This is not normal. The level of pure malice and depravity present in the modern day Republican party has reached its fever pitch. The election of Donald J Trump may have very well brought us across a threshold that we may never be able to return from, so the only way to fight back is to move forward.

Ever since Barry Goldwater’s failed Presidential campaign, the Republican party devolved into something twisted and horrid. The Presidencies of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W Bush helped set the stage for what we are seeing today, and the presidency of Donald Trump is where this disgusting bigotry is finally starting to reach its peak. When they said that the south would rise again, I don’t think any of us expected it to be in the form of a New York billionaire though.

This kind of shit is exactly what everyone who broke down into tears on November 9th 2016 feared. Any of you that said things wouldn’t get this bad, any of you fuckheads who thought Hillary was somehow worse than Trump or decided not to vote against him, I hope you learned your lesson. If you still think Hillary was “just as bad” or somehow worse, then I hope I never meet you in person.

There was a point where I convinced myself that Trump might not be so bad, and I embraced a lot of rather cringe worthy centrist rhetoric. I was never a supporter of Trump, and I only ever convinced myself he wouldn’t be as horrible as he was as a coping mechanism cause I was literally contemplating suicide when it was announced that he won. But it still goes to show you how much that four years of hardship and torment can change a person, and right now it seems like Republicans are trying their damnedest to push that change on as many people as possible.

This brings us to the subject of today’s rant. Abortion has rarely been a motivating issue for me. For the longest time, I thought it was an issue with no solution. When you have an ethical quandary that requires you to determine the worth of another human being, and also question what is and is not a human being, how can one come up with a correct answer?

That was how I used to view it, so I just stayed out of it. In my previous political pieces, I’ve limited discussion of abortion to extreme positions. IE things such as defunding Planned Parenthood despite the fact that Government funding to PP isn’t even used for abortions, or for those who think it should not be allowed in cases of rape or incest.

I’m firmly in the “pro-choice” category, but I can at least see why the pro-life argument may be persuasive to some well meaning people. After all, most pro-choice people are not those who are fond of abortion. Rather they simply recognize that it is oppressive and inhumane to force someone to go through a pregnancy that they don’t wish for. If you still believe that people who get abortions are killing a baby, then I ask you to think of it this way.

Imagine a hypothetical scenario where a complete stranger is in a coma and is being kept alive via a feeding tube, but cannot communicate through any other means. Through some hypothetical contrivance, this person will die if you ever leave their bedside for even one minute. You have nothing to entertain yourself with, you see no visitors, and you have no contact with the outside world or any other living being except for the person beside you. You will need to sit there, effectively in solitary confinement, for the rest of your life or else this person dies. You would need to abandon all your dreams and everyone else you ever loved to look after this complete stranger. Would you do it?

If you said yes, there is a 99% chance that you are not being honest. Even the most well meaning of you would try it for a brief period of time but would give up when you realize that you can’t handle the pressure. That’s how most people who get abortions feel. There is an inherent guilt present in most people who get abortions. They may want to take care of their child, but they simply know that they can’t afford to take care of them, and that raising this child will ruin their life AND the child’s life!

A common response to this is “just put the kid up for adoption,” a response that is clearly not well though out for multiple reasons. First of all, there is the process of pregnancy itself. I will just quote Nikki Primrose on Quora here.

CW: A graphic description of pregnancy that goes into excruciating, painful, disgusting, and uncomfortable detail (with gender specific references removed because trans men and AFAB non binary people get pregnant to). If you are “pro-life” and you stop reading the quoted paragraph, you forfeit any moral high ground you have ever had.

