Marine Veteran: The Real Meaning of the Second Amendment: Correction!!

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2022 //
55

CORRECTION! In the original post, I erroneously said that Adrian Fontes lost in a race for Secretary of State in a race against a Trumper. In fact, Fontes won the Democratic primary and will face a Trumper in November. His opponent insists that Trump won the 2020 election despite multiple recounts and even a Republican-sponsored recount (by the “cyber ninjas”).

Adrian Fontes recently ran for Secretary of State in Arizona and won the Democratic primary. He will face off against a Trumper in the fall.. He is a former Marine and combat veteran. In this post on MSNBC, he carefully explains the real meaning of the Second Amendment. The Constitution and the amendment are not ambiguous.

Fontes will face off in November against Mark Finchem. Finchem attended the January 6 insurrection.

“This is the defining race for our Republic,” said Fontes, the former Maricopa County recorder, who oversaw elections in 2018 and, most notably, 2020. “It will let the world know whether we will surrender to foolish conspiracies or whether we will support our Republic that Benjamin Franklin so eloquently said needs to be kept.”

Fontes carried nine of the 15 counties, including Maricopa, where he served as county recorder from 2017-2021. The Democratic race revolved around the need to defend Arizona’s election process and protect democracy. But late in the campaign, questions arose about Bolding’s ties to a nonprofit he runs and whether he had properly distanced himself from its political support for his campaign.

Fontes touted himself as the only candidate who could take on “a Trump sycophant and Jan. 6 insurrectionist,” a clear reference to Finchem….

Finchem, a state lawmaker, has maintained the election was fraudulent, and rode this platform of election denial and reform to a resounding 17.5 percentage point margin of victory in the GOP primary on Tuesday night, besting three opponents. He has called his win a mandate.

Finchem wants to eliminate early voting, a position the Arizona Republican Party is pushing in a case before the state Supreme Court, and along with Lake is asking a federal judge to bar the use of electronic machines in the Nov. 8 election.

The Republican Finchem continues to support Trump’s lies and efforts to destroy democracy.

Categories Democracy, Guns, Guns in Schools, Safety

Oklahoma Downgrades Two Districts for Making Whites Feel “Uncomfortable”

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2022 //
32

The Oklahoma State Board of Education lowered the rating of two districts—Tulsa and Mustang—for offering lessons or training that violated state bans on “critical race theory.”

Let’s be clear: hardly anyone in the state of Oklahoma knows what “critical race theory” is.

The board punished the two districts because they asked students or teachers to reflect on the meaning of racism.

In Mustang, one teacher complained.

Tulsa is a majority-minority district, but it made the mistake of teaching something other than lily-white stories about America., where racism might have long ago existed. Teaching about racism today is intolerable.

Representatives for the Tulsa and Mustang school districts did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday. In a statement to the Oklahoman, Tulsa Public Schools denied that the training stated that people of a certain race were inherently racist, saying it would “never support such a training,” but the system defended the need for implicit bias training.


“In Tulsa, we are teaching our children an accurate — and at times painful, difficult, and uncomfortable — history about our shared human experience,” the district told the newspaper. “We also teach in a beautifully diverse community and need our team to work together to be prepared to do that well.”


Charles Bradley, the superintendent of Mustang Public Schools, said in a statement published by News 9 that he was “shocked” by the board’s demotion, which he called a “harsh action.”


H.B. 1775 prohibits teaching that any individual “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.” It also bans any course material that would make a student “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.”

Message: Never teach the truth!

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Curriculum, Democracy, Lies, Oklahoma, Racism

Kathryn Joyce: New Rightwing Social Studies Curriculum Attacks Social Justice and Equity as “Un-Patriotic”

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2022 //
28

Kathryn Joyce writes in Salon about a new “patriotic” social studies curriculum that celebrates rightwing ideology and deletes social justice from American history. The goal of the new curriculum is to fight “critical race theory” and “wokeness,” which are allegedly trying to “overthrow America.”

Just to be clear, the goal of the new curriculum is to delete the accurate and tragic facts about racism, past and present. They want teachers to stuff children’s heads with fake history. They assume that if students learn the truth about slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, segregation, redlining, and the unfinished struggle for equal rights for all, they will not have faith in America. If they learn the truth, they think, they will want to “overthrow” the government. This is almost too insane to write or repeat, but it’s happening. Crazy people want teachers of social studies and history to teach lies.

