We're #1!!

The United States is #1 (by far) in gun ownership and #1 (by far) in gun deaths.  What the hell is wrong with this country? Or I should ask, what the hell is wrong with Republican politicians?! We've already had 40 mass shootings in 2023 in this country, which sets the fastest pace ever. Yea, America?

America is #1 in Gun ownership & Gun Deaths - Time to Wake the Hell Up

by Thom Hartmann

Mass shooters and child-killers are celebrating. Meanwhile Republican politicians vow to protect us and our kids from - wait for it - librarians and history teachers.

Saturday night 10 people were murdered by a mass shooter in California. It’s the 37th mass shooting this year. We’re 23 days into 2023 and over 2,200+ Americans have already died of gun violence. 

We’re the only developed country in the world that unconditionally allows civilians to own military-style assault weapons, that allows “open carry,” that lets gun manufacturers openly buy politicians (thanks, SCOTUS).

As a consequence, we’re also the only country in the world where the leading cause of death for children is being blown apart by bullets. 

America has just a bit more than 4 percent of the world’s population, but, with more guns than people in our country, we have more than 40 percent of all the civilian guns in the world.

Specifically, as a Swiss-based research group found, there are “approximately 857 million civilian-held firearms in the world’s 230 countries and territories” and, as ABC News points out, in America there are “over 393 million firearms in civilian possession” as of 2017.  

About ten million more have been sold in the US since then: we are the only nation in the world with more guns than people.

For every 100 people in America, there are 120 guns.  Among developed nations, next highest on the list is Canada, at 34 per 100 people, and all other developed countries are lower down the list than that: South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, for example, all clock in at fewer than one gun per 100 people.

This is entirely a recent phenomenon. Before the Reagan Revolution, gun ownership numbers in America resembled Canada’s. 

Today, however, America not only leads the world in gun ownership but, predictably, we also lead the world in gun deaths.  As an exhaustive study of gun deaths in the world’s 23 wealthiest countries published in The American Journal of Medicine found:

“US homicide rates were 7.0 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25.2 times higher. For 15- to 24-year-olds, the gun homicide rate in the United States was 49.0 times higher. Firearm-related suicide rates were 8.0 times higher in the United States... Unintentional firearm deaths were 6.2 times higher in the United States. The overall firearm death rate in the United States from all causes was 10.0 times higher.”

Astonishingly, they added, ninety percent of all women killed by firearms in these 23 countries are in the United States, as well as 91 percent of all children killed by firearms. 

Fully 82 percent of all the human beings living in the world’s wealthy countries killed by firearms lived in the USA.

Only ten percent of the wealthy world’s firearms deaths occurred in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland combined.

Other countries have gotten their gun violence under control by simply reducing the number of guns in circulation and requiring gun owners to do two of the three things we do across America for car owners: be licensed and register your weapon.  

I’d add that we should include mandatory liability insurance, like we do for cars: the insurance companies would then sniff out the “high risk” gun owners and refuse to insure them, thus preventing them from easily and legally owning a gun.

Gallup found last year that 57 percent of Americans, and 85 percent of Democrats, want stricter gun laws in America. 

On the other hand, Republican politicians are moving in the opposite direction, endorsing gun violence and terror: then-Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn said after the Rittenhouse verdict that Republicans should “be armed and dangerous” while Marjorie Traitor Greene said, “[G]un rights are the only thing holding back the Communist Revolution the Democrats are waging.”

Because neofascists like these in the GOP continue to try to push America toward armed civil war, opposition to gun control appears to be an issue that animates Republicans — seemingly enthusiastic about seeing Democrats and people of color die at the hands of vigilantes — far more than Democrats.

That recent Gallup poll found “a drop in support [for gun control] among Republicans, from 36% in 2019 to 22% in 2020.”

It used to be that Republicans opposed gun control because of the NRA’s money, but the NRA is now a shell of its former self. Today, it appears they’re opposing rational gun control measures because so many of them are openly promoting gun-based rightwing terrorism on America’s streets. 

America is caught in a crossfire between gun manufacturers bribing politicians with the blessing of 5 corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court, and a fascist movement fed by billionaire-owned media machines that has seized control of the GOP.

