#Abortion crisis

[urmyasukatomyrei]

I’m sad because

People think feminism means I hate men, but it doesn’t

it just means I want men to be held accountable for the their actions,

I don’t want men to keep thinking women are crazy or messed up for wanting to be treated like human beings

esp with the abortion crisis and the fact women in many states have lost access to abortion, it makes me sad and stressed

it’s a bad omen

just because I’m in Ny doesn’t mean it’s not going to hit here too! I have to be careful and later in life if I am pressured to do so, I don’t want to have sex with men, it feels unfair to those other women, it feels unsafe and I don’t want to take it because like I said it feels like a bad omen and tbh feels even somewhat greedy or ignorant...(I feel sorry for the straight girls because at least i have an interest in women, if I was straight I would have no idea what to do at this time and age)

honestly my prediction is most if not every women in the states is going to become bisexual by choice or not and there will be an increase in lesbian women just because of this darn abortion crisis, which is okay for there to be more lesbians but still, you know what I mean! men are honestly just doing them a disservice by driving women away from them even more

i don’t like and I hate the way men treat women. I don’t “hate” men, but I thought men hated me first? And other women like me?

Every day I go out I feel sad and ashamed because of myself

I shouldnt have to live in World like that

anyway, I found this. This is very good I found this, so I took a photo of it

Yes, people don’t understand sometimes that this isn’t “abortion is illegal now” just saying that feels gross. It’s this. It’s “forced childbirth is now completely legal and normal”

And no, it’s shouldn’t be.!! They’re literally dumbing it down to abortion being a “privilege” but it’s not. All it is that they’re forcing women to have children, thus forced childbirth, and it’s not okay

Giving birth can be an extremely hard to handle, stressful, even painful ordeal, and some people just don’t want to have a child to take care of going forward because yeah, it’s a lifelong commitment

many people can’t handle such a lifelong commitment and that’s their own choice!! It shouldn’t be decided for them, that’s just wrong

i’m concerned about the future so much that I want to fully embrace feminism, real feminism, and that’s a natural response to feeling stressed about this issue that directly affects me

[7loveneverfails]

I really don't understand how the pregnancy boards are so rabidly pro-abortion.

A woman was asking for advice as her husband was really struggling with their unexpected pregnancy since her last postpartum period was so difficult and he stepped up in a big way to support her and the family. It was stressful so he is understandably struggling.

But like 5 women jumped all over her like, "so it's your choice but you didn't even discuss an abortion?! You didn't even get his input if he wanted the baby or not?"

What a ghoulish mindset. No, they reacted like adults who accidentally got pregnant and started with facing and accepting the consequences of their actions.

Of course now she is like, "well, I guess I have to get one if he doesn't want the baby"

Just so gross.

And it is always shutdown to tell an abortion minded woman to consider that choice further to see if it's really the best option that she thinks it is. But this is fine, to berate a woman for not immediately thinking "I should just kill it"

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

Remember How "Prolifers" Swore They Knew an Ectopic Pregnancy Was Nonviable and Said We Were Fearmongering for Using It as an Example Against Abortion Bans?

According to a press release, Doe thought she might be pregnant in October 2022 and wanted to get an ultrasound. She found Clearway through an online search and got an appointment later that day. A Clearway nurse did an ultrasound and said the pregnancy was both viable and in her uterus; the suit says it’s against state medical regulations for registered nurses to read ultrasounds because they’re not licensed diagnosticians. A physician didn’t see Doe, though her discharge paperwork said a medical doctor provided her care. A month later, Doe felt shooting pain on her side and was so weak and lightheaded that her husband called 911, per the release. Emergency room doctors diagnosed her with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy and internal hemorrhage. In order to stop the hemorrhaging, doctors did emergency surgery in which they had to remove of one of her fallopian tubes. None of this should have been necessary, as legitimate medical providers would have ended Doe’s life-threatening pregnancy with medication—typically the cancer drug methotrexate.

