Guest blog by Jessica Morandi!
America has been having a lot of communication issues this week: racists are tired of being called racists yet are still supporting racists and one straight white man morphed into another straight white man and no one noticed or cared. You know what ELSE people didn’t communicate about this week? ABORTION! But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. So without further ado, we present the good, the bad, and the mediocre abortion news of the week.
Remember back in June, when Alabama was trying to save their OPENLY unconstitutional ban on D&Es (aka the safest, most common second-trimester abortion method) and the Supreme Court was like “LOL, NOPE” and refused to even HEAR the appeal?? Well now, Alabama might have to pay over ONE MILLION DOLLARS to the abortion clinics’ lawyers for wasting their time with that bullshit. Nice!
And this wouldn’t be the first time Alabama has had to pay the ACLU oodles of money for being the worst: since 2013, Alabama has already paid $3.72 million to the ACLU after losing or settling lawsuits related to state laws on abortion, same-sex marriage, and immigration. And that’s just to the ACLU! Imagine calling yourself pro-LIFE yet pouring MILLIONS upon MILLIONS into legal battles to endanger people’s lives and restrict autonomy, instead of using that money to ACTUALLY IMPROVE the lives of already-born people who need your help. (For a fun breakdown of how much good that funding could’ve done instead, check out Jaye on today’s episode of Operation Save Abortion.) That’s such a cartoonishly evil move that even supervillains wouldn’t want to be associated with Alabama lawmakers right now. We KNOW if Darth Vader were here, even HE would say, “The hypocrisy is strong with this one.”
And SPEAKING of hypocrisy (we could literally transition into any pro-life news ever here lol), Cyprus is getting alllll the attention right now for that bishop saying it’s hypocritical to mourn a serial killer’s child victims while abortion exists. Unsurprisingly, it’s the same dude who thinks that a pregnant person having anal sex turns their child gay (lmaooooo, but also how dare he peg shame parents who are trying to keep the romance alive with a lil’ kinkiness). This guy would fit RIGHT in with Operation Save America; that brand of baseless, shaming bullshit is exactly the kind of garbage fire we were just fighting in good ole Milwaukee. (And continue to fight. Every. Damn. Day.)
And finally, the second round of democratic debates was this week! But unfortunately and RIDICULOUSLY, abortion was almost COMPLETELY ignored this week, even though it was one of the most anticipated debate topics. Apparently we don’t have time to talk abortion access but we DO have time for 10 flavors of straight white dude in this race? Not cool (but sadly VERY on-brand for America).
Abortion wasn’t even HINTED at on Tuesday despite spending over 30 MINUTES talking about healthcare (which Planned Parenthood draggggggged). Then on Wednesday night, Biden and Harris briefly clashed about the Hyde Amendment (if you’ve forgotten what that’s all about, check out our nifty video explaining how the amendment disproportionately impacts people of color and is just generally the worst), but they seemed COMICALLY UNABLE to say the word “abortion,” referring to it as everything from “reproductive healthcare” to “those kinds of services.” They literally did not say “abortion” one time. The word did not escape the lips of a SINGLE candidate on either debate night — which WOULD be comical if it didn’t send the dangerous (AND FALSE) message that abortion is a dirty word.
As our founder Lizz Winstead put it, “To normalize something you must remind people it’s normal.” So repeat after us: ABORTION IS HEALTHCARE. And as we all know, HEALTHCARE IS A RIGHT.
