It’s time once more for news and views you can peruse. It’s your Weekly Reader! If you’ve got something interesting to share, head over to the comments and drop a link. The more, the merrier!
Everything You Need to Know About the Extreme Abortion Bans Sweeping the Country (Updated) (from ReWire News): “Anti-choicers have latched on to the term “heartbeat,” and the notion that an embryo has one at six weeks’ gestation, in order to distract from the fact that so-called heartbeat bans are near-total abortion bans. This is a critical distinction, because recent studies have shown that people support fetal “heartbeat” bans until you tell them that these laws would end abortion care for most pregnant people.”
You Can’t Trust the Far Right (from The New York Times): “When Mr. Kurz brought the Freedom Party into government in 2017 as the junior coalition partner, he claimed — and many believed — that doing so would “civilize” the party, which was founded by ex-Nazis and which regularly trafficked in racist and anti-Semitic tropes. (In 2012, Mr. Strache posted a cartoon on Facebook depicting a hooked-nose banker wearing Star of David cuff links, which he claimed was a critique of “greedy bankers” rather than anti-Semitic.) The argument was that by bringing the far right into mainstream politics, its leaders would have to tone down their radicalism and learn to appeal to a broader section of voters. With parties similar to — and allied with — the Freedom Party on the rise across Europe, this seemed to some like a sensible strategy.”
Alabama’s Abortion Bill Is Great News For White Supremacists (from The Huffington Post): “By contrast, any measure that would drive white women to churn out more babies is considered a win among white supremacists. And now one such measure is but a gubernatorial signature away from becoming law in Alabama.”
If You Voted for Him Then, Don’t Act Surprised Now (from John Pavlovitz): “More disturbing than you voting for him out of supposed necessity, or choosing an independent candidate that ensured his ascension, or abstaining from voting at all—is you acting like this wasn’t the logical outcome, that this unmitigated global disaster wasn’t all but inevitable.
What the hell did you expect?”
The Earth-Shaking Abortion That Never Happened (from Slate): “But the biggest coup of Blakeslee’s exposé centers around the conversion story itself. Pro-choicers have always been suspicious of Johnson’s claim that she saw an ultrasound-assisted abortion and then saw the light. This sort of story seems ripped straight from anti-choice propaganda and doesn’t really owe much to the daily life of a clinic worker in the real world. But this turns out to be more true than even the most cynical of us could have imagined. Blakeslee examines Planned Parenthood’s records on the day that Johnson claims to have seen this abortion performed, and found no evidence of an ultrasound abortion. When he asked her to describe the patient, she said she was a black woman, and Blakeslee discovered that the only black patient to have an abortion that day was at six weeks, not 13, as Johnson described.”
A Nazi Controversy Deep in the Solar System (from The Atlantic): “The public had many questions for them. What does this thing look like? What’s so cool about it? And why does it share a name with a term used by Nazis?”
Stop telling people that Alabama is better than this. It’s not. (from The AL Reporter): “In the past few years, when they weren’t being sent to prison for one felony or another, Alabama Republicans have attacked Hispanics, blacks, gays, blacks, transgender people, blacks, teachers, anyone who practices a religion other than Christianity and blacks.
And now, girls and women.”
Cory Booker: An Open Letter to Men on Abortion (from GQ): “For men, abortion is not something many feel the need or desire to talk about—it’s too uncomfortable. But that’s a trap—and one we need to get out of immediately. Men need to acknowledge that they benefit from abortion rights and reproductive health care, too.”
US pastor runs network giving 50,000 Ugandans bleach-based ‘miracle cure’ (from The Guardian): “The network, led by pastor Robert Baldwin and part-funded by Sam Little from Arlesey in Bedfordshire, is one of the most extensive efforts yet to distribute the “miracle cure” known as MMS, or “miracle mineral solution”. The Guardian has learned that poor Ugandans, including infants as young as 14 months old, are being given chlorine dioxide, a product that has no known health benefit and can be extremely dangerous.”
SOMETHING APPEARS TO HAVE RIPPED A HUGE HOLE IN THE MILKY WAY AND SCIENTISTS DON’T KNOW WHAT (from Newsweek): “The hole is enormous, so whatever made it must also have been. “It’s much more massive than a star,” she told the website. “Something like a million times the mass of the sun. So there are just no stars of that mass. We can rule that out. And if it were a black hole, it would be a supermassive black hole of the kind we find at the center of our own galaxy.””
And that’s it for this week. Stop by again for more interesting reads you didn’t know you needed. Until then, happy reading!
Iacon East 