They make him feel like even if everything else has gone to shit, he still has his winning personality

And he still has Chilton

[mithliya]

Hi! Do you think you could explain how gender critical people can support body autonomy in cases like abortion but not transition? I know you believe that medical transition doesn't change someone's gender. But under the ideals of body autonomy, would you support a woman taking T if she still called herself a woman instead of a calling herself a trans man?

And in general, I know radfems are anti-plastic surgery, but wouldn't that too fall under one's body autonomy?

I'm just trying to figure out radfem and gc ideas but I'm running into some inconsistencies.

honestly i was a bit baffled by this ask and couldn't help but feel like its bait bc ... how is cosmetic surgery that is harming your body, incredibly expensive, and done as a result of self-hatred the same as not wanting to carry a baby & go thru the risks of pregnancy for 9 months? to me these are such blatantly, fundamentally different things. but let me assume this isn't bait and you're asking in good faith and address your points.

I know you believe that medical transition doesn't change someone's gender.

this shows a complete lack of understanding on what beliefs i even hold. i don't think medical transition "doesn't change someone's gender" i know it doesn't change a person's *SEX*. this difference is very crucial. gender = gender roles, gendered expectations, etc. it is a social construct. it has nothing to do with anything medical nor biological, its a social contruct that varies across time and cultures.

But under the ideals of body autonomy, would you support a woman taking T if she still called herself a woman instead of a calling herself a trans man?

why would i support the act of taking synthetic hormones which are actively harming your health just as long as you Identify a certain way? it doesn't matter to me what you call yourself. i'm critical of medical transition because it is costly, harmful, and rooted in questionable beliefs. i'm critical of how readily it is promoted. i am critical of how profitable it is to pharmaceutical and medical industries. i am critical of how little research is being put into ensuring the safety of it as well as research into other methods of dealing with sex dysphoria. whether you call yourself a man or a woman is the least of my concerns.

you use the term bodily autonomy, but you seem to be under the belief that bodily autonomy = a person gets to do whatever they want with their body and their choices are always above any criticism or analysis and it does not matter how much their choices are harming them or others. by that logic, if you don't support an anorexic woman starving herself or getting a liposuction, you are against her bodily autonomy because you are not allowing her full agency over her body. by that logic, if a woman tells you she wants to get a BBL or have implants put in, you need to validate and encourage that choice because to question harming your body is to oppose bodily autonomy. but that is not what bodily autonomy is. here is a definition:

Body autonomy is defined as the ability of one person to demonstrate power and agency over choices concerning their own bodies. These choices must be made without fear, threat, violence or coercion from others.

Body autonomy allows individuals the freedom to make their own choices about their bodies. This is significant to a person’s health and wellbeing.

now, if there is a group of people being told that they need to transition ASAP and being told constantly that without transition they will kill themselves, is that or is that not going to instill fear? because if i was told that i need to take an action as early as possible, lest my life be miserable and doomed, then im going to want to urgently take such an action out of fear. if parents are being told "do you prefer to have a dead daughter or a living son?" or w/e, is that not coercion and threats?

moreover, we know taking synthetic hormones for cosmetic purposes can be extremely harmful for one's health. women with high levels of testosterone naturally suffer from a lot of health consequences as a result, nevermind people who alter their body's hormones. this is fundamentally different from a woman choosing to get an abortion because a pregnancy is costly, risky, has health consequences, and will impact her entire life for at least the next 18 years of her life.

that said, i'm not blaming people who do pursue cosmetic procedures or artificial hormones and i'm not against them. i am against the industries promoting this and making it difficult to even have a conversation on this, even pushing against research that does not benefit their financial interests. i am against the promotion of cosmetic surgery as necessary, healthy, and somehow healthcare. i think that there NEEDS to be more research into medical transition, the impacts it has on health, its usefulness and helpfulness, and alternative treatments. the lack of such research and the lack of constructive conversation on this topic is where my concerns lie. not with identity politics like what someone calls themselves while harming their bodies.

so ultimately, i'm not understanding what you think is an inconsistency here. questioning profitable industries and cosmetic surgery which are modern inventions rooted in amplifying people's, namely women's, insecurities for the sake of profit is not at all the same as an abortion and it's worrying to me that you don't see the difference. providing blind affirmation to every choice an individual makes is not bodily autonomy, its individualism and liberalism to another degree. bodily autonomy is allowing individuals the right to make informed, healthy, decisions for themselves. a woman deciding she does not want to go through 9 months of pregnancy and 18 years of child-rearing is not the same as a woman deciding she hates her body and thus MUST get a boob job (which ultimately harms this person's health rather than helping), or someone deciding they hate their sex and thus MUST get surgeries to pass for a different sex (which also ultimately negatively impacts the person's health, even if it provides some psychological relief which potentially could've been gained via a different approach like therapy).

