Jess, I have previously posted this, but wanted to make sure you see it. It was in response to the Archbishop’s letter. If you’ve already seen it, sorry for reposting.
I hope it provides you with more information…
————————————————-
This is absolutely enraging.
Once again, a false dichotomy is presented. One which reveals how very little this prelate knows about either babies or ethics. He knows only a party line.
—-
Prochoice does not at all mean pro abortion.
The only ISSUE here is this: Where is the locus of control and who should make the decision?
I am Catholic.
I am also a Pediatrician who dealt with fetuses with anencephaly and many other horrible birth defects for forty years. I had to deal with extremely premature deliveries. I had to counsel couples shortly before the mom was going to deliver a baby that might be 20 weeks or 24-26 weeks. Often we wouldn't know until the baby was born. Yes, accuracy has improved. There is still much uncertainty at times.
I would help the parent(s) to understand that a 20 or 21 week baby was simply not viable. It was NOT an option to resuscitate that child - that there were very well designed guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology which laid out options. Most guidelines suggest comfort care and no true intervention under the fetal age of 25 weeks. Or 23 weeks? Or 24 weeks? Even the guidelines by people who do this for a living are difficult!
I also gave the parents a very clear understanding as to WHY these guidelines existed. That a 22 week baby only weighs one pound. That the TOTAL blood volume of a 1 pound baby is 4-5 ounces.
———
Let’s make things real, shall we?
— If you need to draw 3 ml (1/10 ounce) from a baby to help diagnose and treat them, and if you need to do this four times in a week to manage the baby’s medical problems, you are removing EIGHT PERCENT of the baby's total blood. For this and other reasons it’s very common for babies this tiny to require multiple transfusions simply to replace blood taken for testing.
— At that age the baby’s skin is as thin and fragile as rice paper. Simply holding the baby’s arm and pulling the wrong way can make the skin tear.
— All babies that age must be ventilated. That means that you are pushing air into a baby’s chest to breathe for it. Yes, techniques have improved markedly. BUT it is still common for them to have part of the lung surface blow out, requiring that a plastic tube be inserted between the ribs to keep the baby from dying. Sometimes they have one tube on each side.
— They can and do have bleeding into the brain.
— They can and do have life threatening infections.
— They can and do have permanent eye damage with visual impairment.
— They can and do have life-long lung damage.
30-60% of them die IN SPITE OF heroic measures by extraordinary professionals.
The estimate is that of those who survive (after about half die), half or more have severe ongoing medical problems.
———
I would explain these realities to parents asking for guidance…because usually they had no information and were in crisis.
This was not to be cruel. It was to help them to have a medical imagination and to be realistic so that after having factual medical information they would know exactly what they were choosing.
I would go away to give the parents time to process. Then we would make a joint decision. It was always heartbreaking. It was almost always an urgent decision.
——
I have worked in many settings. I have never once in forty years seen any medical personnel treat this process superficially, casually, or with anything but compassion. I have seen many caregivers including myself cry over the cruel choices that had to be made.
——
For all these reasons, the only place that decisions about babies belong is with their parents with the guidance of their caregivers and spiritual counselors. Full stop.
The decisions absolutely do NOT belong with ignorant, ideological judges, lawyers, legislators, and/or far-away imperious bishops/priests/ministers who have zero understanding of on-the-ground medical decision making.
Accept the reality that families should make decisions about the medical care for themselves and their loved ones. Leave them alone. They are suffering as they choose, regardless of how they choose.
I'm crying now and I'm a 75-year-old man and am thankful that my wife and I never had to experience this trauma. Thank you for telling it like it is and thank you for being there for people that needed your wisdom. Everyone on this side of the issue should read this.
Thank you for your care, compassion and professionalism. There have been many changes over the past 40 years, but it still remains that the parents, families and caregivers are the ones to decide.
