Hekate
Hekate's JournalAfter Roe, religious liberty seen at risk: Jews, Muslims, others say reversal interferes with their
….. say reversal interferes with their beliefs, which allow abortion.
Los Angeles Times, this morning. I find this very encouraging indeed.
For 25 years Rabbi Barry Silver has served as the spiritual leader of L’Dor Va-Dor, a progressive synagogue in Boynton Beach, Fla. Like most congregational rabbis, he offers a Jewish perspective on major life events, giving weekly sermons, performing weddings, funerals and baby namings, and occasionally counseling congregants wrestling with whether to have an abortion.
Silver tells his congregation that contrary to Roman Catholic and evangelical teachings, which state that life begins at conception, traditional Jewish law, known as Halakha, says life begins at birth: when the baby draws its first breath. Before then, the mother’s physical and emotional well-being is paramount.
In some extreme cases — such as when the mother’s life is at stake — an abortion is not just permitted by Jewish law, but required.
>>>snip>>>
For decades, antiabortion Catholic and evangelical Christian perspectives have dominated the religious conversation around abortion. But people of faith hold a variety of views on the issue, rooted in their own traditions, teachings and laws.
Muslim teachings hold that the soul is breathed into a fetus 120 days after conception, and other religious groups — Unitarians, the Oklevueha Native American Church, …. consider reproductive choice and bodily autonomy to be sacred. Even Catholics are far from united in their views on the issue, with 56% saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey.
Silver, a progressive activist who also works as a civil rights attorney, made headlines this month after he filed a religious liberty lawsuit challenging a Florida law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. He said the ban makes abortion unlawful even in situations in which it’s mandated by Jewish law. Silver is the first religious leader to file such a suit; legal experts say that after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision overturning Roe vs. Wade, he won’t be the last.
“One hundred percent, we’re just at the beginning of the religious liberty lawsuits,” said Candace Bond- Theriault, director of racial justice policy with the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School.
>>>more>>>
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/latimes/default.aspx?token=42e23962a5d74614be16bae3d62d13e7&utm_id=62291&sfmc_id=1778350&edid=fd22a601-23d9-4b62-9c79-2b8d24733951
Very interesting! I like primary sources as well, & after reading quite a few mentions of Franklin's
…. book, I set out to find it. To my dismay I could not locate it in the usual places — and it was only after getting into Google search and then the Internet Archives that I realized the book was not by Franklin, but several others. Apparently he edited and emended freely upon the original from England, in order to adapt it to the (then) Colonies.
Franklin’s “recipe” is in a book called “Every Man His Own Doctor, the Poor Planters Physician,” by John Tennent. There is no slapdash “brew some tea” or “chew that root,” but a meticulously prepared and measured-out medicine. Very appropriate, given the toxicity of some of the ingredients. Also, housewives for centuries were accustomed to brewing beer, distilling liquor, and distilling medicines, so this was not alien to most.
The larger book to which Tennent’s was appended is called, “The American Instructor, or, Young Man’s Best Companion,” by George Fisher, an all-purpose self-guided education for a man or woman of those times.
And, now that I know to look for it under some other name than Ben Franklin’s, I have been able to find facsimile copies at Amazon, Abe, and elsewhere — and I downloaded it from the Internet Archives totally free of charge.
Regarding your comment on the “timeline”: the average for the menstrual cycle is 28-days from beginning to end, and the average for the days of menstruation is one week within that cycle. You can see why the ancients closely associated women and their cycles with the Moon itself.
This 28/7 arrangement varies among individual women depending on various factors, such as inheritance, age (young teenagers and perimenopausal women), severe stress, and malnutrition, such as that which accompanies poverty, famine, or anorexia.
But as an average it works pretty well, so girls are taught early on to mark their calendars so as to be prepared for the next onset — because there is nothing like being away from home without supplies when your period starts — altho truth to tell it happens to all of us sooner or later.
More sophisticated trackers assist with charting ovulation in order to either get pregnant or to avoid it. It can be done without an app, believe me, and these days I would recommend that.