[reality-detective]

In the first 6 years of life your child receives the following through vaccines:

•17,500 mcg 2-phenoxyethanol (antifreeze)

•5,700 mcg aluminum (neurotoxin)

•Unknown amounts of fetal bovine serum(aborted cow blood)

•801.6 mcg formaldehyde (carcinogen, embalming agent)

•23,250 mcg gelatin (ground up animal carcass)

•500 mcg human albumin (human blood)

•760 mcg of monosodium L-glutamate (causes obesity & diabetes)

•Unknown amounts of MRC-5 cells (aborted human babies)

•Over 10 mcg neomycin (antibiotic)

•Over 0.075 mcg polymyxin B (antibiotic)

•Over 560 mcg polysorbate 80 (carcinogen)

•116 mcg potassium chloride (used in a lethal injection)

•188 mcg potassium phosphate (liquid fertilizer agent)

•260 mcg sodium bicarbonate (baking soda)

•70 mcg sodium borate (Borax, used for cockroach control)

•54,100 mcg of sodium chloride (table salt)

•Unknown amounts of sodium citrate (food additive)

•Unknown amounts of sodium hydroxide (Danger! Corrosive)

•2,800 mcg sodium phosphate (toxic to any organism)

•Unknown amounts of sodium phosphate monobasic monohydrate (toxic to any organism)

•32,000 mcg sorbitol (Not to be injected)

•0.6 mcg streptomycin (antibiotic)

•Over 40,000 mcg sucrose (cane sugar)

•35,000 mcg yeast protein (fungus)

•5,000 mcg urea (metabolic waste from human urine)

•Other chemical residuals

(From the book, "What The Pharmaceutical Companies Don't Want You To Know About Vaccines" - By Dr.Todd M. Elsner)

Let this sink in. 🤔

[mariacallous]

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments in a challenge to abortion pill access across the country, including in states where abortion is legal. The stakes for abortion rights are sky-high, and the case is the most consequential battle over reproductive health care access since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

At the center of this fight is mifepristone, a pill that blocks a hormone needed for pregnancy. The drug has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for more than two decades, and it’s used to treat some patients with Cushing’s syndrome, as well as endometriosis and uterine fibroids. But its primary use is the one contested now—mifepristone is the first of two pills taken in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy for a standard medication abortion, along with the drug misoprostol.

If the justices side with the antiabortion activists seeking to limit access to mifepristone, it could upend nationwide access to the most common form of abortion care. A ruling that invalidates mifepristone’s approval would open the door for any judge to reverse the FDA approval of any drug, especially ones sometimes seen as controversial, such as HIV drugs and hormonal birth control. It could also have a chilling effect on the development of new drugs, making companies wary of investing research into medicines that could later be pulled from the market.

Pills are now the leading abortion method in the US, and their popularity has spiked in recent years. More than six in 10 abortions in 2023 were carried out via medication, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute. Since rules around telehealth were relaxed during the Covid-19 pandemic, many patients seeking medication abortions have relied on virtual clinics, which send abortion pills by mail. And it keeps getting more popular: Hey Jane, a prominent telemedicine provider, saw demand increase 73 percent from 2022 to 2023. It recorded another 28 percent spike comparing data from January 2023 to January 2024.

“Telemedicine abortion is too effective to not be in the targets of antiabortion folks,” says Julie F. Kay, a longtime reproductive rights lawyer and director of the advocacy group Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine.

Tomorrow’s argument comes after a long, tangled series of legal disputes in lower courts. The Supreme Court will be hearing two cases consolidated together, including FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, in which a coalition of antiabortion activists filed a suit challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, asking for it to be removed from the market. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing Christian law firm that often takes politically charged cases.

Despite decades of scientific consensus on the drug’s safety record, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine has alleged that mifepristone is dangerous to women and leads to emergency room visits. A 2021 study cited by the plaintiffs to back up their claims was retracted in February after an independent review found that its authors came to inaccurate conclusions.