[the-greatest-fool]

I basically only post and read posts in my bubble aside from occasionally scrolling through Real Tumblr, but people’s takes about US politics on this website are fucking unbelievable. They talk about our government as if it didn’t save us from a pandemic-induced financial collapse, pump trillions of dollars into public works, not to mention substantially invest and rein in pharmaceuticals, and is instead some sort of ultra-neoliberal-corporate kitty shooting machine.

Like let’s be for real. Do they…know what the government does? How it works? Do you know what a conservative is? Do you know what an authoritarian is?

Because a system of government whose citizens are all lucky it has had continuous peaceful transfer of power for centuries could very well have its greatest norm violated—that those who reject its legitimacy must be rejected—and we don’t blink an eye.

Because the first major investment against climate change, coupled with life saving investments into healthcare, cancer research, and drug costs could be shredded by indiscriminate fiscal conservatives who don’t care if we die in forest fires, cancer from pollution, lose insurance because we’re jobless, or, apparently, all die in a fricking plague.

Because a foreign policy establishment that had finally reversed two decades of foreign intervention in favor of a normalization strategy aimed at reducing American foot presence, drone strikes, and indiscriminate killings is about to be replaced by the whims of a man who dropped the “mother of all bombs” on the Middle East, gave American soldiers up to Russian bounty hunters, extorted a foreign leader for political favors and arguably indirectedly resulted in that country being BRUTALLY INVADED BY AN IMPERIAL NEIGHBOR, is in the pockets of CCP-funded billionaires, and WANTS TO “FINISH THE JOB” IN GAZA.

Because a President who is against family separations and promotes a path for DREAMERs and more legal immigration and rights for unodcumented people could be replaced by a man who wants to separate families, PUT UNDOCUMENTED PEOPLE IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS, RESTRICT EVEN LEGAL IMMIGRATION, ESPECIALLY THAT OF MUSLIMS, AND SHOOT MIGRANTS.

Because a President who stopped a repeat of the Great Recession and the painful decade that followed it with strong fiscal stimulus which CUT CHILD POVERTY IN HALF BEFORE CONSERVATIVES MADE IT EXPIRE, then managed to cut deficits and presided over a decline in inflation, resulting in record high real wages (aka taking into account inflation) for workers is going to be replaced by a President who wants to TARIFF ALL FOREIGN GOODS by 15%, CUT TAXES FOR THE FILTHY RICH AND THE TAX ENFORCEMENT TO STOP THEM, INCREASE CHILD POVERTY AND UNINSUREDNESS by cutting gov’t programs, and HURT UNIONS which by every measure will lead to lower wages, higher prices, and more poverty and starvation.

Because a President who has pledged to sign a bill codifying Roe v. Wade (which has yet to be possible in recent memory, whatever these kids say), who enshrined the right to marry someone of the same sex or different race, who supports the Equality Act which would enshrine LGBTQ protections into the law, could be replaced by THE MAN WHO REMOVED AMERICA’S RIGHT TO ABORTION, whose Christian nationalist supporters want to END SEXUAL FREEDOM as we know it including TARGETING IVF AND BIRTH CONTROL, who wants to reverse LGBTQ discrimination law in favor of Christian bigots who hate queer and trans people, and who demonizes that community to win political support.

Ask yourself if you really think there’s no difference between the two. Ask yourself if a reasonable person given these facts would choose the latter. Ask yourself why you see so much propagandizing against the reasonable choice. Ask yourself why so many people seem to have opinions on this when they “don’t even go here”.

Maybe I’m just preaching to the choir here. Maybe people who say this inane stuff wouldn’t vote anyways. Maybe somehow we’re screwed anyways. Maybe people will stupidly vote third party and we’re fucked. Maybe this will get me attacked.

I don’t care anymore. If I have to see one more fucking post acting like we live under the fucking Evil Empire while a SELF PROCLAIMED DICTATOR is about to end the best streak of decent governance I’ve ever seen in a while, I just can’t anymore.

[hellyeahscarleteen]

How can you tell whether a clinic is a real health center or a crisis pregnancy center?

