Raskin brings up a truly horrifying scenario
Link to tweet
Rep. Jamie Raskin
@RepRaskin
·
May 3, 2022
If Alito’s majority destroys the right to privacy, states could jail women and doctors for abortion and contraception offenses. They could also COMPEL women to be sterilized for “unfitness” to reproduce, as Virginia sterilized thousands in the last century. See Buck v. Bell.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
@RepRaskin
Any right-wing state powerful enough to jail you for having an abortion is powerful enough to compel you to have one and sterilize you.
7:22 AM · May 3, 2022
= new reply since forum marked as read
They used to do it under the table. But pretty soon it will be perfectly OK out in the open.
Excellent suggestion! 
Where's my scalpel? 
And unfortunately "it takes two to tango" and the Senate decided to leave the party early. 
I noticed that the process of getting Build Back Better, and any of VRA pieces of legislation passed and signed into law, disappeared off of DU once they hit the Senate wall.
This doesn't mean you "give up" but one has to have "Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D" for where to go from there and not just overly focusing on "Plan A", and then devolve into railing against the cloture rule and 2 Senators (one of whom could easily switch parties and kill any further progress for the rest of this term), and finally slinking away without discussing "next steps" afterwards.
there is still a sector of society who believe in upholding "paternalism" as the primary societal "norm" and they have spent centuries attacking women to the point of virulently going after and marginalizing women in general, and particularly feminists who strongly advocate on behalf of women, through invocation disparaging rhetoric (Limbaugh was a master at it with the use of the term "Feminazis" ). 
Some of this might be a backlash to the "#MeToo" movement and certain men seeking to reassert their "authority" (which I haven't seen mentioned, at least yet from the visceral discussions). And despite many of them having women/girls in their lives, they believe they are still "in charge" and will do what they can to keep that dynamic.
And Schumer can't unilaterally do anything with the filibuster. I believe the Rules change can be brought up as a privileged motion and that puts it front and center to debate and do the change.
It was already announced as a way forward back on January 3, and then was tweaked due to the resistance. So the bills needing cloture were delayed while the type of change was discussed, with the suggestion on January 18 shifted to requiring a "talking filibuster". That was a big nada.
The VRA bill went down due to cloture and where even opting for the "talking filibuster", was torpedoed as a Rules change because it was supposedly "not bipartisan" per Manchin.
We are going to have to wait until at least next year with the hope that we not only hold the Senate but can pick up a couple more seats somewhere to cancel out Manchin and Sinema. If that actually happens, then it might be do-able to at least do a "carve out", which might be the "safest" way to go so we don't go through what we did a couple years ago with Turtle ramming unqualified loons through to the Supreme Court with only a simple majority when the "nuclear option" was added to SCOTUS nominations (a Rules change done by the-then GOP-controlled Senate's vote).
(and as a note, that particular Rules change did allow now-Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson to be confirmed for a SCOTUS seat without needing at least 60 votes).
All points taken.
I was hoping the Rules Committee, Klobuchar being Chair, could bring up Rules changes. But even bringing up a rules change requires a 2/3 vote, so I realize you're right.
Man, we have GOT to gain Senate seats this year.
It wasn't just in "the last century", it was a mere 8 years ago in VA (with a 2014 plea deal vasectomy - a rare imposition on a male) and the allegations of "immigrant sterilization operations" carried out by ICE, just 2 years ago in Georgia in 2020.
But he is correct that in the prior century, a number of states engaged in Eugenics -
An operation taking place in 1941 on South Side of Chicago. Library of Congress
Alexandra Minna Stern, University of Michigan
In August 1964, the North Carolina Eugenics Board met to decide if a 20-year-old Black woman should be sterilized. Because her name was redacted from the records, we call her Bertha.
She was a single mother with one child who lived at the segregated O'Berry Center for African American adults with intellectual disabilities in Goldsboro. According to the North Carolina Eugenics Board, Bertha had an IQ of 62 and exhibited “aggressive behavior and sexual promiscuity.” She had been orphaned as a child and had a limited education. Likely because of her “low IQ score,” the board determined she was not capable of rehabilitation.