In April 2023, the Trump-appointed judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary ruling on the FDA case invalidating the agency’s approval of mifepristone. The ruling sent shock waves far beyond the reproductive-rights world, as it had major implications for the entire pharmaceutical industry, as well as the FDA itself; the ruling suggested that the courts could revoke a drug’s approval even after decades on the market.

The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed Kacsmaryk’s decision a week later, allowing the drug to remain on the market, but undid FDA decisions in recent years that made mifepristone easier to prescribe and obtain. That decision limited the time frame in which it can be taken to the first seven weeks of pregnancy and put telemedicine access, as well as access to the generic version of the drug in jeopardy.

Following the 5th Circuit ruling, the FDA and Danco Laboratories sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court, asking the justices to preserve access until it could hear the case. In its legal filing, Danco aptly described the situation as “regulatory chaos.”

SCOTUS issued a temporary stay, maintaining the status quo; the court ultimately decided to take up the case in December 2023.

As all this was unfolding, pro-abortion-rights states across the country were passing what are known as shield laws, which protect medical practitioners who offer abortion care to pregnant patients in states where abortion is banned. This has allowed some providers, including the longtime medication-abortion-advocacy group Aid Access, to mail abortion pills to people who requested them in states like Louisiana and Arkansas.

Though the oral arguments before the Supreme Court begin on Tuesday, it will likely be months before a ruling. Court watchers suspect a decision may be handed down in June. With the US presidential election in the fall, the ruling may become a major campaign issue, especially as abortion access helped galvanize voters in the 2022 midterms.

If the Supreme Court agrees with the plaintiffs that mifepristone should be taken off the market, some in the pharmaceutical industry worry that it will undermine the authority of the FDA, the agency tasked with reviewing and approving drugs based on their safety and efficacy.

“This case isn't about mifepristone,” says Elizabeth Jeffords, CEO of Iolyx Therapeutics, a company developing drugs for immune and eye diseases. Jeffords is a signatory on an amicus brief filed in April 2023 that brought together 350 pharmaceutical companies, executives, and investors to challenge the Texas district court’s ruling.

“This case could have easily been about minoxidil for hair loss. It could have been about Mylotarg for cancer. It could have been about measles vaccines,” Jeffords says. “This is about whether or not the FDA is allowed to be the scientific arbiter of what is good and safe for patients.”

Greer Donley, an associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on abortion on the law, doesn’t think it’s likely that the court will revoke mifepristone’s approval entirely. Instead, she sees two possible outcomes. The Supreme Court could dismiss the case or could undo the FDA’s decision in 2023 to permanently remove the in-person dispensing requirement and allow abortion by telehealth. “This would be an even more narrow decision than what the 5th Circuit did, but it would still be pretty devastating to abortion access,” she says.

The Supreme Court could also decide that the plaintiffs lack a right to bring the case to court, says David Cohen, a professor of law at Drexel University whose expertise is in constitutional law and gender issues. “This case could get kicked out on standing, meaning that the plaintiffs aren't the right people to bring this case,” he says. “If most of the questions are about standing, that will give you a sense that that's what the justices are concerned about.”

As the current Supreme Court is considered virulently antiabortion, reproductive-health-care workers are already preparing for the worst. Some telehealth providers have already floated a backup plan: offering misoprostol-only medication abortions. This is less than ideal, as the combination of pills is the current standard of care and offers the best results; misoprostol on its own can cause additional cramping and nausea. For some providers who may have to choose between misoprostol-only or nothing, it’s better than nothing.

Abortion-rights activists have no plans to give up on telehealth abortions, regardless of the outcome of this particular case. “Let us be clear, Hey Jane will not stop delivering telemedicine abortion care, regardless of the outcome of this case,” says Hey Jane’s CEO and cofounder, Kiki Freedman.

“They’re not going to stuff the genie back in the bottle,” Kay says.

[redacted-metallum]

Tell me about some beast biology. I wat ur opinions on how some of these creatures function. Pick whichever you have the most to say about

SPECBIO BULLSHIT ABOUT SHOGGOTHS GO! (under a cut because it. Got long loll)

One of my longest running internal debates is on if shoggoths are prokaryotic or eukaryotic, and if they're eukaryotic, if they're multicellular or not.

