MAHA just announced that states will be able to prohibit people from purchasing junk food with SNAP.

They claim this will make people healthier. That it’ll force them to make better choices.

It won’t.

Why? They aren’t addressing the privilege involved with healthy eating 🧵 I’m all for a healthy diet.

I only consume whole and unprocessed foods myself, and even did a year as a raw vegan to try and reduce my overall inflammation.

It was an eye opening experience that I was only able to do because of my privilege.

The forced birth crowd love to spin a narrative that women are “heroes” for going through with a pregnancy that risks their lives.

They’re conditioning us to accept high maternal mortality rates due to abortion bans.

The woman below isn’t “cancer free”, she’s dead. We saw the same thing with Adriana Smith.

A Georgia hospital turned her body into an incubator for a 9 week old fetus, and they did it without her family’s consent

Many pro-life people said it’s what “all mothers would want” and it was a worthy sacrifice for her baby’s survival

Rodney Taylor, is a disabled man who was detained by ICE back in January & thrown in a Georgia detention facility.

He’s still there.

A double amputee, Taylor was taken into custody just two days before he was schedule to receive new prosthetic legs. 🧵 What’s followed is a series of abuse and mistreatment, including being unable to charge his legs, unable to use the wheelchair because of injuries to his hand and denial of access to his new legs.

At 19 I was told my health came second to my future husband.

At 22 I was told I would feel differently once I was “in love”

At 24 my boyfriend was asked if he would still love me if I couldn’t bear children.

My autonomy was violated for 5 years for a hypothetical baby 🧵 I had severe endometriosis and adenomyosis.

My periods were absolutely hell.

They were irregular, heavy and excruciatingly painful.

I would lay on the bathroom floor in unrelenting pain, throwing up and too weak to move.

Many Americans aren’t familiar with Canadian serial killer & rapist Paul Bernardo, nicknamed the “schoolgirl killer”

He & wife Karla Homolka raped and killed women together before being arrested in 1993.

The prosecution made a deal with Homolka, the “deal with the devil” 🧵 He was charged and tried for the rapes and murders of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, though there were many more victims, including his wife’s own sister Tammy Homolka.

The prosecution made a deal with Karla to testify against him, giving her a reduced sentence.

A few weeks ago I wrote about a South Carolina woman who had been arrested for a miscarriage.

I was lambasted with comments about how it was a stillbirth, how she was a horrible mother etc.

Today we found out it was an 18 week loss & she DID go to the hospital for care🧵 First things first, she was originally charged with “desecration of a corpse”

So before anyone tries to come in here with a “gotcha”…
I’m well aware of this fact.

The forced birth brigade seems to be using that charge because they can’t charge someone for a miscarriage

Today I was told that if I can’t cook simple meals for myself I should be institutionalized

That people on disability should not be allowed to access “luxuries” like food delivery services because they’re unhealthy & expensive

This is eugenics.

Feeding oneself is survival 🧵 People act like their tax dollars shouldn’t support disabled people and that if they do, it must be the most bare bones life imaginable

They want us to suffer

They want us in legislated poverty.

Why? Ableism. They want us to die faster because they see us as “useless eaters”

Tennessee’s Medical Ethics Defence Act gives doctors, insurers & hospitals the right to deny care to someone based on religious, moral or ethical beliefs.

A pregnant woman has been denied prenatal care in a state that claims to be “pro life”

Why? She’s unmarried .

🧵 A 35 year old pregnant woman was denied care because the doctor felt it went against his “values”

She has been with her partner 15 years, but since they weren’t legally wed, she was sent on her way.

This is misogyny and discrimination.

It’s the opposite of “pro life”

An 82 year old man named Luis Leon came to the US in 1987.

He sought asylum from political persecution in Chile.

He’s been in the US ever since & was granted a green card.

He lost his wallet (and green card) in June & when he went to replace it he was disappeared by ICE 🧵 What followed for his family is the stuff of nightmares.

They couldn’t find him. Couldn’t talk to him. Couldn’t get him a lawyer.

This was a senior citizen who did absolutely nothing wrong.

Who hasn’t lost their wallet at some point?

One of my oldest friends ghosted me when I went public with my chronic illness.

They wanted the “old me”. They wanted me to hide it better.

Two days ago they reached out to say they’re now disabled & worried they won’t be able to keep their job.

They asked for my help 🧵 They said they didn’t realize how bad it was.

They lamented the lack of support.

Said they’re hiding it as best as they can but it’s exhausting and wearing them down.

You know what they didn’t say? Sorry.

“If you can use the internet you can work!” Is such a privileged ableist take.

