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      ‘I was not voting before, now I am’: gen Z voters on what they think of Kamala Harris

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      American gen Z voters share how they feel about Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, why they like or dislike her as a candidate and whether they think she could beat Donald Trump, as the vice-president races towards winning the Democratic nomination for November’s election.‘I think she’s just what we need’“I think [Kamala Harris] is the only one that makes sense. She will get the votes Biden couldn’t. She could get the Black, Asian, Latino, women’s, LGBTQ+ and youth votes. She stands more for progress and equality than an old white dude and if she wins it will be historic. The Democrats need a bold move and I think she’s just what we need.“I hope the Democrats realize what an opportunity this is for them.” Will, 22, construction worker from Portland, Oregon‘We are fired up’“I have so much renewed passion and hope now that Kamala is the endorsed candidate. She made history when she was elected VP and I believe she can make history again. I get emotional just thinking about it. And despite having just purchased a new home and having hardly any extra cash lying around, my husband and I just donated $100 to a campaign for the first time this election cycle. We are fired up.“My concern is we are facing a self-fulfilling prophecy; that people think it’s an impossible task to elect a Black woman to the highest office and as a result it becomes one. I think it’s quite the opposite actually. I feel Kamala is just what we need to energize young voters and get them to the polls.” Lizzie, 28, engineer from Idaho‘I’m concerned that she is silly or not serious’“I feel mixed about it. I am a Democrat and at first I thought: ‘Oh well, we’re stuck with Joe we’ll get him elected if it means no Donald Trump.’ Then after the debate I thought: ‘Omg this guy is way too old!’ I guess Biden seemed so set on still running I thought he would never drop out. I liked Kamala when she ran back in 2020 but I’m not sure how I feel about her today.“My biggest concern with her is this perception that she is silly, or not serious. She laughs in every interview and the “You think you fell out of a coconut tree? You are the sum of everything … ” is a huge meme on TikTok. I guess I wouldn’t say it paints her in a horrible light, but I just think people don’t take her seriously.” Georgie, 25, research associate from Massachusetts‘Kamala is not perfect, but I’m more optimistic now than with Biden’“I and everyone I know are THRILLED that Kamala Harris is now leading the ticket. Joe Biden could not win. Kamala is not a perfect candidate, but she can campaign; she is running against the oldest major party nominee in history; she can make the case for a new Democratic administration. Joe Biden could do none of these things, so while I think Democrats still face an uphill battle, I am infinitely more optimistic now that we have a likely nominee who is physically and mentally capable of running an energetic campaign.“Kamala is not a perfect candidate, and I probably would have supported someone else if Biden had stepped down a year ago. I’m worried that she will struggle to differentiate herself from the administration’s policy on Gaza (as Hubert Humphrey struggled to differentiate himself from the Johnson administration’s policy on Vietnam), that she’ll be blamed for voters’ dissatisfaction with the status quo, and, of course, she will certainly face racist and sexist headwinds that Biden did not. BUT, and it’s a big ‘but’, I thought Biden was a certain loser after the debate, so even if Harris’s chances to win are 30%, that’s still better than 0%. I don’t have any concerns about her ability to do the job if elected, and I think she is perfectly capable of running a winning campaign, at least in theory.” Peter, 27, museum educator from Indiana‘That Harris was picked by delegates, not voters, is a disaster for her campaign’“I watched the 2019 debates (eg Harris’s inability to perform under pressure from opponents like Tulsi Gabbard) and her recent interviews (eg her disastrous response to Lester Holt when asked if she’d been to the border) and don’t think she’s the strongest the Democratic party can offer. She doesn’t bring the fact-based, logical responses needed to counter a populist candidate like Trump nor does she present clear policy beyond typical stump-speech moralizing.“I’d rather have Pete Buttigieg to be honest and feel deeply, horribly cheated because the Democratic candidate isn’t going to be chosen by a primary vote, instead relying on a couple thousand delegates in Chicago.“I’d feel better if she were at least chosen by the American people instead of being sweethearted because Biden picked her for VP. It all leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I’ll have a hard time backing Harris until there’s a broad-scale democratic process to ballast her presidential bid.