The one that we see in ATMOM is described as being the size of a subway train engine, which to me means that they HAVE to be multicellular OR have some weird shit going on like that giant bacteria or algaes that just sort of piss me off because they're Breaking The Rules because one of the limits for how large a cell can get is how much oxygen said cell can get into its cytoplasm (presuming, of course, that shoggoths are both aerobic and follow said Rules about biology, which are technically made up) in order to create the energy needed to continue the processes of life.

THIS WOULD IMPLY that the shoggoth has to be eukaryotic, otherwise it wouldn't be able to get enough glucose and oxygen to remain alive, since shoggoths were created by the Elder Things out of materials extant on Earth. However, this STILL doesn't answer if shoggoths are single or multicellular!!! The largest single cellular organisms are multinucleate algaes, which produce their own glucose and don't need to worry about moving. I would say that the necessity of movement means that shoggoths are multicellular, as well as their shape-shifting abilities. Shoggoths are described as being able to sprout whatever organs and appendages needed for their task, which means that they can create tissues to form more complex structures. (Cell -> tissue -> organ -> organ system -> organism)

Which then takes me down a different rabbit hole:

Shoggoths basically have full control over the cell cycle, and by necessity are moving lumps of stem cells. Which is fucking WILD to think about and can get into some really really fun (awful) ideas for scenarios or short stories where the Big Bad is like, a pharmaceutical company that's found a way to do stem cell research without using aborted fetal tissue (the #1 reason stem cell research has been hamstrung in the USA, even though it has so much promise in wound management and organ replacement)

OR

They're colonial organisms like siphonophores with similar control, except it's made up of multiple zooids instead of just being made up of cells.

[pro-birth]

“We live in a pro-natalist society that hurts child free people :((((“

Going back to work three days after birth isn’t pro-natalist. Being paid less than your childless peers isn’t pro-natalist. Being mistreated by subpar medical experts isn’t pro-natalist. Being pressured to abort when your circumstances aren’t perfect isn’t pro-natalist. Having an increased risk of homicide during pregnancy as caused by an SO or other loved ones isn’t pro-natalist. Being denied safe and effective treatment options and care providers for pregnancy and birth isn’t pro-natalist. Having your infertility symptoms be mismanaged by an overbloated artificial fertility industry isn’t pro-natalist. Being shamed for having more than 2-3 kids (or for having any at all!) is not pro-natalist. Not having great options for pharmaceuticals because of lack of research into perinatal health isn’t pro-natalist. Lacking sufficient support for lactation isn’t pro-natalist.

Being annoyed by other people judging you for remaining childless sucks and I support people minding their damn business, but I know things that suck worse. Don’t gaslight me about the bullshit society has put me through because I chose to procreate.

(This post is US centric. I understand that childless women receive far worse treatment in other parts of the world. This is about child free women in the US trying to act like they are placed beneath mistreated mothers).

[bijoumikhawal]

Bite the Hand that Starves You: Chapter One

(originally posted 12/5/23 on AO3)

Fic as of chapter contains: discussion of abortion, references to drug use, intersex and trans characters

---

Julian shouldn’t have been in the infirmary at this hour. His shift ended quite some time ago, but while he was up eating a middle of the night snack, he realized he’d forgotten a personal padd down here with a book he’d been reading on it. He certainly could have replicated a new one. But the excuse to get in a decent walk and enjoy the quiet of the station at night had convinced him otherwise.

Vusora wasn’t up and about the main room of the infirmary. More likely than not a patient had called for her- over-nighters were moved to private rooms, if possible. Ishiha either was also helping a patient or had been allowed to rest early.

Julian felt a bit uneasy, though this was all normal.

His unease grew when he heard a slight sound from near the back.

Quietly, he walked towards it. Maybe it was a nurse. If it wasn’t, he didn’t want to tip them off.

He heard another scuffling sound, and he was close enough to determine it was the pharmaceutical closet, normally locked. Then silence.

When Julian had the inside in his direct line of sight, it was hard to describe what he felt.

“Oh, Garak.”

Garak didn’t turn to face him, simply holding still like he was contemplating the possibility of melting into the shelf.

---

Julian sat down across from Garak in his office. "Alright. Why were you attempting to steal from the infirmary stores?"

Garak had gone along with him without struggle, but was petulant as expected. "Why do you think? Surely you remember the last few months."

Julian rested his chin on his hand. He certainly did. After Garak claimed to be recovered, there naturally were aftershocks. He reluctantly submitted himself to checkups- for a week. Then he abruptly refused to see just about anyone, working on alterations from his quarters and only having his shop open for two hours each day, primarily to allow customers to pick up their orders and do final fittings.