We used to teach children that it was wrong to tell lies. But these extremists want the entire education system to embrace lies. The danger is that students will watch documentaries on television and discover that everything they learned in social studies was a pack of lies. What then? Who will they want to overthrow?

Joyce writes:

In late June, a conservative education coalition called the Civics Alliance released a new set of social studies standards for K-12 schools, with the intention of promoting it as a model for states nationwide. These standards, entitled “American Birthright,” are framed as yet another corrective to supposedly “woke” public schools, where, according to Republicans, theoretical frameworks like critical race theory are only one part of a larger attack on the foundations of American democracy. 

“Too many Americans have emerged from our schools ignorant of America’s history, indifferent to liberty, filled with animus against their ancestors and their fellow Americans, and estranged from their country,” reads the introduction to “American Birthright.” (The “birthright” here refers to “freedom.”) And the fields of history and civics, it suggests, exemplify the worst of that trend. “The warping of American social studies instruction has created a corps of activists dedicated to the overthrow of America and its freedoms, larger numbers of Americans indifferent to the steady whittling away of American liberty, and many more who are so ignorant of the past they cannot use our heritage of freedom to judge contemporary debates.” 

While it claims to represent an ideologically neutral, apolitical history, the document holds that most instruction that references “diversity, equity and inclusion” or “social justice” amounts to “vocational training in progressive activism” and “actively promote[s] disaffection from our country.” It heralds Ronald Reagan as a “hero of liberty” alongside Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. Its proposed lessons in contemporary U.S. history include Reagan’s revitalization of the conservative movement, Bill Clinton’s impeachment, “Executive amnesties for illegal aliens” and the “George Floyd Riots.”  

American Birthright is just one of numerous recent right-wing efforts to overhaul public K-12 curricula to align with the dictates of current conservative ideology. 

Last week, the Miami Herald reported that Florida’s Department of Education has begun holding three-day training sessions for public school teachers around the state to prepare them to implement the state’s new Civics Literacy Excellence Initiative, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ flagship effort to create a more “patriotic” civics curriculum. The new Florida standards were created in consultation with Hillsdale College, a small Christian college that has become a guiding force on the right, and the Charles Koch-founded Bill of Rights Institute. 


These new rightwing curriculum writers want to impose the evangelical Christian worldview on America’s children. They want to force their fundamentalists ideology on everyone. Once they have gained control of the Governor’s office, they want to gain control of the schools and use them as centers of indoctrination. You may believe, with some evidence, that public schools have always taught American history with the atrocities edited out. But not even the bowdlerized textbooks were as audacious as the outright lies that the fundies are pushing now.

Mainstream textbook editors might balk at portraying Ronald Reagan as the equal of Abraham Lincoln. If so, the states that want anti-woke (i.e., unconscious) accounts of history can always purchase the texts produced by the publishers that supply Christian fundamentalist schools and Bob Jones University. The Abeka curriculum, written for homeschoolers and Christian schools, might become the official textbooks of Florida and other red states.

Who needs an educated citizenry? Apparently the educated are a threat to the indoctrinated.

Categories Accountability, Curriculum, Equity, Fraud, History, Lies, Racism

Robert Hubbell: The Rising Tide of Fascism in the GOP

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2022 //
21

Robert Hubbell blogs about the frightening new face of the GOP and an important reason for the surprising victory of reproductive rights forces in Kansas.

He writes:

The GOP is rapidly embracing autocracy and white Christian nationalism as its rallying cry. That rightward drift is anxiety-producing and creates the understandable urge to look away. We cannot do so. However painful or revolting it is to watch the descent of the GOP into madness and hate, if we hope to defeat the anti-democratic forces animating the Republican Party, we must be clear-eyed about the threat the party poses to American democracy.

We must be explicit in naming and describing the threat. We must identify and defeat every foot-solider and sympathizer who promotes or excuses tyranny and white nationalism. If we do so, we will preserve democracy. We can win. We will win. But only if we fight from a position firmly rooted in reality. From that vantage, let’s look at the GOP’s latest flirtations with white nationalism and despotism.

