The study found that the most significant driver of the increase in infant deaths was babies who died of congenital anomalies. In other words, women were forced by Texas law to have babies everyone knew would suffer and die.

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1805400574373851410

It's also not surprising that when states pass laws criminalizing doctors for saving and preserving their patients' lives, a lot of doctors get scared and leave the state, in turn leaving patients with fewer options and worse care - all of which drives up mortality rates.

It is sad, and well beyond its impact on US elections, the maximalism and fundamentalism it has fueled -- amplifying and expanding the worst of an extreme left counter to a powerful Israeli and US extreme right -- seems primed to guarantee bloodshed far beyond November.

https://twitter.com/rickperlstein/status/1789346464352661804

These two groups are deeply interdependent, by the way. The Israeli far right that wishes to extinguish Palestinians cannot succeed without claiming an immediate, existential threat to the very existence of Israel and the safety of Israelis (partly why Netanyahu was happy to fund Hamas for all these years). Every demand that Israel be destroyed feeds those fears -- not just in far-right lunatics, but in average Israelis who may be more inclined to support rightwing parties if they feel their existence is at stake.

There are many people (and I am one) who oppose this war, are horrified by the way Israel is conducting it, and want a ceasefire + peaceful long-term resolution who also don't aim to see Israel destroyed. But a kind of maximalism seems to have taken over this movement, with calls for the destruction of the Jewish state "by any means necessary" / total intolerance for "Zionists" which includes people who want two peaceful side-by-side states. I'm not participating in let alone leading these protests so things may be much more complicated than they look from the outside. But given the content of many of the chants, signs, slogans, statements, etc, as best I can tell the only acceptable position is one state, which may include democratic coexistence and power-sharing (how exactly remains tbd) or may, as the chant goes, be Arab from the water to the water. Many people hold that view and certainly it's going to show up in a big-tent pro-Palestinian movement and is of course a legitimate perspective (if one I disagree with), but it strikes me as pretty self-defeating for a movement to demand adherence to it -- you alienate a lot of would-be allies, and it's also wholly unrealistic. When any organized group or individual adds to that the "by any means necessary" rhetoric, they lose a ton of credibility and rightly should not be taken particularly seriously, but should be understood as a group that promotes and excuses violence against innocent people.

Sex is among the most popular recreational activities in the world, but I do hope that the conservative movement continues to be honest about their aims here, which are shared by no one except a handful of sad men with I imagine much-sadder wives. "Ban abortion and contraception and IVF because sex should never be for fun" great slogan, please keep at it.

I will get yelled at for this, but a question for fellow liberals: Do you support taking Trump off the ballot? I can understand the courts' reasoning. But it also just frankly feels bad for democracy and trust in elections (and yes I know Trump is also very bad for democracy). It's kind of a nonissue because there is a 0% chance the Supreme Court will allow him to be kept off the ballot, but man, I really really do worry that efforts to remove him simply reinforce his followers' ideas and his own claim that the deep state is out to get him.

Overt racists, eugenicists, and virulent misogynists have found a home in the Republican Party -- and in the pages of mainstream publications. But their ideas are not fringe; they are bedrocks of conservatism.
jill.substack.com/p/what-to-make… These overt racists and misogynists aren’t random bigots who have long been on the fringes of the right but now find themselves newly empowered; they are people whose views are the natural extension of social conservatism.
jill.substack.com/p/what-to-make…

This is bad news for marriage *rates* but not at all bad for marriages (or at least not bad for women in them). A lot of women would prefer to be single than to be tied to a man who doesn't respect women's basic bodily autonomy, votes for racist conspiracy theorists, etc.

https://twitter.com/BradWilcoxIFS/status/1667931107721895939

Who you marry is one of the most important decisions women make. Does your spouse support your ambitions, not just in theory but with action? Does he share in housework and childcare? Does he see you as a full human being, or are you folded into him / an incubator for his kids?

A few times a year I host writing + yoga retreats in my very favorite places. This October, I'm hosting a retreat focused on photography and writing in South Africa (no experience required, yoga is optional). Two days left to get the early bird discount:
onthegroundretreats.com/retreat/south-… I co-host this retreat with the amazing @nicholesobecki. Nichole is a National Geographic photographer, and we've worked on a series of stories about abortion access and women's rights around the world. Here are a few:
nybooks.com/online/2021/06…

politico.com/magazine/story…

I'm very (darkly) fascinated by the many many people with absolutely no relevant training or expertise who have nonetheless spent the past two years insisting either that the lab leak theory was a conspiracy theory, or that a lab leak is the only possible pandemic explanation.

https://twitter.com/TVietor08/status/1629866904721719296

No one knows! Not even our top intelligence agencies know! I just cannot imagine the arrogance of thinking me, a random political writer on Twitter, has the ability to determine where Covid originated.