That bizarre behavior had ended a few weeks ago… not too long before the incident with the Dominion simulation.

"I'm just curious, if you are looking for a high, whatever made you think this would do it." Julian held up the vial, having slipped it into his hand while ushering Garak out.

"I'm curious as to why you haven't called security."

Julian continued, ignoring him. "Perhaps you were reaching for something else?" He rolled the vial in-between his fingers before putting it on his desk. "Because this is a Rigellian abortifacient. And while I'm not certain, the information I do have leads me to believe taking any significant dosage would likely give a Cardassian liver damage." It was a 77.6 percent likelihood based on current data, his brain provided helpfully.

Garak looked at him balefully, saying nothing.

Julian tapped the top of the vial. "I would've hoped you had learned not to hide this sort of thing from me, Garak."

"Yes, yes, you're very clever, doctor. You simply know about every sneeze on this station the second it happens." Garak said with a sneer.

"Are you pregnant, Garak?"

Garak retreated again. "Don't be absurd."

"What's absurd about it? I haven't done that kind of examination, of course, so I don't know your personal anatomy, and that makes it a very fair question."

His mouth was held in a firm, thin line.

"Garak. I'm not judging you, or whatever it is that made you think stealing medication was a wise course of action. I just want to help." Julian paused. "And if you are, even a Bajoran medication-"

"-Is still not suited to my biology and has similar risks to what you have in your hand right now. I decided acute liver failure was preferable to cardiopulmonary damage."

Julian didn't smile. "Alright. I'm fairly certain it's less likely, but that would be a risk." He made a mental note that Garak might have a family history of heart and lung problems.

Garak seemed put out that by saying such, he had admitted to the issue. He also just- seemed tired. Some of his hair had escaped the hold of the styling product he normally used. There was redness in his eyes, too, and though the implant had been deactivated months ago, he still looked somewhat ill.

Julian leaned forwards. “I’m not currently planning on reporting this.”

Garak scoffed. “I guessed as much. You should, you know.”

Julian closed his eyes and inhaled. “Which of us is the doctor, again? You seem to have come under the impression that it’s you.”

“When it comes to me, I should think we’re evenly matched.”

Julian didn’t rise to the bait. “As I said, I just want to help. Unfortunately, my knowledge is limited in this area.”

Garak’s hand settled on the desk. Julian picked up the vial again.

“Give me two months.” Julian said. “And if I don’t have a better option, I’ll administer the dose. I’ll do everything I can to mitigate the side affects- anything you need.”

Garak was death-still, gaze tilted downwards.

Julian cautiously reached out, resting his hand on Garak’s upper arm. He could feel his muscles stiffen, then relax under his touch. “I would think this goes without saying, but I will speak of this to no one on this station. And if you need someone- to talk to, to help you, to-“

“I understand.” Garak said, in the tone of someone who just wished you’d stop talking.

Julian gave his arm a squeeze.

“Is this something you offer for all your patients?”

“You’re my friend as well as a patient.” Julian keyed his office door back open, standing at the door to let Garak know he could leave like a dvarapala. “It's late- you should head home, get some rest. I’ll call you when I’m more prepared to help you with this.”

Garak didn’t need much encouragement to go. Julian went back to his office to mark down some notes. And when he left, of course he almost forgot his padd again.

---

Nothing was quite as humiliating as getting caught while doing something he should have been perfectly capable of. And worse, he wasn’t even in trouble for it, because it was such a pathetic thing to be caught doing.

Garak kicked the wall of the turbolift with uncharacteristically unrestrained violence. Of all the things that could compound the situation here, this was the last thing he’d expected. It was a possibility, yes- but it had slipped his mind entirely in the years he'd spent as the only Cardassian on the station, which was unforgivable.

And of course, of course Dr. Bashir had been understanding about it. Garak wished he had called security. There were rules, and so there were consequences. That all made sense. Mercy! What was mercy- foolishness, a tool of confusion, a lapse in duty!

Everything was so sharp without the wire.

He wondered to himself, if Dr. Bashir was relieved that he hadn’t been trying to get high, or if he was confounded by him having yet another medical issue. Probably not the latter- challenges were met with eagerness and a cocksure attitude that a solution could be found. Dr. Bashir was still early in his career, after all, and even doctors with decades of experience…

He needed an auxiliary plan. Certainly, Dr. Bashir had said he’d administer the treatment himself, but he’d only said it, and even if he’d offered to make a record of it, he was free to change his mind. It was a privilege of expertise.