“The Trump campaign is going to villainize Harris and the Democratic party over the lack of primary voting to support Harris’s candidacy. This narrative feeds exactly into the anti-establishment, deep-state messaging central to the Trump campaign, and the sad thing is that the Trump campaign will have a point: Harris was not picked by voters, she was picked by delegates. It’s a disaster for any campaign she’d hope to launch, and based on Harris’s past performances under fire, she will have no effective argument against Trump’s accusations.” Michelle, 26, from Wisconsin‘I think she can do great things’“It will be refreshing for someone new to take the lead. [Harris] has got experience, she is young and passionate. Let’s see if she can make positive changes. This country needs a levelheaded individual, not a pushover or tyrant. I think she can do great things.“I just hope she is smart and strong enough to not continue to support war and the crackdown on immigrants.“This country was built on the foundation of immigrants and the pursuit of fairness and equity. I don’t mind the basis of what it means to be a Republican but their agenda has really changed over the years. We need to support each other as people; I just hope others get over their greed so we can do just that.” Lee Ocasio, 28, medical assistant from New York‘I hope she’ll restore Roe v Wade’“I am anxious for the results, but if she’s got a good chance at victory, I’m in full support. I had switched back and forth on supporting a Biden withdrawal, but what’s done is done now.“I’m a little worried about her policies. From what I’ve read this far, she doesn’t seem to have much of a stance or plan for things like Palestine, immigration or inflation, but if she can restore Roe v Wade, she will have 110% of my support.” Kaleb Stanton, 24, grocery store worker from New Mexico‘She’ll be a tougher candidate to beat than Biden’“I have been worried about the lack of enthusiasm about Biden’s candidacy, particularly among young voters, and the implications that could have on turnout. Virtually all indicators have pointed to a strong economy under Biden; however, I think many young people feel like there is less opportunity for them today than there was for prior generations.“For this reason, I think it is unsurprising that there would be a lack of enthusiasm to support Biden or Trump because of their age (regardless of their ability to do the job or not).“I think that VP Harris will be a harder opponent for Republicans to run against. Consider the matchup: a 78-year-old male Republican nominee recently found guilty on felony charges, and responsible for appointing three supreme court justices that helped overturn Roe v Wade versus a 59-year-old female (likely) Democratic nominee with a background as a former prosecutor. Harris will be able to hammer Republicans on abortion/reproductive health, contrast her own ‘law & order’ background with Trump’s felon status, and offer a younger option to voters that were concerned about Biden’s (and Trump’s!) age.“I think Harris also has strengths that bring previously competitive southern states back into play in a way that Biden couldn’t in 2024. Harris would be the first female president, first female African-American president, and first Asian-American president. She represents America’s cultural melting pot in a way that no previous presidential candidate has and I believe this could help boost African- and Asian-American turnout, two historically strong Democratic voter bases that some polls have shown to be slightly wavering in their support in recent years.” Anonymous policy researcher at a thinktank in their 20s‘She appeals way more to gen Z than Biden’“[Kamala Harris] is a much better candidate for the country, and appeals way more to gen Z voters than Biden did. I was not voting before, and now I am.” Javier, 25, a gay Latino voter from New York More

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      Is there anything that JD Vance actually believes? | Moira Donegan

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      How many faces does JD Vance have? For one thing, he looks a lot different these days. Around the time the election denier first ran for Senate in Ohio, in 2022, he grew a beard, perhaps to cover up his decidedly childlike countenance. As rumors swirled this summer that Donald Trump would choose Vance as his running mate – replacing Mike Pence, who left the vice-presidency after a mob of angry Trump supporters tried to hang him – some wondered if maybe Vance would shave. Trump, it seems, doesn’t like beards, and prefers his underlings clean-shaven. And JD Vance is – has always been – willing to do just about anything to secure the approval of the powerful.According to historian Gabriel Winant, Vance has spent much of his life clinging to a series of mentors, whom he has used for professional advancement before moving on from – and, ultimately, betraying. There was his grandmother, or “Meemaw”, the hardscrabble woman who raised him in rural Ohio – but whom he depicted as ignorant and ultimately culturally pathological in his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. There was his Yale Law School mentor Amy Chua, the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and wife of Jed Rubenfeld, who was suspended from Yale Law after an investigation found that he sexually harassed his students. (Chua also mentored Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, whom she helped secure a clerkship with Brett Kavanaugh.) But Vance left this center-right Yale Law milieu for Silicon Valley, where he made his fortune as a venture capitalist under the tutelage (and with the funding) of the far-right techo-libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, who