This is the part of the so-called Pro-Life movement that I find most annoying. There is no other medical procedure which third parties wish to control; in the end, an abortion should only be an issue for the woman and her medical advisors. No one else should be even remotely involved.
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Maybe gender affirming surgeries?
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For my morning rant of the day, I’m not onboard with calling South Florida “Spanish Caribbean” in that map.
The Spanish lost the territory to England in 1763, then the US took it from England in 1783. It became a state in 1845. Spanish influence was long gone by then.
I believe the wave of settlers into South Florida after the transfer from England were mainly settlers migrating from the Deep South. At least that’s my family history as a second-generation Miami native. My maternal grandfather settled in the Miami area in the 1930’s from North Carolina, and my paternal grandfather settled there in the 1920’s from Georgia. There is a reason South Florida natives called each other “Florida Crackers.” Or at least we used to. Apparently this is not PC these days.
There is now a heavy Hispanic culture in Southeast Florida, but that’s relatively recent from Cuban migration in the latter half of the 20th Century. It has no direct connection to the Spanish occupation in the 1700’s.
The southwest coastal part of the gray area in places like Naples and Ft. Myers is culturally very different from Hispanic majority Miami-Dade. It’s predominantly a retiree zone for conservatives from Northern states. There are other retiree zones in the more northern part of the state like The Villages and communities in the coastal Panhandle that are also not really Deep South. Culturally and politically it’s a function of Florida being a popular retirement area for people from Northern states.
I can’t complain too much about not getting it right because few people do, when it comes to describing the complex mix of people and cultures in Florida. But “Spanish Caribbean” is definitely not a good name for that gray South Florida part of the map. Not unless you’re only talking about Miami.
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Not just surgeries. They also want to control puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
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Funny that, in all this bru-haha the Aliotos seem to firmly believe in free speech (flag flying) applies exclusively to them, but their neighbors can’t have political signs standing in their front yards.
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Because (according to myth) God made humans in his own image (“he was disappointed with the monkey”). Naturally, there were exceptions for breast and bum enhancement, facelifts, botox, hair transplants, liposuction, human growth hormone and collagen injection.
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In her excellent book on caste, Isabelle Wilkerson postulates that abortion bans (and the congruent hunger for contraceptive bans) is fueled by dominant caste (white and white adjacent people’s) concerns over becoming numerical minorities. She gives several compelling pieces of evidence.
It’s well worth the read. (And no, I make no money if you buy the book)
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More to the point: these states where elected officials are pursuing wildly unpopular policies are typically also states where the political system is designed to be unrepresentative… former slave states where persistent racism has been exploited to rig the political system to disenfranchise broad swaths of the electorate.
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The FDA approved Enogen (the first birth control pill) in June of 1960. The Warren Court released its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut halting state-by-state regulation of contraceptives in 1965. The Roe decision was released eight years later in 1973.
These things are certainly interrelated, but I don’t think the ordering was accidental at all.
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(T)he Missouri Midlands look a lot more like Kansas than Ohio and, given that that section of the state makes up two-thirds of the electorate, abortion restrictions will almost certainly lose at the ballot box when Missourians vote on their state’s referendum this coming November.
How come the national Democrats consistenly pay no attention to Missouri? With not much work it should be a blue state.
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Speaking for myself, I’d be happy if these four Indiana counties in “Yankeedom” (plus Goshen) would be annexed by Illinois.
I bet Indianapolis would be pleased to become an autonomous “west Berlin”.
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Outstanding article! Impressed me so much that I ordered the book. One thing that really stands out: states that have banned or severely restricted the procedure don’t allow citizen initiated-ballot referenda, including almost every one in the Deep South, Greater Appalachia and New France. This is one of the best arguments for a constitutional amendment allowing easy creation of citizen initiated-ballot referenda.
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So we return to the core issues- livestock management; or in current context: the control of others’ sexual conduct and reproduction for unmanaged population growth. I blame the artificial overlay of the ancient foreign herder philosophy from the ME. From the war god to the guide for peaceful coexistence, the herding impulse is consistent.
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American Nations by Colin Woodard is a major contribution to understanding the geography of American politics, which I highly recommend. That said, rather than read it, I’d suggest his sequel, “American Character: The Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good.” ( one chapter is a summary of American Nations).
“The author of American Nations examines the history of and solutions to the key American question: how best to reconcile individual liberty with the maintenance of a free society**
The struggle between individual rights and the good of the community as a whole has been the basis of nearly every major disagreement in our history, from the debates at the Constitutional Convention and in the run up to the Civil War to the fights surrounding the agendas of the Federalists, the Progressives, the New Dealers, the civil rights movement, and the Tea Party. In American Character , Colin Woodard traces these two key strands in American politics through the four centuries of the nation s existence, from the first colonies through the Gilded Age, Great Depression and the present day, and he explores how different regions of the country have successfully or disastrously accommodated them. The independent streak found its most pernicious form in the antebellum South but was balanced in the Gilded Age by communitarian reform efforts; the New Deal was an example of a successful coalition between communitarian-minded Eastern elites and Southerners.
Woodard argues that maintaining a liberal democracy, a society where mass human freedom is possible, requires finding a balance between protecting individual liberty and nurturing a free society. Going to either libertarian or collectivist extremes results in tyranny. But where does the sweet spot lie in the United States, a federation of disparate regional cultures that have always strongly disagreed on these issues? Woodard leads readers on a riveting and revealing journey through four centuries of struggle, experimentation, successes and failures to provide an answer. His historically informed and pragmatic suggestions on how to achieve this balance and break the nation s political deadlock will be of interest to anyone who cares about the current American predicament political, ideological, and sociological.”
https://www.powells.com/book/american-character-a-history-of-the-epic-struggle-between-individual-liberty-the-common-good-9780143110002
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It’s so obvious that these restrictions are directed to accomplish one thing: the subjugation of women, and - to be more specific, the erasure of the “unmanly” population from civic life. (Next up (after LGBQTIA+): men with disabilties.
White men who promote these things are such cowards. I wish there were a stronger word than “coward” in my vocabulary.
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It’s their turn to “show us”? I think that’s the other half of the Show Me equation.
Just…damn
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In his excellent, cogently argued books mentioned above, Woodard leans heavily on the history of peoples moving from one place to another and the political consequences that follow.
This approach of following the migrations of peoples was used extensively by the late, great Kevin Phillips in various of his books to help explain modern political divisions. In some ways my favorite is The Cousins Wars, which covers the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War. Phillips argues cogently that they are largely between variations of the same groups fighting each other over roughly similar issues. To put it crudely, they could reasonably be thought of as the English Civil Wars I, II, and III.
The English Civil War of the mid 1600s was between the Royalists loyal to King Charles I, aka the Cavaliers, and those loyal to the British Parliament, aka the Parliamentarians, or Roundheads, many of whom were Puritans. The Puritans moved to what is now New England, and the Cavaliers moved to the Southern colonies. It is no mere coincidence that the University of Virginia mascot and sports teams are the Cavaliers.
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Well crap! He was an interesting guy.
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I hate cancer. Dealt with it twice myownself and I’d rather not see it again.
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