He wondered what all got reported back to the Order about him these days, if they had surveillance on the infirmary, and if Tain was thinking on him with disgust already.

A moment of anger seized him. If Tain thought so of him, he had no one to blame but himself. It was his “tactical decision” that had gotten Garak unto this mess, a simple “no” on his part, or even stating that he didn't care what Garak did, and this never would have happened. Or even-

Garak breathed. Counted. Centered himself.

Allowing such thoughts to fester would only worsen his chances of no longer being exiled. No use in bitterness over the past. He had enough to deal with- and it was almost more than he could handle.

Ideally, when he exited the turbo lift, no one who may be watching noticed anything was amiss. Aside from him perhaps seeming tired. A particularly kind person might’ve asked, “late night?” he imagined, if the corridor to his quarters was not silent save for his own footsteps.

The difference between the temperature in his quarters and the rest of the station was such that opening the door felt like a wall of fire coming to meet him. He had limited the impulse to tamper with the environmental controls in previous years- but when he felt his out of season mating cycle coming on, well. It became necessary. And when it ended abruptly, he hadn't the sternness to turn it back down.

A shudder went through him at the thought of how necessary it’d become if this wasn’t dealt with.

That wouldn’t happen. He would make a plan of his own if this fell through.

---

Julian summoned him to his office a week later, still in the late hours when Garak had first gotten caught. He phrased it as “a follow up for your implant, to set my mind at ease”.

Garak had (painfully) skipped their lunch that week, so this would be the first time seeing him since that night.

The corridors were just as empty as they’d been last time. It wasn’t quite as late as it had been then, but even Quark’s was closed.

Julian was sitting in his office. When Garak closed the door behind him, he immediately began fiddling with a small device next to him, and sat it down on his desk once he was satisfied.

“A signal jammer? Why, doctor, I’d think having recordings of your patients in general was a major ethical violation.”

“It’s not for me. But you know that.” Garak did- he knew that Odo and the good doctor had come into rather major disagreement over the former’s desire to install recording equipment in the infirmary.

Julian also had a pad of paper and a pen sitting on his desk. Off Garak’s look, he said, “You can’t hack paper. I assume you’d prefer this is kept… relatively off the record.”

A correct, though complicated assumption. All of this was already “on the record”- logs of doors being opened and turbolifts being used, security camera footage (Garak was reasonably sure he’d avoided that until he got caught last time, but hadn’t bothered after that), and so on. Julian had provided some cover by having his communication obscure the nature of his late night visits, but Garak felt somewhat doubtful he would be able to keep it that way- no matter how much he wished it, that the only evidence in the end would be memory.

“First. Are you certain you’re pregnant?”

Garak glared at him. “Do you think I’d try to steal from the infirmary on a suspicion?”

“I need to know where we’re at, Garak, and that includes asking questions you may find stupid. How did you find out? How long ago do you think this happened?”

Garak looked down to his hand, which had located a loose thread in the chair upholstery and was spinning it between his fingers, feeling the slubbed texture. “It happened a little over a month ago. There were some… unexpected behavioral changes, and certain biological processes didn’t quite happen as expected since.”

“I would prefer specifics, if you can.” Garak’s eyes slowly met his. Julian held up a hand.

“I did say if you can. I don’t doubt you’re certain based on the information you have, but I’m not familiar with this area of Cardassian healthcare, and with any patient I’d rule out any chance of false positives before proceeding.”

“How can you rule out a false positive if you don’t know?”

Julian tapped his pen against his desk. “Why do you think I waited a week before asking you to come for a preliminary appointment?”

The knowledge that Julian already likely knew specifics of why Garak might be reticent to be detailed made him no less embarrassed. Let him put the pieces together, if he knew so much. “I've had an increased need to be warm, a dramatically increased appetite followed by a low one, sluggishness, worsened mood, and pheromone changes.”

“You can sense your own pheromone changes?” Julian asked as he scribbled notes.

“You can smell when you sweat, can’t you?” Garak replied. “Among other… things, the latter in particular makes me quite certain of what’s going on.”

Julian opened a desk drawer- how clever of him, Garak thought irritably, keeping things out of sight until he needed them- and brought out two sets of a swab and a container. “If you don’t mind.”

