After the announcement on June 24th that Roe was overturned, my emails and social media sites were overrun with many posts that had a similar tone “If MEN had to deal with pregnancy” or “If MEN’s health were in jeopardy”….Abortion would be legal/free/written in the Constitution, etc.
In my humble opinion, it is a tactical mistake in the war to protect a woman’s right to choose, to make men the enemy.
Do the people who sent me these messages realize that one of the six judges that voted to overturn Roe was a woman, and that it’s clear to anyone with a brain that another judge who voted to overturn is clearly being controlled by his wife – a woman who also supported the insurrection on January 6th?
This is NOT a men versus women issue. In fact, while not as large a majority as women with 62% in support of Roe, 56% of men support a woman’s right to choose.
Let us not divide our ranks by presenting this as a men versus women issue. If you are a woman who is outraged by the decision, know that most men are on your side, and do not forget that a significant number of women, and men are not.
A majority of men did vote for Republicans in the last several elections. Whether these were Barstool/Joe Rogan Republicans who wanted lower taxes and anti-PC cultural views who were pro or indifferent to abortion is besides the point. They enabled this hostile takeover along with evangelical women and white women in general.
Obviously the men on this site (and unfortunately it’s down to a handful of white guys lately) voted for the progressive woman who would’ve put Democrats on the court in 2016 and some of us backed women in the 2020 primary as well. But I wouldn’t condemn all men nor would I cheerlead them.
It was a progressive man who put codifying Roe on the back burner in 2009. It was a progressive woman who refused to give up her seat when Democrats had the votes to replace her. It was our incumbent progressive man in the White House who let perverted creep and constitutional Neanderthal Clarence Thomas get into the court. So lots of mistakes were made to get here and our side is not blameless, but our side is also the only one willing to fight back.
I’m pretty sure Biden ultimately voted against seating Thomas. He ran a fair hearing and if you are suggesting he should have somehow obstructed the process like Republicans do I would disagree.
He did not run a fair hearing, he ran a one sided hearing that favored Thomas and marginalized Anita Hill who was not allowed to call witnesses to corroborate her testimony. This has been well documented and Biden himself has apologized for his conduct. The reality is at least two credibly accused assaulters are on the court and they both voted to destroy a woman’s right to choose and both were aided and abetted by Democrats who wanted to play fair while the other side played for keeps.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/politics/joe-biden-anita-hill.amp.html
It was fair in the sense that both Hill and Thomas got to speak, and I’m not sure piling on the accusations counts as fair. In both cases the Senate had a choice both as to whether to believe the allegations and whether to consider them disqualifying. Personally I think allegations aside there is no shame whatsoever in voting against a nominee simply on ideological grounds even if his morals are pure.
I would also agree with that and wish more Democrats had done the same throughout the last two decades.
This travesty is the fruit of decades of very concerted effort on the part of three groups:
While some men fought this, and some women supported it, asserting that this is anything other than what it so clearly IS is just gaslighting.
Each man among us can expect to face the ire of tens of millions of women who are now under siege. This is not the time for any man to be whining about how unfair it is to be targeted in this way.
I most strongly suggest that the most honest response from each and every one of us is “I could have done more”. We should stop there — at least for now.
This is a time for men to listen. Nothing more.
And even the “liberal New York Times” contributed to this with a stupid article yesterday asking men how they felt about this. Who cares? I agree with former Senator and a conservative Republican Alan Simpson that we shouldn’t even be allowed to vote on this issue. Granted I blame Amy Coney Barrett for her call and Ruth Bader Ginsberg for refusing to retire when it was much easier to replace her with a pro-choice jurist. Those two women deserve some blame, otherwise it’s men who dropped the ball.
RBG had every right to make the decision she did. This trend toward blaming her is just more Left eating their own and is unproductive.
I disagree. She put herself and her own needs over that of the country and her legacy as a champion of women’s rights. I am acquainted with her grand daughter and deeply familiar and sympathetic with the family’s concerns that if she retired she would have passed earlier, but sometimes patriotism requires putting country first.
