Dear friends,
Yesterday, I listened to a deeply troubling episode of a podcast, in which law professors Leah Litman and Kate Shaw interviewed Jessica Valenti, who has been chronicling the fallout of the Dobbs decision in her publication, Abortion, Every Day.
This is what makes it so harrowing to listen to (or read) Valenti: she tracks the rhetoric of the groups working to block abortions and the moves that follow, painting a paint-by-numbers picture of how these groups are dismantling human rights.
“So like a couple of months ago, the Students for Life president said something to the effect of like, we would never want to ban travel for women, right? Like, maybe we’ll, well, you know, talk about minors and, you know, not letting minors out of state, possibly with parental permission. And the way she said it, I was like, oh, this is this is going to be a thing. And then sure enough, they were [doing it]. Students for Life is an organization that also does draft legislation. Sure enough, yesterday Idaho announced this bill that they’re going to label anyone who takes a teenager — a minor — out of state for abortion care as a human trafficker.”
I had to stop listening for a while because Valenti’s account of the right’s playbook — denying that they’re targeting contraception and travel, pretending that there are exceptions for rape and incest, even when the hurdles for those seeking exceptions are so insurmountable that she doubts anyone who has been raped has ever been able to take advantage of them — was terrifying.
Litman noted that the pattern is the same for attacks on the rights of trans people:
“You know, where it starts out with, oh, well, we just want to restrict gender affirming therapy for minors. And then now all of a sudden people are like, no, really for everyone.”
They spent some time discussing the attacks on medication abortion and the imminent threat that, in a case challenging the FDA’s decades old approval of mifepristone, one judge could limit medication abortion with a “nationwide injunction” on the use of the drug.
For details about the case, NARAL has an explainer.
Litman pointed out that medication abortions would still be possible, using another drug normally used in combination with mifepristone, but they would be more painful.
Are you upset yet?
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On Wednesday of this week, Valenti reported that
This was the first of Valenti’s posts I’d read after subscribing and I had to take rage breaks.
Yesterday, the Virginia governor used a procedural move to block
a bill passed in the Democratic-led state senate, and supported by half the chamber’s Republicans, would have banned search warrants for menstrual data stored in tracking apps on mobile phones or other electronic devices.
Each week, I talk to people from around the world about topics of their choosing. We have discussed the Dobbs decision, but I wonder if I could get through a discussion about the post-Dobbs crisis.
Jessica Valenti and the podcast hosts lingered over the president’s failure, during the State of the Union, to show even a “little bit of fucking energy” about an issue that’s so important to Americans.
I would love to see Biden come out and say like, hey, show me one rape victim that has been able to access an abortion in any of these states.
Valenti’s remark is the inspiration for our action today.
Let the president know that abortion rights matter and he has to bring energy to the discussion whenever he speaks. I made is so easy.
There is so much going on, all the time. We haven’t even discussed the airborne toxic event in Ohio. But we only have so much fucking energy. We have to apportion it in manageable amounts. Have a restful weekend!
with love,
L