Garak tilted his head to the side, allowing Julian to rub each swab over his jaw glands. “Out of curiosity- how do you plan to test those if this is “off the record”?” he asked, distracting himself from his increased heartbeat at having to adopt the posture.

“I’ll say I’m testing the equipment. It doesn’t get logged in patient records, so anyone you’re worried about wouldn’t immediately think to look there, it’s a separate indexing system, and I schedule tests on a regular basis. I can claim that I think there was an error and retest within a few days if that makes you feel better- bury the data somewhat.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.”

Julian put the swabs away. “Are there any particular medical concerns you have?”

“Other than the obvious?” Garak had managed to tear the thread out by now, and his spinning was making it twist into a little ball. He dropped it.

Julian looked at him, trying to be compassionate- Garak hated it. And he hated that he was aware the reaction wasn’t founded on anything he had actually done to offend Garak, not really. It was evidence to Garak’s- problem.

“I don’t want to be pregnant. That’s all.”

Julian nodded. “I understand. There’s a few more questions I’d like to ask, if you would.”

Garak leaned back in the chair with a sigh.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 29, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 30, 2024

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned today in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They spoke at Girard College, a school where Black Americans make up most of the student body, where they emphasized the importance of Black voters to the Democratic coalition and the ways in which the administration’s actions have delivered on its promises to the Black community. 

“Because Black Americans voted, Kamala and I are President and Vice President of the United States,” Biden said. “That’s not hyperbole. Because you voted, Donald Trump is a defeated former president.”

Harris noted that Black Americans are 60% more likely than white Americans to be diagnosed with diabetes, and called out the administration’s capping of insulin at $35 a month, along with the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that permit Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies. She called out the administration’s relief of more than $165 billion in student loan debt for more than 5 million Americans, as well as the first major bipartisan gun safety law in 30 years. 

What has guided them, Harris said to applause, is the “fundamental belief” that “[w]e work for you, the American people, not the special interests, not the billionaires or the big corporations, but the people.” 

She contrasted their record with that of former president Trump, who tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act that puts healthcare within reach for millions of Black Americans, proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and handpicked Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. “And as he intended, they did,” she said. “[T]oday, one in three women and more than half of Black women of reproductive age live in a state with an abortion ban.”

Then Biden took the stage to chants of “Four more years!” He added to Harris’s list of ways in which the administration has worked for racial equality: reconnecting the Black and brown and poor neighborhoods that were cut apart by highways in the 1960s and addressing the decades of disinvestment that happened as a consequence of the carving up of those neighborhoods (this cutting apart of neighborhoods is a really big deal in urban history, by the way); getting rid of the lead pipes that still contaminate water, especially in minority neighborhoods; making high-speed internet widely available and affordable; investing in historically Black colleges and universities; appointing more Black women to federal circuit courts than all other U.S. presidents combined. 

Under the Biden administration, he noted, Black unemployment is at a record low and Black small businesses are starting at the fastest rate in 30 years. The wealth gap between Black Americans and white Americans is the lowest it’s been in 20 years. “We’re opening more doors for economic opportunity, including access to capital, entrepreneurship, workforce training so you can build a life of financial freedom and create generational wealth...all while being the providers and leaders of your families and community,” the president said.

Biden drew a contrast between his administration and Trump, saying, “I’ve shown you who I am, and Trump has shown you who he is. And today, Donald Trump is pandering and peddling lies and stereotypes for your votes so he can win for himself, not for you.” “[W]e’re not going to let Donald Trump turn America into a place that doesn’t believe in honesty, decency, and treating people with respect,” he said, “and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Donald Trump turn America into a place filled with anger and resentment and hate.” 

According to Myah Ward and Brakkton Booker of Politico, this was Biden’s fifth trip to the Philadelphia area and his seventh to Pennsylvania this year. As he tries to win the state in 2024, the campaign has opened 24 field offices and outspent Trump there by a ratio of more than 4 to 1.   

Harris and Biden’s appearance in Philadelphia looked pretty much like a normal day in a normal presidential campaign season.

The same was not true of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who was in a courtroom in Manhattan as Judge Juan Merchan instructed the jury in the criminal case  against Trump for falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, to stop her account of their sexual encounter from becoming public in the days before the 2016 election.  

Legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained that to find Trump guilty, “[t]he jury must find unanimously that Trump created fraudulent business records and that he did it with the intent to influence an election through unlawful means.”