This is the best response I've EVER heard to the issue! Beginning with, "Prochoice does not at all mean pro abortion," I support every word of this. One of the "choices" is life, but it's between a woman, her family, and those who care about and for her.
Before I read this amazing comment, but after I read your piece, Jess, I made a posting for voting that says:
You have an absolute right to be Pro-Life or Pro-Choice.
You have absolutely no right to force your views on others.
Thank you for putting that together and posting it here. So well written.
I know what you are talking about as I and my husband spent 7 straight weeks in a NICU watching our premature baby slowly pull out of his early birth crisis along with other babies, laid side by side in incubators uniquely and beautifully decorated by parents desperate to show their love. You could only touch the child through a protected glove entrance and hold the baby twice a day for a period on a pillow on your lap, wires trailing everywhere. I, like so many women can and do, had developed preeclampsia, and had been heading into crisis myself with obscenely high blood pressure when the doctor said I had to have an emergency cesarean at just under 7 months.
I called it the 'through the looking glass' pregnancy and birth. Because hard as it was, it taught us so much about how strong the will to live is in human beings, how tragic the death is of these tiny babies (only a few were over 3 lbs) who were clearly in pain but struggled so valiantly, some unable to even feebly cry, and how difficult it can be for families to handle these desperately horrible turns of fate. In one case, I watched grandparents and husband blame the mother, making the situation 10x worse.
Luckily, I didn't have that burden on top of everything else. We decided collectively to be as brave as our son, who stoically fought his way out of his complications with the help of those nurses and brilliant doctors. And he is a fine young Citizen now, contributing plenty to this country's economy, and voting for the second time in a Presidential election. Noone would know he had a rough start.
We need more sensible Catholics like you to step up and confront the Church about its misguided ban on abortions. Or at the very least, no matter one's beliefs, stand up and state that mixing church with state affairs and having government enact laws that force Catholic beliefs upon all of us--even the non-Catholics--is a recipe for disaster.
After the NICU experience, I realized too many men and some women regard and portray pregnancy as magical, a dance through the woods, babies just pop out, that nothing can possibly be dangerous about this period in a woman's life, or for the baby--or if it is, the woman must have done something wrong.
Which is why I want full sex education, end to end, with girls learning everything about boys' anatomy and vice versa, in Middle School. Clinical, scientific, with an open discussion of everything involved with our respective bodies. Leave no excuses for ignorance of how babies are made and formed. Don't leave it up to Tik Tok and YouTube, or what my husband says was his education, on the playground from other boys.
I was fortunate enough to get such training in the 70s overseas. It was slightly uncomfortable for a few of our more conservative foreign teachers, but the kids were not embarrassed at all, just open and curious, occasionally bored, and in the end far, far better equipped to face life.
Beautifully said. Thank you for this much needed addition.
Regardless of how much of a caregiver’s practice experience is in Neonatology, there is simply no way to fully comprehend what the parents’ experience is like.
Two reasons:
1) Physicians, neonatal NPs, nurses - we ultimately have to compartmentalize simply to survive emotionally and to do the job effectively.
2) Because of the fact that we all are “used to it” - meaning we know the path that likely will be traveled and understand the technology and procedures, we cannot possibly comprehend the brutal emotional jungle that a non-medical parent has to negotiate.
I appreciate the care and diligence you took to create this post. The case against abortion bans is heartbreakingly clear. The last three paragraphs expand on beliefs I have held for years. I want to copy them and keep them as a reference somewhere. Thank you!
As my friends who are currently visiting their 23-week preemie in the NICU daily are living this exact life… they mention the exact things you are mentioning like needing FOUR transfusions because of the sheer volume (%) of blood they’re having to draw for testing and evaluation. The tubes. The barely holding. The thinnest skin. The fears of permanent disability. The fears they might never get to bring their son home, and they don’t know where on the spectrum things will go, or when, and they’re afraid they’ll lose… another… baby.
