This is insanity. Two Republican legislators in Tennessee introduced a bill to treat abortion as homicide.
There are moments in history when legislation stops being merely controversial and becomes openly barbaric. Tennessee’s House Bill 570 is one of those moments. Proposed by two Republican lawmakers, this bill seeks to classify abortion as homicide punishable by life imprisonment, life without parole, or even the death penalty. There are no exceptions for rape. There are no exceptions for incest. There are no exceptions for the health of the mother. This is not a policy debate. This is a war on women, and it is being waged in broad daylight.
But Tennessee is not an outlier. It is a preview.
The good news is that the Republican-dominated legislature killed the proposal. They would not go along with the insane idea that a woman should spend her life in prison or get the death penalty as punishment for an abortion.
A Tennessee House committee rejected an anti-abortion bill Tuesday that would have criminalized women for seeking abortion procedures, potentially allowing them to be charged with murder.
The bill failed for lack of support and didn’t come to a vote in the Population Health Subcommittee, leading supporters to sing hymns and protest in the Cordell Hull Legislative Building…
Groups such as End Abortion Now and the Foundation to Abolish Abortion that supported Barrett’s bill blasted the Republican supermajority legislature for claiming to be “pro-life” but refusing to support the legislation. They expect to revive the bill in 2027..
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Nothing says pro life like the death penalty.
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This law is a symptom of the widespread misogyny that is so ingrained in right wing extremism. Tax paying women have fewer rights than a handful of cells with potential for life. The Tennessee law is hardly a pro-life position if it can condemn a women to death or life in prison for making a decision about her own body. It defines women’s lives only in terms of their ability to procreate which results in a legal system where women have fewer rights than men.
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This administration is doing everything it can to control women’s bodies. A federal appeals court just halted access to the abortion pill by mail.
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I read that the case now goes to Alito. We know how that will turn out. Is this actually about a state law being able to overturn a federal law?
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This is not a clash between a federal and state law, as I read it, but an attempt by a very conservative federal appeals court to ban FDA approval of the drug, which is available online and is shipped by mail.
The NY Times wrote today:
“Two manufacturers of the abortion pill mifepristone asked the Supreme Court on Saturday to immediately restore full access to the medication, putting the contentious issue of abortion back before the justices in a midterm election year.
“The requests came after a lower court on Friday temporarily restricted abortion providers nationwide from prescribing the pills by telemedicine and sending them to patients by mail. That process is one of the main ways women seeking abortions have obtained the medication in recent years.
“If the order on Friday by a federal appeals court is upheld, it could sow confusion and upend a major avenue for abortion access across the country — not just in states with abortion bans. About one-fourth of abortions in the United States are now provided through telemedicine.
Louisiana officials had sued the Food and Drug Administration to restrict access to mifepristone, saying the availability of the medication by mail had allowed abortions to continue in the state despite its near-total ban on abortion.
“A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Friday sided with Louisiana and essentially reimposed an F.D.A. requirement that health care providers prescribe mifepristone only after seeing patients in person. That rule was first lifted in 2021. The Fifth Circuit ordered that in-person dispensing of mifepristone be reinstated until the Louisiana lawsuit made its way through the courts.
“The manufacturers, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, are also defendants in the Louisiana lawsuit. On Saturday afternoon, Danco filed an emergency request asking the Supreme Court to lift the lower court’s order, which applied to patients across the country. GenBioPro filed a similar request Saturday evening.
“The Supreme Court must reject this unfounded and baseless attack on an essential medication,” GenBioPro’s chief executive, Evan Masingill, said on Saturday, adding: “We remain concerned that anti-abortion special interests are attempting to undermine the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory authority. This is why we are bringing our fight to the Supreme Court.”
“In its filing, GenBioPro said that “patients and clinicians have, for years, relied on dispensing mifepristone without an in-clinic visit, particularly for women from rural areas and those for whom transportation, child care or occupational constraints make it difficult to see providers in person.””
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Of great interest to me is the number of women who believe in this sort of thing even more than their male counterparts. I can give you the names of at least five women who came to mind immediately when I read this. I find it difficult to believe how this might be the case, but I live with this as an obvious reality.
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The Radical Right-to-life has been trying to pass this nonsense since its founding. Again, they demonstrate that they are not really for life. If that was true they would campaign for childcare subsites, free housing and food for all families with minor children (under 18), free health care for all, free daycare for all (including elders with dementia), the end to the death penalty [which apparently in this bill!].
No, Right-to-Life should be called “The Enslavement-of-Women” Organization.
I suggest that all women of childbearing age who are members or supporters of Right-to-Life should be mandated by law to not have access to birth control, be mandated by law to engage in sex or be inseminated every time that their cycle is likely to produce a pregnancy, and be mandated by law to bear the resulting child and must support and care for all children that result from this requirement until they are 18 or longer if the child want to secure higher education. Of course, they are to bear all the costs involved.