Trump and his supporters immediately took to the media to misrepresent the court system. Trump appeared to sleep through the jury instructions but later posted on social media: “I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE CHARGES ARE IN THIS RIGGED CASE…. THERE IS NO CRIME.” (He had told the judge on April 4, 2023, that he understood the charges against him.) Trump insisted that he had been railroaded by the fact that “a lot of key witnesses were not called,” although his own defense did not call them and he declined to testify himself. He called the judge “conflicted” and “corrupt,” and said “Mother Teresa could not beat these charges,” a reference to the Albanian-Indian Catholic nun canonized by the Catholic Church in 2016. 

Fox News host John Roberts misrepresented the judge’s instructions, launching a wave of fury on right-wing media stations and prompting Florida senator Marco Rubio to write: “This is exactly the kind of sham trial used against political opponents of the regime in the old Soviet Union.” Utah senator Mike Lee chimed in with his own attacks on Judge Merchan. Roberts later corrected his tweet, but it was too late to change the narrative.

Tonight, those two themes reappeared again and again on social media in both Trump’s feed and those of his supporters. Their frenzy suggested they are concerned about the jury’s verdict. Newsmax host Todd Starnes tweeted: “President Trump needs to get out of New York City RIGHT NOW! Fly back to Mar-a-Lago or another state that will provide him safe harbor.”

Indeed, it seems we are seeing the fear of accountability that has been missing from the top levels of American politics since President Gerald Ford pardoned President Richard M. Nixon in 1974. While Ford believed Nixon’s accepting the pardon was an admission of guilt for his participation in the coverup of the break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel before the 1972 election and anything else he might have done, Nixon never admitted such guilt. 

In the fifty years since then, certain powerful people seem to have concluded that they cannot be held accountable to laws or rules. The MAGA Republicans are illustrating that disrespect for the rule of law on a daily basis as they work to undermine the courts and the Department of Justice. 

Yesterday, Jodi Kantor of the New York Times reported that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s story that his wife flew the upside down flag of distress favored by the January 6th rioters as a response to a hostile neighbor did not line up with accounts given by neighbors and a police report. 

Because of that distress flag, as well as the “Appeal to Heaven” flag that flew over his beach house, Alito is under increasing pressure to recuse himself from considering cases related to the events of January 6, including whether Trump is immune from prosecution for his actions surrounding the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Today Alito refused to recuse himself, blaming his wife for flying the flags—“My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not,” he wrote—and suggesting that anyone who thinks he should recuse himself is “motivated by political or ideological considerations.” 

And in what should almost certainly be read as trolling those who disagree with him, Alito, the author of the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision taking away from American women the right to make their own decisions about their healthcare, wrote: “[M]y wife is an independently minded private citizen. She makes her own decisions, and I honor her right to do so.”  

Trump promptly congratulated Alito “for showing the INTELLIGENCE, COURAGE, and ‘GUTS’ to refuse stepping aside from making a decision on anything January 6th related.” 

MAGA attacks on the rule of law affect real people’s lives. Ryan J. Reilly of NBC News reported today that after former Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone called Trump “authoritarian” with a “violence fetish” in front of the Manhattan courthouse yesterday, Fanone’s 78-year-old mother was swatted, with officers showing up at her home after reports of a murder there. Fanone protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and went into cardiac arrest after a rioter assaulted him with a stun gun. “This is the reality of going up against or challenging Donald Trump…. These swatting calls are incredibly f---ing dangerous, especially when the target is somebody like my mom.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[fite-club]

the thing that's going over so many younger trans guys' heads is that, yes, the primary form of discrimination faced by trans men is that our existence is constantly forgotten and/or erased-- but that in of itself is not targeted discrimination.

testosterone isn't a controlled substance because the pharmaceutical industry wants to prevent people from transitioning, it's because it's a performance-enhancing drug and athletes are banned from using it. pregnant trans men don't have to stop taking T because doctors don't want them to be trans, it's because there is so little research and data on pregnant trans men that we have no idea what the risks and complications of the hormone interactions are. trans men having trouble making appointments or getting insurance coverage for "women's health issues", being left out of discussions about abortion or breast cancer, and everything about where we're at with phalloplasty... it's because the people in these institutions either don't know we exist or can't imagine there's that many of us. that is bad, that is discrimination, this is the kind of fight for visibility we need to be having. but pretending that these are problems because society as a whole has something against trans men in particular, is an unhelpful and unrealistic way to think about this stuff. that's not why we're marginalized. there is no "anti-masculinity" problem.