Mass shooters and child-killers are celebrating. Meanwhile Republican politicians vow to protect us and our kids from — wait for it — librarians and history teachers. 

The rest of the world is looking at us, boggled. It’s way past time to wake the hell up and do something about guns. The number to call your members of Congress is 202-224-3121. 

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Pro-abortion

A great writing by Valerie Tarico from back in 2016, which I missed then. More valid than ever now.

Why I Am Pro-Abortion, Not Just Pro-Choice

by Valerie Tarico

I believe that abortion care is a positive social good—and I think it’s time people said so.

Not long ago, the Daily Kos published an article titled “I Am Pro-Choice, Not Pro-Abortion.” “Has anyone ever truly been pro-abortion?” one commenter asked.

Uh. Yes. Me. That would be me.

I am pro-abortion like I’m pro–knee replacement and pro-chemotherapy and pro–cataract surgery. As the last protection against ill-conceived childbearing when all else fails, abortion is part of a set of tools that help women and men to form the families of their choosing. I believe that abortion care is a positive social good. And I suspect that a lot of other people secretly believe the same thing. I think it’s time we said so.

Note: I’m also pro-choice. Choice is about who gets to make the decision. The question of whether and when we bring a new life into the world is, to my mind, one of the most important decisions a person can make. It is too big a decision for us to make for each other, especially for perfect strangers.

But independent of who owns the decision, I’m pro on the procedure. I’ve decided that it’s time, for once and for all, to count it out on my ten fingers.

