The Countdown To A Real Life American Handmaids Tale?

In a worrying piece yesterday for Vogue, Molly Jong-Fast reported that "Republicans have started to blur the lines between birth control and abortion in the hopes of making it harder for American women to get both birth control and abortions. And nowhere is this clearer than in the Missouri statehouse, where lawmakers debated whether they needed to restrict Medicaid coverage of birth control and limit payments to Planned Parenthood. Yes, as the Kansas City Star reported, lawmakers there spent hours last week in a discussion that 'resembled a remedial sex-education course.' It was a tricky play, attacking birth control as a way to attack abortion, and it didn’t work…this time."

She quoted Planned Parenthood official Alexis McGill Johnson warning what the GOP is up to, making the point "that what happened in Missouri is not isolated, and in many ways it’s part of a Republican playbook for the future. 'What’s been happening in Missouri last week should serve as a warning sign for what’s to come. We’re already hearing members of the U.S. Congress spread the same falsehoods we’ve seen in Missouri, conflating medications that prevent pregnancy-- birth control and emergency contraception-- with medications that end pregnancy.'"

In backward Republican-controlled states-- not just Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina and Alabama, but even in states like Florida and Georgia-- "abortion access is so limited that women have to drive hundreds of miles to end a pregnancy. We’re already two Americas, and the conservative Supreme Court hasn’t even had a chance to get their hands on abortion."

No one doubts that the 6 right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court intend to overturn Roe v Wade. Meanwhile legislators are the tip of the arrow in the Republican Party's war against women. And not just on the state level. Republican extremists in Congress have plans as well; think Georgia crackpot Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example.

The war on choice rages on, but the alarming development is that it seems to be more and more focused on birth control. This is particularly disturbing because most of us feel that the legitimacy of birth control relies on solid settled precedent. But ever since Obamacare was passed, Republicans cottoned on to the fact that if they can tie birth control to abortion, then publicly funded insurance might not have to pay for birth control. Because of the Hyde Amendment, federally funded health care providers cannot, except in rare circumstances, offer coverage for abortion. So if birth control equals abortion…

As outlandish as this equating seems, you can already see its consequences playing out. Just look to QAnon congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who doesn’t think that Plan B-- the safe and effective early-contraception pill that prevents women from becoming pregnant within 72 hours of having intercourse-- should be covered for veterans by the Department of Veteran Affairs. Yes, Greene told Congress on Thursday that, “contraception stops a woman from becoming pregnant. The Plan B pill kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already pregnant.” This isn’t true. Plan B stops a woman from ovulating and thus prevents her from getting pregnant. A generous interpretation of this nonsense is that Greene has confused Plan B with the abortion pills misoprostol and mifepristone. But there’s also a possibility that this is part of an organized assault on birth control from the Republican Party of Gilead. More and more we see these coordinated attacks coming from both elected Republicans and their messaging arm, Fox News.

...Look, Republicans are smart(ish), so they’re not going to take away your birth control pills, they’re just going to continue to blur the line between abortion and birth control. And do you know why that is? Because abortion was never about life for these Republicans. These were the people who argued that your grandmother should be willing to die for the Dow Jones Industrial Average when it came to COVID lockdowns. These are the people who believe in the death penalty. No, this isn’t about life, this is about power. Republicans want to blur the line between birth control and abortion because they want the power to control what happens to women’s bodies.

Wonder how old the Supreme Court justices are?

• Stephen Breyer (D)- 1938 (age- 82-- 83 next month)

• Clarence Thomas (R)- 1948 (age- 73)

• Sammy Alito (R)- 1950 (age- 71)

• Sonia Sotomayor (D)- 1954 (age- 67)

• John Roberts (R)- 1955 (age- 66)

• Elena Kagan (D)- 1960 (age- 61)

• Brett Kavanaugh (R)- 1965 (age- 56)

• Neil Gorsuch (R)- 1967 (age- 53)

• Amy Coney Barrett (R)- 1972 (age- 49)

Wonder who will be in charge of confirming replacements for Breyer, Thomas and Alito?