Tuesday, January 14th, 2020
CORINNE ROCCA, Associate Professor at University of California, San Francisco's Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) - Salon
Stephan: You hear it in almost any conversation with an anti-choice advocate, "Those poor women. You know it devastates their lives; they're filled with regret." Is that true, you certainly hear it over and over? Well, now we have some data.
In this study, "...we learned that after 5 years, 99 percent of women reported their abortion was the right decision."
Here is my view very simply: Every human being as a fundamental right must have control over their own body.
Protesters hold signs as they rally in support of Planned Parenthood and pro-choice
Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP /Getty
Last month, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a Kentucky law requiring doctors to describe ultrasound images and play fetal heartbeat sounds to people seeking abortions. The state argued that these images and sounds best “inform a patient of the nature and consequences of an abortion.” In 2007, Justice Anthony Kennedy based his decision to ban an abortion procedure on the grounds that “while we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice” to have an abortion.
The specter of “abortion regret” has been used by lawmakers and judges alike to impose or uphold rules making it harder for people to get abortions. In Kansas, doctors must tell their patients that life begins at conception and the fetus is a separate living being — neither of which is supported by medical research. Women in Kentucky who […]
1 Comment
Tuesday, January 14th, 2020
Katelyn Burns, - Reader Supported News/Vox
Stephan: I am not surprised to see that a) Trump thinks his appointees on the Supreme Court will play his game; and, b) Trump doesn't want them to do this until after the election because he correctly realizes that if the court rules against the ACA there will be a huge negative outcry.
It is amazing to me that the pathetic dim bulbs of Trump's base don't seem to understand that he is trying to screw them big time over healthcare. Since he has been president 7 million people have lost their healthcare based on his policies, and if ACA were overturned it is estimated 20 million would lose their healthcare. Do they know? Do they care?
His approval rating is up slightly to 42.3% because even though his rating amongst Republicans is down a bit it is still, according to the Washington Post, at 74%.
Affordable Care Act supporters gathered outside of the Supreme Court ahead of a 2015 ruling on the law’s tax subsidies.
Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty
During the 2016 election, Donald Trump promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Congressional Republicans tried to make good on this promise in 2017, before a Senate vote effectively killed the effort. In the wake of that failed attempt, Republican states challenged the law’s constitutionality in court, an effort encouraged and aided by the Trump administration.
But with 2020 elections looming, the Trump administration and state-level Republicans have seemingly lost their appetites for slashing and burning the landmark health care legislation.
In briefs filed Friday to the Supreme Court in a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the law in its entirety, the US Department of Justice and a separate group of Republican state attorneys general both asked the court not to take on the case this year.
The case carries heavy implications for the US health care system, and […]
2 Comments
Tuesday, January 14th, 2020
David Badash, - Raw Story
Stephan: Do you ever stop and think how many people appointed or associated with criminal Trump end in some variation of this sordid tale concerning the Chief of the United States Border Patrol, Carla Provost? The number is historically unprecedented. No other presidency from the first day of George Washington's first term has a record anything like Trump's.
I have run a number of stories, and there are many more, about the fascist racism, the family separations. The concentration camps -- and yes that is the exactly correct term, look it up -- the attitudes that have infected the U.S. Border Patrol. You remember the Nuremberg Defense piece I ran the other day. And now we have this.
Chief of the United States Border Patrol, Carla Provost
The Chief of the United States Border Patrol, Carla Provost, is expected to resign this month. Provost has officially been in position since August of 2018, and served as Acting Chief since April 2017.
“Provost planned to retire in December from the 21,000-person organization, but the 24-year Border Patrol employee was forced to put her plans on hold due to infighting at CBP over whether a white or nonwhite person should replace her and what message the race of the new chief would send,” the Washington Examiner reports.
Succeeding Provost is expected to be Rodney Scott, who has been with the agency for 27 years.
“Scott, who is white,” the Examiner adds, “was selected as Provost’s successor last summer, but that decision was questioned by acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan in the fall.”