Then they will understand that both women and men must be allowed to make out own decisions about our bodies and health without government getting involved.
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The radical right to life folks love babies before they are born.
Once they are born, the pro-life people lose interest.
They are willing to put the mother to death, as if his life means nothing.
And as you point out, they don’t care about the babies’ health, or even if they have food.
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Correction:
“The Radical Xtian Theofascist Right-to-life has been trying to pass this nonsense since its founding.”
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This legislation does not account for life threatening occasions such as an ectopic pregnancy. In 2024, Florida congresswoman Kat Cammack had an ectopic pregnancy. Her treatment – abortion – was delayed due to the hospitals concern they would be held accountable for an illegal abortion. She eventually received the abortion that may have saved her life.
Who did she blame? Democrats. For fear mongering. Her doctor and the hospital at first refused treatment due to legislation SHE supported and voted for.
Look out Tennessee, you are next in line. Right to life women, get in line.
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I was walking our dog the other morning and was looking at the mess of dead limbs strewn about. There are wrecks of entire trees destroyed by the Emerald Ash Borer. It’s an infestation of a bug we knew was coming. And, here it is.
I’ve been chainsawing the heavy pieces that fall into our hay fields then dragging them out. Tractors can’t go over the ugly, dead remains of once towering, beautiful trees. I’ll probably be doing that job for the rest of my life, given my age. Until I can’t haul myself out there.
The dying forest reminds me of the destruction in our world right now, which we’ll be cleaning up for many years to come. That is if we still can. Of course, global climate change is just one of the huge threats.
Around here, these same ash trees were taken down and used for making baseball bats. The famous Louisville Slugger billets (blanks for creating bats) were cut right here in these woods I now call home. When I split firewood and throw it on a pile it sounds just like being on a ball field in the suburban town where I grew up. It brings me right back to being a kid, and tossing a baseball bat on the ground. It always surprises me how that very particular noise, a warm gentle sort of ‘clink”, can transport me through time.
One thing that’s for sure is that when I was young I never thought the future United States would look like THIS. What an absolute embarrassment this nation is right now.
I feel so bad for the children who are inheriting this world.
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The ash borer is devastating in Tennessee
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We knew the devastating Emerald Ash Borer was coming.
15 years ago biologists went all over the nation hanging these purple, cardboard looking boxes out of trees. Probably they had them in Tennessee, too, Roy. These so-called “Barney traps” (nicknamed for the cartoon dinosaur) were used to gauge how far and fast the infestation was traveling. I had a trap right down our dirt road where trees are now falling over.
Back then I had the thought of creating my own pile of cardboard test kits….and making them a different color. Then going out in the middle of the night and hanging them on trees along the roadway all over the region. Sort of an art project with a political purpose.
People would wake up in the morning and say, what ARE those other things hanging off our trees? Those Day-Glo red boxes. Or maybe I’d make them a gloomy shade of gray?
And, then we’ reveal that the mysterious boxes were test kits to see how far racism was expanding in the United States. Testing for intolerance or something like that.
My idea didn’t get past that point -though I did run it by the high school’s art teacher. (I definitely need help in that dept.)
Turns out resurgent, shameless prejudice was already running rampant in America circa 2011. For example, the good ‘ole internet pegs the explosion of the racist Obama birther smear back to, yes indeed, Donald J. Trump, that same year, 2011. Though the BBC says some “disgruntled Clinton supporters” were talking about that nonsense as early as 2008.
The roots of this debacle called MAGA were there. And, of course, plenty of people will argue that those poisonous tendrils were festering, growing from sea to shining sea in the US of A long before you and I walked this earth.
So, now millions of ash trees are caving over, dead.
But how many Americans really give a crap? (You ‘woke tree huggers’.) We had a pandemic six years ago that killed millions of humans (some of them from our families) and the culture has moved on -faster and faster than ever. At least decades ago more people had the time (and for some, the inclination) to truly mourn the loss of loved ones.
Drill, baby, drill. Hate, baby, hate. Kill, baby, kill. Trump’s leading millions in a joyous pillaging of our world, dancing on graves. The WORST angels of human nature, let loose -or whatever the hell those demons are called.
Come to think of it, those pretty, shiny emerald ash borers seem much nicer than some of the monsters living right now in our midst.
And, we know what could be coming next from them….
https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/blog/whats-purple-sticky-and-hangs-ash-tree-emerald-ash-borer-survey-traps
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Thanks, John.
I wish that a poster was strong enough to stop pests and hate.
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Let’s take back both houses in November and indict the cretinous, traitorous, orange criminal.
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Jessica Valenti covers reproductive health and rights in her Substack Abortion Every Day. I highly recommend it for those interested in this issue.
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A significant development in the legislative debate over reproductive laws and criminal justice boundaries.
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