Today's Shorts: Let's Talk about Sex ...
Abortion rights election wins are at odds with the Republican Party's religious zealotry, but the issues of sex, pregnancy and access to care are much broader.
War, sex, religion, money, crime, lies ... our news feeds are roiling with tense, flashpoint issues.
For Today’ Shorts, I’m setting aside most of those issues to focus on a topic that is pleasurable for many of us … sex1. Join me as I highlight several recent news stories:
Abortion care on the ballot,
Suppression of people’s rights as government policy,
Governments incentivizing increased childbearing,
Climate change incentivizing decreased childbearing, and
Antidepressants causing long-term genital numbing. (That will make you depressed!)
Way to Go, Ohio! We Can Do This, Arizona!
When the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Roe v Wade on June 24, 2022 and said the states should decide access to abortion care, they cast aside decades of settled law. That decision led to 24 states banning abortions or severely limiting them within a year. It also led to multiple petition drives to put protection for abortion care on state ballots.
On Tuesday, November 6, 2023, Ohio became the seventh state to protect the right to abortion by putting it into the state’s constitution. The vote wasn’t even close. As one late night TV host said, “Who knew people wanted to retain their rights?” In 2024, abortion rights groups in Arizona, South Dakota, Missouri and Florida are hoping to put protection of abortion rights on those state ballots.
“Once again, voters sent a clear message to Republicans and anti-abortion extremists: We believe in the right to abortion, and we are the majority,” Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly Naral, was quoted as saying the the New York Times after the Ohio vote.
The Times said that Ohio was the biggest challenge for the abortion rights initiative so far because of the state’s importance in the presidential race and it’s long-term swing state status. Ohio has always been a mixed bag politically. The former “industrial north,” along Lake Erie, where I grew up, was heavily union and very multicultural. Southern Ohio, along the Ohio River, was heavily influenced by Kentucky and West Virginia. Senator J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy talks about his family traveling north to Ohio for work in the factories. My high school included kids from Kentucky who lived in the trailer parks around the Ford Plant on the outskirts of town and whose parents worked at Ford.
Thanks to offshoring, all of the factories are gone. Many have been flattened completely and returned to grass. The Ford Plant — lake front property with a view and its own railroad spur — has been for sale for years. With the loss of thousands of good-paying union jobs and extreme gerrymandering protecting extreme candidates, Ohio politics has grown nuttier. It’s not my parents’ Republican Party.
On abortion rights, the people of Ohio spoke loud and clear. Eighteen counties that voted to re-elect former President Donald Trump in 2020 voted to enshrine “reproductive decisions” in the Ohio constitution. Yes!
Overall, 53 percent of Ohioans voted for Trump in 2020, and 57 percent voted for abortion rights in 2023. In my hometown county of Lorain County, 50 percent voted to retain Trump, while 62 percent voted to retain abortion rights. This is significant because Lorain County has been gerrymandered into three Congressional Districts — one being Rep. Jim Jordan’s. Hmmm … maybe his extremist politics are out of line with his voters.
In Ohio, retaining the right to abortion was more popular than retaining Trump as president.
Some Republican Congressional members got Ohio’s memo that taking away people’s rights isn’t popular — but not newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson and the “Freedom” Caucus, which includes several Arizona Republican representatives.
All six of Arizona’s Republican representatives supported and participated in the weeks-long Republican chaos when the US House of Representatives was without a speaker. All nine members of Arizona’s Congressional delegation are up for re-election in 2024: six Republican seats (David Schweikert, Eli Crane, Andy Biggs, Juan Ciscomani, Debbie Lesko [who is stepping down], and Paul Gosar) and three Democratic seats (Raul Grijalva, Ruben Gallego and Greg Stanton.) All six Arizona Republicans joined Trump in backing election denier Jordan for Speaker of the House. Vote them out!
Just to spice things up, abortion rights advocates are hoping to get a pro-abortion citizens initiative on the same 2024 ballot. Check out Arizona Abortion Rights Advocates Optimistic for 2024 as Voters Extend post-Roe Win Streak. Also, in the video below, the physician explains why abortion is healthcare and talks about initiatives.
It will be an exciting year.
I shot this video at a Tucson Area Ground Game event about ballot propositions in September 2022. Arizonans had tried to get a pro-abortion initiative on the ballot for 2022, but the timing was too tight to collect the necessary signatures. The physician in this video talks about medical need for abortion care and the initiative. People are currently collecting signatures for an Arizona abortion rights ballot initiative for the 2024 ballot.