I strongly encourage every voter to go to your county seat and participate in early voting. Not only are there no lines, but it's harder to argue that the race is close if there's heavy turn-out well before the election day!
This election answers a fundamental question about who we are as a nation. If felon Trump is re-elected, everything will change:
We will no longer be a nation of equal justice for all. You can remove the tablet from the Statue of Liberty. The idea of liberty only applies to the rich, the white, and males. Women will become second-class citizens.
We will abandon our allies and embrace authoritarian dictatorships.
In short, we will have become the antithesis of the ideals upon which this country was created!
I can't wait to celebrate Harris EPIC victory wearing this We the People means EVERYONE rainbow flag t-shirt on November 5th 👇
Heather, I agree with your statement except on one point. When the SC issued their Dobbs ruling, women immediately became second class citizens. It’s already happened.
There is no democracy for anyone who cannot control their own body.
I heard yesterday that a TX woman miscarried at 14 weeks. Her fetus was not viable, but her doctors knew how to save HER. What she needed was an abortion, but the Trump abortion ban in TX prevented her doctors from using their medical training and judgment to prevent her suffering by giving her the standard medical care (abortion). She was in agony, begging for help. Three days later she died. She was not the first to die. She will not be the last. Donald Trump did this.
Trump brags he ended Roe. Trump boasts and lies about abortion while women suffer and die. Republicans, mostly white males, ignore medical experts and refuse to fix the mess they have created. They’re coming for birth control and IVF next and want a national ban on abortion.
It is important to remember that women who want access to abortion are not asking for a special right. Women just want control over our own bodies, you know, the same right men have. If the TX woman had had that right, she would be alive today.
It’s not just pregnant people who are harmed by Trump abortion bans. We are
all harmed. Doctors who fear prosecution for providing standard medical care (abortion) leave states with abortion bans, creating healthcare deserts. It’s already happening in Idaho and other states.
I just finished reading Jessica Valenti’s excellent book, Abortion. It is well written and I highly recommend it. Did you know anti-choice lobbyists tell lawmakers that when women who go to an Emergency Room because they are hemorrhaging that they should not be allowed a D & C (the standard medical care to stop the hemorrhaging)? I didn’t want to believe it but the horror stories we all hear show us that “pro-life” really means:
LET WOMEN DIE.
Trump abortion bans don’t work to protect women. You know what works? ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY.
Your vote for Harris/Walz and Democrats, up and down the ballot, will save the lives of women you know and love. If you have a uterus, it may save your life.
First day of early voting in KY. Waited in line 30 minutes (in the rain) to vote. Waits other places we’re over an hour. So definitely vote early, but expect lines. #whenwevotewewin
Oh Jess, what a powerful story. I'm so moved to think of that station's audience getting to hear you and your stories. (And you are so right about the cookies!) I believe that truth served with love is way more powerful than lies. I don't remember if I told you that i was a Catholic nun for five years in the sixties, before RvW, and I thought abortion was murder and should be banned. Until I learned that when it is illegal, rich women and mistresses of rich men fly to where it's legal while low- and middle- income women die. I'm developing a character, Rap singer Granny Annie, (Im 79) to find a way to reach folks with my ideas. Maybe we could talk some day on whether my work could support yours. Here's our first one on voting, which won the SONG category in the https://www.whydoyou.vote/ film competition.
Just scroll down through the 8 winners on the home page to the SONG category. Blessings,
Thank you, Jess, for everything you do - and for writing about it so beautifully. As a women's reproductive health RN, I find the lies about abortion especially infuriating. I hope to buy you a cup of coffee someday when I'm in Missouri for legal weed, and tell you how impactful your words have been during such a chaotic and stressful season.
Thank you for telling those folks on their tractors the truth. My little granddaughter was born three years ago. I was terrified that something would go wrong. I was praying for the baby, but even more so for my daughter who is MY baby. Things went fine, the situation can go downhill in the blink of an eye. If I were Amber Thurman’s mom, I would be SO angry at her unnecessary death.