The FWHC offers this sound advice on how to find a reliable, bonafide clinic, no matter what choice a pregnant person is making:

• Select clinics that provide the full range of contraceptive alternatives. • Ask on the phone if they provide or refer for abortion services. Avoid centers that refuse to give a straightforward answer. • Do not use the ones listed in yellow pages under Abortion Alternatives. • Be cautious when surfing the web. Often you will find anti-abortion religious-based websites disguised as pro-choice information. Keep searching for reliable information. • Select clinics that have clearly established reputations. Avoid centers with ambiguous descriptions. Avoid clinics whose staff do not provide full, clear answers regarding their services. Ask friends or relatives you trust!

(From Crisis Pregnancy Centers: Harm, Not Help)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David McAfee and Matthew Chapman at Raw Story:

U.S. Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) is being ridiculed on social media for a new piece of proposed legislation that, while billed as a child support bill for new moms, is being panned as yet another dystopian intrusion into women's pregnancies. Britt, who came to the forefront of the political conversation following her heavily-mocked response to President Joe Biden's 2024 State of the Union address, announced the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) Act. The bill would create a registry of pregnant women, who would then be steered to support services that include "crisis pregnancy centers" — usually faith-based groups designed to shame or trick women seeking abortions into keeping their pregnancies anyway. "To all of my fellow moms out there, my goal is to give you and your children the opportunities to thrive and to live your American dreams," Britt said in a video announcing the policy.

Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) coming in strong with the Handmaiden's Tale vibes with her grossly anti-abortion MOMS Act bill that purports to help women but in reality would promote fake clinics (crisis pregnancy centers) and have a federal pregnancy tracker.

See Also:

Salon: Katie Britt is back at it, pushing a bill to launch a pregnancy tracking federal database

[mysidaesm]

You know what fucking sucks? I'm a teenager. There are so many shitty things in this world that I can't do jack shit about because I'm old enough. And even if someone is old enough to do things, they often don't or can't. No matter what I do I can't fix the problems I've been forced to confront, and it seems like a lot of people cope with this by pretending said problems don't exist. I can't do anything major because I am a teen, and people older than me, even if they have the ability to make change, don't. I'm not asking middle aged moms to solve homelessness, I'm begging my mom to sign up for volunteer work that you have to be at least 21 for. I'm begging people to donate money to causes because I can't. I'm begging people to at least acknowledge the issues that we all face, but that's too much for a lot of people. One of my biggest fears is that I will grow up and have the chance to do something, but I don't. I'm so fucking tired of this shit world I was forced into.

Didn't mean for this to turn into a rant, but it kinda ended up being one anyway.

Tl;Dr: if you have the means to help, even in a small way, you should take it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google makes millions on paid abortion disinformation

Google’s search quality has been in steady decline for years, and Google assures us that they’re working on it, though the most visible effort is replacing links to webpages with lengthy, florid paragraphs written by a confident habitual liar chatbot:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

The internet is increasingly full of garbage, much of it written by other confident habitual liar chatbots, which are now extruding plausible sentences at enormous scale. Future confident habitual liar chatbots will be trained on the output of these confident liar chatbots, producing Jathan Sadowski’s “Habsburg AI”:

https://twitter.com/jathansadowski/status/1625245803211272194

But the declining quality of Google Search isn’t merely a function of chatbot overload. For many years, Google’s local business listings have been terrible. Anyone who’s tried to find a handyman, a locksmith, an emergency tow, or other small businessperson has discovered that Google is worse than useless for this. Try to search for that locksmith on the corner that you pass every day? You won’t find them — but you will find a fake locksmith service that will dispatch an unqualified, fumble-fingered guy with a drill and a knockoff lock, who will drill out your lock, replace it with one made of bubblegum and spit, and charge you 400% the going rate (and then maybe come back to rob you):

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html

Google is clearly losing the fraud/spam wars, which is pretty awful, given that they have spent billions to put every other search engine out of business. They spend $45b every year to secure exclusivity deals that prevent people from discovering or using rivals — that’s like buying a whole Twitter every year, just so they don’t have to compete:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/how-a-google-antitrust-case-could/

But there’s an even worse form of fraudulent listing on Google, one they could do something about, but choose not to: ad-fraud. For all the money and energy thrown into “dark SEO” to trick Google into putting your shitty, scammy website at the top of the listings, there’s a much simpler method. All you need to do is pay Google — buy an ad, and your obviously fraudulent site will be right there, at the top of the search results.