This is partly why I think reviving the FDR proposal to add a young judge for every judge over 70 will help ease the burden on justices who may have a harder time doing the job as they age and also produce a Court more ideologically in tune with the times and country it purports to represent. That might be a nicer way of avoiding the uncomfortable conversations Obama had with RBG and the criticism, which now seems valid, if those of us who wanted her legacy not to be marred by last weeks travesty.
Or a hard ten or eighteen year term so there is more turnover on the court to ensure it reflects its times. Some kind of reform is needed beyond waiting for the actuary tables to be in our favor and other even harder reforms (removing the filibuster or electoral college) to pass. It is well within Congresses power to add justices and Democrats should do so while we have the votes. We know what Mitch McConnell would do if the shoe were on the other foot. There is no respect for precedence, bipartisanship, or majority rule on the other side and there should be no quarter from ours.
Usually it goes further back in history, but to me this is another example of the Left judging the past (even if just a couple years in the past in this case) by what happened later or what we now know. As soon as new information or mores come to the fore we so quickly knock people off their often well-deserved pedestals. Nobody has a perfect crystal ball and RBG could have just easily died shortly after Biden’s inaugural as shortly before his election. I believe we should have one justice per circuit, but recall the FDR despite enormous popularity and majorities failed spectacularly on this count. I strongly disagree with term limits, but would be open to mandatory senior status at a certain age.
And when President Trump sought to ban immigration of predominantly “Muslim Men”….well,
And so I shall sit on the sidelines and not get involved?
You’re grasping at straws.
When I saw the title of this diary on the BMG dashboard I instantly and correctly guessed who the author was. I don’t at all feel attacked as a man, but I think the point is a lot of men do seem to have a lot of opinions about what a woman should do with her body. I also think that if men were the ones getting pregnant they also wouldn’t be the ones making the rules.
“Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.” President Bill Clinton
That position would be anathema in todays Democratic Party unfortunately, this is also part of the problem that we have moved to the left of the median voter on this question which gives the media and the GOP the ability to gaslight and both sides this question to death. I think now the focus has to be on the risks of unsafe abortions and the extremism of forcing women, some as young as 12, of carrying their rapists or relatives child to term.
We also need to cry remember Savita who’s death on the operating table led to Ireland finally amending its constitution to enable abortion rights. I’ll add that letting voters decide this on a national level produced a better and more durable outcome than nine justices ever could.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar
Yes, and many, like me, have the opinion that she should be be the sole decider with such matters as her pregnancy. However, let us not forget that more than one third of women in America do not agree with me and that is a significant number.
Again, this misses the point. A Majority of Men support making the “rule” that the woman and only the woman who gets pregnant is the only one deciding on her body, her pregnancy. Are you implying that if this majority of men got pregnant, they would somehow change their opinion and see to it that others had control over their pregnancy?
I’m saying that if men were the gender that got pregnant, society would probably assume that they should stay in the domestic lane and women would run the show.
The big thing is bodily autonomy and the right to privacy. The same men who didn’t want to grey vaccines or wear masks should be on board with the government not forcing women to bear children against their will. That’s the question. Also keeping religion out of the state. I think the religious right did a bang up job making people feel bad about the fetus and value it’s safety over the safety and dignity of the living breathing adult carrying it to term. And I agree the feminist abortion is healthcare or abortion is sacred to women and other birthing people argument is going to alienate people we need.
I think even the Barstool guy gets it on how choice and bodily autonomy is essential to all Americans regardless of gender.
https://www.thestreet.com/.amp/investing/republicans-vote-democrat-save-democracy
Sadly, I fear that these are not going to resonate with bar-stool guys and good old boys of the deep south.
These guys literally still prefer their women barefoot and pregnant.
Sorry, but I think that’s just the way it is down there.
Also — not just “down there”.
By not making it a women’s issue, Republicans have been able to team up the 38% of women and 44% of men who wanted Roe overturned, gave the podium or pen or microphone to any of them, regardless of gender while the Republicans limit themselves to a “women’s issue”, blame men, and instruct the 56% of men who want body autonomy and privacy to keep to the sidelines and feel guilty.