1. I’m pro-abortion because being able to delay and limit childbearing is fundamental to female empowerment and equality. A woman who lacks the means to manage her fertility lacks the means to manage her life. Any plans, dreams, aspirations, responsibilities or commitments—no matter how important—have a great big contingency clause built-in: “… until or unless I get pregnant, in which case all bets are off.” Think of any professional woman you know. She wouldn’t be in that role if she hadn’t been able to time and limit her childbearing. Think of any girl you know who imagines becoming a professional woman. She won’t get there unless she has effective, reliable means to manage her fertility. In generations past, nursing care was provided by nuns and teachers who were spinsters, because avoiding sexual intimacy was the only way women could avoid unpredictable childbearing and so be freed up to serve their communities in other capacities. But if you think that abstinence should be our model for modern fertility management, consider the little graves that get found every so often under old nunneries and Catholic homes for unwed mothers.
2. I’m pro-abortion because well-timed pregnancies give children a healthier start in life. We now have ample evidence that babies do best when women are able to space their pregnancies and get both prenatal and preconception care. The specific nutrients we ingest in the weeks before we get pregnant can have a lifelong effect on the well-being of our offspring. Rapid repeat pregnancies increase the risk of low birth-weight babies and other complications. Wanted babies are more likely to get their toes kissed, to be welcomed into families that are financially and emotionally ready to receive them, to get preventive medical care during childhood, and to receive the kinds of loving engagement that helps young brains to develop.
3. I’m pro-abortion because I take motherhood seriously. Most female bodies can incubate a baby; thanks to antibiotics, cesareans, and anti-hemorrhage drugs, most of us are able to survive pushing a baby out into the world. But parenting is a lot of work, and doing it well takes twenty dedicated years of focus, attention, patience, persistence, social support, mental health, money, and a whole lot more. This is the biggest, most life-transforming thing most of us will ever do. The idea that women should simply go with it when they find themselves pregnant after a one-night stand, or a rape, or a broken condom completely trivializes motherhood.
4. I’m pro-abortion because intentional childbearing helps couples, families, and communities to get out of poverty. Decades of research in countries ranging from the United States to Bangladesh show that reproductive policy is economic policy. It is no coincidence that the American middle class rose along with the ability of couples to plan their families, starting at the beginning of the last century. Having two or three kids instead of eight or ten was critical to prospering in the modern industrial economy. Early, unsought childbearing nukes economic opportunity and contributes to multigenerational poverty. Today in the United States, unsought pregnancy and childbearing is declining for everyone but the poorest families and communities, contributing to what some call a growing “caste system” in America. Strong, determined girls and women sometimes beat the odds, but their stories inspire us precisely because they are the exceptions to the rule. Justice dictates that the full range of fertility management tools—including the best state-of-the-art contraceptive technologies and, when that fails, abortion care—be equally available to all, not just a privileged few.
5. I’m pro-abortion because reproduction is a highly imperfect process. Genetic recombination is a complicated progression with flaws and false starts at every step along the way. To compensate, in every known species including humans, reproduction operates as a big funnel. Many more eggs and sperm are produced than will ever meet; more combine into embryos than will ever implant; more implant than will grow into babies; and more babies are born than will grow up to have babies of their own. This systematic culling makes God or nature the world’s biggest abortion provider: nature’s way of producing healthy kids essentially requires every woman to have an abortion mill built into her own body. In humans, an estimated 60 to 80 percent of fertilized eggs self-destruct before becoming babies, which is why the people who kill the most embryos are those like the Duggars who try to maximize their number of pregnancies. But the weeding-out process is also highly imperfect. Sometimes perfectly viable combinations boot themselves out; sometimes horrible defects slip through. A woman’s body may be less fertile when she is stressed or ill or malnourished, but as pictures of skeletal moms and babies show, some women conceive even under devastating circumstances. Like any other medical procedure, therapeutic contraception and abortion complement natural processes designed to help us survive and thrive.
6. I’m pro-abortion because I think morality is about the well-being of sentient beings. I believe that morality is about the lived experience of sentient beings—beings who can feel pleasure and pain, preference and intention and who at their most complex can live in relation to other beings, love and be loved, and value their own existence. What are they capable of wanting? What are they capable of feeling? These are the questions my husband and I explored with our children when they were figuring out their responsibility to their chickens and guinea pigs. It was a lesson that turned expensive when the girls stopped drinking milk from cows that didn’t get to see the light of day or eat grass, but it’s not one I regret. Do unto others as they want you to do unto them. It’s called the “Platinum Rule.” In this moral universe, real people count more than potential people, hypothetical people, or corporate people.
7. I’m pro-abortion because contraceptives are imperfect, and people are too. The pill is 1960s technology, now half a century old. For decades, women were told that the pill was 99 percent effective, and they blamed themselves when they got pregnant anyway. But that 99 percent is a “perfect use” statistic. In the real world, where most of us live, people aren’t perfect. In the real world, one in eleven women relying on the pill gets pregnant each year. For a couple relying on condoms, that’s one in six. Young and poor women—those whose lives are least predictable and most vulnerable to being thrown off course—are also those who have the most difficulty taking pills consistently. Pill technology most fails those who need it most, which makes abortion access a matter not only of compassion but of justice. State-of-the-art IUDs and implants radically change this equation, largely because they take human error out of the picture for years on end, or until a woman wants a baby. And despite the deliberate misinformation being spread by opponents, these methods are genuine contraceptives, not abortifacients. Depending on the method chosen, they disable sperm or block their path, or prevent an egg from being released. Once settled into place, an IUD or implant drops the annual pregnancy rate below one in five hundred. And guess what? Teen pregnancies and abortions plummet—which makes me happy, because even though I’m pro-abortion, I’d love the need for abortion to go away. Why mitigate harm when you can prevent it?
8. I’m pro-abortion because I believe in mercy, grace, compassion, and the power of fresh starts. Many years ago, my friend Chip was driving his family on vacation when his kids started squabbling. His wife, Marla, undid her seatbelt to help them, and, as Chip looked over at her, their top-heavy minivan veered onto the shoulder and then rolled, and Marla died. Sometimes people make mistakes or have accidents that they pay for the rest of their lives. But I myself have swerved onto the shoulder and simply swerved back. The price we pay for a lapse in attention or judgment or an accident of any kind isn’t proportional to the error we made. Who among us hasn’t had unprotected sex when the time or situation or partnership wasn’t quite right for bringing a new life into the world? Most of the time we get lucky; sometimes we don’t. And in those situations we rely on the mercy, compassion, and generosity of others. In this regard, an unsought pregnancy is like any other accident. I can walk today only because surgeons reassembled my lower leg after it was crushed between the front of a car and a bicycle frame when I was a teen. And I can walk today (and run and jump) because another team of surgeons reassembled my knee joint after I fell off a ladder. And I can walk today (and bicycle with my family) because a third team of surgeons repaired my other knee after I pulled a whirring brush mower onto myself, cutting clear through bone. Three accidents, all my own doing, and three knee surgeries. Some women have three abortions.
9. I’m pro-abortion because the future is always in motion, and we have the power and responsibility to shape it well. As a college student, I read a Ray Bradbury story about a man who travels back into prehistory on a “time safari.” The tourists have been coached about the importance of not disturbing anything lest they change the flow of history. When they return to the present, they realize that the outcome of an election has changed, and they discover that the protagonist, who had gone off the trail, has a crushed butterfly on the bottom of his shoe. In baby-making, as in Bradbury’s story, the future is always in motion, and every little thing we do has consequences we have no way to predict. Any small change means that a different child comes into the world. Which nights your mother had headaches, the sexual position of your parents when they conceived you, whether or not your mother rolled over in bed afterward—if any of these things had been different, someone else would be here instead of you. Every day, men and women make small choices and potential people wink into and out of existence. We move, and our movements ripple through time in ways that are incomprehensible, and we can never know what the alternate futures might have been. But some things we can know or predict, at least at the level of probability, and I think this knowledge provides a basis for guiding wise reproductive decisions. My friend Judy says that parenting begins before conception. I agree. How and when we choose to carry forward a new life can stack the odds in favor of our children or against them, and to me that is a sacred trust.
10. I’m pro-abortion because I love my daughter. I first wrote the story of my own abortion when Dr. George Tiller was murdered, and I couldn’t bear the thought of abortion providers standing in the crosshairs alone. “My Abortion Baby” was about my daughter, Brynn, who exists only because a kind doctor such as George Tiller gave me and my husband the gift of a fresh start when we learned that our wanted pregnancy was unhealthy. Brynn literally embodies the ever-changing flow of the future, because she could not exist in an alternate universe in which I would have carried that first pregnancy to term. She was conceived while I would still have been pregnant with a child we had begun to imagine but who never came to be. My husband and I felt very clear that carrying forward that pregnancy would have been a violation of our values, and neither of us ever second-guessed our decision. Even so, I grieved. Even when I got pregnant again a few months later, I remember feeling petulant and thinking, I want that baby, not this one. And then Brynn came out into the world, and I looked into her eyes, fell in love, and never looked back.