would later go on to bankroll Vance’s Senate campaign. Thiel seems to have introduced Vance to his other mentor, the reactionary “neo-monarchist” and favorite intellectual of the Silicon Valley right, Curtis Yarvin.But he pushed aside these old mentors for Donald Trump, whose endorsement he sought with near-slavish sycophancy in his 2022 race. He did this despite having once characterized Trump as “cultural heroin”, “a total fraud”, “reprehensible”, “a moral disaster” and “America’s Hitler”. Vance made those statements back when it suited his ambitions to be critical of Trump: after the release of his book, just before the election in 2016, Vance had been hailed as a “Trump whisperer”, translating the then candidate’s supporters in terms that were palatable for coastal liberal elites. But it does not suit him to be anti-Trump anymore. Now it suits him to be the running mate for “America’s Hitler”.Is there anything JD Vance really believes? He is not a consistent man, but he has embraced a virulent, creepy and inventive sexism that appears too irrepressible to be insincere. Vance is a prolific demeaner of women. He supports a national abortion ban and has opposed rape and incest exceptions, calling rape “an inconvenience” and insisting that abortions should not be allowed in such circumstances because “two wrongs don’t make a right”. In a bizarre episode, he characterized a national abortion ban as necessary to prevent “George Soros” from flying “Black women” to California for abortions.The VP pick of the twice-divorced Trump also opposes no-fault divorce, which allows women to leave unhappy marriages without having to prove abuse in court. Though to be clear, he doesn’t think women should leave abusive men, either. He characterized the ending of marriages that were “maybe even violent” as selfish frivolity: “This is one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace,” Vance said. “Making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear.”An adamant “pro-natalist”, Vance has an abiding and obsessive contempt for childless adults, especially women. Blaming the “childless left” for a host of political and cultural problems, Vance has proposed extending extra votes to people with children, so as to dilute the political representation of those without them. He has demeaned non-breeding women as “childless cat ladies”.For those women who do have children, Vance seems to think that they should be confined to the home: he has characterized childcare subsidies – which allow mothers of young children to earn money, obtain professional experience or education, and preserve their independence – as “class war against normal people”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNormal, I guess, is relative. Who counts? Certainly not everyone. Vance’s droolingly misogynist pro-natalism has shaded, as such positions always do, into an endorsement of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which posits that the “elites” Vance so often rails against are trying to replace white “real” Americans with a compliant underclass of immigrants. “Our people aren’t having enough children to replace themselves,” Vance told the 2019 National Conservatism Conference. “That should bother us.” He did not define “us” or “our people”, and he did not elaborate on what he meant by “replacement”. But Vance, though he is craven and dishonest, is not a dumb guy. He did not use those words by accident.Does Vance really believe in the passionately, obsessively sexist things he says? I think he probably does. But it might not matter: what will matter – what has always mattered to Vance – is not what he believes, but what he finds expedient. Vance has already tried to distance himself from his extreme position on abortion, wiping his call to “End Abortion” from his website and delivering mealy-mouthed statements to reporters about his desire for a “national standard” – a phrase that is meant to confuse, since he doesn’t specify what he wants a national standard of. To ask what JD Vance really believes is a bit like staring into a black hole: there is an unknowable blankness behind his tiny, tight blue eyes. What it is certain that Vance has is ambition – ruthless, insatiable and unburdened by principle. Other people believe in ideals, moral principles, right and wrong. The only thing we can say for sure that JD Vance believes is that he, personally, should have as much power as possible.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      A Trump-Vance administration would be ‘the most dangerous’ for abortion rights, say advocates