When a sperm cell fertilizes an egg, the cells begin to multiply. Right at the very beginning, this microscopic clump of cells will travel into the uterus and attach itself to the lining. It will remain inside a person’s uterus for approximately 9 months, during which time it will go from being a microscopic lump to a small human weighing up to 10 pounds. All of this will happen inside a person’s body, and we call the phenomenon “pregnancy”. The process is not confined to the uterus, though, in part because of the role that hormones play. Pregnancy hormones transform people, emotionally and physically. Changes take place throughout their body. You probably heard of morning sickness, but did you know that it isn’t always confined to any certain time of day? Try feeling nauseated 24 hours a day for several months, and vomiting constantly at a time when your body desperately needs its nutrients to fuel the production of a human-to-be. My body likes to announce pregnancy by turning my breasts and nipples into torture devices. Imagine that your tits suddenly swell and your nipples become so sensitive that a soft breeze will make it feel like they’re being twisted in a vise. And let’s not forget about the constipation, the incessant farting, and those glorious hemorrhoids. Oh, and the joy of pissing yourself whenever you sneeze, laugh, or most especially, fart – and if you’re really lucky, you might keep doing that forever! Your body will gain weight in strange ways, and your appearance will likely be permanently altered. Maybe you lose the baby weight, maybe you don’t? Those purple streaks are there to stay, so enjoy your brand new zebra patterned tummy and tits. Of course everything will hurt, and you won’t be able to attain anything resembling comfort towards the end. You will carefully construct a nest of pillows every time you lay down, but you’ll still feel like a beached whale. Those hormones are fucking with your mind too, so you might find yourself weeping when you watch a commercial for a car or see a tub of crabmeat in the store and begin to empathize with the deceased crabs. Once your miraculous pregnancy comes to an end, you will need to push a baby out your vagina. Either that, or you’ll need to undergo major surgery. Your cervix has to expand from this thing with a tiny opening that allows blood and mucus to pass, into a doorway fit for a medieval castle. I would try to describe contractions to you, but there’s just no point. All I’ll say is that if you felt pain like that under other circumstances, you’d definitely think that you were about to die. Like, immediately. Did you know that labor can last more than a whole day and a whole night? When the facilities and expertise for emergency c-sections aren’t available, people sometimes labor for days. Giving birth sucks ass. You’ll probably crap yourself, you might tear or have someone cut your most sensitive skin instead, and it will take quite a while before you can even recognize everything down there as human genitalia. The most glorious part of pregnancy and birth is the fact that you could die. Any pregnancy can develop into an emergency where the person’s life is in danger, and childbirth is a leading cause of death when modern medicine isn’t available. Even with expertly trained doctors and state of the art facilities, people still die. So you really ought to be asking why people don’t just go through all of the above, only to then hand a child over to strangers, instead of having a safe abortion. The answer ought to be a bit more obvious that way, too.

CW Over

This alone is already a perfectly valid reason to get an abortion, but there are other reasons why “just put the baby up for adoption” isn’t an acceptable alternative. Another key reason is due to the fact that putting a baby up for adoption does not guarantee that the baby will be put adopted, and will instead be kept in foster care where there is a one in three chance that they will be abused or neglected by your care taker and have nowhere to turn in most US States. For those who claim that it’s better to live in an abusive home than to be dead, then you clearly are not aware of the increased risk of suicidal ideation among child abuse victims. I will just let Jessie Pridemore’s words speak for herself.

When you add all these factors and combine them with the fact that there are instances where a pregnant person may need an abortion for a medical reason, and the fact that cis men literally cause 100% of unwanted pregnancies, you end up in a scenario where abortion bans have absolutely no justification. In fact, my earlier analogy was actually a pretty generous comparison to abortion that was meant to foster empathy with the majority of those who get abortions.

The key difference between the hypothetical scenario I mentioned earlier and abortion is that the hypothetical scenario may involve a total stranger, but they are at least a living human being That likely stranger has a family or friends of their own who want to see them get better. The nature of my hypothetical scenario draws a fair number of comparisons to that of assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, and I bring this up because there is only one objective non-religious argument that can be used to condemn both abortion and murder but not assisted suicide; that the former two rob someone of their potential future.

On the surface, this seems like this justifies anti abortion legislation, but it falls apart when one realizes that banning abortion robs even more people of a potential future than abortion does! In fact, it will lead to a lot of people dying from back alley coat hanger abortions due to the fact that doctors are punished for performing them. This is not even taking into account those who support the death penalty for people who get abortions.

The hypocrisy of those who call themselves “pro-life” when they actually just mean “anti abortion rights” has been long documented. Most “pro-life” people are Republicans who are against every humanitarian cause from healthcare, to labor unions, to civil rights, to gun control, etc. The reason for this is that most Republican politicians…. don’t actually give a flying fuck about abortion.

