Wise Words from Cousin Nancy on the passing of RBG...

[ProudMNDemocrat]

Words thoughtfully written by my husband's Cousin Nancy. A former Republican who was once an aide of Ronald Reagan's. I could not be more proud of her.

She wrote ...

"t's disheartening to see the "Pro-life" response to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death. It's very clear that the folks who think RBG was a vehement "baby killer" have never heard of the name Susan Struck.

In the 1960s & 1970s, before Roe vs Wade, abortion was not only legal on US military bases, it was actively ENCOURAGED and basically mandated. Yes, really.

Captain Susan Struck was a combat nurse in Vietnam. When she got pregnant in 1970, the Air Force starkly gave her two choices. Get an abortion or be discharged. Struck wanted to keep her baby. So she was kicked out of the service.

When she got back to the US, Struck sued the US Government for putting women in such a horrible position that they had to choose between either not being able to serve their country or getting an abortion that they didn't want.

Do you know which ACLU lawyer took her case and got the military to change their policy?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ginsburg approached this case with the same tenacity she would later use to help Congress draft the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. In the dark days after Roe in 1973, it was perfectly legal for employers in many states to put women in the same situation that Struck was put in--"deal with your pregnancy" or suffer the consequences of a lost job, responsibilities or pay.

Ginsburg fought for the rights of women to choose life. She also fought for the rights of women to be able to work without discrimination, purchase homes, have bank accounts and a myriad of other things that make it easier for women in desperate situations to choose life in the first place.

Life is never as black & white or simple as it looks through a myopic lens. It's never either/or. There's always "ands” and "buts" to everything.

So before you paint Ginsburg as some satanic villain, at least acknowledge the many abortions that likely DIDN'T happen because of her tireless advocacy for women and families."

[Joinfortmill]

1. Thank you

[northoftheborder]

2. Thank you, I had never heard this story.

[MuseRider]

3. I have always felt like our government

uses the Christian right to keep us in our places. Over the years I have come and gone with that opinion but really, it certainly seems clear when you look back to episodes like this one. Reagan saw how easy it was to take their most emotional issues and use it against the rest of us. It has built this enormous group and I do not see it being resolved in my life time. Somehow our shouts for equality are covered over by the religious emotions about everything else having more rights. We are only here to serve.

Edit to add, thank you. I had never heard this either

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Or is it the other way around ? The Christian Right exploiting the gov't to keep us in our places.

Every time elected officials concede so much as an atom of power to the Christian Right, they immediately start abusing to oppress everyone outside their particular little circle of cultists. Uglicans sold out to these people at least as far back as Reagan, and they've been trying to eradicate democracy ever since.

[MuseRider]

10. Good question.

I am not entirely certain. I seem to recall Reagan running as a big ole christian and I felt like he was using them at the time. Probably a little of both. Gets them all het up about killing babies and off we go, those mean and heathen women killing babies must be put back in their place. They won't do it then because we won't let them.

There was a family in my little village when I first bought the land out here. He would come outside his house every night around midnight and shoot his rifle (or whatever) into the air from the middle of the road. He had a wife and a child but nobody ever saw them outside of their house. They would peek out of the front window and that was it. That is pretty much the favored family for these particular nutbags.

[calimary]

4. Kicked and HIGHLY recommended.

[malaise]

5. Great post

Rec

[Solly Mack]

6. Choice. That's what it is. To be able to have the say whether or not you give birth.

It was about discrimination against women. Saying they can't be both a worker and a mother. RBG fought to give women options. Options they didn't have due to the warped and twisted thinking of patriarchy.

It wasn't about a woman choosing life. That's their framing.

Yes, appealing to their framing makes them ever so much more willing to come over to the pro-women side. It magically opens their hearts and minds to an expanded way of thinking.

Not.

The Susan Struck story is a great story. RBG advanced women's rights of that there is no doubt.

I simply reject the framing of - it is "choosing life" to give birth.

A woman who has an abortion is choosing life - her own... or those of her other children.

And there's not a damn thing wrong about that.

[MuseRider]

11. I wish I could

rec this over and over and over.

[Solly Mack]

25. Thank you, Muse.

[Pacifist Patriot]

19. You can't see or hear it, but...

You're getting a standing ovation from me!