Anti-abortion activists have filed a lawsuit that could result in a national ban on mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug. What's telling, though, is that their lawsuit is chock full of lies. It's like they're afraid to say what they actually believe.
jill.substack.com/p/is-honesty-t… The anti-abortion movement wants to ban abortion because they don't like abortion. But that's not what they argue in this suit. Instead, they argue that mifepristone is dangerous. 20x as many Americans die from penicillin each *year* than have ever died from mifepristone.

I feel bad for the Hamline students that are caught up in this controversy, but man, just about every single comment from the students suggests there have been many major failures at this school and whatever schools they attended before Hamline.

https://twitter.com/bzosiad/status/1617955698524184577

Like just... what? So the argument now is that anything that might merit a trigger or content warning because it might upset students just... shouldn't be shown in class? And "freedom" doesn't mean you can "overstep boundaries"?

This fundamental divide over the limits of free speech / expression of course shows up when it's conservative religious fundamentalists vs. liberals, but animates a whole lot of divides on the left, too (you can probably guess I'm solidly Team Sweden here)
theguardian.com/world/2023/jan… Blasphemy: Still the dumbest crime.

I know Twitter is not real life and this space has gotten increasingly deranged, but I saw that viral tweet about not understanding why people would ever want to eat out and that people who dine in restaurants are murders and... you guys really need to leave your homes more tbh. Human beings need social interaction. We need friends and connections *off* the internet, and we need interactions with strangers. We need novelty. We need pleasure. We need our senses stimulated. Can you live without that? Yes. Is it a very good life? For most people, no.

Teenagers deserve some basic privacy. If a kid comes out as gay or wants to begin socially transitioning and use a different name at school, teachers / admin should respect that, and let them come out to their parents at their own pace.
nytimes.com/2023/01/22/us/… I understand the trans stuff is a huge lightning rod, and I'm more sympathetic to debates over a parent's right to know when it comes to medical interventions. But socially transitioning? Let kids experiment with identity, and disclose to who they want when they want.

I've noticed something peculiar in the past few weeks: Prominent abortion opponents and conservative media setting their sights on death with dignity laws.

The hope, I think, is that this movement will eventually give you no choice, in birth or in death.
jill.substack.com/p/who-should-d… The overturning of Roe has had two major effects: It has both emboldened the anti-abortion right, and it’s taught them how radically unpopular their ideas are. Overturning Roe has made clear that the only way the movement wins is by force — because they can’t win on their ideas.

There is some mildly interesting stuff in the Twitter Files. It's concerning, for example, that an unaccountable tech company suppressed the sharing of a news story, even if that story was published by a pretty disreputable newspaper (the New York Post). However... The fact that this "story" is being broken in a series of breathless tweets by a narcissistic and disreputable substacker who seems unable or unwilling to do the kind of full journalistic investigation any decent institution would require calls so much of this into question.

This profile by @erenorbey in @NewYorker is very well-done. You can simultaneously feel for this woman and the trauma she has endured while also raising an eyebrow at her profoundly narcissistic and damaging activism.
newyorker.com/magazine/2022/… "If abortion had been legal I wouldn't have been born" is... not a reason to legally compel women to give birth. Millions and millions of people *were* born because their mothers had earlier abortions; they wouldn't have existed otherwise. Life: It's complicated.

The starkest gender gap in a midterm election that was a referendum on abortion rights was between women and men of reproductive age.

What does that mean for heterosexual romance and relationships?

jill.substack.com/p/dont-show-up… In the midterms, an astounding 72% of women under 30 voted for Democrats. Among men the same age, it was 54%. These gaps persist with Millennials: Among women 30-44, 57% voted for Dems, while just 43% of men the same age did.

Just a little reminder that Matt Taibbi is a pig who terrorized women and relished in misogynistic attacks, and co-wrote a book in which his 30-something coauthor bragged about sex with teenagers and threatening to kill his girlfriend if she didn’t abort.

washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-tw… “It’s satire,” they said, except there’s a photo of Mark Ames, Taibbi’s coauthor, at the senior prom with his date. She was 17 and he was 34.

Here is a fun(?) fact: Many US anti-abortion groups and advocates claim that abortion is *never* necessary to save the pregnant woman's life. This is a lie, but it's one they're sticking to, because eventually, they want zero exceptions to abortion bans.

jill.substack.com/p/pro-life-gro… Right now, the Catholic Church in Malta is opposing a law that would allow life- and health-saving abortions after an American tourist on her babymoon almost died because she was hemorrhaging & had a partially detached placenta but her fetus still had a heartbeat.

This makes a lot of sense. Of course a business shouldn't have to endorse a viewpoint it finds abhorrent. But businesses open to the public also shouldn't be able to discriminate against customers based on their race, gender, etc.
nytimes.com/2022/12/05/opi… In the case before the Supreme Court today, the owner of the company creates wedding websites. She will create them for a woman marrying a man. But if you're a man marrying a man, she won't. That's gender discrimination, and anti-gay discrimination.