Freezing, winds, a 5-hour bus ride, and some anti-abortion zealots seriously misusing Sara Bareilles songs could not stop LPJL from being front and center this week at the Supreme Court! The #EndtheLies rally, MC’d by our fearless leader Lizz Winstead, showed fake clinics that our truth is louder, more informed, and a heck of a lot more fun than their lies! We show up! And no amount of sleet or, again, hateful misuses of Sara Bareilles, is gonna stop us from speaking our truth!
NIFLA v. Becerra is all about whether FAKE clinics can hide behind their faulty definition of the First Amendment to hide the fact that they’re masquerading as healthcare providers in order to lie, shame, and berate people out of their own choices about their own bodies. And they’ll do that by vomiting up a vile concoction of myths, misrepresentations, and utter bullshit from abortion causing breast cancer to depression.
They lie because they have to. And because they’re slimeballs, but mostly because they have to. You can’t force harmful policies onto people while honestly telling them what you’re doing. So we see the lies in everything they do, on every level. We saw it all week—just like every week. MISSISSIPPI’s insane 15-week abortion ban was put on hold because it’s based on a lie about when a fetus becomes viable. (Cough! 24 weeks! Ahem!) IOWA was pushing a “fetal heartbeat” bill on the lie that a six-week old embryonic collection of cells is doing somersaults and cartwheels in the womb playground.
And Trump’s Department of Health and (in)Human Services shit-canned a teen pregnancy prevention program based on the lies of abstinence-only crusaders who say that birth control doesn’t work… but that “keep your knees together” sermons do!
Here’s some truth: the most complete study out there just concluded that abortion in the USA is “safe and effective.” And that’s despite the best efforts of anti-choice ghouls to sabotage it. Oh, and a separate study says that places with legal abortion and access to birth control have lower rates of abortion. You want a poster child for abortion-policy common sense? Try WASHINGTON state. This week they enacted a bill to make insurers cover maternal care—including contraception AND abortion care!
We can have sane and safe repro care—or a bunch of crazy lies. Part of that is up to the Supreme Court, but most of it is up to us.