The influential and ultraconservative Conservative Political Action Conference is holding its latest meeting in Dallas, Texas. (Where else?) CPAC’s two keynote speakers are Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump. Both are wannabe dictators, though Orbán has made more progress towards that goal than Trump.

Orbán promotes an ugly brand of politics based on hate and racial superiority (for whites, of course). He has recently saidthat Hungarians “do not want to become peoples of mixed race,” causing one of his cabinet members to resign, saying Orbán’s remarks were “a pure Nazi speech worthy of Goebbels.” He blames much of the world’s troubles on George Soros—an attack line that is a dog-whistle for antisemites. Indeed, he went so far at the CPAC conference to claim that “a Christian politician cannot be racist” because . . . well, because they are Christian. And like the Nazis, Orbán has led a national crusade of discrimination against LGBTQ people.

In most of the world, an audience would recoil in horror at remarks that explicitly invoked the Nazi ideologies of antisemitism, racial superiority, and discrimination against LGBTQ people. Not at the CPAC convention in Texas. Orbán received multiple standing ovations as he delivered remarks that could have easily been delivered in Nazi Germany in 1935. See The Independent, Fresh from furor over ‘Nazi’ speech, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban welcomed by American conservatives.

Notably, no Republican politician has condemned Orbán’s remarks. Instead, they are lining up to speak at CPAC. Other speakers comfortable sharing the podium with a “Nazi-curious” dictator include Trump, Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, and Sean Hannity. No surprises there.

The despotic yearnings of CPAC are not an aberration. They have become part of the GOP DNA. Charles M. Blow addresses this trend in his column in the NYTimes on Thursday: Opinion | The Republican Party Is the Anti-Democracy Party. Blow notes that The Heritage Foundation (self-described as “the most influential conservative group in America) is actively promoting the idea that “America is not a democracy,” but a “republic.”

While that statement is a truism (there are no pure democracies in the world), The Heritage Foundation uses the term “republic” to mean “white nationalist patriarchy.” Strong words, I know, but here is what The Heritage Foundation wrote in 2020:

America is threatened by an egalitarianism that undermines the social, familial, religious, and economic distinctions and inequalities that undergird our political liberty.

That passage deserves re-reading. The Heritage Foundation claims that America is threatened by “egalitarianism.” What?! Egalitarianism is defined as “the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.” So, the Heritage Foundation is against “equal rights and opportunities for all??

Yes, it is! The Heritage Foundation goes on to say that “inequalities undergird ourpolitical liberty.” Re-read the preceding phrase—twice! It is breathtaking. In that phrase, “our” can only refer to the privileged, white elite that has ruled America since its founding. For The Heritage Foundation, “our political liberty” is based on “inequality.” Unbelievable.

So, the two leading Republican advocacy groups are actively promoting a white, Christian nationalism that is antithetical to the declaration that created America: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . .

If we can get past the grievance mentality that Trump manipulates to his advantage, the positions embraced by CPAC and The Heritage Foundation are repugnant to most Americans. We need only articulate that truth in a way that resonates with their inherent belief in the American promise of equality. If we can do that, we have a fighting chance to turn the GOP’s message of hate against its most ardent promoters. The victory in Kansas points the way. Read on!

Messaging in Kansas.

With the benefit of 48 hours hindsight, it is becoming clear that a critical component of the victory in Kansas was messaging (a fact noted by dozens of readers in Comments and emails today). Charlie Sykes does an excellent job of reviewing the commentary on this issue in his Morning Shots newsletter. From WaPo,

Abortion rights supporters used conservative-sounding language about government mandates and personal freedom in their pitch to voters, and made a point of reaching out to independents, Libertarians and moderate Republicans.

And check out this television ad that describes the anti-abortion effort as an attempt to impose “a strict government mandate” that was “a slippery slope that would put more of your individual rights at risk.”

Messaging wasn’t the only reason that reproductive choice won in Kansas on Tuesday, but it was undoubtedly one of the reasons that a majority of persuadable Independents and some Republicans voted “No” on the anti-choice measure.

It will not require an advertising genius to draft ads demonstrating that the ugly ideologies of CPAC and The Heritage Group are antithetical to America’s founding ideals.