Farm AM radio is poison for the brain. I helped my parents in their seed house, and have talked to farmers who seemed like very practical people spewing conspiracy theories that are so insane, they wouldn’t even make a good fantasy novel.
And AM radio is the only thing they can listen to in their tractors because some older tractors only have an AM radio.
So farmers are out in the field listening to lies and conspiracy theories all day.
So that's the big ticket for them. They make a bonus for being pro life. Wow that's awful. It makes sense now. And Sen. Ron Santos is definitely saying there's not going to be abortions in FL. And Trump with his decision going back and forth , makes a lot more sense now.
The kicker? The only thing they're allegedly "pro-life" about is am embryo or fetus that isn't even a legally recognized person. They don't care about the ACTUAL person carrying said embryo or fetus. That makes them "forced-birth," not "pro-life."
Bill is correct. It's Gov Ron DeSantis, Sens Rubio and Rick Scott.
I am so very proud of you, Jess! You faced this opportunity with absolute courage and walked into that “lion’s den” with all the facts! You are one in a million.
Jess, I have previously posted this, but wanted to make sure you see it. It was in response to the Archbishop’s letter. If you’ve already seen it, sorry for reposting.
I hope it provides you with more information…
————————————————-
This is absolutely enraging.
Once again, a false dichotomy is presented. One which reveals how very little this prelate knows about either babies or ethics. He knows only a party line.
—-
Prochoice does not at all mean pro abortion.
The only ISSUE here is this: Where is the locus of control and who should make the decision?
I am Catholic.
I am also a Pediatrician who dealt with fetuses with anencephaly and many other horrible birth defects for forty years. I had to deal with extremely premature deliveries. I had to counsel couples shortly before the mom was going to deliver a baby that might be 20 weeks or 24-26 weeks. Often we wouldn't know until the baby was born. Yes, accuracy has improved. There is still much uncertainty at times.
I would help the parent(s) to understand that a 20 or 21 week baby was simply not viable. It was NOT an option to resuscitate that child - that there were very well designed guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology which laid out options. Most guidelines suggest comfort care and no true intervention under the fetal age of 25 weeks. Or 23 weeks? Or 24 weeks? Even the guidelines by people who do this for a living are difficult!
I also gave the parents a very clear understanding as to WHY these guidelines existed. That a 22 week baby only weighs one pound. That the TOTAL blood volume of a 1 pound baby is 4-5 ounces.
———
Let’s make things real, shall we?
— If you need to draw 3 ml (1/10 ounce) from a baby to help diagnose and treat them, and if you need to do this four times in a week to manage the baby’s medical problems, you are removing EIGHT PERCENT of the baby's total blood. For this and other reasons it’s very common for babies this tiny to require multiple transfusions simply to replace blood taken for testing.
— At that age the baby’s skin is as thin and fragile as rice paper. Simply holding the baby’s arm and pulling the wrong way can make the skin tear.
— All babies that age must be ventilated. That means that you are pushing air into a baby’s chest to breathe for it. Yes, techniques have improved markedly. BUT it is still common for them to have part of the lung surface blow out, requiring that a plastic tube be inserted between the ribs to keep the baby from dying. Sometimes they have one tube on each side.
— They can and do have bleeding into the brain.
— They can and do have life threatening infections.
— They can and do have permanent eye damage with visual impairment.
— They can and do have life-long lung damage.
30-60% of them die IN SPITE OF heroic measures by extraordinary professionals.
The estimate is that of those who survive (after about half die), half or more have severe ongoing medical problems.
———
I would explain these realities to parents asking for guidance…because usually they had no information and were in crisis.
This was not to be cruel. It was to help them to have a medical imagination and to be realistic so that after having factual medical information they would know exactly what they were choosing.
I would go away to give the parents time to process. Then we would make a joint decision. It was always heartbreaking. It was almost always an urgent decision.