There are so many top searches that go to fraud or malware sites. Tech support is a favorite. It’s not uncommon to search for tech support for Google products and be served a fake tech-support website where a scammer will try to trick you into installing a remote-access trojan and then steal everything you have, and/or take blackmail photos of you with your webcam:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-search-ads-infiltrated-again-by-tech-support-scams/

This is true even when Google has a trivial means of reliably detecting fraud. Take the restaurant monster-in-the-middle scam: a scammer clones the menu of a restaurant, marking up their prices by 15%, and then buys the top ad slot for searches for that restaurant. Search for the restaurant, click the top link, and land on a lookalike site. The scammer collects your order, bills your card, then places the same order, in your name, with the restaurant.

The thing is, Google runs these ads even for restaurants that are verified merchants — Google mails the restaurant a postcard with a unique number on it, and the restaurant owner keys that number in to verify that they are who they say they are. It would not be hard for Google to check whether an ad for a business matches one of its verified merchants, and, if so, whether the email address is a different one from the verified one on file. If so, Google could just email the verified address with a “Please confirm that you’re trying to buy an ad for a website other than the one we have on file” message:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google doesn’t do this. Instead, they accept — and make a fortune from — paid disinformation, across every category.

But not all categories of paid disinformation are equally bad: it’s one thing to pay a 15% surcharge on a takeout meal, but there’s a whole universe of paid medical disinformation that Google knows about and has an official policy of tolerating.

This paid medical disinformation comes from “crisis pregnancy centers”: these are fake abortion clinics that raise huge sums from religious fanatics to buy ads that show up for people seeking information about procuring an abortion. If they are duped by one of these ads, they are directed to a Big Con-style storefront staffed by people who pretend that they perform abortions, but who bombard their marks with falsehoods about health complications.

These con artists try to trick their marks into consenting to sexual assault — a transvaginal ultrasound. This is a prelude to another fraud, in which the “sporadic electrical impulses” generated by an early fetal structure is a “heartbeat” (early fetuses do not have hearts, so they cannot produce heartbeats):

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/heartbeat-bills-called-fetal-heartbeat-six-weeks-pregnancy-rcna24435

If the victim still insists on getting an abortion, the fraudsters will use deceptive tactics to draw out the process until they run out the clock for a legal abortion, procuring a forced birth through deceit.

It is hard to imagine a less ethical course of conduct. Google’s policy of accepting “crisis pregnancy center” ads is the moral equivalent of taking money from fake oncologists who counsel people with cancer to forego chemotherapy in favor of juice-cleanses.

There is no ambiguity here: the purpose of a “crisis prengancy center” is to deceive people seeking abortions into thinking they are dealing with an abortion clinic, and then further deceive them into foregoing the abortion, by means of lies, sexually invasive and unnecessary medical procedures, and delaying tactics.

Now, a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate finds that Google made $10m last year on ads from “crisis pregnancy centers”:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-made-millions-from-ads-for-fake-abortion-clinics/

Many of these “crisis pregnancy centers” are also registered 501(c)3 charities, which makes them eligible for Google’s ad grants, which provide free ads to nonprofits. Marketers who cater to “crisis pregnancy center” advertise that they can help their clients qualify for these grants. In 2019, Google was caught giving tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of free ads to “crisis pregnancy centers”:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/12/google-advertising-abortion-obria

The keywords that “crisis pregnancy centers” bid up include “Planned Parenthood” — meaning that if actual Planned Parenthood clinics want to appear at the top of the search for “planned parenthood,” they have to outbid the fraudsters seeking to deceive Planned Parenthood patients.