From a purely strategic standpoint, turning abortion into a partisan issue was a very smart move on the part of Republicans. The entire premise of this tactic is to find a way to call your opponent a baby killer and have it be somewhat believable to onlookers. It is because of this that you will inevitably find loads and loads of mediocre politicians milking the crap out of abortion because they know it is the most efficient way of winning elections.

If Republican politicians truly cared about reducing the amount of abortions people get, there would be plenty of ways to combat it. I’m once again going to quote someone else here, a Saint Junia UMC Pastor who goes by Dave Barnhart. I’d highly recommend checking out his full piece on this subject and the rest of the pieces on his blog, but I’ll just share the most telling part.

A few years ago, some conservative clergy proposed a resolution in our local denominational body about defunding Planned Parenthood. The resolution was tabled until we could talk through it. I offered to meet with its authors to see if we could craft a resolution we could agree on. None of them showed up for the first meeting. Since they chose not to participate, those of us who did show up kept the goal of the original resolution—reducing or preventing abortion—but chose to focus on a policy that actually applied to our state: comprehensive, medically-accurate sex education in schools. That got their attention. They showed up to the second meeting to oppose this change. They would not even consider a resolution that included comprehensive sex education. Abstinence was the only choice. The only compromise we reached was withdrawing the resolution. I asked if any of the authors had met with the people at Planned Parenthood whose jobs they were trying to defund. They had not. I offered to facilitate a meeting between representatives of Planned Parenthood and the clergy who drafted the resolution. They declined. I don’t know how they could have made it any clearer: They didn’t care about preventing abortion. Nor did they care about even hearing from the other side.

It’s quite clear what Republican politicians are aiming for with this. To them, it IS entirely about subjugating women! Those who support these Republicans are either equally misogynistic or are short sighted and apathetic, which deserves every bit as much scorn as those who actively DO hate women. The decision to prioritize the safety of the unborn over every other vulnerable and disenfranchised group is also telling. I’m going to once again quote Dave Barnhart on this.

“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.

“Pro-life” beliefs are inherently founded in bigotry and a lack of empathy. Republican politicians in particular don’t even believe their own nonsense whenever someone they know gets pregnant. For instance, there is Tennessee congressman Scott Desjarlais, a pro-life Republican who pressured a mistress of his to get an abortion back in 2000. There is also former Pennsylvania congressman Tim Murphy who resigned after it came to light that he had an affair with a woman less than half his age and asked her to have an abortion. Hell there is even our current President who has paid for the abortions of many of his previous partners! Also for added bonus, check out this piece about Pro-life Republican politicians who have also abused and raped women.

Many people have dismissed the draconian abortion laws of Georgia, Ohio, Alabama, Kentucky, and Mississippi that are also in pending in Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia, as if they are unprecedented. Don’t let any Republicans fool you though; this is the “Pro-life” movement taken to its logical conclusion.

What is even more concerning is that a lawsuit over these laws is eventually going to reach the Supreme Court, which has been currently packed with corrupt far right scumbags who will rule to overturn Roe Vs Wade regardless of any evidence put forth. In fact, I’m quite certain that this is what they are trying to accomplish in the first place.

There is a silver lining though, and that sliver lining is precisely WHY the Republicans are doing this. Republicans know they are screwed in 2020. After the blue wave in 2018, they are desperate to keep their base and to disenfranchise as many leftists as possible. This is why they are also criminalizing miscarriages and “false rape accusations;” so they can lock up any pro choice person in prison and thus prevent them from voting.

This is far from an unprecedented tactic on the part of Republicans. The entire war on drugs was specifically created to lock up black people and hippies that would vote against Richard Nixon, and the purpose of the drug war has not changed since then. One also does not need to look any further than the states themselves to see their motivation for these laws.

Most of the states that have started work on these bills are the ones that Republicans have been struggling to maintain their foothold in.

Alabama elected a Democrat to the US Senate in 2017 who is also up for re-election to a full term in 2020.

Florida Republicans struggled to flip a Senate seat from a mediocre centrist Democrat and to hold the Governorship in 2018.

Georgia almost had a Republican lose the race for Governor in 2018, and has a Republican Senator who is up for re-election in 2020.

Kentucky has a Republican senator and Governor that are up for election in 2019 and 2020 respectively and who both have the lowest approval ratings in the country.