——
I have worked in many settings. I have never once in forty years seen any medical personnel treat this process superficially, casually, or with anything but compassion. I have seen many caregivers including myself cry over the cruel choices that had to be made.
——
For all these reasons, the only place that decisions about babies belong is with their parents with the guidance of their caregivers and spiritual counselors. Full stop.
The decisions absolutely do NOT belong with ignorant, ideological judges, lawyers, legislators, and/or far-away imperious bishops/priests/ministers who have zero understanding of on-the-ground medical decision making.
Accept the reality that families should make decisions about the medical care for themselves and their loved ones. Leave them alone. They are suffering as they choose, regardless of how they choose.
Thank you!!!
I'm crying now and I'm a 75-year-old man and am thankful that my wife and I never had to experience this trauma. Thank you for telling it like it is and thank you for being there for people that needed your wisdom. Everyone on this side of the issue should read this.
No one who lacks a uterus is allowed to have an opinion on how to operate said organ!
Thank you for your care, compassion and professionalism. There have been many changes over the past 40 years, but it still remains that the parents, families and caregivers are the ones to decide.
This is the best response I've EVER heard to the issue! Beginning with, "Prochoice does not at all mean pro abortion," I support every word of this. One of the "choices" is life, but it's between a woman, her family, and those who care about and for her.
Before I read this amazing comment, but after I read your piece, Jess, I made a posting for voting that says:
You have an absolute right to be Pro-Life or Pro-Choice.
You have absolutely no right to force your views on others.
VOTE!
I'll try to share it if anyone wants it.
Thank you for putting that together and posting it here. So well written.
I know what you are talking about as I and my husband spent 7 straight weeks in a NICU watching our premature baby slowly pull out of his early birth crisis along with other babies, laid side by side in incubators uniquely and beautifully decorated by parents desperate to show their love. You could only touch the child through a protected glove entrance and hold the baby twice a day for a period on a pillow on your lap, wires trailing everywhere. I, like so many women can and do, had developed preeclampsia, and had been heading into crisis myself with obscenely high blood pressure when the doctor said I had to have an emergency cesarean at just under 7 months.
I called it the 'through the looking glass' pregnancy and birth. Because hard as it was, it taught us so much about how strong the will to live is in human beings, how tragic the death is of these tiny babies (only a few were over 3 lbs) who were clearly in pain but struggled so valiantly, some unable to even feebly cry, and how difficult it can be for families to handle these desperately horrible turns of fate. In one case, I watched grandparents and husband blame the mother, making the situation 10x worse.
Luckily, I didn't have that burden on top of everything else. We decided collectively to be as brave as our son, who stoically fought his way out of his complications with the help of those nurses and brilliant doctors. And he is a fine young Citizen now, contributing plenty to this country's economy, and voting for the second time in a Presidential election. Noone would know he had a rough start.
We need more sensible Catholics like you to step up and confront the Church about its misguided ban on abortions. Or at the very least, no matter one's beliefs, stand up and state that mixing church with state affairs and having government enact laws that force Catholic beliefs upon all of us--even the non-Catholics--is a recipe for disaster.
After the NICU experience, I realized too many men and some women regard and portray pregnancy as magical, a dance through the woods, babies just pop out, that nothing can possibly be dangerous about this period in a woman's life, or for the baby--or if it is, the woman must have done something wrong.
Which is why I want full sex education, end to end, with girls learning everything about boys' anatomy and vice versa, in Middle School. Clinical, scientific, with an open discussion of everything involved with our respective bodies. Leave no excuses for ignorance of how babies are made and formed. Don't leave it up to Tik Tok and YouTube, or what my husband says was his education, on the playground from other boys.
I was fortunate enough to get such training in the 70s overseas. It was slightly uncomfortable for a few of our more conservative foreign teachers, but the kids were not embarrassed at all, just open and curious, occasionally bored, and in the end far, far better equipped to face life.
