Buckeye Breakthrough

Both state constitutional amendments on the ballot in Ohio last night passed overwhelmingly as voters in the Buckeye state approved the right to abortion, and legalized marijuana for recreational use.

Ohio voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to enshrine protections for reproductive health services, including abortion, in the state constitution — the latest in a post-Roe streak of ballot box wins for the abortion rights movement.

The Associated Press called the race less than two hours after polls closed, and early counts showed the abortion rights initiative leading by double digits.

The results follow a long, bitter and expensive campaign that shows the continuing resonance of the issue more than a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned and the strength of ballot measures as a tool for advancing abortion rights in GOP-dominated states.

The resounding victory comes despite a myriad of advantages for the anti-abortion camp heading into Election Day.

Gov. Mike DeWine cut ads for the “No” campaign calling the ballot measure “extreme,” and suggested he would push the legislature to add rape and incest exemptions to the state’s six-week ban if the referendum were defeated.

The official website for the GOP-controlled state legislature published posts claiming the amendment would “legalize abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy” and allow for “the dismemberment of fully conscious children” — echoing the disputed talking points of the campaign against the amendment.

Secretary of State and Senate hopeful Frank LaRose also crafted a ballot summary that abortion rights supporters decried as biased and misleading — including changing the word “fetus” to “unborn child” and removing references to protections for non-abortion services like contraception and fertility treatments.

LaRose also spearheaded August’s failed special election that would have made it more difficult to amend the state constitution and his office purged tens of thousands of inactive voters from the rolls after early voting for the November election was already underway and the deadline to reregister had passed.

Anti-abortion groups campaigning against the amendment focused on many of the same arguments that failed in six other states’ abortion ballot fights last year — including claims, disputed by their opponents, that the measure’s passage would strip away parental consent laws and all limits on abortions later in pregnancy.

But Ohio conservatives also shaped their strategy in response to those 2022 losses. They invested, for example, in targeted outreach to Black voters, students, and people who identify as “pro-choice” and encouraged early and absentee voting.

They were outraised, however, by abortion rights groups, which raked in triple the donations and purchased significantly more TV time. Most of the money on both sides came from out of state, with a group affiliated with Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America providing more than half of the funding for the anti-abortion campaign and several national groups pouring millions into the abortion rights campaign’s coffers, including the ACLU, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and Open Society Policy Center.

Ahh, but with Republicans controlling all three branches of government in Ohio, the fight is far, far from over.  Expect massive amounts of hoops for women to jump though, if not the existing six week ban to be ruled constitutional somehow.

These are, after all, Ohio Republicans, the most crooked state party in America.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

It's Election Day, and here in Kentucky we're hoping to re-elect Democratic Gov. Andy Behear to a second term.

 

Republicans are hoping to sink Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's reelection bid on Tuesday by tying him to the widely unpopular President Joe Biden.

But in this ruby red state that Biden lost by more than 25 points three years ago, Beshear appears to be offering Democrats hope of local success amid party-wide handwringing: voters supporting both Beshear and his Republican challenger, Attorney General Daniel Cameron, told ABC News that the governor's brand was strong enough to blunt any ties to the White House.

"Andy Beshear is a more liberal Democrat than the average Kentucky Democrat. Kentucky Democrats are pretty conservative. Now, is he the clone of Joe Biden? No," said Steve Megerle, an attorney and lifelong Republican in Fort Thomas, who said he is debating between voting for Beshear and leaving the governor's line blank on Tuesday.

"I probably don't see Beshear as bad as Biden," Carol Taylor told ABC News at a Cameron campaign event in Richmond. "I don't think I can say anything good about [Biden]."

To be sure, Beshear's reelection is no sure thing. A former state attorney general and son of a former governor, he narrowly won his first term in 2019 against an unpopular incumbent Republican and, given how the state usually votes, he'll have to win over a large swath of conservatives to stay in office, with recent polling previewing a neck-and-neck race.

But interviews with more than 20 operatives and voters of both parties revealed a lack of the kind of vitriol about Beshear that is usually evident when a governor is about to be unseated.

The trend could prove notable for other down-ballot Democrats in 2024 as they try to persuade voters to view them separately from Biden while sharing a ticket with him.

The governor's race could also show some signs of how Democrats will fare next year both in House seats the party holds where Donald Trump also won and in Senate races in Montana, Ohio and West Virginia, which like Kentucky often vote for Republicans.

 

And speaking of Ohio, over the river voters will go to the polls there to decide on abortion rights and legalized marijuana. 

Columbus area residents Beth and Kyle Long held hands as they walked into the Franklin County early voting center to cast their ballots for Issue 1, a proposed constitutional amendment that would enshrine abortion and other reproductive rights into the state's constitution.

Beth, now 18 weeks pregnant after in vitro fertilization, is at the same point in her pregnancy as she was in January when she got an abortion after learning the fetus she was carrying had a fatal condition.

"The doctors came back and told us, 'all of her organs, except her heart, are growing on the outside of her, enmeshed in the placenta," she told NPR. "'[They said] there is nothing we can do to go through and separate that. No fetus has ever survived this condition, and yours will not be the first.'"

The Longs were featured in an ad for Issue 1, one of many that have dominated the air waves in a contest that many view as a critical precursor to the 2024 elections.

"I think it's important for us to know that no one else here in Ohio has to go through what we went through," Kyle Long said before voting.

If voters approve the measure, which is similar to one passed in Michigan last year, Ohio would become the seventh state to pass abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.

 

Ohio Republicans have done everything they can to confuse, befuddle, obfuscate and cheat on Issue 1. Vote Yes, Ohio!

Getting Drugged Out

With pharmacy chain Rite Aid filing for bankruptcy this week, and the other big pharmacy chains in CVS and Walgreens expected to close hundreds of locations, it's looking like the pharmacy may go the way of the video store by the end of the decade.

 

Drugstore chains for decades saturated US cities, suburbs and small towns with new stores.

Now, they are closing thousands of stores, leaving gaps in communities for medicines and essentials. Researchers find pharmacy closures lead to health risks such as older adults failing to take medication.

Rite Aid, the third largest standalone pharmacy chain, filed for bankruptcy Sunday and will reportedly close roughly 400 to 500 of its approximately 2,200 stores.

Rite Aid was undone by competition from larger rivals, its $3.3 billion debt load, and expensive legal battles for its alleged role in fueling the opioid crisis.

It comes amid walkouts by Walgreens pharmacists and technicians around the country and at CVS stores in Kansas City over low pay and understaffed stores.
Drug store struggles

Rite Aid’s bankruptcy reflects long-term struggles in the retail pharmacy industry.

The majority of drugstores’ sales comes from filling prescriptions. But their profits from that segment have declined in recent years because of lower reimbursement rates for prescription drugs.

The front end of drugstores, where they sell snacks and household staples, also face pressure.

CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid are eliminating some locations as they face rising competition for these items from Amazon, big-box stores with pharmacies like Walmart, and Dollar General in rural areas.

Although drugstores benefited during the pandemic from people getting Covid-19 vaccines, fewer consumers visited stores to shop and prescription volumes fell because people were getting fewer elective procedures.

“The pandemic was not a strong time for drugstores,” said David Silverman, a senior director at Fitch Ratings.

Theft has become a problem for drugstores in some locations, and some stores have resorted to locking up products to prevent theft. But this has made the customer experience worse.

“Theft appears to be hitting drug retailers more than other categories,” Silverman said.

