red states

The Pro-Life/Anti-Contraception Paradox

Fandango55 Comments

Contraceptives are generally defined as “any drug, device, or biological product intended for use in the prevention of pregnancy, whether specifically intended to prevent pregnancy or for other health needs, that is legally marketed under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, such as oral contraceptives, long-acting reversible contraceptives, emergency contraceptives, internal and external condoms, injectables, vaginal barrier methods, transdermal patches, and vaginal rings, or other contraceptives.”

A number of red states (i.e., Republican controlled states) — the same states that have either banned or significantly restricted abortions — are discussing or making legislative efforts that could potentially restrict access to most forms of birth control. For instance, there’s a push in Idaho to ban emergency contraception like Plan B and IUDs by a powerful lobbying group. Some states have also targeted birth control methods that they claim cause abortions.

In the U.S. House and Senate, Democrats have drafted bills that would protect a woman’s right to access contraception. But in the Senate this week, Republicans blocked such legislation that would have codified the right to contraception access nationwide.

Why is it that those who oppose abortion also oppose the use of contraception, or at least making contraceptives readily available? I have discussed this in the past, but I still cannot wrap my head around the rationale. It seems to me that the best way to prevent abortion is to prevent unwanted pregnancy. So those who oppose access to affordable contraception, are not really “pro-life.”

Fact: contraception prevents unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. Women who choose to have abortions do so, to a large extent, because of such pregnancies. Doesn’t it follow, then, that advocating the use of contraceptives and promoting their availability would reduce the demand for abortions?

But that logic seems to be beyond what most religious and social conservatives can grasp, so they continue to follow the paradox of being opposed to both contraception and abortion.

Only In America

Fandango104 Comments

Some of you who are reading this might think I’m exaggerating or making a mountain out of a molehill, but it’s very clear to me that Republican legislators in red states all across the country are looking for opportunities to enshrine white Christian sensibilities into state law. Their aim is to turn the United States into a white supremacist theocracy.

Let me give you some examples of why I feel this way. A Republican Oklahoma state senator, Rob Standridge, has introduced legislation that would allow parents to sue any public school educators who teach anything “in opposition to closely held religious beliefs of students.” Standridge has also introduced a bill that would give individual parents the power to demand the removal of any book from school shelves that they believe contains LGBTQ content.

This bill would allow parents to sue teachers for $10,000 “per incident, per individual.” The fine would need to be paid by the teacher “from personal resources” and the educator cannot “receive any assistance from individuals or groups.” If the teacher is unable to pay and receives assistance, they will be fired immediately and unable to teach in the state for five years.

What could this mean for Oklahoma teachers?

  • A biology teacher who discusses evolution could be sued by Creationist parents.
  • A health teacher who educates students about different forms of birth control could be sued by abstinence-promoting parents.
  • A history teacher who correctly describes the Founding Fathers as a mix of religious and non-religious individuals could be a target of conservative evangelicals.
  • An English teacher who wants to challenge kids with thought-provoking literature would be forced to stick to only the blandest books.

And then there’s Florida, where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has proposed the “Stop Woke Act,” where WOKE is an acronym for “Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees.” The act would let Florida parents sue schools that offered instruction in critical race theory. Critical race theory is an academic concept based on the idea that racism is not about individual people’s prejudices, but about institutions and policies. It does not, as Republican lawmakers and pundits in the right-wing media claim, teach that all white people are racist.

This bill would essentially ban making white people feel bad about racism. The bill would make it illegal for public schools and private businesses to inflict “discomfort” on white people during lessons or training about discrimination. It was already passed by the state’s Senate Education Committee, its first hurdle before becoming a law.

Another piece of state legislation in Florida, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by opponents, would allow teachers to be subject to lawsuits if they discuss sexuality and gender issues in the classroom.