Beautifully said. Thank you for this much needed addition.
Regardless of how much of a caregiver’s practice experience is in Neonatology, there is simply no way to fully comprehend what the parents’ experience is like.
Two reasons:
1) Physicians, neonatal NPs, nurses - we ultimately have to compartmentalize simply to survive emotionally and to do the job effectively.
2) Because of the fact that we all are “used to it” - meaning we know the path that likely will be traveled and understand the technology and procedures, we cannot possibly comprehend the brutal emotional jungle that a non-medical parent has to negotiate.
Blessings.
I appreciate the care and diligence you took to create this post. The case against abortion bans is heartbreakingly clear. The last three paragraphs expand on beliefs I have held for years. I want to copy them and keep them as a reference somewhere. Thank you!
As my friends who are currently visiting their 23-week preemie in the NICU daily are living this exact life… they mention the exact things you are mentioning like needing FOUR transfusions because of the sheer volume (%) of blood they’re having to draw for testing and evaluation. The tubes. The barely holding. The thinnest skin. The fears of permanent disability. The fears they might never get to bring their son home, and they don’t know where on the spectrum things will go, or when, and they’re afraid they’ll lose… another… baby.
This should be published in every newsletter and magazine on every country, and on the internet.
I strongly encourage every voter to go to your county seat and participate in early voting. Not only are there no lines, but it's harder to argue that the race is close if there's heavy turn-out well before the election day!
This election answers a fundamental question about who we are as a nation. If felon Trump is re-elected, everything will change:
We will no longer be a nation of equal justice for all. You can remove the tablet from the Statue of Liberty. The idea of liberty only applies to the rich, the white, and males. Women will become second-class citizens.
We will abandon our allies and embrace authoritarian dictatorships.
In short, we will have become the antithesis of the ideals upon which this country was created!
I can't wait to celebrate Harris EPIC victory wearing this We the People means EVERYONE rainbow flag t-shirt on November 5th 👇
https://libtees-2.creator-spring.com/listing/wtpmelb
Everyone will be celebrating in the streets!
Heather, I agree with your statement except on one point. When the SC issued their Dobbs ruling, women immediately became second class citizens. It’s already happened.
There is no democracy for anyone who cannot control their own body.
I heard yesterday that a TX woman miscarried at 14 weeks. Her fetus was not viable, but her doctors knew how to save HER. What she needed was an abortion, but the Trump abortion ban in TX prevented her doctors from using their medical training and judgment to prevent her suffering by giving her the standard medical care (abortion). She was in agony, begging for help. Three days later she died. She was not the first to die. She will not be the last. Donald Trump did this.
Trump brags he ended Roe. Trump boasts and lies about abortion while women suffer and die. Republicans, mostly white males, ignore medical experts and refuse to fix the mess they have created. They’re coming for birth control and IVF next and want a national ban on abortion.
It is important to remember that women who want access to abortion are not asking for a special right. Women just want control over our own bodies, you know, the same right men have. If the TX woman had had that right, she would be alive today.
It’s not just pregnant people who are harmed by Trump abortion bans. We are
all harmed. Doctors who fear prosecution for providing standard medical care (abortion) leave states with abortion bans, creating healthcare deserts. It’s already happening in Idaho and other states.
I just finished reading Jessica Valenti’s excellent book, Abortion. It is well written and I highly recommend it. Did you know anti-choice lobbyists tell lawmakers that when women who go to an Emergency Room because they are hemorrhaging that they should not be allowed a D & C (the standard medical care to stop the hemorrhaging)? I didn’t want to believe it but the horror stories we all hear show us that “pro-life” really means:
LET WOMEN DIE.
Trump abortion bans don’t work to protect women. You know what works? ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY.
Your vote for Harris/Walz and Democrats, up and down the ballot, will save the lives of women you know and love. If you have a uterus, it may save your life.
It's not just Trump.