Drugstores are trying to pivot into the more lucrative health care industry in recent years and become primary care providers. CVS acquired health insurer Aetna, and Walgreens took a majority stake in primary care network VillageMD.

But this strategy requires fewer brick-and-mortar retail stores.

 

Walmart and Target were always threats to drugstore chains, but Amazon is going to finish them off.  Cheap prescriptions that you don't have to pick up and the pharmacist doesn't run out of? Yeah, I can already see how this is going to go.

 

On the other hand, if the Supreme Court gets rid of by-mail abortion pills, I can certainly see brick-and-mortar pharmacy companies ganging up on Amazon.

 

On the gripping hand, if your local chain drugstore isn't careful, they may put themselves out of business too if Congress and/or SCOTUS decide pills by mail is too dangerous. I don't see that happening, but who knows with this Congress, and this SCOTUS?

 

 

Alabama's Bloody Tide

Alabama Republicans have been refusing federal Medicaid expansion money for years now, and like most non-expansion red states, more and more hospitals are reducing services or closing up entirely as a direct result. Three hospitals near Bimingham are shutting down their maternity wards over the next several weeks, leaving tens of thousands of women without a place to go to deliver babies by Thanksgiving.

 

By the end of the month, two Alabama hospitals will stop delivering babies. A third will follow suit a few weeks later.

That will leave two counties — Shelby and Monroe — without any birthing hospitals, and strip a predominantly Black neighborhood in Birmingham of a sought-after maternity unit.

After that, pregnant women in Shelby County will have to travel at least 17 miles farther to reach a hospital with an OB-GYN. And because the county, one of Alabama’s largest, is bordered by another whose hospital also lacks an obstetrics unit, some of those residents are also losing the closest place they could go to deliver their babies.

“There’s a sense of dread knowing that there’s going to be families who are now not only driving to the county over, but driving through three counties,” said Honour McDaniel, director of maternal and infant health initiatives for the March of Dimes in Alabama.

People in Monroe County, meanwhile, could face drives between 35 to 100 miles to a labor and delivery department.

Trekking that far to give birth is not unheard of in Alabama, in which more than a third of the counties are maternity care deserts, according to the March of Dimes — meaning they have no hospital with obstetrics care, birth centers, OB-GYNs or certified nurse midwives.

The state has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country; only three others had higher rates between 2018 and 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Alabama also had the nation’s third-highest infant mortality rate in 2021, the latest data available.

Physicians currently or formerly affiliated with the Alabama maternity units about to close fear the consequences for pregnant women and babies, especially if people are not able to reach birthing hospitals quickly enough in emergencies.

“People are going to show up delivering in the ER, and you’re going to have bad outcomes,” said Dr. Jesanna Cooper, an OB-GYN who formerly worked at Princeton Baptist Medical Center, the Birmingham hospital closing its maternity services. “If you show up with a very premature baby and deliver in the ER, and you don’t have a NICU and you don’t have an obstetrics team, things aren’t going to go well.”

 

And of course the real kicker:

The closures come as the need for obstetrics care in Alabama is anticipated to rise as a result of its abortion laws. The state has banned almost all abortions since June 2022.

 

At this point, one would have to believe that the state Republican party, having banned abortion, and the same party letting hospitals die on the vine like this, really don't want those people to have sex at all without potentially ruinous consequences.  

When we talk about Alabama having a similar socioeconomic profile to say, Albania, understand that a poor exploitable populace is what the ruling government wants, and has wanted, for generations.

Burning Lake Of Fire, Con't

Perennial loser Kari Lake is trying to win Arizona's three-way US Senate race by promising she won't support a national abortion ban, and that's not going over well with the Republicans who are expected to give her an easy primary win. She's not alone by any means in backstabbing her MAGA base when it comes to an untenable position against abortion in the general election stage, either.

Kari Lake campaigned for governor of Arizona last year as a fierce ally of former President Donald J. Trump who was in lock step with her party’s right-wing base, calling abortion the “ultimate sin” and supporting the state’s Civil War-era restrictions on the procedure.

This week, she made a remarkable shift on the issue as she opened her bid for the U.S. Senate: She declared her opposition to a federal ban.

“Republicans allowed Democrats to define them on abortion,” Ms. Lake said in a statement to The New York Times about her break from the policy prescription favored by many anti-abortion groups and most of her party’s presidential contenders. She added that she supported additional resources for pregnant women, and that “just like President Trump, I believe this issue of abortion should be left to the states.”

The maneuvering by Ms. Lake, along with similar adjustments by Republican Senate candidates in Pennsylvania and Michigan, is part of a broader strategic effort in her party to recalibrate on an issue that has become a political albatross in battleground states and beyond.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, eliminating federal protections for abortion rights and handing Republicans one of their most significant policy victories in a generation, voters have turned out repeatedly to support abortion rights, even in red states.

The campaign arm for Senate Republicans, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is now coaching candidates to take the same tack as Ms. Lake — that is, clearly state their opposition to a national abortion ban, according to people familiar with the new strategy.

The group has also urged candidates to state their support for “reasonable limits” on late-term abortions with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, the people said. Rather than trying to avoid the topic, like many candidates did last year, it is advising Republicans to go on offense.

Senate Republicans were briefed last month on detailed research commissioned by One Nation, a nonprofit group aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, showing that many Americans equated the term “pro-life” — traditionally used by Republicans — with support for a total ban on abortion without any exceptions.

The research also showed that while voters opposed the idea of a total ban, there was wider support for restrictions after 12 to 15 weeks of pregnancy, particularly with exceptions for rape, incest and the life or health of the mother.

The nonprofit has suggested that Republicans communicate their views on abortion with empathy and compassion. Steven Law, who is the president of One Nation, is also the president of the Senate Leadership Fund, which has spent more than $1 billion on federal campaigns since 2016.

Whether or not Republican candidates for Congress — and the White House — can persuade voters that they have become more moderate on abortion promises to be one of the central questions of the 2024 elections.

“Voters have repeatedly rejected Republican politicians for supporting dangerous policies that deny a woman’s right to access abortion,” Sarah Guggenheimer, the spokesperson for the Senate Majority political action committee dedicated to electing Democratic candidates. “This cynical effort by Mitch McConnell and Republican candidates to mask their positions won’t change that.”

 

The problem of course is that the MAGA chuds aren't going to accept anything less than a permanent national abortion ban that jails half the population, including doctors, nurses and activists. The even bigger problem is even the "compromise" position still gives control of wombs and the folks that have them to the state. 

Democrats are right that this is a cynical ploy, and fewer and fewer voters are going to buy it.

The Battle Of The Buckeye State, Con't

With under a month to go until elections here in Kentucky for Governor, there's also a lot of attention on Ohio's abortion rights ballot measure, and the anti-choice MAGA dirtbags are pulling out all the stops to ensure women are second-class citizens in the Buckeye State.

Anti-abortion groups are banking on Ohio to end the movement’s run of state-level losses and create a blueprint for battles in 2024 and beyond.

In four weeks, voters in the Buckeye State will decide whether to enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution or be the first to reject an abortion-rights measure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

“Ohio is the first of a lot to come in the year ahead,” said March for Life President Jeanne Mancini, who flew to Ohio last week for a rally against the referendum. “That’s why we’re looking even more closely at Ohio: It could easily set the standard.”