Louisiana has a Democratic Governor who is favored to win re-election later this year.

Mississippi has a Senator who won with less than 55% of the vote in 2018 and is in the bottom 10 of US Senator approval ratings, and is also up for re-election to a full term in 2020 in addition to a Governor seat open later this year.

Missouri struggled to vote out a Democratic incumbent with one of the lowest approval ratings in the senate at the end of 2018.

Ohio had a Democratic senator win re-election in 2018 and their incumbent Republican Governor barely won re-election.

South Carolina had a Republican Senator who won with less than 55% of the vote and has another whose up for re-election in 2020.

Tennessee had a Senator win with less than 55% of the vote in 2018 and has a Senate seat up for re-election in 2020.

Texas has a Senator barely win re-election in 2018 and has another Senator up for re-election in 2020.

West Virginia had a Democrat win re-election to the Senate in 2018 and has a Republican Governor AND Senator up for re-election in 2020.

The only odd ones out are Maryland and Minnesota, both of which are blue states where the bills will likely die because they are in blue states. This proves that passing these bills is not actually a priority for Republicans because they don’t seem to be in any hurry to pass them in state where Democrats can’t even put up a fight. States like Arkansas, Wyoming, and Oklahoma have not taken nearly as much action as the previously mentioned states, and the action they have taken is not nearly as extreme. This is most likely because they don’t need to worry about being voted out of office, and they are saving those abortion bans for when they actually become worried they might lose.

So there you have it. To each of you, these abortion laws may be invoking absolute terror and despair, but to these Republican scumbags, they are nothing more than a bargaining chip. They are willing to put your lives in danger just to keep themselves in office. If that doesn’t qualify as “evil” to you, then I don’t know what does. So the question that remains is how to combat this mess?

Thankfully though, this kind of shit is likely going to come back to bite the Republicans pretty hard in the elections. Hence why I’m going to give the most obvious advice of FUCKING VOTE!!!!! Vote Republicans out of any political office that you are eligible to vote for, and also make sure to vote in Democratic primaries so we don’t get stuck with Pro-life DINO fuckwads that will inevitably lose because most younger voters don’t want to vote between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Vote in state and local elections as well. These bills are PROOF that state elections are important, and most state legislatures get their start on the local level.

I am fully aware that a lot of people aren’t interested in being told to build signs, knock on doors, or attend protests, but they do serve a role in all this. This sends the message that there is going to be powerful push back. Some Republicans are already scared of the backlash that these bills will receive, and the best way to make sure that your voice is heard is to confirm their fears.

I’m a mentally disabled, unemployed, college dropout and yet I’ve been able to create this entire blog and bring together a community of like minded individuals all on my own. If you are an adult and are reading this, then there is a pretty good chance that you make a fuckton more money than I do. If you have any to spend, the best use for it would be to donate to causes that fight against these corrupt cretins. In particular, I would recommend donating to Emily’s List, an organization dedicated to electing pro choice women into office and fighting back against these regressive Republican scumbags.

There has also been a fair number of people suggesting that that cis women withhold sex from their partners as protest in regards to this barbaric scumfuckery. I think that this needs to be taken a step further and that any leftist not only refuses to fuck people who are “pro-life,” but also flat out refuse to associate or speak with any of them.

Yes, I am suggesting for you to end friendships and relationships over this. I’m about as much of a nervous wreck as one can get in regards to interacting with people in person, yet I am very well prepared to cut off anyone in my life who supports these policies no matter how long I have known them. You are better off not associating with misogynistic assholes anyway.

What’s that? I’m not being tolerant enough for you? I’m “making a big deal over politics?” Let me just put it this way; your refusal to recognize the severity of your beliefs is precisely why you deserve this scorn. Most of you are under the impression that stripping the vulnerable of their rights will cause them to become docile and submissive, when it actually does the opposite.

I am calling on every human being born with a uterus or a sense of empathy for those that aren’t a clump of cells to refuse to stay silent. To be as bitchy, as intolerant, as unpleasant, as moody, and as aggressive as possible to anyone who continues to support this regressive crap that list literally costing people their lives! After all, there is no greater argument in favor of abortion than a Republican congressman.

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