The Border Patrol has been subject of scathing reports, including once focused on a secret Facebook page where, as ProPublica reported, “agents joked about the deaths of migrants, […]
1 Comment
Monday, January 13th, 2020
David Hawkings, Editor-in-Chief - The Fulcrum
Stephan: America is a deadly place to live. Here are the statistics:
Every day, 310 people are shot in the United States. Among those:
- 100 people are shot and killed
- 210 survive gun injuries
- 95 are injured in an attack
- 61 die from suicide
- 10 survive a suicide attempt
- 1 is killed unintentionally
- 90 are shot unintentionally
- 1 is killed by legal intervention
- 4 are shot by legal intervention
- 1 died but the intent was unknown
- 12 are shot but the intent was unknown
DAILY GUN VIOLENCE IMPACTING CHILDREN AND TEENS (1-17)
Every day, 21 children and teens (1-17) are shot in the United States. Among those:
- 4 die from gun violence
- 2 are murdered
- 17 children and teens survive gun injuries
- 8 are injured in an attack
- 2 children and teens either die from suicide or survive a suicide attempt
- 8 children and teens are shot instances of family fire — a shooting involving an improperly stored or misused gun found in the home resulting in injury or death
ANNUAL GUN VIOLENCE IMPACTING PEOPLE OF ALL AGES IN THE U.S.
Every year, 113,108 people are shot. Among those:
- 36,383 people die from gun violence
- 12,830 are murdered
- 76,725 people survive gun injuries
- 34,566 are injured in an attack
- 22,274 die from suicide
- 3,554 survive a suicide attempt
- 496 are killed by legal intervention
- 1,376 are shot by legal intervention
- 295 die but the intent was unknown
- 4,471 are shot but the intent is unknown
- 509 women are killed by their husband or male dating partner*
ANNUAL GUN VIOLENCE IMPACTING CHILDREN AND TEENS (AGES 1-17)
Every year, 7,782 children and teens are shot in the United States. Among those:
- 1,488 children and teens die from gun violence
- 772 are murdered
- 6,294 children and teens survive gun injuries
- 2,788 injured in an attack
- 590 die from suicide
- 166 survive a suicide attempt
- 86 are killed unintentionally
- 2,893 are shot unintentionally
- 30 die but the intent was unknown
- 380 are shot but the intent is unknown
And yet the Republican Party does everything in its power to block any policy that addresses this reality.
Source: https://www.bradyunited.org/key-statistics
Credit: halbergman/Getty
One of the most prominent talking points in the entire democracy reform movement is that curbing money’s sway over elections is a prerequisite to fixing every one of the nation’s biggest problems. Now critics of partisan gerrymandering are trying to piggyback on that concept.
A new study concludes that aggressive legislative mapmaking by Republican majorities is responsible for the lack of any new gun control laws in five states during a decade marked by the accelerating pace of mass shootings.
In issuing the report Tuesday, the Center for American Progress, one of Washington’s most influential liberal think tanks, joined the lengthening roster of groups advocating for states to take the drawing of political boundaries away from the politicians themselves in and turn the responsibility over to independent and nonpartisan panels.
Fourteen states have already given such panels authority to draw state legislative lines starting in 2021, after the census exposes population shifts mandating new lines that confirm with the Constitution’s one-person-one-vote requirement. Eight of them have also assigned the next congressional […]
2 Comments
Monday, January 13th, 2020
Stephan: When I hear Trumpers talking about how wonderful everything is economically in America under criminal Trump, I always wonder how you get that far out of touch when it is easy to see with five minutes of research that what you are saying is crap unless you are in the 1%. Here is an example of what you can find with a couple of Googles. So the real question for Trumpers is: Why are you so deliberately and willfully ignorant?
Scott, the youngest of the kids, is a marketing manager for a health and beauty company based in nearby Provo, Utah. Though he earns around $60,000 annually — about 20% more than his dad did at his age — he is living with his parents, because he doesn’t feel he can afford to buy a place of his own thanks to
soaring housing prices. While his dad was able to purchase a house for a little over twice his annual salary, Scott Larsen says he’d have to spend more than five times his yearly paycheck.
“The prospect of taking care of a family or buying a normal, decent home seem like far-off dreams that I’ll have to reconsider in another five years,” said Scott Larsen, noting that living at home is “horrible” for his social life but is a “financially sound idea.”