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      Within minutes of Donald Trump’s announcement that he had tapped Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate in the 2024 elections, abortion rights groups vociferously condemned the pick.“A Trump-Vance administration will be the most dangerous administration for abortion and reproductive freedom in this country’s history,” Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said in a statement.“By naming Vance to his ticket, Trump made clear that his administration will sign a national abortion ban and put birth control and IVF at risk,” said Jessica Mackler, president of Emily’s List, an organization that supports Democratic women who support abortion rights running for office.Vance, the venture capitalist turned Hillbilly Elegy author turned GOP standard-bearer, has long opposed abortion.In 2021, while running for Ohio senate, Vance told an Ohio news outlet that he did not support rape and incest exceptions in abortion bans. “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term,” he said. “It’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.”But voters’ outrage over the overturning of Roe v Wade has grown, leading abortion rights supporters to a string of victories at the ballot box, and harnessing that outrage is widely considered Democrats’ best hope for winning the November elections. As Trump and other Republicans have tried to project a moderated stance on the issue – despite the fact that Trump handpicked three of the supreme court justices who overturned Roe – Vance has also tempered his public position.“We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans. They just don’t,” Vance told CNN’s Jake Tapper last year. “I say this as a person who wants to protect as many unborn babies as possible. We have to provide exceptions for the life of the mother and rape and so forth.”In 2022, Vance said he would support a national 15-week abortion ban with exceptions. He also told NBC News that he wants mifepristone, a common abortion pill that was at the heart of a major supreme court case this year, to remain accessible.Even while supporting a national ban, Vance has said he would like abortion to be “primarily a state issue”.“Ohio is going to want to have a different abortion policy from California, from New York, and I think that’s reasonable,” he said. “I want Ohio to be able to make its own decisions, and I want Ohio’s elected legislators to make those decisions.”But, he added: “I think it’s fine to sort of set some minimum national standard.”Much of Vance’s public persona, however, remains defined by his support of what he sees as the traditional nuclear family. He has backed policies that he says will increase birth rates, such as making childbirth free, and said that people who are childfree by choice “do not have any physical commitment to the future of this country”.“I think the rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and the most evil thing that the left has done in this country,” said Vance, a father of three. He then went on to suggest that several Democratic politicians, like Kamala Harris and New Jersey senator Cory Booker, should not have political power because they do not have children.“Why have we let the Democrat party become controlled by people who don’t have any children? And why is this just a normal fact of American life?” Vance asked. “That the leaders of our country should be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring, via their own children?” (The vice-president has two stepchildren.)“Many of the most unhappy and most miserable and most angry people in our media are childless adults,” he continued.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance has also called people who fear having kids “cat ladies” who “must be stopped” and said that universal daycare is “class war against normal people”.Two days after the US supreme court overturned Roe, Vance tweeted: “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.”Shortly after Trump announced he had chosen Vance as his running mate, Joe Biden’s campaign started to circulate a clip of comments Vance made in 2021 about violence in marriages.“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that, like: ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,’” Vance said in response to a question on fatherlessness.Vance has said that he was not defending men who commit domestic abuse and that he himself is a victim of domestic abuse.Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the powerful anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, praised Vance on Monday.“His ability to compellingly share these stories on a national stage will surely be an asset,” Dannenfelser said in a statement. “With approximately 750,000 babies in states like California and New York still lacking basic protections, we need champions whose boldness will not waver.” More

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      Anger, fear and desperation: people reflect on two years since fall of Roe

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      After Roe v Wade was overturned in June 2022, Daphne did not want to leave anything to chance.Abortion is currently legal until 18 weeks in Utah, where the 38-year-old lives – but the state has a 2020 trigger law banning almost all abortion care that is currently under appeal.Daphne knew she didn’t want children so she decided to undergo surgical sterilization in October 2022, to have “peace of mind that [she] physically cannot become pregnant”.“My husband could have gotten a vasectomy for less money and an easier recovery time. However, that doesn’t change the outcome if I were to be assaulted. Living in Utah, I could not and would not risk having to seek an abortion, likely having to leave the state to do so, after an already traumatic event,” Daphne said.The procedure, which was not fully covered by her health insurance, left her around $1,000 out of pocket.