THANK FUCKING GOD
"The Supreme Court on Thursday [June 13, 2024] unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
The nine justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication, mifepristone, and the FDA’s subsequent actions to ease access to it. The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.
Abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy in 14 states, and after about six weeks of pregnancy in three others, often before women realize they’re pregnant.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the majority to overturn Roe, wrote for the court on Thursday that “federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions.”
The opinion underscored the stakes of the 2024 election and the possibility that an FDA commissioner appointed by Republican Donald Trump, if he wins the White House, could consider tightening access to mifepristone, including prohibiting sending it through the mail...
Kavanaugh’s opinion managed to unite a court deeply divided over abortion and many other divisive social issues by employing a minimalist approach that focused solely on the technical legal issue of standing and reached no judgment about the FDA’s actions...
While praising the decision, President Joe Biden signaled Democrats will continue to campaign heavily on abortion ahead of the November elections. “It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states,” Biden said in a statement...
About two-thirds of U.S. adults oppose banning the use of mifepristone, or medication abortion, nationwide, according to a KFF poll conducted in February. About one-third would support a nationwide ban...
More than 6 million people [in the U.S.] have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of a second drug, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen has been used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks gestation...
Biden’s administration and drug manufacturers had warned that siding with abortion opponents in this case could [have] undermined the FDA’s drug approval process beyond the abortion context by inviting judges to second-guess the agency’s scientific judgments. The Democratic administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, argued that the drug is among the safest the FDA has ever approved."
-via AP, June 13, 2024
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Note: A massive relief and a genuine victory - this will preserve access to the medication used in 2/3rds of abortions last year, for at least another 2 years. (Probably minimum time it will take Republicans to get their next attempt before the Supreme Court.)
Still, with this, a sword that has been hanging over our heads for the last two years is gone. There will be a new one soon, but we just bought ourselves probably at least 2 years. The fight isn't over, but this is absolutely worth celebrating.
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Only the elves really see Elrond as "half-elven." They focus, of course, on who he is in relation to them. He's sort-of an elf– enough that they can accept him into their society, but not enough to erase his differences. They understand the different parts of him– his propensity to get sick, his elvish-sharp hearing, his need for sleep, his immortality– as "elvish" or "not-elvish." And while they can be rather condescending about anything they see as "not-elvish," they aren't usually very curious.
Most men regard Elrond vaguely as a fae being. This isn't unique to him– much of Middle-Earth's changling and fairy stories were built on the strange human-and-not-human nature of half-elves. Of course, different humans regard them very differently– sometimes with respect, even reverence, believing that "fairies" are beings of great wisdom and knowledge. Others see them with suspicion and fear, viewing them as sources of danger and deception.
To the Numenorians, Elrond is just one of them– a kind of "immortal man." He is like them in several key ways– he gets ill, he needs sleep, he regards the passage of time in a very "human" way. More importantly, he is their kin, a living remnant and reminder of both their mythical founder and non-human blood they share. He acts as a healer and counselor when they need him. This is all well and good until some of them start thinking that if Elrond could make the choice to be immortal, surely they should be able to as well.
The dwarves see Elrond as an elf. They absolutely do not care enough to tell the difference between him and the others. He's immortal, he's always with a bunch of elves. He's an elf.
The Maiar do not really understand what Elrond is, and have kind of defaulting to seeing him as one of them but like, small. Look, they're all uncounted thousands of years old, he's a child to them. They dote on him and think he's adorable, but sometimes forget that he's also part-elf and part-human, and can't just drop his physical form whenever he likes to go be a disembodied spirit in the clouds. Gandalf encourages all their antics. Elrond is working on it.
(Contrary to popular belief, the average hobbit does not have any kind of opinion on Elrond Peredhel. Bilbo Baggins, who lives in his house and has written several long, extremely personal ballads about his family history, is a statistical outlier and should not have been counted.)
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I feel like when criticising places for not being wheelchair accessable enough, we need to drag House of Leaves into it more. "Oh you're telling me this place is LESS wheelchair accessable than the house on Ashtree Lane?? Wheelchair users can get into the five and a half minute hallway but not your place of business? Are you less accesability focused than an unknowable, infinite, hostile physical anomaly? Get a fucking ramp."
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hotd's commentary on patriarchy is so much more interesting when you allow yourself to acknowledge the differences in privilege and power between the various women we see. aemma, alicent, laena, rhaenys, rhaenyra- they all have varying levels of privilege that come to them either indirectly or directly. rhaenyra is, ofc, undisputedly at the top. and this doesn't sideline or villainize rhaenyra in any way, because no amount of privilege will change the fact that she is not a man. like otto said: she could be jaehaerys reborn, could be as wise and powerful and mighty as any human being could be, and at the end of the day society would still see her as a woman. as the most powerful woman, sure, but as a woman. and i think that's just a much more salient point- that no amount of power within a system will allow you to breach the confines of that system. no matter how much influence these woman gain within the system of patriarchy, they're never able to be free of it.
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thank god robert sean leonard doesnt have social media because that man is NOT in control of what comes out of his mouth. i truly think we'd have another "is this covid related?" on our hands
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Hey, CampFam, so...a thought just occurred:
Kenji isn't calling his mom this week.
There's gonna be a news story about how Daniel Kon died in a dinosaur attack, and his son was unavailable for comment. Also that Yaz's campus suffered a dinosaur breach and three people were killed or wounded, also there was a van that got rammed off a bridge. A van whose plates will be matched to a Ben Pincus, whose friend was living on the campus, and who was spotted with Sammy Gutierrez a day or so prior at a roadside show disruption. No bodies will have been recovered, but neither will at least one of the bodies from the campus.
Obviously DPW will provide forensics on the Becklespinaxes' waste (assuming the PH level is low enough), and probably find that only two humans were devoured (maybe even positively identify whom), but the fact remains that for at least a week....
All of the Nublar Six's families are going to think their children are dead. Again.
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