All but 2 Republican Senators voted against codifying Roe and protecting contraception.
Every Republican candidate running for any local, state, federal office (or judgeship) is arrogantly, stridently, condescendingly "pro-harming women".
Pro-life is too tame a word.
Also voted against fertility treatments (IVF, etc.). Twice.
Exactly. And only heterosexual, rich white males.
First day of early voting in KY. Waited in line 30 minutes (in the rain) to vote. Waits other places we’re over an hour. So definitely vote early, but expect lines. #whenwevotewewin
Jess Piper, you rank among the absolutely most awesome women.
If it only made a difference to one person, it was worth doing.
Thank you. OMG thank you. We have to fight back against this white and male supremacy. Reject fear. Expose lies. Vote for truth and compassion.
It takes a lot of guts and a lot of smarts, to do what you do, Jess. Thanks for showing the way out of the darkness.
Thank you for all you do!
Oh Jess, what a powerful story. I'm so moved to think of that station's audience getting to hear you and your stories. (And you are so right about the cookies!) I believe that truth served with love is way more powerful than lies. I don't remember if I told you that i was a Catholic nun for five years in the sixties, before RvW, and I thought abortion was murder and should be banned. Until I learned that when it is illegal, rich women and mistresses of rich men fly to where it's legal while low- and middle- income women die. I'm developing a character, Rap singer Granny Annie, (Im 79) to find a way to reach folks with my ideas. Maybe we could talk some day on whether my work could support yours. Here's our first one on voting, which won the SONG category in the https://www.whydoyou.vote/ film competition.
Just scroll down through the 8 winners on the home page to the SONG category. Blessings,
Awesome song Grannie Annie!
Thanks, Laurie!!
Very cool, Grannie Annie😎🎶🤩
Thank you!
Thank you, Jess, for everything you do - and for writing about it so beautifully. As a women's reproductive health RN, I find the lies about abortion especially infuriating. I hope to buy you a cup of coffee someday when I'm in Missouri for legal weed, and tell you how impactful your words have been during such a chaotic and stressful season.
Thank you for telling those folks on their tractors the truth. My little granddaughter was born three years ago. I was terrified that something would go wrong. I was praying for the baby, but even more so for my daughter who is MY baby. Things went fine, the situation can go downhill in the blink of an eye. If I were Amber Thurman’s mom, I would be SO angry at her unnecessary death.
Farm AM radio is poison for the brain. I helped my parents in their seed house, and have talked to farmers who seemed like very practical people spewing conspiracy theories that are so insane, they wouldn’t even make a good fantasy novel.
And AM radio is the only thing they can listen to in their tractors because some older tractors only have an AM radio.
So farmers are out in the field listening to lies and conspiracy theories all day.
HUZZAH! That is great news. And also, WTF about the tax credit grift?!? How is that legal?
It is a grift passed through by the Missouri GOP supermajority.
Whaaaaaat??????? 🤯🤬
So that's the big ticket for them. They make a bonus for being pro life. Wow that's awful. It makes sense now. And Sen. Ron Santos is definitely saying there's not going to be abortions in FL. And Trump with his decision going back and forth , makes a lot more sense now.
Don't you mean Gov. DeSantis? Because the senators from Florida are scott and rubio...
The kicker? The only thing they're allegedly "pro-life" about is am embryo or fetus that isn't even a legally recognized person. They don't care about the ACTUAL person carrying said embryo or fetus. That makes them "forced-birth," not "pro-life."
Bill is correct. It's Gov Ron DeSantis, Sens Rubio and Rick Scott.
Well done, Jess! Thank you.
Go you Jess!!!
I am so very proud of you, Jess! You faced this opportunity with absolute courage and walked into that “lion’s den” with all the facts! You are one in a million.
As an aside, ProPublica has a great article today on this "government cash" stuff. It seems to be everywhere in these right-wing evangelical circles: https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-instagram-meta-deceptive-political-ads-election