Six states voted last year on abortion referendums. In all six, including deep-red Kansas, Kentucky and Montana — the anti-abortion side lost, and it wasn’t particularly close. The losing streak continued this year, as state supreme court races and special elections that became proxy wars over abortion swung decisively in favor of abortion-rights advocates.

The anti-abortion movement needs Ohio to be different, and as early voting begins Wednesday, they’re holding rallies, canvassing, phone-banking, and airing TV, radio and digital ads to ensure that November’s referendum doesn’t become the latest proof-point for a hardening narrative that opposing abortion rights is a losing issue for the conservative movement.

Conservatives also see Ohio’s referendum as a bellwether for 2024, when abortion rights could be on the ballot in Arizona, Florida, and Missouri and will feature heavily in Democratic efforts to hold the White House, and win a swath of state and federal seats.
“Ohio is a classic test market state,” said Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican seeking the nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown next year. “People know that, ‘Hey, if my product sells in Ohio, then I can sell it other places.’ The same logic applies politically.”

 

The "product" they are selling in Ohio is second-class citizenship for half the population. And there are a lot of buyers.

In many ways, Ohio conservatives are running the same playbook that failed in other states’ abortion ballot fights, with messaging focused on parental rights, gender-affirming care and abortions later in pregnancy. But the leaders of the anti-abortion campaign insist they’ve learned lessons from those losses and see several factors working in their favor heading into November, including more time to plan than their peers had in other states, an anti-abortion governor on their side and more targeted outreach to students, Black communities and other groups that lean towards Democrats.

“It’s important to win here so that we can demonstrate to the rest of the nation how you win ballot initiatives,” said Peter Range, the CEO of Ohio Right to Life and a board member of Protect Women Ohio — the coalition leading the campaign to defeat Issue 1. “The nation is watching what happens here.”

The abortion-rights groups pushing for the amendment’s passage see equally high stakes in Ohio, but insist the same messaging of freedom from government interference that helped their side win in six states last year will work again.

“We’re very similar to other states,” argued Sri Thakkilapati, the executive director of Preterm, an abortion provider based in Cleveland, and a leader of the pro-Issue 1 campaign. “Americans have shown, again and again, that this is not a partisan issue, that there’s wide support for abortion rights. Ohio is not unique. People understand what’s at stake.”
Still, Ohio’s anti-abortion leaders pointed to several reasons why they’re confident the state will tip in their favor.

Ohio has the only state referendum on abortion this year, meaning national anti-abortion groups like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Students for Life can focus their resources. Ohio conservatives also had more time to plan and fundraise than their counterparts in Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan and Montana last year who had to scramble to mount a campaign in the few months after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Both of those factors could equally benefit their opponents. But unlike several purple states that voted on abortion last year, Ohio has a popular Republican governor campaigning against the measure. Mike DeWine, who in 2019 signed the six-week abortion ban, hosted a “Vote No” rally at the Ohio Republican Party’s headquarters around the corner from the state capitol on Saturday, and has given speeches and interviews calling the proposed amendment “radical.”

“I’m voting no and I’m certainly urging everyone to vote no,” DeWine told GOP staff and volunteers at the Saturday event. “Whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice, Issue 1 just goes much, much too far.”

 

Ohio Republicans like Mike Dewine believe that women with control of their own bodies is "radical" and "just too far". I hope Ohio voters remember this in 2024 too.

Vote Yes on Issue 1.

Red State Dead, Redemptionless

The post-Obama era red state wave across the Midwest and South over the last decade has turned back decades of progress for tens of millions of Americans, including life expectancy numbers that are plummeting like rocks in the ocean, and there's no better example of how Republicans are killing their own constituents than Ohio.

Americans are more likely to die before age 65 than residents of similar nations, despite living in a country that spends substantially more per person on health care than its peers.

Many of those early deaths can be traced to decisions made years ago by local and state lawmakers over whether to implement cigarette taxes, invest in public health or tighten seat-belt regulations, among other policies, an examination by The Washington Post found. States’ politics — and their resulting policies — are shaving years off American lives.

Ashtabula, Ohio’s problems stand out compared with two nearby counties — Erie, Pa., and Chautauqua, N.Y. All three communities, which ring picturesque Lake Erie and are a short drive from each other, have struggled economically in recent decades as industrial jobs withered — conditions that contribute toward rising midlife mortality, research shows. None is a success story when it comes to health. But Ashtabula residents are much more likely to die young, especially from smoking, diabetes-related complications or motor vehicle accidents, than people living in its sister counties in Pennsylvania and New York, states that have adopted more stringent public health measures.

That pattern held true during the coronavirus pandemic, when Ashtabula residents died of covid at far higher rates than people in Chautauqua and Erie.

The differences around Lake Erie reflect a steady national shift in how public health decisions are being made and who’s making them.

State lawmakers gained autonomy over how to spend federal safety net dollars following Republican President Ronald Reagan’s push to empower the states in the 1980s. Those investments began to diverge sharply along red and blue lines, with conservative lawmakers often balking at public health initiatives they said cost too much or overstepped. Today, people in the South and Midwest, regions largely controlled by Republican state legislators, have increasingly higher chances of dying prematurely compared with those in the more Democratic Northeast and West, according to The Post’s analysis of death rates.

The differences in state policies directly correlate to those years lost, said Jennifer Karas Montez, director of the Center for Aging and Policy Studies at Syracuse University and author of several papers that describe the connection between politics and life expectancy.

Ohio sticks out — for all the wrong reasons. Roughly 1 in 5 Ohioans will die before they turn 65, according to Montez’s analysis using the state’s 2019 death rates. The state, whose legislature has been increasingly dominated by Republicans, has plummeted nationally when it comes to life expectancy rates, moving from middle of the pack to the bottom fifth of states during the last 50 years, The Post found. Ohioans have a similar life expectancy to residents of Slovakia and Ecuador, relatively poor countries.

Like other hard-hit Midwestern counties, Ashtabula has seen a rise in what are known as “deaths of despair” — drug overdoses, alcoholism and suicides — prompting federal and state attention in recent years. But here, as well as in most counties across the United States, those types of deaths are far outnumbered by deaths caused by cardiovascular disease, diabetes, smoking-related cancers and other health issues for residents between 35 and 64 years old, The Post found. Between 2015 and 2019, nearly five times as many Ashtabula residents in their prime died of chronic medical conditions as died of overdoses, suicide and all other external causes combined, according to The Post analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s death records.

Public health officials say Ohio could save lives by adopting measures such as a higher tobacco tax or stricter seat-belt rules, initiatives supported by Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican generally friendly to their cause.

“I told the legislature, ‘I’m going to ask you to invest in things where you’re not going to see the results during your term in office and I’m not going to see it during my term in office,’” DeWine said in an interview in the governor’s mansion.

But those proposals have repeatedly stalled in a state legislature controlled by Republicans for 27 of the past 29 years and whose leaders show little inclination to move aggressively now.

DeWine has a “nanny state” mentality, said Ohio state Rep. Bill Seitz, the state House majority floor leader and fellow Republican who has helped block tobacco tax increases amid aggressive lobbying by industry interests. The 68-year-old Seitz, who smoked for 50 years before developing kidney cancer and having a kidney removed this summer, said he’s unmoved by his own brush with the health system — even if it led him to finally kick the habit.

“I’m not going to turn into a smoke Nazi just because I used to smoke and I don’t anymore,” Seitz said.

 

When I say that Republicans would kill their own constituents if it meant "owning the libs" this is what I mean.  All my life America has been a country where the chief factor in your life expectancy has been the zip code where you grew up. Republicans are just making it worse for entire states.