Suppression of People’s Rights as Public Policy
It’s a simple question: do you believe in a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions, without government interference? Yes or no? An overwhelming number of Republican politicians answer that question with a resounding, “NO.”
Some Republican politicians have recently realized — since their party’s losses on November 6, 2023 — that they could lose their seats in 2024 if they stick with repressive reproductive rights stances. Americans don’t want the government dictating when they have children, who they have children with or if they want children. Those are the ultimate Parental Choice decisions — not textbooks and private school vouchers. Take the veil from your eyes.
Why can’t we get the Republican Party out of our bedrooms and
our personal decisions?
Unfortunately for the American public — and dare I say for the cause of freedom — House Speaker Mike Johnson and others in the Republican leadership are so against women controlling their own bodies and decisions that they support a national abortion ban. That is how out of step Johnson is with the American public. (Remember the Ohio vote. More people voted to retain abortion care than voted to retain Trump.)
In the two weeks that Johnson has been speaker, he has focused on trying to wedge non-budget items like attacks on abortion rights into the federal budget. As of this writing on November 13, there is no budget.
Does that sound familiar? Budget delays? Republican chaos? Stuffing ideology into the budget to pass it without Democratic votes? Speaker Rusty Bowers and Arizona Republicans wedged non-budget policy items into the budget they passed on a party line vote in June 2021. Soon after, the state got sued over that budget. Last week, Johnson’s ideological maneuvering in the federal budget caused him to lose votes from moderate Republicans who don’t want to lose their seats in 2024.
Writing in The Guardian, Moira Donegan says that the opposition research stories popping up about Johnson aren’t your usual muckraking stories about sordid affairs or cagey finances.
“Instead, the revelations that have emerged about Mike Johnson since his ascent to the speakership paint a picture of a fevered zealot: in thrall of baroque and morbid religious fantasies; beholden to a regressive, bigoted and morbid worldview; and above all, obsessed – with a lurid and creepy enthusiasm – with sex, and how he thinks it should be done,” writes Donegan in Mike Johnson, the New Speaker of the House, Is a Gender Extremist.
“The enforcement of a Christian sexual morality and a strict gender hierarchy of men over women have not been incidental or minor themes of Johnson’s career: they have been its primary goal, one he pursued doggedly through his pre-congressional life,” she continues.
How can these politicians call themselves the Freedom Caucus?
We’re already seeing horrific anti-abortion state laws that punish people who leave their home state with a abortion ban and cross state lines for an abortion. They are prosecuting pregnant people, doctors and people, often relatives, who help them make the trip to another state. Religious zealots in state government are even charging and jailing women for taking abortion pills. In a Nebraska case, a 19-year-old woman, who took the abortion pill as a minor, was sentenced to 90 days in jail, and her mother who helped her get the abortion pill online was sentenced to five freakin’ years in jail. A young woman who got pregnant in high school and whose mother helped her get the abortion pill to end the pregnancy now has her mother taken away from her by entitled ideologues in the Nebraska Legislature. How is that freedom?
Why should a woman’s healthcare decision-making rights change when she crosses state lines? This is government-sponsored sex discrimination.
This is why we need the Equal Rights Amendment.
Look how patchwork of states rights abortion laws is playing out for women in the military. Little Napoleon Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has been blockading hundreds of military promotions — while US allies are involved in major wars. I don’t understand why he is being allowed to do this. A few Republicans like Senators Mitt Romney and Jodi Ernst started actively debating the issue on the floor, but didn’t knock Tuberville off his game. Other than that, Congress appears to be sitting idly by and allowing Tuberville to take a stand against women’s rights and weaken the country’s military at the same time. Why?
Tuberville doesn’t like the new US policy that pays for servicewomen to travel to another state for abortion care if they are stationed in a repressive states that have total bans or highly restrictive abortion care windows like Arizona. The government wouldn’t have to pay for soldiers’ travel if we had nationwide abortion care. A lack of nationwide access to abortion care puts women at risk, especially women who serve, work, study, travel or live in repressive states, like Arizona.
On November 10, 2023, CounterSpin reported that the United States has been found in violation of UN human rights agreements, according to a new report. Lack of universal reproductive freedom in the US was one of the items where our country is in violation. Here’s a link to the show.
