Blogaround

1. Abortion Rights: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (November 6) Yeah, I'm really worried about what's going on with abortion rights in the US.

John Oliver's target audience for this video is people who are already pro-choice. For people who are "pro-life", he doesn't offer any arguments that actually address the reasons they want abortion to be illegal. So I'll link to a few of my posts on that:

What Pregnancy Taught Me About Being Pro-Choice 
Why I Am Pro-Choice
Don't You Think If It Was Possible To Re-Implant Ectopic Pregnancies, We Would Already Be Doing That?

I used to be evangelical, and obviously as an evangelical, you're required to be "pro-life"- back then I only ever heard "pro-life" talking points, and I really had no idea how on earth anyone would be pro-choice. (I remember in college, I heard some of my friends discussing a news story about an abortion ban, and I had always heard stuff like that described in terms of "hooray good news, we're stopping those bad people from killing their babies"- but then my friends were talking about how the abortion ban was a bad thing, and what a bad situation you would be in if you found out you were pregnant and couldn't get an abortion. It was the first time I had ever heard any kind of pro-choice argument. Before that, I couldn't even imagine what kinds of arguments the pro-choice side could even make.) Honestly now I still think that a lot of the language from the pro-choice side doesn't actually help to get rid of those misconceptions that "pro-life" people have. For example, saying "this is about women having control over their own bodies" is nonsensical to people on the "pro-life" side, because they believe that needing an abortion isn't something that happens to *women in general*, it's something that happens to *bad* and *irresponsible* women, and it's easy to think "well I'm a woman but obviously I would never be in that situation." I mean, the *truth* is that it *is* about women having control over their bodies, but my point is, framing it that way doesn't do anything to convince "pro-life" people to change their minds.

Basically, the main thing that changed my mind was this: Trust women. (Also trans/nonbinary people/ anyone with a uterus.) Yes, abortion does end the embryo/fetus's life, and I don't take that lightly, but there are so many other factors that need to be weighed against it. Like, pregnancy is GRUELING. And what if you're in an abusive relationship, and being pregnant makes you more vulnerable to being hurt or killed by your partner. And the risk of losing your job because you're pregnant. And how expensive everything is for babies- starting with the hospital bills for giving birth, if you don't have insurance. And sometimes it's a wanted pregnancy, and then some horrible health problem (for the baby or the pregnant person) is discovered, and every option is terrible and heartbreaking- but you should at least have every option- that would be THE WORST time for some politicians to step in and tell you what you can or can't do.

Basically, the pregnant person is the only one who can weigh all those factors and decide what's best. Nobody else knows the situation well enough. Certainly not some cis male politician who just thinks that voting for more restrictions is better because it makes him more "pro-life", without really understanding what those restrictions are. Restrictions on imaginary people who just want to kill babies for no reason. Come on. 

"Pro-life" myths about women waddling down to the abortion clinic, massively pregnant. Come on. If someone's having an abortion that late in the pregnancy, then it's a wanted pregnancy and something has gone horribly wrong, and the last thing they need is some stranger judging them.

"Pro-life" myths about doctors being eager to find any excuse to end a pregnancy. The reality is- and anyone who has been pregnant and given birth will know this- doctors are EXTREMELY CAUTIOUS about doing any kind of medical treatment that could possibly harm the unborn baby. No x-rays if you're pregnant. If you have some health problem and you need medicine for it, the doctors are very very careful about only prescribing medicine that's been shown to not harm the unborn baby. If your baby is breech, most doctors will say you have to have a c-section rather than a vaginal delivery, because vaginal delivery could be risky for the baby. Etc. "Pro-lifers" making up bizarre stories about doctors sitting around dreaming up excuses to kill babies. Come on. Doctors choose to go into gynecology and deliver babies because it's such a beautiful thing seeing new life born into the world. That's the reality- and if you spend a few seconds thinking about it, you realize it must be true. But instead, "pro-life" people are making laws to stop the imaginary doctors and imaginary women who are eager to kill babies for no reason.

Relatedly, I was glad to see this news from Ohio: Ohio voters enshrine abortion access in constitution in latest statewide win for reproductive rights (November 8)

2. Taking Stock of Love and Losses in the ‘World’s Supermarket’ (November 4) "Between 2015 and 2016, I spent 12 months in Yiwu and interviewed over 100 people involved in transnational marriages. At their best, the pairings offer mutual support in life as well as business. But the complex entanglement of love and commerce that characterizes many of these relationships is fraught with uncertainty — especially for Chinese women, whose credit within the local community is perhaps the couples’ greatest asset, even as it exposes the wives to additional risk should their marriages one day fall apart."

Also from Sixth Tone: How Shanghai Turned a Notorious Dump Site Into an Eco-Haven (November 9) [content note: it's about garbage]

3. The DeSantis-approved version of American racial history (July 24) "To tell that story, the standards identify a lot of high-achieving Black Americans, as well as many admirable Whites who were abolitionists or allies of the civil rights movement. But slavery itself just sort of happened; it emerged out of vague historical and economic forces. Ditto for Jim Crow."

4. 18,000 strangers sing ‘Africa’ by Toto (August 16) Wow, this is AMAZING.

5. Matisyahu - One Day (YouTube Version) (2009) This song is actually my religion. "All my life I've been waiting for / I've been praying for / for the people to say / that we don't want to fight no more / there'll be no more wars / and our children will play."

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

6. “Parents’ Rights”—Especially Moms for Liberty—Lost Big in Elections Last Night (November 8, via)

7. Astronauts dropped a tool bag during an ISS spacewalk, and you can see it with binoculars (November 10, via) "McDowell also explained that the bag has also been given its own categorization in the U.S. space force cataloging system for artificial objects in orbit officially designated 58229 / 1998–067WC."