We can do that. We did it. In Kansas.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Democracy, Democrats, Extremism, Fascism, Kansas, Racism, Republicans

How Alabama Takes from the Poor and Gives to the Rich

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2022 //
13

The New York Times Magazine recently published a startling article about Alabama’s tax system is designed to impoverish the poor and enrich the rich. Written by Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, the article documents why Alabama remains a poor state with a high rate of poverty and underfunded public services. If you want to read a road map to how to institutionalize extreme poverty, racism, and underdevelopment, read “Alabama Takes from the Poor and Gives to the Rich.”

The author explains that the state constitution was written in 1904 by a convention controlled by rich landowners. It capped property taxes at a low rate, which meant that any public services had to be paid for by other taxes, fines, and fees. Fines and fees are assessed for almost every interaction with government.

He writes:

In states like Alabama, almost every interaction a person has with the criminal justice system comes with a financial cost. If you’re assigned to a pretrial program to reduce your sentence, each class attended incurs a fee. If you’re on probation, you’ll pay a fee to take your mandatory urine test. If you appear in drug court, you will face more fees, sometimes dozens of times a year. Often, you don’t even have to break the law; you’ll pay fees to pull a public record or apply for a permit. For poor people, this system is a trap, sucking them into a cycle of sometimes unpayable debt that constrains their lives and almost guarantees financial hardship.

While almost every state in the country, both red and blue, levies fines and fees that fall disproportionately on the bottom rung of the income ladder, the situation in Alabama is far more dramatic, thanks to the peculiarities of its Constitution. Over a century ago, wealthy landowners and businessmen rewrote the Constitution to cap taxes permanently. As a result, today, Alabama has one of the cruelest tax systems in the country.

Taxes on most property, for example, are exceptionally low. In 2019, property taxes accounted for just 7 percent of state and local revenue, the lowest among the states. (Even Mississippi, which also has low property taxes, got roughly 12 percent from property taxes. New Jersey, by contrast, got 29 percent.) Strapped for cash, all levels of government look for money anywhere they can get it. And often, that means creating revenue from fines and fees. A 2016 studyshowed that the median assessment for a felony in Alabama doubled between 1995 and 2005, to $2,000.

How did this unjust system take root?

In 1874, less than a decade into Reconstruction, the Democratic Party, representing the landowning, formerly slave-owning class, took over the state government in a rigged election and quickly passed a new Constitution that mandated taxes on property would remain permanently low.

In the next couple of decades, as cotton prices crashed, poor sharecroppers, both white and Black, banded together in a populist movement to unseat the elites who controlled the state. In response, in another set of contested elections, the elites called another constitutional convention to further consolidate their power over the state. “What is it that we want to do?” the convention president, John B. Knox, asked. “Establish white supremacy in this state.” But this time, he said, they wanted to “establish it by law — not by force or fraud.”

People like Knox weren’t just racist; they were virulently classist, too, and hoped to exclude all poor people from the political process. The result of the 1901 Constitution was the mass disenfranchisement and subjugation of poor people — white and Black. The Constitution established the basis for a literacy test, a poll tax and stringent residency requirements. By 1943, according to the Alabama Policy Institute, an estimated 520,000 Black people and 600,000 white people had been disqualified from voting by different aspects of the 1901 Constitution. “In most counties more whites were disenfranchised than registered,” the historian Wayne Flynt writes in his authoritative book “Alabama in the Twentieth Century,” “limiting the vote to a select elite.”

This system of minority rule starved public administration in the name of small government. The result was a “government of, by and for special interests,” writes Mr. Flynt. “The citizens of Alabama did not control their government. Trial lawyers, the Business Council of Alabama, ALFA, A.E.A. and their cohorts did.” And this government went about protecting the property owned by some of the wealthiest families and businesses in the state from any meaningful taxation. In 1920, property taxes accounted for 63 percent of state revenue, but by 1978, it was down to a measly 3.6 percent. In 1992, it was below 2 percent, he writes.

Alabama is an “internal colony,” controlled by out-of-state corporations and an elite, with no interest in change, progress, equality, or justice.

Sounds un-American to me.

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Funding, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Poverty, Racism

Florida: Is DeSantis Purposefully Driving Teachers Away?

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2022 //
32

Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, has pushed policies that are driving teachers out of their profession. He knows exactly what he is doing. He favors charter schools and voucher schools, where teachers have no job security, no pensions.

