‘I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience…’

… announces James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus.

Here in America in 2023, it’s the millionth plus one time for America’s anti-abortion zealots (14th Amendment Protections for Zygotes Now!) to encounter the reality of experience — as in, strong majorities of Americans value access to abortion, and these majorities are acting and voting accordingly.

A year after the Dobbs decision, the anti-abortion movement is contending with two unexpected results. The first was neatly expressed by the banner headline in a newspaper that abortion rights groups We Testify and INeedanA.com printed to mark the Dobbs anniversary: “We are Still Having Abortions All Across the Country.” Not only did the Society for Family Planning’s survey of reported abortions find less of a decrease than many expected; it doesn’t account for the untold number of people who are accessing abortion medications through overseas or peer-to-peer suppliers, even in states where it is banned. Meanwhile, other states and localities are taking historic steps to ease abortion access. On the day [a prominent anti-abortion speaker addressed an important gathering], New York’s governor signed a law to protect abortion providers in the state who are openly planning to provide telemedicine abortions in states where it is banned.

… Since Dobbs, abortion rights supporters have won all six abortion-related ballot measures, stifled the “red wave” in the 2022 midterms, and cinched a key Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. In [a recent anti-abortion] convention’s host state, Pennsylvania, outrage over Dobbs helped Democrats flip the state House, elect a Democratic governor, and send Democrat John Fetterman to the US Senate. 

It’s the reality of experience all over again. What are the anti-abortion people to do?

They could ease up, or they could harden. The problem with easing up (‘Well … maybe we won’t go after rape and incest victims…’) is obvious; you’re allowing some abortions to happen.

The only option is toughening up, which inevitably means you’ll have to, among other things,

revoke enforcement authority from local prosecutors, many of whom have declined to enforce abortion bans, and give it to state attorneys general. [Plus] allow citizens to enforce abortion bans with civil lawsuits, apply RICO laws used to take down the mob to abortion providers, and weaponize anti-trafficking laws to make it harder to leave the state…

The increasingly popular neologism Cathoflucht (okay, well, I like it), an intentional echo of brutal Republikflucht laws used to punish people who tried to flee Communist East Germany, captures the attempted flight from states whose coalitions of anti-abortion-activist Catholics and Evangelicals have begun to restrict free movement out of abortion deserts. Gradually we will be able to trace a Republikflucht-like declension, from civilized, moderate efforts to force people who want out of no abortion states to stay in them, all the way to electronic tracking/threatening, to prisons, and to walls along borders.

“[Anti-hijab] campaigns seek to preoccupy the minds of our youths with sensual urges,” warned [one Iranian hardliner], “so that they will have no room to pursue missiles, the nuclear program, and knowledge-based technology.”

Too horny to defend the homeland, Iranian men must be kept from the sight of female heads.

While the “Woman, Life, Freedom” street protests were largely snuffed out months ago, and stricter hijab rules have been enacted, legions of Iranian women … are still refusing to wear hijab in public.

… In mid-June uniformed and plainclothes security forces again raided coffee shops in several cities and beat customers over hijab rules. And the police chief of a northern resort province was filmed telling a subordinate, “Break the neck of anyone who breaks the [hijab] norms … and I will take responsibility.” 

“Do your worst. I’m not intimidated. I won’t back down. My mission is Truth, my God is the Lord Jesus Christ, and my client is the President of the United States.”

Jenna Ellis, election denier, 2020.

Poor Jesus. Screwed again.

UD, who is always on the lookout for signs of cultural advancement among ultraorthodox Jews, is pleased to note that…

… the most recent criminal gang to attract the attention of law enforcement includes a woman. True, her sentence for stealing federal funds meant for underprivileged children, and using them to buy high-end SUVs and Florida condos, will be merely time served, whereas the big boys are getting bigger, man-sized sentences. But they dealt her in, even though she’s a girl! This is where gender equality begins.

‘The political Catholic wants to order the nation and its state to the natural and divine law, the tranquility of order…’

Harvard’s oddest lays out the glorious Cathophate-to-Come.

There goes the neighborhood.

All nations have the right to self-determination. All nations should be aware that if you choose to establish yourself as in important/coercive ways a religious state, you’re eventually going to look like shit. Think Pakistan; or worse. Iran.

Bill’s coming due for Israel, as we’ve all noticed. The process is well underway there in the established forms: The destruction of an independent judiciary. The surrender of the state to corrupt, bigoted, violent, and reactionary fanatics. The dismantling of national education standards. The degradation/disappearance of women. And now, out goes the money.

“From my clients I’m hearing concrete instructions to mobilize money out of Israel, to Switzerland or London,” said Eran Goren, a co-founder of Fidelis Family Office, which manages the money of wealthy Israelis. “We work closely with private banking departments of big banks, and they say it’s from every direction — people are just pulling money out.”

A withering tech industry would make Israel poorer, weaker and more religious, [another observer] said. That ought to worry anyone concerned about the stability of the Middle East, he added.

“Weaker states tend to be more aggressive, and a weaker Israel will be a more aggressive Israel.”

But emergent Israel wants the money to go. A rich educated nation will always erode the poverty and ignorance at the core of fundamentalist Judaism. Education evolves people away from the bellicose certainty that their sect comprises God’s unique anointed world-redeemers.

If backwards is what the Israelis want, backwards is what they get. If you take a long historical perspective on the thing, the core of Israel’s collapse was inherent in its willingness from the outset to cave to fundamentalism. And it was willing to do that because, as it affirmed in 2018:

 [T]he Knesset passed legislation reaffirming Israel’s identity as the “nation-state of the Jewish people,” which means that the country belongs to Jews like me [the author is Peter Beinart] who don’t live there, but not to the Palestinians who live under its control, even the lucky few who hold Israeli citizenship...  Ultimately, a movement premised on ethnocracy cannot successfully defend the rule of law. Only a movement for equality can.

‘UD, who has followed [Shamima] Begum’s case closely, has long shared with UD’s readers her confidence that Begum will never be allowed back into the country she betrayed and attacked. The decision of the [British] court does not surprise UD, and

I wrote this two years ago, as ISIS fanatic Begum (she says she isn’t an ISIS fanatic anymore; British intelligence disagrees), stuck in a Syrian detention camp, had her request to return home at least to argue her case denied. The latest news is that — in line with UD‘s confidence she’ll never be allowed back in her home country — a court has on appeal upheld the decision to revoke her citizenship.

This is the kind of shit you get when you still have an independent judiciary.

But don’t worry. They’re working on it. Soon Israel won’t have a courts system, and all will be well.

Dropped the ball just a wee bit, did we?

Fine upstanding Mormon man is praised to the skies in his obituary, which fails to mention he shot his entire large extended family to death. He had quite the history of family abuse, too, but none of his Mormon associates seems to have cared enough to protect anyone in the monster’s home. Maybe they figure that’s how you deal with domestic conflict. Let God sort it out or whatever.