In Virginia, the newly elected Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, announced that he’s created a “tip line” for parents to report instances of school officials “behaving inappropriately,” by which he means teaching “divisive” subjects like critical race theory. Youngkin had already issued an executive order banning the use of such concepts and now he’s asking the good, white Christians in his state to snitch on teachers. “We’re asking for folks to send us reports and observations,” Youngkin said. “Help us be aware of their child being denied their rights that parents have in Virginia, which will give us the ability to make sure we’re rooting it out.”

These examples I’ve given in Oklahoma, Florida, and Virginia are just three examples of this insanity. Republican legislators in many states in which they are in charge are passing laws to ban books and forbid the teaching of subjects that do not support Christian teachings, or that make white people uncomfortable.

And these same Republican controlled states have already enacted laws that are designed to make it more difficult for people of color to vote and easier for Republican legislators to decide what votes to count and what votes to toss.

This is America in the second decade of the 21st century. If you’re not scared or pissed off about the future of America after reading this post, you must be a Republican.

Mind the Gap

Fandango38 Comments

An article from the New York Times showed up on my newsfeed this morning. The headline of the article was…

Gee, what a shocker. Vaccines to protect people from getting COVID-19 or from getting as severely sick from the disease if they do get it, arrived in early 2020. But with the partisan attitudes toward them so different, a gap in Covid’s death toll quickly emerged. In brief, the gap in Covid’s death toll between red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) states in America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point.

In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened.

Counties where Trump received at least 70 percent of the vote have an even higher average Covid death toll than counties where Trump won at least 60 percent. As a result, Covid deaths have been concentrated in counties outside of major metropolitan areas. Many of these are in red states, while others are in red parts of blue or purple states, like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Virginia, and even California.

The explanation for that growing gap is simple: the vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing severe Covid, and yet almost 40 percent of Republican adults remain unvaccinated, compared with about 10 percent of Democratic adults.

As the Times article points out, irrational fears about vaccine side effects have overwhelmed rational fears about a deadly virus. It stems from disinformation — promoted by right-wing media outlets, like Fox News, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, One America News Network, and online sources — that prey on distrust and fear mongering from those on the right, including Republican politicians.

The bottom line is that conservative Americans (Republicans) will probably continue to suffer an outsized amount of unnecessary illness and death.

Shouldn’t Donald Trump be held accountable?

Who Won the Week — 10/3/2021

Fandango15 Comments

The idea behind Who Won the Week is to give you the opportunity to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

My Who Won The Week pick for this week is the health of Americans living in blue (democratic leaning) states that voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

According to an article published in the New York Times this past week, the political divide over vaccinations is so large that almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state.

Further, because the vaccines are so effective at preventing serious illness, Covid deaths are also showing a partisan pattern. Covid is still a national crisis, but the worst forms of it are increasingly concentrated in red America.

And when you get even more granular, in counties where Donald Trump won at least 70 percent of the vote in the 2020 election, Covid-19 has killed about 47 out of every 100,000 people since the end of June. In counties where Trump won less than 32 percent of the vote, the Covid death rate is about 10 out of 100,000.

I wonder what lesson we can learn from this.

What about you? Who (or what) do you think won the week?

Government Overreach Hypocrisy

Fandango26 Comments

On Wednesday, after deliberate inaction on the part of the conservative U.S. Supreme Court, the “heartbeat bill” took effect in the state of Texas. It bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Considering that most women don’t learn that they’re pregnant until just around that time, abortion has essentially just been outlawed in Texas.

And, of course, other Republican-led states are now falling all over themselves to enact restrictive abortion laws patterned after the Texas law.

I find it ironic that Republican law makers in Texas (and in other “red states”) decry government overreach when it comes to “personal liberties” such as mask mandates, COVID vaccinations, common sense gun laws, and federal oversight on virtual anything, but they’re quite comfortable with government overreach when it comes to a woman’s uterus and interfering with her ability to make sensitive reproductive health decisions privately with her medical provider.