• Home with the Armadillo
  • Posts
  • Hard to Believe It's Only Tuesday: Texas AG Flees To Avoid Court Appearance on Abortion Ban

Hard to Believe It's Only Tuesday: Texas AG Flees To Avoid Court Appearance on Abortion Ban

Here's what happened in abortion news, tweets, toks, and takes this week — plus action items.

September 30, 2022

Here’s another edition of Hard to Believe It’s Only Tuesday, a weekly roundup of the top headlines, tweets, toks, takes, and more in abortion news. Remember: you can always email me ([email protected]) or @/DM me on twitter or instagram with action items — rallies, trainings, fundraisers, block-walks, petitions, etc. — to include in the The Fuck Are We Supposed To Do About It? section!

The big takeaway: How afraid are Republicans of standing behind their abortion bans? Very afraid! Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had his wife peel out of their driveway on Monday night to avoid a federal process server so that he didn’t have to appear in court to opine about the state’s abortion laws.

The Top Headlines

The Tweets ‘n Toks ‘n Grams ‘n Socials

  • Montana’s @NoLR131 tweets a quote from an MD on the bullshittery of the state’s proposed abortion referendum: "Every pregnancy is different. But LR-131 forces one-size-fits-all treatment regardless of the situation or family's wishes. How these tragic situations are handled should be decided by families and doctors, not politicians."

  • It’s coming for all of us, a thread from Rewire’s Imani Gandy:

  • Abortion researcher Steph Herold watched Blonde and its horrible treatment of abortion so you don’t have to.

  • A man who needs no introduction:

The Takes

  • Mona Eltahawy in Feminist Giant on “the hypocritical fuckery of white Christian theocratic women.” She writes: “This isn’t a ‘whose flavour of patriarchy is worse’ letter. This is a ‘fuck the patriarchy everywhere’ grenade that I gift to you. This is not The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s real life. This is a wake the fuck up because clearly you’ve been drifting, cruising on the delusions that your whiteness will save you from white supremacist patriarchy. Nothing will.” 

  • It’s me, in DAME magazine, with a warning about #Roevember: “… writ large, women are unlikely to save abortion access in one fell swoop, not because the majority of us are not angry about losing access to abortion—we are—but because the question of how to restore abortion access is deeply complicated, and because losing access to abortion is not now and may not be, in the coming months and years, enough to turn a key number of white women away from the other benefits of white supremacy that the GOP promises us.”

  • Brown University’s Kim Gallon, Director of the Black Press Research Collective, is in the Washington Post with a look at Black women’s historic role in advocating for abortion access in Black publications: “The Black press in the era of Roe v. Wade created a forum for a rich diversity of Black women’s voices on abortion, often overlooked in White news outlets, and demonstrated the significance of their perspectives for the larger battle for reproductive rights in the United States in the late 20th century. As people across the country engage in a new fight for universal access to abortion, Black women’s ability to capture the necessary nuance of gender, class and race offers a model in the discussions and struggles to come. Their perspective is unique and essential to discussions. Black people already encounter structural racism in health care that is, partially, responsible for high rates of pregnancy-related death, preterm births and other maternal health complications. Restrictions on abortion will have deadly consequences for them, and that is an important element in the debate ongoing throughout the country.”

  • MSI Reproductive Choices’ Banchiamlack Dessalegn is in Al Jazeera extolling the virtues of safe, legal abortion access through the lens of Ethiopian political and cultural change on the issue: “Growing up in Addis Ababa, my siblings and I all knew someone who had had an unsafe abortion. My sister had a friend who died by suicide because of unintended pregnancy. I remember girls who dropped out of school after they drank bleach or attempted to terminate a pregnancy through other dangerous means. I often think about where these girls are now and how these tragic stories were all avoidable. These stories also remind me of how far Ethiopia has come in the last 17 years and how the progress achieved should never be reversed. Instead, it should be emulated.”

The Fuck Are We Supposed To Do About It?

That’s all for this week. I’m sure I’ve missed something you’d like to see featured in this roundup, for I am but one woman with a computer and an abortion-news-induced drinking problem. Holler at me — [email protected], or DM me on Twitter, and I’ll try to add follow-ups as I’m able.