Thanks, I'm adding this to my collection of articles. The authors noted how obstetrics became the...
… exclusive property of male physicians in the 19th century, and hence male lawmakers. This I already knew, but the rest of it — the story of Nancy and her abortion and the women who quite openly helped her, was news to me, and I won’t forget it.
It’s good to have a well-researched rebuttal to The Fanatical Six, especially Alito and the Handmaid. They are not merely ignorant, but willfully and maliciously misleading the ignorant.
"At UC, a betrayal over reproductive care" -- this will make your blood boil
Highly recommend reading the entire thing at link. 
Los Angeles Times, page A2, by Michael Hiltzik
One year ago, the University of California Board of Regents voted to approve an uncompromising policy governing the terms of partnerships between UC’s medical schools and Catholic hospital systems.
The policy led UC doctors to believe that they would be permitted to provide any care they judged warranted for their patients, including performing abortions and contraceptive implants that are otherwise forbidden at Catholic healthcare facilities.
They couldn’t be required to transfer or refer those patients to non-religious hospitals if moving them or delaying treatment would be “detrimental to the patient’s care,” as is often the case.
But somehow the language changed when the regents’ vote was translated into a formal UC policy. The policy now fails to guarantee that UC doctors can perform any procedure they deem necessary, only that they can prescribe and counsel patients about their options.
And it now says doctors can refuse to transfer a patient only if the move would “risk material deterioration to the patient’s condition.” That’s a stricter standard that doctors say deprives them of significant discretion to direct patient treatment.
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/latimes/default.aspx?token=42e23962a5d74614be16bae3d62d13e7&utm_id=62001&sfmc_id=1778350&edid=7d901b0c-7721-4c63-b7b6-9a45d35cc342
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/latimes/default.aspx?token=42e23962a5d74614be16bae3d62d13e7&utm_id=62001&sfmc_id=1778350&edid=7d901b0c-7721-4c63-b7b6-9a45d35cc342
I just read the whole thing, & it just rips my heart
TY Nevilledog
Edited to add your links for my own archives
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/18/health/young-girls-pregnancy-childbirth.html
No paywall
https://archive.ph/HNYtr
LATimes: A Desert Oasis for Abortion Patients / Imperial Valley clinic sees surge from Arizona
Cross-posted from California
There have been questions on and off about planning (or lack of it) for the fall of Roe. This article answers a lot of those questions: planning, co-ordination, assistance — all have been in motion for quite awhile. Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest are heroes.
🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺
https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/latimes/default.aspx?token=42e23962a5d74614be16bae3d62d13e7&utm_id=61499&sfmc_id=1778350&edid=5ac9bd6c-63dd-4b49-ad20-dc3f68161c0e
A DESERT OASIS FOR ABORTION PATIENTS
>>>snip>>>>
The El Centro clinic was always busy. Now it’s overwhelmed as it finds itself on the front lines of the drastic changes wrought by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Dobbs decision…
>>>snip>>>>
A recent report from the UCLA School of Law’s Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy estimates that between 8,000 and 16,100 more people will journey to California each year for abortion care, and at least half of those will travel from Arizona because of the long border it shares with California.
Since the Dobbs decision, out-of-state patients have increased at all 19 clinics in San Diego, Riverside and Imperial counties affiliated with Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest.
>>>snip>>>>
In El Centro, (office manager) Perez, ……. had long prepared for a rise in patient visits. ….
In the Imperial Valley, the Planned Parenthood center in El Centro is one of the most affected because it’s the closest to Arizona, where legal abortion care vanished overnight. …..
>>>>snip>>>>
Out-of-state patients — especially Arizonans — aren’t something new for the El Centro center. Ever since it opened seven years ago, it was clear that Planned Parenthood-Imperial Valley Health Center wouldn’t just serve El Centro.
An easy 20-minute drive from the Mexican border and an hour from Yuma, Ariz., the center has long served as a refuge, particularly for Mexicans and Arizonans seeking abortion care. ….. It’s not far from Yuma, Phoenix, Tucson.