They're literally killing us, folks.

The Country Goes Viral, Con't

As the latest variant of Covid ravages the country this fall, more Americans than ever have given up on vaccines and boosters, and the Biden administration has quietly folded efforts to fight vaccine disinformation after being blocked by Republicans in Congress and by the Supreme Court on what they can actually accomplish.

 

A Biden administration that vowed to restore Americans’ faith in public health has grown increasingly paralyzed over how to combat the resurgence in vaccine skepticism.

And internally, aides and advisers concede there is no comprehensive plan for countering a movement that’s steadily expanded its influence on the president’s watch.

The rising appeal of anti-vaccine activism has been underscored by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s insurgent presidential campaign and fueled by prominent factions of the GOP. The mainstreaming of a once-fringe movement has horrified federal health officials, who blame it for seeding dangerous conspiracy theories and bolstering a Covid-era backlash to the nation’s broader public health practices.

But as President Joe Biden ramps up a reelection campaign centered on his vision for a post-pandemic America, there’s little interest among his aides in courting a high-profile vaccine fight — and even less certainty of how to win.

“There’s a real challenge here,” said one senior official who’s worked on the Covid response and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “But they keep just hoping it’ll go away.”

The White House’s reticence is compounded by legal and practical concerns that have cut off key avenues for repelling the anti-vaccine movement, according to interviews with eight current and former administration officials and others close to the process.

Biden officials have felt handcuffed for the past two years by a Republican lawsuit over the administration’s initial attempt to clamp down on anti-vaxxers, who alleged the White House violated the First Amendment in encouraging social media companies to crack down on anti-vaccine posts. That suit, they believe, has limited their ability to police disinformation online. In addition, Congress is clawing back Covid funds once earmarked for vaccine education and outreach. And Biden himself has opted to largely ignore Kennedy’s campaign, concluding there’s no political benefit to engaging with the increasingly longshot challenger or his conspiratorial views.

The approach has given conservative influencers and lawmakers who have embraced Kennedy and other vaccine skeptics more space to promote their views and tout themselves as free speech warriors doing battle against the Biden administration.

And the impact is clear: As another Covid vaccination campaign gets underway, fewer Americans than ever have kept up to date on their shots. Child vaccination rates against the flu are measurably lower than before the pandemic. Even standard childhood inoculations to prevent diseases like the measles are subject to deepening partisan divisions, with recent polling showing Republicans are now more than twice as likely to believe the shots should be optional than they did in 2019. Democrats, by contrast, remain overwhelmingly in favor of childhood vaccine requirements.

“We can see a long-term future where kids aren’t going to get vaccinated in schools, diseases that we once thought had ended will roar back and kids will get sick and die from 100 percent preventable conditions,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University public health professor who has advised the White House. “This will cost lives in the long term.”

 

Science won many battles over the last three years, but the anti-vaxxers have all but won the war politically, and it's going to cost thousands upon thousands of preventable deaths in the years ahead.

I don't know how we fix this, either. The Roberts Court has made it clear that the government can't mandate vaccinations, and corporations can't require them for employment. Increasingly, schools are being blocked from requiring them for attendance as entire school districts are getting sick and schools having to shut down because of lack of healthy staff or students.

Hospitalizations are up as I pointed out at the top of the post, and we're in as bad of a situation as we were in 2020, only we have the vaccines ready and much fewer people are using them.

Please get the latest booster. Trust me when I say you never know what's around the corner in life...or death.

Florida Goes Viral, Con't

The FDA has new guidance on the latest Covid booster vaccine, approving and recommending the booster for all Americans over six months in age, and once again, Florida's MAGA nutjob Surgeon General David Ladapo is telling Florida residents under 65 not to get vaccinated at all.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hand-picked surgeon general on Wednesday warned healthy adults under the age of 65 against taking a new Covid-19 booster, contradicting the Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration.

Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, speaking during a roundtable that DeSantis hosted, said that after three years of Covid, most healthy people don’t need to worry about getting infected from a virus that has killed more than 1 million people across the country. Ladapo is a well-known vaccine skeptic who has claimed some shots pose risks to healthy young men.

“With the amount of immunity that’s in the community — with virtually every walking human being having some degree of immunity, and with the questions we have about safety and about effectiveness, especially about safety, my judgment is that it’s not a good decision for young people and for people who are not at high risk at this point in the pandemic,” he said.

Previous guidance by Ladapo about Covid-19 vaccine safety has been widely rejected by the medical community. Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University, said Wednesday it appeared that Ladapo and the others at the roundtable were selectively highlighting data to show problems with the new boosters.

“In general, they’re cherry-picking data and facts and science,” Salmon said. “And I think that they’re there, because they don’t want to recommend this vaccine for Florida.”

Jason Salemi, an epidemiology professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, said there are plenty of credible studies showing that healthy people under the age of 65 are still at risk of death from Covid-19.

“Equipping ourselves with and implementing mitigation measures can result in considerably less severe illness, less long Covid, and less mortality, all with little impact on our day-to-day lives,” Salemi wrote in an email. “So, there is clearly a need.”

The CDC and FDA this week gave the green light for two new vaccine boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which are recommended for people ages 6 months and up.

 

Remember, the only person here who manipulated the science on vaccines is Ladapo himself.

Ladapo, a well-known vaccine skeptic, has gone even further. Last year, he warned young men against taking the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, suggesting that they increase the risk of cardiac-related deaths. POLITICO later revealed that Ladapo personally altered a state study to imply that the vaccines pose a health risk to young men. He highlighted that study when asserting that some Covid vaccines are dangerous for young men. 

He lied to make the Covid vaccines look more dangerous than they were, got caught, and nothing happened. And now, he's lying again, and putting thousands of Floridians at risk of dying from Covid.

This is what I mean when I say Republicans will kill everyone you know if it means they can "own the libs."

Shutdown Countdown, Clown Town Edition

Usually as we head into the last half of September, we have the annual spending bill battle where Republicans and Democrats work it out and fund the government for another year. Only one problem this time around, and that's because House GOP Speaker Kevin McCarty is such an absolute paperweight of uselessness that the House GOP hasn't managed to pass any spending bills at all, and that the country is headed for an economic nightmare again.

 

House GOP leaders have abandoned efforts to pass an agriculture funding bill amid an intraparty row over abortion policy. Now, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is left without critical leverage as the Democratic-majority Senate advances its own plans and Congress hurtles toward a federal shutdown Oct. 1.

House GOP leaders had hoped that inserting abortion policy into every major piece of their government spending plans would help win over conservative members and placate influential outside groups agitating for more aggressive action on the issue. But so far, the move has helped to seal the demise of what is usually among the easiest appropriations bills for Congress to pass, drawing fierce and rare pushback from more than a dozen moderate Republicans.

At the center of the battle: a GOP provision in the agriculture funding bill to ban mail delivery of abortion pills nationwide. Divisions over the move, along with disagreement over the total spending levels, forced senior Republicans to scuttle a planned House vote on the bill that funds the USDA and Food and Drug Administration at the end of July. Discussions to revive the bill over the August recess failed, according to three people who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Now, Republican leaders have no plans to bring the bill to the floor vote amid the time crunch, the three people familiar with the talks confirmed. That leaves the Democratic-controlled Senate — which is advancing its own, very different version of the Agriculture and FDA funding bill as part of a “minibus” spending package this week — in a far stronger negotiating position when it comes time to hammer out a compromise spending bill to fund the government.