Google has an official policy of requiring customers that pay for ads matching abortion-related search terms to label their ads to state whether or not they provide abortions, but the report documents failures to enforce this policy. The labels themselves are confusing: for example, abortion travel funds have to be labeled as “not providing abortions.”

Google isn’t afraid to ban whole categories of advertising: for example, Google has banned Plan C, a nonprofit that provides information about medication abortions. The company erroneously classes Plan C as an “unauthorized pharmacy.” But Google continues to offer paid disinformation on behalf of forced birth groups that claim there is such a thing as “abortion reversal” (there isn’t — but the “abortion reversal” drug cocktail is potentially lethal).

This is inexcusable, but it’s not unique — and it’s not even that profitable. $10m is a drop in the bucket for a company like Google. When you’re lighting $45b/year on fire just to prevent competition, $10m is chump change. A better way to understand Google’s relationship to paid disinformation can be found by studying Facebook’s own paid disinformation problem.

Facebook has a well-documented problem with paid political disinformation — unambiguous, illegal materials, like paid notices advising people to remember to vote on November 6th (when election day falls on November 5th). The company eventually promised to put political ads in a repository where they could be inspected by all parties to track its progress in blocking paid disinformation.

Facebook did a terrible job at this, with huge slices of its political ads never landing in its transparency portal. We know this because independent researchers at NYU’s engineering school built an independent, crowdsourced tracker called Ad Observer, which scraped all the ads volunteers saw and uploaded them to a portal called Ad Observatory.

Facebook viciously attacked the NYU project, falsely smearing it as a privacy risk (the plugin was open source and was independently audited by Mozilla researchers, who confirmed that it didn’t collect any personal information). When that didn’t work, they sent a stream of legal threats, claiming that NYU was trafficking in a “circumvention device” as defined by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a felony carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine — for a first offense.

Eventually, NYU folded the project. Facebook, meanwhile, has fired or reassigned most of the staff who work on political ad transparency:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/06/get-you-coming-and-going/#potemkin-research-program

What are we to make of this? Facebook claims that it doesn’t need or want political ad revenue, which are a drop in the bucket and cause all kinds of headaches. That’s likely true — but Facebook’s aversion to blocking political ads doesn’t extend to spending a lot of money to keep paid political disinfo off the platform.

The company could turn up the sensitivity on its blocking algorithm, which would generate more false positives, in which nonpolitical ads are misidentified and have to be reviewed by humans. This is expensive, and it’s an expense Facebook can avoid if it can suppress information about its failures to block paid political disinformation. It’s cheaper to silence critics than it is to address their criticism.

I don’t think Google gives a shit about the $10m it gets from predatory fake abortion clinics. But I think the company believes that the PR trouble it would get into for blocking them — and the expense it would incur in trying to catch and block fake abortion clinic ads — are real liabilities. In other words, it’s not about the $10m it would lose by blocking the ads — Google wants to avoid the political heat it would take from forced birth fanatics and cost of the human reviewers who would have to double-check rejected ads.

In other words, Google doesn’t abet fraudulent abortion clinics because they share the depraved sadism of the people who run these clinics. Rather, Google teams up with these sadists out of cowardice and greed.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/15/paid-medical-disinformation/#crisis-pregnancy-centers

[Image ID: A ruined streetscene. Atop a pile of rubble sits a dilapidated shack. In front of the shack is a letterboard with the word ABORTIONS set off-center and crooked. In the foreground is a carny barker at a podium, gesturing at the sign and the shack. The barker's head and face have been replaced with the Google logo. Within the barker's podium is a heap of US$100 bills.]

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[odinsblog]

Please be careful. Fake, anti-abortion, “pregnancy centers” are disguising themselves as pro-choice abortion clinics, and they are collecting a ton of personal data on desperate people who were tricked into coming to them.