Instead the board recommended the “protection of sterilization” for Bertha, because she was “feebleminded” and deemed unable to “assume responsibility for herself” or her child. Without her input, Bertha’s guardian signed the sterilization form.
A pamphlet extolling the benefit of selective sterilization published by the Human Betterment League of North Carolina, 1950. North Carolina State Documents Collection/State Library of North Carolina
Bertha’s story is one of the 35,000 sterilization stories we are reconstructing at the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab. Our interdisciplinary team explores the history of eugenics and sterilization in the U.S. using data and stories. So far, we have captured historical records from North Carolina, California, Iowa and Michigan.
https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/forced-sterilization-policies-us-targeted-minorities-and-those-disabilities-and-lasted-21st
I won't even go into the "Norplant" fiasco (note the below happened when Pete Wilson (R) was governor of CA) -
By Tamar Lewin
Jan. 10, 1991
Less than a month after the Federal Government approved a new birth control device that is implanted under a woman's skin, the long-lasting device is the focus of a renewed debate over forced contraception. A county judge in California has ordered that a woman convicted of child abuse use the device for three years as a condition of probation. Experts in medical ethics say that because of the ease in using the device, which is not yet on the market, other judges may be tempted to order its use in cases where women are seen as unfit to be parents.
The device, Norplant, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Dec. 10 and was widely hailed as a "dream method" of birth control because it could easily be implanted in a woman's arm, remaining effective for up to five years. The device, the first substantially new contraceptive in 25 years, consists of several soft, matchstick-size rubber tubes that are placed under the skin of the woman's upper arm, where they release the female hormone progestin, one of the components of birth control pills. With the exception of sterilization, Norplant is expected to be the most effective contraceptive, because it does not depend on a person's remembering to use it.
"Norplant presents a special temptation to judges because it's so long lasting and doesn't require any cooperation after it's implanted, and can be monitored by a parole officer just by looking at the woman's arm," said Dr. George Annas, director of the program on law, medicine and ethics at the Boston University School of Medicine. "I think we're going to see more of these cases. It's kind of amazing that this has happened already, when hardly any physicians even know how to implant this thing." In the California case, Tulare County Superior Court Judge Howard Broadman last week ordered the implantation of the device in Darlene Johnson, a 27-year-old mother of four who pleaded guilty to beating two of her children with a belt.
The order was issued at her sentencing, without notice to either the woman or her lawyer, Charles Rothbaum. Judge Broadman is to reconsider the order at a hearing this morning on a motion filed by Mr. Rothbaum. Mr. Rothbaum said his client had been completely taken by surprise by the Judge's decision. In a plea agreement arranged earlier, Ms. Johnson was to be sentenced to one year in jail and three years of probation. He said she had agreed to the Judge's order only because she was afraid that if she refused she would go to jail for four years. Mr. Rothbaum said he did not know how much Ms. Johnson had understood about Norplant, because he was not at the hearing.
(snip)
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/10/us/implanted-birth-control-device-renews-debate-over-forced-contraception.html
I'm still waiting for a forced (vs "plea deal" ) vasectomy for abusive fathers.
Last Updated 7 days ago
Exclusive: Biden's latest judicial nominees dominated by public defenders
By Nate Raymond
(snip)
Combined with two other district court nominees in New York and Virginia, Biden has nominated 92 federal appellate and district court judges since taking office last year.
Senate Democrats are racing to confirm as many of the nominees as they can before the November midterm elections while they retain their narrow 50-50 control of the chamber.
A majority of Biden's picks have been women and people of color. Many have backgrounds other than as corporate lawyers or prosecutors, more traditional career paths for judges, including 27 who were current or former public defenders representing indigent defendants.
(snip)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/exclusive-bidens-latest-judicial-nominees-dominated-by-public-defenders-2022-04-27/
A gov't powerful enough to compel you / deny you...
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-true-history-of-religious-tolerance-61312684/?no-ist= ;
Madison also made a point that any believer of any religion should understand: that the government sanction of a religion was, in essence, a threat to religion. "Who does not see," he wrote, "that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?" Madison was writing from his memory of Baptist ministers being arrested in his native Virginia.
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