“It’s dead, dead,” one of the people familiar with the talks said, describing the fate of the House USDA and FDA funding bill, and, for now, the ban on mail delivery of abortion pills House Republicans have been pushing.

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), a member of the Appropriations Committee, said agriculture was important “on both sides of the aisle” but that Agriculture Department and FDA funding will likely be hammered out in talks with the Senate. The focus now, the Montana Republican said, should be elsewhere.

“We gotta get the border done,” Zinke said.

While GOP leaders anticipated pushback on the spending proposals from their right flank — including pressure for deeper spending cuts and tougher border security measures — they’ve also faced rare public pushback from moderate Republicans, who have dug in against their abortion strategy. In particular, those moderates have objected to the provision in the Agriculture and FDA spending bill to ban mail delivery of abortion pills, which have become a major flashpoint since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, the pills have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S. but battles over the drugs continuing to play out in courts, state legislatures and on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.), who represents a district President Joe Biden won in 2020, said in an interview earlier this summer that he “cannot vote for the bill” as long as it includes the abortion pill rider. Fellow New York Republican Mike Lawler, who also hails from a Biden district, told POLITICO the abortion pill policy “should be dealt with at the state level.”

Those GOP moderates are eager to see controversial abortion provisions and other divisive provisions included the House’s other spending bills tossed out as House GOP leaders turn to crafting a larger funding package and reconciling it with the Senate.

In other areas of the spending fight, House Republicans’ Financial Services draft funding bill would block Washington, D.C., from using its own money to support abortion services and ban insurance coverage of either abortion or gender-affirming care for federal employees. Their Labor-HHS-Education spending bill would ban federal funding for medical research using fetal tissue and bar Planned Parenthood from participating in any federal programs. And their State-Foreign Operations spending bill would ban funding to any group overseas that provides abortions or information about the procedure.

The House’s Defense spending bill, which recently drew a veto threat from the White House over its anti-abortion provisions among other measures, is also in trouble. A floor vote on the GOP bill, which would block funding for service members to travel for an abortion if they’re stationed in a state where the procedure is banned, is now in jeopardy.

“A number of us would like to see the stickier social issues presented as individual amendments,” said Rep. John Duarte, a Republican who represents a blue district in California.

The fight comes as Republicans continue to struggle to unite around a strategy and message on abortion more than a year after the fall of Roe v. Wade. And Democrats plan to lean heavily on the issue in the 2024 campaign.

 

In other words, the House GOP can't even pass its own bills at this point, which means the Senate is in charge, the deals will be made with the Democrats, and McCarthy will have to eat bowl after bowl of turd flakes, resulting in his eventual ouster next month as he gets the Boehner Special. 

 

And note it's not the right-wing MAGA trolls dropping out of this bill, it's the House Republicans in Blue and purple states who know if they vote to end shipping of abortion meds by mail that they're done.

Who knows who will replace him, but I don't see him surviving as Speaker for much longer. Maybe Gaetz or Stefanik? Steve Scalise? 

We'll see.

The Road To Gilead Does Not Go Through Mexico

With a new sweeping legal ruling where Mexico's Supreme Court has decriminalized abortion in all states in the country this week, our southern neighbor is now infinitely more enlightened than America is on women's rights.

Mexico’s Supreme Court threw out all federal criminal penalties for abortion Wednesday, ruling that national laws prohibiting the procedure are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights in a sweeping decision that extended Latin American’s trend of widening abortion access.

The high court ordered that abortion be removed from the federal penal code. The ruling will require the federal public health service and all federal health institutions to offer abortion to anyone who requests it.

“No woman or pregnant person, nor any health worker, will be able to be punished for abortion,” the Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials GIRE, said in a statement.

Some 20 Mexican states, however, still criminalize abortion. While judges in those states will have to abide by the court’s decision, further legal work will be required to remove all penalties.

Celebration of the ruling soon spilled out onto social media.

“Today is a day of victory and justice for Mexican women!” Mexico’s National Institute for Women wrote in a message on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The government organization called the decision a “big step” toward gender equality.

Sen. Olga Sánchez Cordero, a former Supreme Court justice, applauded the ruling, saying on X that it represented an advance toward “a more just society in which the rights of all are respected.” She called on Mexico’s Congress to pass legislation in response.

But others in the highly religious country decried the decision. Irma Barrientos, director of the Civil Association for the Rights of the Conceived, said opponents will continue the fight against expanded abortion access.

“We’re not going to stop,” Barrientos said. “Let’s remember what happened in the United States. After 40 years, the Supreme Court reversed its abortion decision, and we’re not going to stop until Mexico guarantees the right to life from the moment of conception.”

The court said on X that “the legal system that criminalized abortion” in Mexican federal law was unconstitutional because it “violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to gestate.”

The decision came two years after the court ruled that abortion was not a crime in one northern state. That ruling set off a slow state-by-state process of decriminalizing it.

Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th state to drop criminal penalties.

Abortion-rights activists will have to continue seeking legalization state by state, though Wednesday’s decision should make that easier. State legislatures can also act on their own to erase abortion penalties.

For now, the ruling does not mean that every Mexican women will be able to access the procedure immediately, explained Fernanda Díaz de León, sub-director and legal expert for women’s rights group IPAS.

What it does do — in theory — is obligate federal agencies to provide the care to patients. That’s likely to have a cascade of effects.

Díaz de León said removing the federal ban takes away another excuse used by care providers to deny abortions in states where the procedure is no longer a crime.

It also allows women with formal employment who are part of the social security system and government employees to seek the procedure in federal institutions in states where the abortion is still criminalized, she said.

Díaz de León and officials at other feminist organizations worry that women, particularly in more conservative areas, may still be denied abortions.

“It’s a very important step,” Díaz de León said. But “we need to wait to see how this is going to be applied and how far it reaches.”

The battle to decriminalize the state laws will continue, but I don't see how they will survive in the wake of this ruling.

And yet in the US, we're headed for more bans and more evidence that the country being divided into states where a woman has a right to her own reproductive system and states where she 100% does not is unsustainable federally.

I expect a federal ruling is going to come sooner rather than later where there's five votes to say that the availability of abortions in blue states is infringing upon red state bans, and that it's the blue states who are wrong and that the whole thing has to go. That's the endgame.

How quickly we get there depends on a lot of things, but the more Republicans get into power, the faster this handbasket goes to hell.

 

Increasingly, America is the outlier rogue nation that other, more civilized countries are warning their own people about, and with good reason.

The Road To Gilead Gets A Rebrand

Republicans are losing elections when calling their side "pro-life" while criminalizing women's reproductive systems, tracking their movements into other states, offering bounties to family to turn women in, and basically ruling women by fear and punishment, in some cases sentencing them to death for the crime of not being able to carry a dangerous pregnancy to term.

The Republican response to this is of course to rebrand "pro-life" as something that turns off voters a bit less so more people will vote to keep these monsters in power.

Republican strategists are exploring a shift away from “pro-life” messaging on abortion after consistent Election Day losses for the GOP when reproductive rights were on the ballot.

At a closed-door meeting of Senate Republicans this week, the head of a super PAC closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., presented poll results that suggested voters are reacting differently to commonly used terms like “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, said several senators who were in the room.

The polling, which NBC News has not independently reviewed, was made available to senators Wednesday by former McConnell aide Steven Law and showed that “pro-life” no longer resonated with voters.