How bad do the Republicans want to make it for the women and men of childbearing age in the US? Reproductive care is everyone’s issue … it’s not a women’s issue. Access to care impacts the mother, the father, the child and society.
The ultimate in Parental Choice is choosing IF you want to have a child, when you want to have a child and who you want to have a child with. Government has no business meddling in our reproductive freedom.
I recorded this video in my office in the Arizona House on June 24, 2022, the day Roe v Wade was struck down by SCOTUS.
Governments Eager for Women to Have More Kids
Birth rates have been falling in some countries, including the US, for years. Thanks to educating women (in general and specifically about family planning); delayed childbirth; reduction in teen pregnancy; and access to contraception and abortion, many American women had control of their reproductive health and choices until June 24, 2022.
In a world with shrinking resources, rising temperatures and seas, and more disastrous storms, it’s not a bad thing to have fewer people on the planet. Capitalist media bombards us with stories about future workers being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence. The stories of future hellscapes are not encouraging to young people who are considering starting families. (See related story below.)
Ironically, the governments that are creating future dystopias through rampant pollution, deregulation and tax incentives are trying to encourage procreation among the populace.
Using both carrot and stick approaches, governments are trying reverse declining birth rates and encourage women to have more children.
Since 2022, South Korea has been paying women a monthly allowance for newborns through their first year. They also have a separate monthly stipend for children up to seven years old. Previous efforts to boost fertility rates failed. There are questions regarding whether the cash payments will work, since many South Koreans are “committed to a child-free life,” for a variety of reasons. South Korea’s death rate is outpacing its birth rate.
Repressive governments — including China and some US states like Arizona — are also incentivizing childbearing and extolling motherhood over career for women.
US states are using the stick approach. Repressive state governments like Arizona and others highlighted above try to force women to have children by passing stringent anti-abortion laws; limiting access to care for abortion and contraception; ignoring maternal and child healthcare deserts throughout the state; and failing to require comprehensive, medically accurate sex education in schools.
With food insecurity, housing insecurity, gig economy wages and hours, high rent, evictions, homelessness … is there any wonder why some people say they don’t want any children — or any more children — because they just can’t care for them financially, physically and/or emotionally? It’s time to repeal Arizona’s repressive anti-abortion laws and pass the abortion care initiative in 2024.
The Chinese government is taking the authoritarian father approach to encourage women to have more children. Chinese leader Xi Jinping recently “lectured female delegates” at a recent National Women’s Congress on the topic. This conference is a largely ceremonial gesture to show the Chinese government’s commitment to women, according to the New York Times, but this year is the first time the Chinese leadership includes no women. (As noted in the photo above, Xi’s “new world order” also includes no female leaders.)
“‘We should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture,’’ Xi is quoted as saying in the New York Times article China’s Male Leaders Signal Women That Their Place Is in the Home, “adding that it was the role of party officials to influence young people’s views on ‘love and marriage, fertility and family.’”
Communist Party officials are going to “influence young people’s views” in China.
Meanwhile, in the US, the Republican Party is trying to influence and control people’s lives.
Couples Be Like: Save the Planet if You Want Us to Have More Kids
Governments are using carrot and stick incentives to encourage or force women to have more children.
How about cleaning up the planet instead? High-polluting countries like the US and China could make a dent in climate change, but they’re not. Recent research suggests that would-be parents want a cleaner, safer, more habitable planet for their children and grandchildren.
The Guardian article More People Not Having Children Due to Climate Breakdown Fears, Finds Research tells us that more couples worldwide are choosing to have no children or fewer children due to climate change fears.
Their reasons are often twofold: some would-be parents are afraid of the state of the planet their children will face, while others are concerned about the emissions and pollution produced by more human beings on Earth.
Anti-Depressants & Loss of Sexuality
Prozac is an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) and one of the most widely prescribed antidepressants. The Prozac label warns users of “sexual side effects,” but what does that mean?
According to the New York Times article After Antidepressants, a Loss of Sexuality, doctors and patients have known about sexual problems related to SSRIs like lack of libido, “pleasureless orgasms” and genital numbness for a few years.
Now patients — both men and women — are coming forward and complaining about genital numbness and lack of orgasms persisting for years after stopping SSRI antidepressants. That is really depressing.
If you’re on SSRIs or have been, you may want to check out the rest of the article and the research here.
This Substack primarily focuses on sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and abortion. As a result, I am using “men” and “women” to refer to people born with male or female reproductive organs.