👉🏿 https://time.com/6189528/anti-abortion-pregnancy-centers-collect-data-investigation/

[pipperdoo]

Friendly PSA

Support your local pro-life crisis pregnancy center. They offer counseling services, parenting classes, referrals for pre/peri/post natal care, free ultrasounds, and free resources such as formula and diapers. Their services extend to the fathers involved as well. Some even offer counseling for those healing from past abortions. With abolition of abortion prayerfully drawing closer these facilities will need your help to be prepared for the shift. So support your local pregnancy center!

[theirondragonrants]

I'm saying it right now, if you're celebrating the fact that Diane Feinstein is dead, the spirit of Harvey Milk is very fucking pissed at you.

[scribblersobia]

Some people are like USA, they lecture everyone about everything but, fail to bring justice and equality in their own home!

[iirulancorrino]

When Americans used to imagine life post-Roe, many seemed to believe that at the very least the country would agree on one thing: the need for an exception to save a woman’s life. These exceptions enjoy sweeping public support; a recent Pew Research Center poll found that 73 percent of Americans favored legal abortion if a woman’s life or health was at risk. Only 8 percent of respondents favored no exception whatsoever to criminal abortion laws.

Life-of-the-patient exceptions do not even require anti-abortion-rights Americans to change their minds about fetal personhood. Even if someone believes that a fetus enjoys the same rights as an adult, abortion could be justified much in the same way that people who are anti-violence can understand the need in certain situations for self-defense. Support for the so-called life-of-the-mother exception seemed unshakable.

Not anymore. Anti-abortion-rights groups, like Wisconsin Right to Life, have described the “life of the mother” exception as unnecessary and wrong. The Idaho GOP just approved a platform with no lifesaving exception. Republican candidates like Matthew DePerno, the Republican running to be Michigan’s attorney general, oppose all exceptions to abortion bans, and that includes to save a mother’s life. Conservative states are rushing to eliminate or narrow existing exceptions to their laws. Powerful groups like Students for Life, Feminists for Life, and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) argue that “abortion is never medically necessary” and that doctors should always be punished for intentionally taking a fetal life.

Why has what was once unthinkable suddenly become a legal reality, despite its extreme unpopularity? Recent changes in both the GOP and the anti-abortion-rights movement have something to do with it, but the problem runs deeper: a twin skepticism of women and the medical establishment. Even though activists of the anti-abortion-rights movement and the politicians who support them sometimes argued that women must be protected in certain cases, they question the honesty of people—both doctors and patients—who invoke emergency exceptions. These dual suspicions have produced a new definition of abortion—as the intentional, criminal taking of a life—and a growing consensus that abortion bans should have no exceptions.

[thepro-lifemovement]

Pro-life legislation (Senate Bill 300), sponsored by state Sen. Erin Grall, R-Fort Pierce, would provide $25 million to help pregnancy centers expand resources to pregnant and parenting families in need throughout the state. An additional $5 million would go to the state family planning program to provide contraception to low-income individuals.

“The $25 million appropriation is really to go to all families, all mothers who are looking for support at this time in their life,” Grall said Monday when the state Senate Health Policy Committee voted to pass her bill, which also bans most abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable.

According to the Miami Herald and Reveal News, the bill would increase funding to the state alternatives to abortion program by five times; the state budgeted $4.45 million for the program in 2022.

Grall told the news outlet that she wants Florida to become a “beacon of hope for those who understand that life is sacred and must be protected.”

Pregnancy resource centers are community-based nonprofits that help pregnant mothers choose life for their unborn babies. Often, women have abortions because they fear they cannot afford a child, but pregnant mothers frequently change their minds when they find out that there are resources available to help them.

Most pregnancy centers offer free ultrasounds, pregnancy and STI tests, baby and maternity clothes, cribs and diapers, counseling and referrals for additional support. There are nearly 160 in Florida, and many are located near abortion facilities so they can help mothers and fathers understand the facts about abortion, the value of their unborn child and the resources available to families in need.

[allhailthe70shousewife]

Young people are the drivers of progress. Republicans are afraid of you young people. Give them more and more reasons to be afraid. Seize your power! Please register and VOTE IN EVERY SINGLE ELECTION.