“What intrigued me the most about the results was that ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ means something different now, that people see being pro-life as being against all abortions ... at all levels,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said in an interview Thursday.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the polling made it clear to him that more specificity is needed in talking about abortion.

“Many voters think [‘pro-life’] means you’re for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever, and ‘pro-choice’ now can mean any number of things. So the conversation was mostly oriented around how voters think of those labels, that they’ve shifted. So if you’re going to talk about the issue, you need to be specific,” Hawley said Thursday.

“You can’t assume that everybody knows what it means,” he added. “They probably don’t.”

Abortion is now banned in 14 states, and several others have pursued restrictions. Eleven states, including Missouri, have enacted abortion bans with no exceptions for rape and incest.

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., summarized Wednesday’s meeting as being focused on “pro-baby policies.”

Asked whether senators were encouraged to use a term other than “pro-life,” Young said his “pro-baby” descriptor “was just a term of my creation to demonstrate my concern for babies.”

Senators who attended Law’s presentation said he encouraged Republicans to be as specific as possible when they describe their positions on abortion, highlighting findings that he said could have a negative impact on elections. Many senators in attendance represent states where Republican-led legislatures are pursuing abortion restrictions.

“People require more in-depth discussions; you can’t get away with a label anymore,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo. “What we’ve learned is you have to dive in and talk to people about very specifically where you are on that subject if you’re running for public office.”

 

We're pro-baby now! Everyone loves babies! We love babies so much that we don't see women as anything other than baby factories and will increasingly use the coercive power of the state against them if they try anything else, but hey, babies!

Yes, Republicans. Keep up the rebranding of your open villainy heading into 2024. It'll work great.

The First Lady Goes Viral

In a non-so-gentle reminder that the Covid era isn't over, despite everyone pretending that millions of Americans somehow won't contract the disease and thousands will die this fall and winter, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden has tested positive for the virus.

 

First lady Jill Biden tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday and is experiencing “mild symptoms,” the White House said. President Joe Biden has tested negative.

The diagnosis has upended the first lady’s plans to begin teaching the fall semester at Northern Virginia Community College on Tuesday. She is working with the school to “ensure her classes are covered by a substitute,” Vanessa Valdivia, the first lady’s spokesperson, said.

Dr. Biden, who remains at the family’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, typically teaches on Tuesday and Thursdays.

An administration official told CNN Monday that there are no changes to White House Covid protocols or to the president’s schedule at this time.

The diagnosis of the first lady, 72, comes amid a busy week for Joe Biden, who delivered a Labor Day speech in Philadelphia earlier in the day. The president is scheduled to present the Medal of Honor to an Army captain in a White House ceremony Tuesday before departing for the G20 Summit in India on Thursday.

CNN has asked for more details on both the president and first lady’s regular Covid testing cadence and if Joe Biden was with his wife when she began exhibiting Covid symptoms.

Last summer, the first lady tested positive for Covid-19 while vacationing in South Carolina in August. President Biden tested positive last July. Both experienced rebound cases shortly after being treated with Paxlovid.

 

Needless to say, Covid is still a very real threat to the Bidens, and to millions of Americans, and while vaccination continues to increase, new variants also continue to emerge. The battle is far from over.

 

Get the jab.

The Road From Gilead Is Being Watched In Texas

More and more local and county jurisdictions in Texas are passing home rule versions of the state's "abortion bounty bill", making it a crime to "traffic" those passing through county roads, lanes, highways and byways on the way to states like neighboring New Mexico to get an abortion procedure.

 

More than a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned, many conservatives have grown frustrated by the number of people able to circumvent antiabortion laws — with some advocates grasping for even stricter measures they hope will fully eradicate abortion nationwide.

That frustration is driving a new strategy in heavily conservative cities and counties across Texas. Designed by the architects of the state’s “heartbeat” ban that took effect months before Roe fell, ordinances like the one proposed in Llano — where some 80 percent of voters in the county backed President Donald Trump in 2020 — make it illegal to transport anyone to get an abortion on roads within the city or county limits. The laws allow any private citizen to sue a person or organization they suspect of violating the ordinance.

Antiabortion advocates behind the measure are targeting regions along interstates and in areas with airports, with the goal of blocking off the main arteries out of Texas and keeping pregnant women hemmed within the confines of their antiabortion state. These provisions have already passed in two counties and two cities, creating legal risk for those traveling on major highways including Interstate 20 and Route 84, which head toward New Mexico, where abortion remains legal and new clinics have opened to accommodate Texas women. Several more jurisdictions are expected to vote on the measure in the coming weeks.

“This really is building a wall to stop abortion trafficking,” said Mark Lee Dickson, the antiabortion activist behind the effort.

Conservative lawmakers started exploring ways to block interstate abortion travel long before Roe was overturned. A Missouri legislator introduced a law in early 2022 that would have allowed any private citizen to sue anyone who helped a Missouri resident secure an abortion, regardless of where the abortion occurred — an approach later discussed at length by several national antiabortion groups. In April, Idaho became the first state to impose criminal penalties on anyone who helps a minor leave the state for an abortion without parental consent.

But even in the most conservative corners of Texas, efforts to crack down on abortion travel are meeting some resistance — with some local officials, even those deeply supportive of Texas’s strict abortion laws, expressing concern that the “trafficking” efforts go too far and could harm their communities.

The pushback reflects a new point of tension in the post-Roe debate among antiabortion advocates over how aggressively to restrict the procedure, with some Republicans in other states fearing a backlash from voters who support abortion rights. In small-town Texas, the concerns are more practical than political.

Two weeks before the Llano vote, lawmakers in Chandler, Tex., held off passing the ordinance, citing concerns about legal ramifications for the town and how the measure might conflict with existing Texas laws.

“I believe we’re making a mistake if we do this,” said Chandler council member Janeice Lunsford, minutes before she and her colleagues agreed to push the vote to another time. She later told The Washington Post that she felt the state’s abortion ban already did enough to stop abortions in Texas.

Then came the Llano City Council meeting on Aug. 21. Speaking to the crowd, Almond was careful to emphasize her antiabortion beliefs.

“I hate abortion,” she said. “I’m a Jesus lover like all of you in here.”

Still, she said, she couldn’t help thinking about the time in college when she picked up a friend from an abortion clinic — and how someone might have tried to punish her under this law.

“It’s overreaching,” she said. “We’re talking about people here.”

 

She's so very close to getting it, isn't she?

I expect that the question of these illegal search and seizure attempts are going to end up in front of SCOTUS in the next year or two, because if you can be sued into civil court oblivion for tens of thousands of dollars in damages for driving someone to an abortion clinic out of state, your interstate travel can then be stopped for any reason states deem fit.

Down that road is fascism, very much so.

Sunday Long Read: The Far Future Of Nearsightedness

In our Sunday Long Read from Amit Katwala at Wired Magazine, while it seems the overwhelming prevalence of myopia in Taiwan has led to much scientific hand-wringing and social wrangling, the solution is apparently simple: get more outdoor light.

 

DOING SURGERY ON the back of the eye is a little like laying new carpet: You must begin by moving the furniture. Separate the muscles that hold the eyeball inside its socket; make a delicate cut in the conjunctiva, the mucous membrane that covers the eye. Only then can the surgeon spin the eyeball around to access the retina, the thin layer of tissue that translates light into color, shape, movement. “Sometimes you have to pull it out a little bit,” says Pei-Chang Wu, with a wry smile. He has performed hundreds of operations during his long surgical career at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Kaohsiung, an industrial city in southern Taiwan.