All around us living, breathing, and loving are the chosen children of mothers who waited, who ended an ill-timed or unhealthy pregnancy and then later chose to carry forward a new life. “I was only going to have two children,” my friend Jane said as her daughters raced, screeching joyfully, across my lawn. Jane followed them with her eyes. “My abortions let me have these two when the time was right, with someone I loved.”

Those who see abortion as an unmitigated evil often talk about the “millions of missing people” who were not born into this world because a pregnant woman decided “Not now.” But they never talk about the millions of children and adults who are here today only because their mothers had abortions—real people who exist in this version of the future, people who are living out their lives all around us—loving, laughing, suffering, struggling, dancing, dreaming, and having babies of their own.

When those who oppose abortion lament the “missing people,” I hear an echo of my own petulant thought: I want that person, not this one. And I wish that they could simply experience what I did, that they could look into the beautiful eyes of the people in front of them and fall in love.

Valerie Tarico

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist, author, and founder of WisdomCommons. org. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light (Oracle Institute Press, 2010).

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Abortion Rights

Good news for abortion rights advocates from coast to coast in the recent November elections.

FFRF cheers abortion access victories

(Freedom From Religion Foundation)

Abortion won big in the November elections, proving that abortion rights retain popular support.

Abortion access received solid support in ballot measures in California, Montana, Michigan, Kentucky and Vermont.

• Michigan: Voters enshrined abortion in the state’s Constitution by passing Proposal 3. 

• California: Voters in the Golden State also enshrined abortion in the state’s Constitution with Proposition 1. 

• Vermont: Vermonters overwhelmingly supported Article 22, the Reproductive Liberty Amendment, which provides a constitutional protection to abortion.

• Kentucky: In a close race, voters in Kentucky rejected a ballot measure that would have denied any constitutional protections for abortion or abortion funding. 

• Montana: Montanans voted down a deceptive abortion ban law that would have criminalized health care providers and limited their care options. 

