We support the ceasefire in Palestine.
Laurie and Debbie say:
We don’t need to waste much space on the profoundly deteriorating political and cultural climate; we’ll just note that it even makes blogging harder. We’ve always tried to select topics where we could add our own thoughts and insights. Right now, we’re mostly finding subjects where our commentary really boils down to “this sucks and these people should never have any power.”
The example of the moment comes from the Washington Post, and you may have to give them an email address and answer a few questions before being able to see the whole article, “Anti-abortion advocates look for men to report their partners’ abortions.” These anti-women crusaders …
… are increasingly turning to one group with uniquely intimate and specific information to help them find cases: male sex partners of women who decided to end their pregnancies.
The strategy propelled a first-of-its-kind lawsuit filed last month by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that cited first-hand information from an unnamed “biological father” to accuse a New York doctor of illegally providing abortion pills to woman in the Dallas area, according to two people familiar with the case’s origins.
The case was inspired by a report Paxton’s office received from the man and emerged as part of a broader abortion law enforcement operation the attorney general has quietly created that includes searching for potential plaintiffs, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
This partner-focused approach will shift to a more public phase next month when Texas’s largest antiabortion organization launches an advertising campaign on Facebook and X to reach the husbands, boyfriends and sex partners of women who have had abortions in the state — with the goal of recruiting them to file lawsuits against those who assisted the women in ending their pregnancies.
There’s lots more in the article, including details, history, and some commentary on the effect of this kind of betrayal on the women who have already had to jump through all the hoops to find an out-of-state doctor who will send pills. The icky overtone of men searching their wives’ and partners’ medicine cabinets and wastepaper baskets to find evidence of mifepristone cannot be overstated.
And, although the article doesn’t mention this, each of these men is also entitled to $10,000 from the great state of Texas if the lawsuit succeeds–because something, somewhere, has apparently been protected or defended. Texas women, on the other hand, are not supposed to be prosecuted, but they will probably be publicly exposed and certainly be betrayed by their sexual partner.
There’s worse to come; everyone’s job is to never obey in advance, never to write something like this off as “normal” or “acceptable,” and never to shut up about how wrong it is.
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You can now follow Debbie on Bluesky, an almost sane social media platform.
Follow Laurie’s Pandemic Shadows photos on Instagram.
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