Teachers are leaving public schools. They are quitting. DeSantis is getting what he wants.

BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2022 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — The Palm Beach County School District appears to be in desperate need of teachers as the new school year gets underway. The first day of school for students is August 10th. Several teachers tell BocaNewsNow.com that they — and their colleagues — are leaving their long-held positions due to what they call the politicization of teaching by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

“From ’Don’t Say Gay’ to other bizarre positions,” said one teacher who asked not be identified, ”teaching is no longer teaching. It’s politics. Politics should have no place in the classroom, unless it’s actually a class about politics.”

“We have elementary school students who have same-sex parents,” said another teacher at a Palm Beach County elementary school. ”Are we really not allowed to acknowledge that? If we get fired, we lose benefits. If we resign now, we get what we have. This is why so many teachers are leaving. The Governor got it wrong.”

While the school district has been transmitting email blasts — and taking to social media — to promote job fairs and open positions, a check of the actual ”help wanted” website reveals just how dire the situation appears to be. As of noon on July 31st, 2022, a search of the word ”teacher” on the official Palm Beach County School District employment website yielded 1,784 jobs. While we did not review each and every listing, a spot check of several listings suggests that the openings are real. They range from full-time gifted to part-time continuing education. They range from Eagles Landing Middle School in Boca Raton to schools in all parts of the county.

It’s not just teachers. Transportation Services is also in need of bus drivers. The need is so great that the school district is offering a $1000 signing bonus to new transportation department employees.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Extremism, Florida, Funding, Teacher Shortage, Teachers

Jury Fines Alex Jones $45 Million in Punitive Damages for Lying about Sandy Hook Massacre

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2022 //
16

There will never be justice for the families who lost loved ones at the Sandy Hook (Ct) massacre.

But Alex Jones will pay for his lies, his claims that the massacre of children and educators was a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to build support for gun control.

A jury in Texas awarded one set of parents $45 in punitive damages in addition to $4 million in compensatory damages for the pain and anguished he inflicted on the survivors.

This is the first trial. There are more to come.

Others will have to explain why Jones shamelessly exploited the suffering of Sandy Hook families. If it was greed, then it is just that he lose his ill-gotten gains.

What a vile, evil man.

Categories Accountability, Connecticut, Evil, Justice, Lies

Chalkbeat: Parents and Teachers Win Lawsuit to Block Budget Cuts by Mayor Adams

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2022 //
2

Mayor Eric Adams proposed budget cuts to the city’s public schools, and his chancellor David Banks tried to do an end-run around the city’s Panel on Education Policy (the Board of Education) by declaring an “emergency.” Two parents and two teachers sued to block the budget cuts, based on the flawed process, and won in court.

A Manhattan judge ruled Friday to throw out the New York City education department’s budget and allow the City Council and Mayor Eric Adams to reconsider how to fund schools this year. 

Judge Lyle Frank ruled in favor of two teachers and two parents who filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court last month, claiming that the city violated state law when it approved the education department’s budget for this fiscal year.

The extraordinary ruling means that until the City Council revisits the budget, New York City must fund schools at the same levels it did last fiscal year. The city plans to appeal.

Like several of his predecessors, Schools Chancellor David Banks had used an “emergency declaration” to circumvent a vote on it by the Panel for Education Policy, a largely mayoral appointed board that approves spending and contracts.

Principals have been busy laying off staff in anticipation of the cuts. Now those layoffs are on hold.

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters (and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education) has been deeply involved in fighting the budget cuts.

Categories Education Reform

Georgia: A Fetus May Be Claimed as a Dependent on State Tax Returns

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2022 //
41

The state of Georgia will allow people to get a tax break by claiming a fetus as a dependent.

If that is the case, then a pregnant woman should be allowed to drive in the HOV lane because she has a passenger in her womb.

What other privileges can the state award to fetuses now that they are full-fledged people six weeks after conception?

Categories Georgia

Texas: Lack of Access to Abortion Creates Tragic Choices for Women

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2022 //
16

This mother in Texas wanted another child. She was thrilled when she learned she was pregnant. But then the doctor told her that the ultrasound revealed a terrible genetic condition in her fetus. It might die in utero or a few days after birth. What should she do? Should she seek an abortion or let the baby die in utero or die a painful death?