These election results demonstrate what public polls have shown: Abortion access receives overwhelming support across political lines. Freethinkers lead the way with 87 percent supporting abortion in all or most cases, according to Pew Research. A YouGov analysis last spring found that atheists are the most likely to identify as pro-choice, at 91 percent.

While these measures are worth celebrating, there’s much work to be done to protect abortion throughout the country. Most abortions are now banned in at least 13 states, with court battles taking place in these and many other states.

In addition to the above good news, the South Carolina Supreme Court just struck down the absurdly restrictive 6-week abortion ban. This is HUGE:

South Carolina Constitution Includes Abortion Right, State Supreme Court Rules

The decision overturns the state’s six-week ban on abortion, a major victory for abortion rights in the South, where the procedure is strictly limited.

by Kate Zernike - January 5, 2023 (New York Times)

The South Carolina Constitution provides a right to privacy that includes the right to abortion, the state’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, saying “the decision to terminate a pregnancy rests upon the utmost personal and private considerations imaginable.”

The decision overturns the state’s law banning abortions after roughly the sixth week of pregnancy. More broadly, it is a victory for abortion rights in the South, where states have severely restricted access.

It is the first final ruling by a state Supreme Court on the state constitutionality of abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, which ended the right to abortion under the federal constitution that had been in force for half a century, and left the matter to the states.

Abortion rights groups responded to that decision by filing suits in 19 states, seeking to establish a right to abortion under state constitutions, in many cases citing explicit provisions in those documents protecting a woman’s privacy and equal rights. The South Carolina case was a critical first test — and success — for that strategy.

“This is a monumental victory in the movement to protect legal abortion in the South,” said Jenny Black, the president of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which was among the groups that filed the case.

The five justices ruled 3-2 that a state ban on abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy violated a provision in the state constitution which says that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures and unreasonable invasions of privacy shall not be violated.”

Even so, the court’s majority said that the right to abortion “was not absolute, and must be balanced against the State’s interest in protecting unborn life.”

The Republican-controlled state legislature may try to test what that means by passing other restrictions on abortion later in pregnancy, but it will be limited by the court’s new broad protection for abortion.

The state’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, said in a statement that he was working with the governor’s office to review “all our available options moving forward.”

“We respectfully, but strongly, disagree with the Court’s ruling,” he said.

The ruling in South Carolina will not necessarily translate to other states, given the differences in the makeup of their courts and the language of their constitutions.

Still, it was a significant decision in the post-Roe world, and one that will help shape the arguments as cases proceed in other states.

Abortion rights advocates argue that once some states begin recognizing a constitutional right to abortion — either because of court decisions like this one or because of the outcomes of ballot initiatives like those in Kansas and Michigan last year — others will follow.

The South Carolina case concerned a law passed by the state legislature in 2021, which banned abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected, typically around six weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest, or that threaten the mother’s life. Federal courts had blocked the law because of the Roe protections. It took effect shortly after Roe was overturned, but several weeks later the state’s Supreme Court unanimously blocked it again, while the litigation proceeded.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the South Carolina legislature has attempted, but has so far failed, to pass a stricter ban.

The decision by the state’s highest court almost certainly blocks that effort, and leaves only limited options. State appeals are exhausted. Officials could try to amend the state constitution to explicitly rule out any provision for abortion rights, though attempts to do that have failed in states like Kansas.

“We know that lawmakers will double down on their relentless efforts to restrict essential health care, but we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to restore abortion access across the country once and for all,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, another of the groups that filed suit.

Justice Kaye Hearn, who wrote the opinion issued Thursday, is the only woman, and the second woman to serve on the court. Chief Justice Donald Beatty, the second Black justice elected since Reconstruction, joined her in the opinion along with Justice John C. Few.

Justice Hearn seemed to indicate some sympathy toward the abortion providers during oral arguments. She noted that the plaintiff’s side of the courtroom was all female and the state’s side was all male. Most women who are pregnant at six weeks do not want anyone to know, she said, and many women do not want anyone to know if they have had an abortion.

“I know you’re not a woman,” she told a lawyer for the state government. “But what could be more personal than that decision?”

More to the story here.