It goes to show how little the average person understands chronic illness.

How little thought they give to the unique challenges we face or the multiple barriers to holding down a job 🧵 First things first, it’s true that remote work is an important disability accommodation that can allow some disabled people to remain active in the workforce.

It’s also exceedingly hard to get and doesn’t work for everyone.

When I was 19, I was told pregnancy would likely kill me.

I didn’t want kids. I had never wanted kids. I certainly didn’t want to die.

So I asked for my tubes to be died and was told no.

They told me abortion would be my best option IF I became pregnant. 🧵 Thankfully I live somewhere that gives me full reproductive rights and healthcare.

Thankfully there’s no draconian abortion bans to put my life at risk.

But I was still denied autonomy over my body, just because I’m a woman.

There’s nothing wrong with healthy eating, but it is not a “patriotic duty”

The moment you start believing that, you’ve ceded ground to eugenics

This is another ploy to get people to be “fine” with kicking people off their healthcare.

To get you to accept death & disease 🧵 The MAHA crowd want to make people believe that disability is a personal failing.

That if you eat right, have a healthy lifestyle and exercise you won’t ever become chronically ill.

They want to blame people for being sick so that they don’t have to provide care.

A woman in South Carolina has been arrested for miscarrying.

Why? Because she put the tissue in the garbage.

They’re charging her with “desecration of human remains”

This is where abortion bans lead.

To the criminalization of pregnancy & total control of women. These bans aren’t about preserving life or protecting women, they’re about controlling us.

They strip us of bodily autonomy. Threaten our lives and our freedom. Traumatize, harm and even kill.

Bans also increase maternal & infant mortality.

A healthcare worker doesn’t have to “force” you to remove your mask to cause harm or infection.

When they say “you don’t have to wear your mask here” or “you seem anxious about Covid”…

They’re sending a clear message to the patient that their mask isn’t respected. 🧵 They’re telling the patient that their care may be compromised should they insist on masking.

They’re telling the patient that if they request staff wear a mask, they will likely end up with a note in their chart about how they’re “difficult”

When you’re chronically ill, some people will treat you like you’re not dying “fast enough”.

They will be upset you’re surviving.

They will act like you must be “not that sick” or you would be dead.

Your literal survival will anger them.

No one prepares you for that. 🧵 People understand acute illness. They can empathize with an illness that knocks you down & then you recover.

They understand terminal illness. They’re capable of compassion when you get sick with something that is going to kill you.

They don’t understand chronic illness

Today a doctor asked the question most disabled patients dread…

“What do you want ME to do about it?”

I wanted to scream:

Your job!
Help me!
Solve the problem!
Provide treatment!

But I didn’t. I remained calm. I avoided being “difficult”

I left with no answers 🧵 This is the life of a patient with complex chronic illness.

We are the experts in our bodies. We are often the experts in our rare diseases.

But we need doctors to provide the treatments.

We need them to provide the care.

This person nailed it (sadly)

Everyone did play a numbers game. They decided their personal risk was low, and therefore stopped masking

They don’t care about the elderly or disabled, because caring about them means having to sacrifice a small amount of personal comfort 🧵

https://twitter.com/senpainotes/status/1942945945718534601

I can say on a personal level it feels awful to know this is how most in society see me.

Expendable. Not worth caring about. An acceptable loss.

Most people would rather I die than put a mask on their face.

That will never stop hurting.

Tonight I watched a heartbreaking video of a woman in Texas pleading for help rescuing her bed bound & disabled father

He’s on hospice care, and their home was filled with at least two feet of murky water from the floods

She can’t move him without assistance. They’re stuck 🧵 He was lying in a hospital bed with water pooling all around it.

She said it was starting to smell like raw sewage.

She was on the phone trying to reach 911 but of course the lines were jammed.

Cynthia Olivera is a Canadian who’s been living in the US since she was 10

She’s in ICE custody, after being grabbed at her green card interview.

The 45 year old wife & mother has been moved between facilities while her husband begs ICE to let her get on a plane to Canada. 🧵 They’re willing to pay. She’s willing to leave. But she can’t escape.

This is why we call them concentration camps.

There’s no due process. Some people go in and never come out.

Every time I advocate for more covid mitigations, someone screams “survival of the fittest” at me.

Tells me that if I’m “too weak” to survive Covid, I don’t deserve to live.

That society can’t be expected to cater to people like me.

They’ve got it completely backwards 🧵 Survival of the fittest was never about who was the strongest or the most healthy, it was about who was most capable of adapting to their environment.

When we stop adapting, we perish.

Covid is the ultimate test in adaptation.