Wu is 53, tall and thin with lank dark hair and a slightly stooped gait. Over dinner at Kaohsiung’s opulent Grand Hotel, he flicks through files on his laptop, showing me pictures of eye surgery—the plastic rods that fix the eye in place, the xenon lights that illuminate the inside of the eyeball like a stage—and movie clips with vision-related subtitles that turn Avengers: Endgame, Top Gun: Maverick, and Zootopia into public health messages. He peers at the screen through Coke bottle lenses that bulge from thin silver frames.

Wu specializes in repairing retinal detachments, which happen when the retina separates from the blood vessels inside the eyeball that supply it with oxygen and nutrients. For the patient, this condition first manifests as pops of light or dark spots, known as floaters, which dance across their vision like fireflies. If left untreated, small tears in the retina can progress from blurred or distorted vision to full blindness—a curtain drawn across the world.

When Wu began his surgical career in the late 1990s, most of his patients were in their sixties or seventies. But in the mid-2000s, he started to notice a troubling change. The people on his operating table kept getting younger. In 2016, Wu performed a scleral buckle surgery—fastening a belt around the eye to fix the retina into place—on a 14-year-old girl, a student at an elite high school in Kaohsiung. Another patient, a prominent programmer who had worked for Yahoo, suffered two severe retinal detachments and was blind in both eyes by age 29. Both of these cases are part of a wider problem that’s been growing across Asia for decades and is rapidly becoming an issue in the West too: an explosion of myopia.

Myopia, or what we commonly call nearsightedness, happens when the eyeball gets too long—it deforms from soccer ball to American football—and then the eye focuses light not on the retina but slightly in front of it, making distant objects appear blurry. The longer the eyeball becomes, the worse vision gets. Ophthalmologists measure this distortion in diopters, which refer to the strength of the lens required to bring someone’s vision back to normal. Anything worse than minus 5 diopters is considered “high myopia”—somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of myopia diagnoses around the world are in this category. In China, up to 90 percent of teenagers and young adults are myopic. In the 1950s the figure was as low as 10 percent. A 2012 study in Seoul found that an astonishing 96.5 percent of 19-year-old men were nearsighted. Among high schoolers in Taiwan, it’s around 90 percent. In the US and Europe, myopia rates across all ages are well below 50 percent, but they’ve risen sharply in recent decades. It’s estimated that by 2050, half the world’s population will need glasses, contacts, or surgery to see across a room. High myopia is now the leading cause of blindness in Japan, China, and Taiwan.

If those trends continue, it’s likely that millions more people around the world will go blind much earlier in life than they—or the societies they live in—are prepared for. It’s a “ticking time bomb,” says Nicola Logan, an optometry professor at the UK’s Aston University. She wasn’t the only expert I talked to who used that phrase. Because so much of Taiwan’s population is already living life with myopia, the island nation has already glimpsed what could be coming for the rest of us. And in a rare confluence, the country may also be the best place to look for solutions.

 

Literally the solution to the myopia epidemic in Asia is "send kids outside more" instead of keeping them in dimly lit classrooms all year. Australia's occurrence of myopia among kids is just 13%, where in Japan, China and Taiwan it's around half.

So yeah, go let the kids play outside for a bit.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead Goes Through Ohio, Con't

Having been roundly defeated in their efforts to make the vote in November on Issue 1 enshrining reproductive rights into the state constitution more difficult by requiring 60% of the vote, Ohio Republicans led by GOP Secretary of State and US Senate hopeful Frank LaRose are changing the rules again, trying to put a thumb, arm, shoulder, torso and body on the scale to muddle the language of the ballot initiative.

 

In a 3-2 split decision Thursday, the Ohio Ballot Board rejected using the full text of a proposed reproductive rights amendment on the ballot in November, adopting instead summary language written by the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office that was criticized for being incomplete and inaccurate.

The board’s approval of the language – which is now titled Issue 1 for the November general election – was the next step in the process of voters deciding whether or not the Ohio Constitution will include the right to abortion, as well as contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and continuing one’s own pregnancy. Those last four items were all left out of the language approved by the ballot board majority.

The summary language does not change what the actual amendment would state in the constitution, but would be the last representation of the amendment voters read before the casting their approval or rejection.

The full text of the amendment will be available at boards of elections during the election, but not in the ballot booths with voters. LaRose said posters with the text will be accessible at voting locations.

In the summary language approved by the board, the medical term “fetus” is changed to “unborn child,” and the amendment’s “decision” language is changed to “medical treatment.”

The leader of the Ohio Ballot Board, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, said the changes were made by “staff” of the board, though Democratic board member and state Rep. Elliot Forhan said “I would assume that the buck stops with the secretary of state.”

LaRose during the meeting also said that, “having worked extensively on drafting this, I do believe it’s fair and accurate.”

LaRose has been vocal in his opposition of the amendment, even saying the effort around the previous Issue 1, which would have changed the threshold to approve a constitutional amendment had it not been roundly defeated, was targeting the abortion rights fight specifically.

At the beginning of Thursday’s meeting, he prefaced the board’s activity by saying the group was not there to “debate the merits” of the amendment or the marijuana ballot initiative also on the table at the meeting.

Board member and state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, however, gave a speech in the middle of the meeting harshly criticizing the amendment and calling it “a bridge too far,” even after multiple comments by LaRose about the neutrality with which the board was supposed to conduct their business.

“This is a dangerous amendment that I’m going to fight tirelessly against,” Gavarone said. “But that’s not why we’re here today.”

Gavarone also claimed, as anti-abortion groups throughout the state do as well, that the amendment is “an assault on parental rights.” Neither the amendment nor the summary approved by the board mention parental rights of any kind.

The senator continued her comments during the board meeting, saying the true nature of the amendment “is hidden behind overly broad language,” despite the fact that the board summary took out pieces of the full text.

The summary passed by the board does not include a list of the rights to “reproductive decisions” spelled out in the ballot measure, including contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, and miscarriage care, all of which would be impacted under the new constitutional amendment.

 

So one more set of hurdles on the amendment itself, and Republicans are forced to rewrite and hide the fact the ballot initiative will protect a number of reproductive rights for Ohioans, because that would be popular and the vote might actually pass.

 

Republicans of course can't have that. I fully expect that should the ballot initiative pass, the most corrupt GOP state legislature in the country will simply turn to the GOP-controlled State Supreme Court to interpret that the state's abortion ban meets the criteria of the language of the ballot amendment, or far more likely in a ruling that favors the amendment and strikes down the law, Republicans will ignore it fully.

I mean, we've already gotten to the point where the state is ignoring the Court's ruling on gerrymandering, now stuck in a permanent limbo where even if the state Supreme Court doesn't play ball, Republicans will ignore the ballot measure and the courts and continue to shut down abortion clinics and hospital procedures in the state anyway.

There just isn't any reason to believe that Republicans will pay attention to the ballot measure if it wins, or they'll just make it impossible to enforce with loopholes and evasions that would make Republicans in Florida and Texas jealous.

I do expect the ballot to win in November.

The real fight begins then.

Going Viral In Kentucky, Con't

Welcome back to school here in Kentucky, kids. You may think Covid is over. Covid doesn't think it's over with you.

Two school districts in eastern Kentucky have canceled in-person classes this week after a rise in illnesses including Covid-19, respiratory viruses and strep among its students and staff, according to local officials.