[Solly Mack]

26. Thank you, Pacifist Patriot

Something did startle the cats, which they blamed me for - judging by the looks I got.

[love_katz]

24. I agree, Solly Mack.

The living woman matters. We need to be able to choose to put our own lives first. We do have value, beyond being an incubator for some man's sperm. And there is not a damn thing wrong with that. Thank you for your post.

[Solly Mack]

27. Thank you, love_katz. We do have value.

All women and girls need to know that. To feel it.

[Stuart G]

7. Thank You K and R

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Cousin Nancy sounds like a real pip, and one Republican I wouldn't mind meeting. nt

[crickets]

12. Well said, Cousin Nancy. K&R

[iluvtennis]

14. + 1 nt

[Moostache]

13. EVERYONE needs to see this and SPREAD THE WORD...

RBG was a titan of the American legal world, unmatched in her efforts to stem discrimination and bring equality for all regardless of gender, race, creed, age or orientation. We NEED more of her to step forward in this darkest hour. We have to somehow find people with the strength to pick up that banner and take another step...in short, we need the youth to get off the sidelines, to follow their peers who HAVE joined the fight already and VOTE at all levels.

This mess is largely due to losing sight of the local level importance of width AND depth of the bench. The judiciary as currently packed is no longer an impartial apolitical body. It is an extension of the House of Representatives - neither deliberative nor impartial and certainly no longer capable of adjudicating issues based on LAW instead of BELIEFS.

I have never felt more hopeless about the future of this country than I have these last few weeks. The storm clouds ahead make it seem like what we have already endured is but a summer rain shower compared to the hurricane on the horizon. Stories of RBG's greatness give me a little more fuel for the fight, but what we absolutely MUST have is a new generation pissed off and ready to fight, ready to take over and ready to carry some of us who despair back into action...nothing has ever been more important in the history of the republic than November 3rd...

[secondwind]

15. It's all about CHOICE. Always has been!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My body, my CHOICE

[dlk]

16. We don't hear about the flip side of the abortion issue

If government had the authority to prohibit abortions, then government has the authority to enforce abortions. Thank you for sharing.

[PatrickforO]

17. I had no idea. It makes me furious, this. We have to stand together to ensure

that women no longer are controlled in any way by misguided men beholden to some ideology, be it religion or economic.

A woman can never truly be free until she can decide if, when, and under what circumstances she will allow herself to become a mother.

Religious zealots and capitalists should have no say in that.

[MFGsunny]

18. Principle over propaganda, pretense, or pandering. RBG, may you rest in power and in peace. n/t

[ProudMNDemocrat]

20. Feel free to copy and paste onto your Facebook timelines

Cousin Nancy in Orange County in California would be proud her words are making waves and educating people.

[orleans]

21. (as an aside) i just googled and found struck is a trumpster

"Today, Struck sees herself as an independent outsider. She fought for women’s rights in the military, but is a self-identified “Trumpster” who gets most of her news from Fox and its ultra-right cousin America One News Network.

"She believes abortions should be available with some limitations, and taxpayer money should not pay for them. Struck never looked into Roe v Wade, “I don’t have any feelings on that case,” she said. “That’s after my little girl was born.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/13/us-air-force-pregnancy-susan-struck-abortion-motherhood-america

[elleng]

22. THANKS.

In Struck v. Secretary of Defense, 460 F.2d 1372 (9th Cir. 1971), vacated and remanded for consideration of mootness, 409 U.S. 1071, 93 S.Ct. 676, 34 L.Ed.2d 660 (1972), the Ninth Circuit upheld against an equal protection claim an Air Force regulation providing for discharge of pregnant women officers; contra, Robinson v. Rand, 340 F.Supp. 37 (D.Colo. 1972).

https://casetext.com/case/struck-v-secretary-of-defense

[smirkymonkey]

23. K&R

[c-rational]

28. Wise words indeed. K&R!

[Cha]

29. Thank you for this from your Cousin, Nancy,

PMND!

[Hekate]

30. Thank you

[FuzzyRabbit]

31. Thank you, Cousin Nancy.

You educated many people today.

[Blue Owl]

32. K&R