…… Anticipating that Arizona might be one of those states to do away with abortion if Roe fell, Planned Parenthood officials in California and Arizona created a system to provide coordinated abortion care and help funnel Arizonans to providers in California. Planned Parenthood staffers in Arizona confirm each case of pregnancy and then refer the patients to clinics in California.
>>>>snip >>>>
Sorry, no. Hell No. There is no compromise to be had with them
I know this is long, but I feel it had to be said to you and all those who think compromise is an option.
Our home-grown theocrats have gone so far over the line that there is no compromise. There never was any compromising with them. It never was about “babies.” If it was, someone in the legislatures writing those “no exceptions” laws would have realized that a girl who was impregnated at age 9 (she only just turned 10) is still a baby herself. It was only ever about women and not allowing us to own our own bodies and shape our own futures.
I know you mean well, but what if there had been talk of “compromise” about chattel slavery? Really — those people’s lives could have been improved with better places to sleep and limits on whipping and raping. Maybe a mess-hall with abundant healthy food. It wouldn’t be so bad.
But when something is called slavery right up front, people with a conscience will recoil. And the human soul cries out for freedom and the rights to one’s own bodies and own thoughts and actions.
Because most women and girls in this country have a decent life in 2022, it is easy to forget how we got here. The keystone of it all — without which everything collapses — is contraception.
They, the Right Wing, started redefining the most reliable forms of birth control as abortifacients years ago.
That’s when I knew it was not just about abortion, but more deeply about every social advance women have made since we got the vote. Every social advance we’ve made since Margaret Sanger went to prison for telling women how they could avoid unwanted pregnancies. (By the way, since the dawn of time women have tried to control their fertility, and have done so. Alito is a damn fool if he thinks otherwise.)
Having a prospective employer say, “But you’ll just get pregnant,” or having your current employer say straight up the reason you as a married woman can’t get that promotion is because “You’ll just get pregnant” is something that will return in a heartbeat when contraceptives are once again unavailable. Because it will once again be true.
It goes further. My grandfather, born in the 1880s, told his 3 daughters that college for them was pointless because they were just going to get married and have babies. His 3 sons went to college.
American men are in for a very rude awakening if they somehow think this is “only a woman’s issue.”
When inflation & lagging wages for men really started to bite, women had already entered the workforce in large numbers. It was the wages of married women, long considered secondary in the family budget, that propped up the middle class as long as it did.
More than one or two children completely erodes family finances: childcare and diapers and formula are incredibly expensive.
One thing I never see factored in is the destruction of public schools, with the twofold push to homeschool and/or send the kids to private schools. Who homeschools? Mothers.
The pandemic shutdown put the religious right agenda on steroids: get the moms out of career jobs and back in the home where they belong, get the kids out of public schools and into a homeschooling setting where mom is the full time teacher, divert taxes away from K-12 public schools.
And if women once again cannot reliably control their fertility, it will fall to the man of the house to be the sole provider of an ever-expanding brood.
I hate the RW GOP so much there are hardly words for it. DON’T YIELD AN INCH.
Life and health of the mother, rape, incest. Those were the 3 exceptions in the Bad Old Days...
Cultures and countries that allowed women to DIE with a dead fetus inside them were barbaric. That allowed women to BLEED OUT were barbaric. That forced a CHILD, a LITTLE GIRL to remain pregnant were barbaric. That forced a woman to bear a RAPIST’s baby were barbaric.
THAT’s how we knew WE were not barbaric.
To be sure, we ourselves screwed up royally all those years— and then we got better, and better, and better. Contraception, for Gods’ sake. Abortion without going septic. Gay rights. LGBTQ+ rights including marriage and family.
And now we stand to lose it all, and the Barbarians will rejoice.
Yo Momma Bin Kicktoons. Horsey's great...
One of my memories from the Bad Old Days was from when I was about 12 or 13 myself and read an article that said that in some benighted US state the minimum age for marriage for girls was age 12. The mind reeled.
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Gender: FemaleHometown: Central Coast, California
Home country: USA
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 90,645