The Lee County School District, which enrolls just under 900 students, reported an 82% decrease in attendance last Friday, which it attributed to illnesses including flu and colds, Superintendent Earl Ray Shuler said. 

Lee County started the school year on August 8. By Monday of this week, the attendance rate had dropped to 81%, with 14 staff members also out sick, Shuler said.

Shuler said all buildings and buses are being sanitized, and all student activities for the remainder of the week are canceled.

Classwork will be done remotely for the remainder of the week. In-person learning returns Monday.

Students who had Covid-19 will be required to wear masks for five days when students return to school, Shuler said.

Magoffin County Schools, which has approximately 1,800 students, has seen its student attendance plummet from 95% last week to 83% on Wednesday, Magoffin County Schools Superintendent Chris Meadows told CNN by phone.

Meadows said the district made the decision Wednesday to cancel classes for the remainder of the week and will have students return to school Monday.

“We just kept seeing a trend,” Meadows said. “It’s not an easy decision, I don’t like to close school.”

 

A not-so-gentle reminder that the pandemic is still very much with us, and with one out of every five kids sick already in some districts, it's only going to get worse once we hit the heart of flu and Covid season later this fall. 

Believe it, from the guy who's taking care of loads of leave of absence tickets at your local enterprise IT desk because HR forces you on to short-term leave if you're out sick more than 3 straight days. Those tickets are way up too since school started, with snotty little kids bringing diseases to and from the local petri dish with 35 kids stuffed in a classroom and getting mom and dad sick.

It's going to be a bad winter.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead Goes Through South Carolina

After Republicans replaced the only woman on South Carolina's state Supreme Court who blocked the state's "fetal heartbeat" abortion ban earlier this year, a 4-1 decision from the now all-male panel has stripped the right of bodily autonomy from the state's women.

 

South Carolina’s new all-male Supreme Court reversed course on abortion on Wednesday, upholding a ban on most such procedures after about six weeks of pregnancy.

The 4-1 ruling departs from the court’s own decision earlier this year to strike down a similar law.

The continued erosion of legal abortion access across the U.S. South comes after Republican state lawmakers replaced the lone female on the court, Justice Kaye Hearn.

Writing for the new majority, Justice John Kittredge acknowledged that the 2023 law infringes on “a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy,” but said the state legislature reasonably determined this time around that those interests don’t outweigh “the interest of the unborn child to live.”

“As a Court, unless we can say that the balance struck by the legislature was unreasonable as a matter of law, we must uphold the Act,” Kittredge wrote.

It was Hearn who wrote the majority’s lead opinion in January striking down the ban. The court ruled then that the law violated the state constitution’s right to privacy.

Hearn then reached the court’s mandatory retirement age, enabling the Republican-dominated legislature to put Gary Hill on what is now the nation’s only state Supreme Court with an entirely male bench.

 

And yet plenty of women will continue to vote for Republicans in SC and plenty of other red states, and just accept that all women need to be second-class citizen to the axolotl tank imperative in order to keep all the crabs in the bucket, and none can escape.

Increasingly, your rights depend on where you live in America, and solely so in some cases. That's not justice or fairness, it's tyranny.

 

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Indiana

With the final appeal by the ACLU to Indiana's state Supreme Court denied, the 2022 abortion ban signed into law by GOP Gov. Eric Holcomb now goes into effect.

Indiana’s near-total abortion ban is now in effect after the Indiana Supreme Court on Monday denied a request from the ACLU and Planned Parenthood to rehear the case.

For all practical purposes, health care providers had been following the abortion law since Aug. 1, though the process of the legal case ticked on.

Monday’s news comes more than a year after Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the law at the end of the 2022 special legislative session.

At the end of July, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood asked for a rehearing to clarify exemptions in the law related to an exemption to the life of the mother.

However, Chief Justice Loretta Rush, in an opinion, stated that the parties asking for a rehearing in the case did not “properly” put concerns about the impact of the abortion law on Hoosier women seeking medical care for serious health conditions or on health care providers.

The ACLU and Planned Parenthood wanted the court to maintain the injunction that completely stopped the ban from going into effect while it pursued another injunction in trial court, according to Rush’s opinion.

Justice Christopher Goff was the only member of the state’s Supreme Court to dissent with the denial to rehear the case.

In a prepared statement, Attorney General Todd Rokita said his office has defended the law every step of the way and applauded the court's decision.

“This is great news for Hoosier life and liberty," he said. "We defeated the pro-death advocates who try to interject their views in a state that clearly voted for life.”

In a statement, ACLU of Indiana executive director Jane Henegar said it's a "dark day" in the state's history.

"We have seen the horrifying impact of bans like this across the country, and the narrow exceptions included in this extreme ban will undoubtedly put Hoosiers’ lives at risk," Henegar said in the statement. "We will continue to fight in court to clarify and expand upon the current exceptions. Every person should have the fundamental freedom to control their own body and politicians’ personal opinions should play no part in this personal decision.”

IndyStar has reached out to the branch of Planned Parenthood that includes Indiana.

 

The ban criminalizes the procedure outside of hospitals, and bans all abortions except for cases of rape, incest, the health of the mother is at stake, and fatal fetal anomalies, but even then the exceptions for the life of the mother are limited to 20 weeks and rape and incest, ten. It's horrific across the board and the ban will kill women in the state, but Republicans don't care.

The majority of women of child-bearing age now live under partial or near-total abortion bans in the US, and Indiana's ban is effectively total. It's going to take a massive number of votes in order to beat the gerrymandering in these red states giving Republicans supermajority status in state legislatures. We can't abandon these states and the people in them to these monsters.

The road to Gilead has to end.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

With this week's 5th Circuit ruling against mifepristone providing future SCOTUS shenanigans towards the end of not just legalized abortion but contraception in America, Charlie Pierce shows us the road map to Gilead:

Right into the lap of Justice Sam Alito, who will undoubtedly find some obscure codicil in the Code of Hammurabi to justify upholding the ruling of the 5th Circuit, which is the Uruk-Hai to Alito's Saruman anyway. All the lawyers seeking to ban the drug will need to do is talk very fast and use the word "abortifacient" a lot. And the ducks will all be marching in formation.

The assembly line between the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans and the chambers of the Supreme Court is the best example we have of how completely the conservative takeover of the federal judiciary is. It is the Wal-Mart of conservative judge shopping. The most recent former president* put four judges on that court including James Ho, who is a real prize. From the Texas Tribune: 

The 5th Circuit had upheld an Austin campaign donation limit — a maximum individual contribution of $350 to a city council candidate. His opinion seemed to challenge all restrictions on campaign donations, arguing that “if you don’t like big money in politics, then you should oppose big government in our lives...If there is too much money in politics, it’s because there’s too much government,” Ho wrote. A cash-flooded campaign system, he added, is “the inevitable result of a government that would be unrecognizable to our Founders.”

It was through the Fifth Circuit that the Dobbs case was shuffled from Mississippi upwards to Alito and his invisible chorus of 17th Century witch hunters. And now the circle is nearly complete. Sooner or later, some loaded court will declare all contraceptives to be "abortifacients," and that will be the final end for a protected right of privacy.

That's the big finish here after SCOTUS decides in the next year or two that abortion medications are illegal nationwide. It won't just be mifepristone. It'll be all contraception, including birth control medication, hormone therapy, IUDs, the whole works. That's the next milepost on the road to Gilead, and unless SCOTUS is stopped, it's going to be reality.