“I’m lucky I was able to take these measures, and most cannot,” she added.Almost two years after the supreme court decided there is no constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, patients have increasingly been forced to travel out of their state in order to access abortion care, while others have carried unwanted pregnancies to term. A study earlier published in January estimated there have been nearly 65,000 pregnancies from rape in states with abortion bans.Interstate travel for abortion care in the US doubled between 2020 and 2023, from one in 10 to almost one in five people leaving their state to access treatment, data from the Guttmacher Institute shows.In states where it is possible, many go to neighboring states. Hanz, a 30-year-old who works as a clinical social worker in an abortion clinic in Illinois, but lives in Missouri, found out they were pregnant in late July 2022, they recalled: “As soon as I saw the two lines on the test, I knew I had more rights standing in Illinois than I would when I got home that night. Abortion rights had already got so much worse in recent years – and then Roe was overturned.” (Missouri passed a trigger law in 2019 that banned abortions except in medical emergencies.)Hanz wanted a child, but felt it wasn’t the right time. “I was really weighing what I wanted and what felt like the right decision. It was very hard for me to terminate the pregnancy, but I had a difficult time growing up and didn’t feel I could bring a child into the world and not be able to give them the quality of life I wanted to,” they said.After spending a month carefully weighing their options, they crossed into Illinois to terminate the pregnancy at the beginning of September at nine weeks.“Making the decision was much harder than having the actual abortion,” Hanz said, adding that fears remain about crossing the border to receive care.“I’ve talked to people who thought they may be arrested when they returned to their home state – you’re not breaking the law by crossing the state,” Hanz said.For others, the introduction of abortion restrictions has meant they are not having children they may have had. Over the last few years, Brie, 41, had been considering having another child – but after Dobbs, she felt she could not undergo the risk of a pregnancy at her age in the state of Texas.“My husband and I had dreamt of a third child. Now, I know it’s definitely not going to happen,” Brie said, adding that she felt she could not risk a pregnancy in Texas, which has a near-total abortion ban.Her medical history adds to her fears: she had a complicated first pregnancy, including experiencing pre-eclampsia, and needed an emergency C-section.“It was scary and dangerous,” she said. “With my history, there’s no way I’d trust having this pregnancy in Texas or the south. I’d have to move.”The loss of the constitutional right to abortion has taken the choice out of her hands, she feels. “Our seven-year-old son is asking for a younger sibling,” Brie said. “I know I’m in a privileged position – we have two wonderful, healthy kids – but I don’t appreciate the state making my family planning decisions.”Abortion is an issue that divides her family. “The last two years have been a very volatile time, even having these discussions within my extended family,” she said. The issue is at odds with other values prized in Texas, she believes: “People here are very concerned with freedom. But there’s this huge conflict here between concern with personal freedom, and the approach to women and fertility. The only acceptable carveout is women that are pregnant.”Every month, she feels anxious about the chance of pregnancy. “It’s constantly on my mind and has been since Dobbs: am I going to be thrown under the bus by my state this month?“You play scenarios out, what if, where would I go, who would I tell. It’s a big wall of separation between who could you trust. I think that’s the goal: to isolate and put women in a position of insecurity.”For some, the fall of Roe was a call to action. Paul, in his mid-50s and living in North Carolina, knew little about abortion rights when he heard the news two years ago.“Up until then, it was not something I cared about – it was obvious that women should have the right to choose,” he said. He had thought abortion was a “settled issue”.When he heard the news, he remembers that he and his wife “stared at each other in silence, and thought, what the hell happens next? It doesn’t affect us personally, but it does affect millions of women. I went in completely blind.”Compelled by a need to take action, by November 2022, Paul had begun volunteering with a group that offered logistical assistance to people requiring abortions, often picking up patients who had travelled from states with more restrictive laws and driving them to clinics.“I’ve driven young teens with their parents who are absolutely petrified; women in their 20s who accept it’s something they have to do, and others to whom it’s no big deal. Everyone has a different set of circumstances – you don’t have to explain your reason to me,” he said.After North Carolina reduced the limit from 20 to 12 weeks in May 2023, the number of patients traveling to the state dwindled until the service disbanded. Now, Paul volunteers most weeks as a clinic escort.