Last year, Farrah Day tried for months to get pregnant with her second child. The 32-year-old San Antonio–area mother hoped to finish building her family in her early 30s, while she was still relatively young. Doing so would allow her to commit fully to attending medical school, building upon her experience working as a medical researcher.

After going through “so many pregnancy tests that I lost count,” Day and her fiancé finally learned in the summer of 2021 that she was expecting. They were thrilled, but hesitantly so. The last time Day had tried to have a child, she’d had a miscarriage; for the first couple of months of this pregnancy, the fear of losing another child lingered.

But by the time she arrived at her doctor’s office for a routine ultrasound at thirteen weeks, Day was feeling healthy and optimistic. She’d announced her pregnancy on Facebook and had begun designing a nursery in the family’s new home. “We were so excited,” Day said. “As someone who reads medical literature, I knew my odds of having complications after twelve weeks were about five percent.”

Her excitement ended during that ultrasound visit. Day recalls the moment when her normally talkative ob-gyn went silent, a look of concern appearing on her face. Within hours, Day was sitting in front of a maternal-fetal specialist trying to wrap her head around devastating news: her unborn baby was suffering from a particularly severe case of hydrops fetalis, a rare condition that causes abnormal amounts of fluid to build up inside a fetus, which can lead to extensive damage of its internal organs.

Should she decide to continue her pregnancy for another six months, the specialist told Day, she would most likely give birth to a stillborn baby. If the baby didn’t die in utero, he said, it was unlikely to live more than a few days outside the womb. She was told that continuing to term could also put Day at risk for developing mirror syndrome (also known as Ballantyne syndrome or triple edema), a condition associated with hydrops in which an expectant mother develops severe swelling and potentially life-threatening hypertension. “I’d never heard of hydrops,” Day said. “When I found out, I couldn’t quite believe that, against all odds, this terrible thing still managed to happen….”

Because she was nearly two months beyond the deadline for accessing legal abortion care in Texas, Day decided her best option was for her and her fiancé to split the driving on the twelve-hour trip from Central Texas to a clinic in Albuquerque. She felt there was no time to spare. The longer she waited, the more expensive, and potentially complicated, the procedure would be. Though abortions conducted after the first trimester are still considered overwhelmingly low-risk, the skill required to perform the procedure increases as pregnancy advances, which partly explainsincreases in cost…

Once arrangements were in place, Day and her fiancé packed into her Jeep and headed west, driving twelve hours overnight, stopping only at convenience stores for food and gas….

After her abortion, the couple planned to race home, but Day began hemorrhaging, a rare and potentially serious complication. Feeling weak, and worried that the bleeding might intensify, the couple lingered at a gas station in Roswell for several hours; otherwise, they risked being caught in the desert without close access to medical care. Looking back, Day fears that her condition was a prelude of tragedies to come. “We were afraid to leave Roswell,” she said. “There’s a real chance that women returning to Texas who experience a medical complication could bleed out in the desert on their way home.”

Nine months later, the grief remains. But Day has no regrets about her decision. She keeps her baby’s ashes and his blanket in a closet at home— one she refers to as the “no-open closet.” It’s still too early, she said. But in the wake of Roe v. Wade having been overturned by the Supreme Court on June 24, she said, some of her grief has turned into rage…

With abortion in Texas now effectively illegal in almost all circumstances, Day knows that even more expectant mothers with unexpected complications during their pregnancies will find themselves in the same position she was in. They’ll be forced to choose between upending their lives to receive a costly abortion somewhere far away and remaining in a state that forces their unborn child to suffer and places their own health—and the family members who rely on them—at risk.

Day is infuriated by the narratives from conservative Texas politicians, in particular, that have long suggested that women approach abortions later in pregnancy casually—a conceit that deliberately strips reproductive choices of the heart-wrenching complexity they so often involve, and which, she believes, made it easier for anti-abortion advocates to demonize the procedure. (According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 percent of abortions were performed at or later than 21 weeks’ gestation in 2019.) Day’s frustration about how abortion is debated partly explains why she’s decided to allow her story to be made public. “Most people don’t know a woman that has gone through an experience like mine,” she said. “I’m happy to be the person that helps people understand how these laws will affect the women you do know.”

Categories Safety, Texas
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