“More Saturdays than not, I can be found wearing a rainbow-striped vest, shielding women behind umbrellas as I walk them into the clinic. I have been called a murderer, a baby killer … And I’ll happily do it again next weekend as well,” he said. “A lot of men don’t want to acknowledge that men have a role to play in fixing this – it’s not up to just women.”For Jane*, a woman from Texas in her 60s, the writing was on the wall before Dobbs as she watched restrictions chip away at abortion rights year after year. ​Between 1973 and May 2022, 1,380 abortion restrictions were enacted in states, according to the Guttmacher Institute, with more than 630 of these enacted since 2011.Jane became involved in direct action in 2018, driving people in need of abortion to appointments: “I became involved because I realised pro-choice is just that – it doesn’t address access. It’s a limited way at looking at reproductive justice. Seeing the impact of restrictions on abortion, I felt that to do nothing is to be complicit.”After Texas passed a bill outlawing abortion following the detection of cardiac activity – usually around six weeks – in 2021, Jane was galvanized to take further action. Toward the end of that year, she reached out to Las Libres, a Mexican network that mails pills for self-managed medical abortion.“The inhumanity of restrictions just raised my temperature and made me increasingly angry and willing to stick my neck out and do something to help,” she said. “Dobbs was the logical next step after increasing regulations permitted under Roe. [Access] was very effectively overturned before Dobbs.”Jane has been packaging and posting pills to states with abortion bans for the last two years.“It is empowering and effective to fight back,” Jane said. “Perhaps I am in denial about my own risk, but I have had a good life, I enjoy relative financial stability in my retirement, and who better than me to be in a position to fight back? Small actions matter, and allow me to maintain hope.”
      *Name has been changed More

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      Louisiana’s move to criminalize abortion pills is cruel and medically senseless | Moira Donegan

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      This week, Louisiana moved to expand the criminalization of abortion further than any state has since before Roe v Wade was decided. On Thursday, the state legislature passed a bill that would reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol – the two drugs used in a majority of American abortions – as dangerous controlled substances.Under both state and federal classifications, the category of controlled substances includes those medications known to cause mind-altering effects and create the potential for addictions, such as sedatives and opioids; abortion medications carry none of this potential for physical dependence, habit-forming or abuse. The move from Louisiana lawmakers runs counter to both established medical opinion and federal law. Jeff Landry, the anti-choice Republican governor, is expected to sign the bill. When he does, possession of mifepristone or misoprostol in Louisiana will come to carry large fines and up to 10 years in prison.Louisiana already has a total abortion ban, with no rape or incest exceptions. But the Louisiana lawmakers are pursuing this new additional criminalization measure because while abortion bans are very good at generating suffering for women, they are not very good at actually preventing abortions. Data from the Guttmacher Institute suggests that the United States saw an 11% increase in abortions between 2020 and 2023 – a possible indication that pregnant people are still managing to obtain abortions in spite of post-Dobbs bans. As was the case in the pre-Roe era, women have continued to seek out ways to end their pregnancies, even in defiance of abortion ban laws.In the pre-Roe era, illegal abortions were often unsafe, and abortion bans caused a public health crisis: many hospitals had to open septic abortion wards, where women who had had incompetent or careless illegal abortions were treated for frequently life-threatening conditions. But the post-Dobbs reality is that advances in communications technology and medicine mean that illegal abortions need no longer be unsafe ones. Now, women living in states with abortion bans can access safe, effective abortion care in the comfort of their own homes, and often law enforcement and anti-choice zealots are none the wiser. Women can perform their own abortions, safely and effectively, without regard to the law’s opinion on whether they should be free to. They can do this because they can access the pills.The criminalization measure, then, is part of an expanding horizon of invasive, sadistic and burdensome state interventions meant to do the impossible: to stop women from trying to control their own lives. The Louisiana bill nominally will not apply to pregnant women – they’re exempted from criminal punishments for possession of the medications. But it will take square aims at the vital, heroic efforts of feminists, medical practitioners and mutual aid networks that have been distributing the pills in Louisiana: the people who have adhered to the principles of bodily autonomy and women’s self-determination even amid a hostile climate. These people’s courage and integrity is the greatest threat to the anti-choice regime, and so it is these people whom Louisiana’s new medical criminalization law will be used against first.But pro-abortion rights and women’s rights activists are not the only ones who will be hurt by the new law. For one thing, the criminalization of possession is likely to scare many Louisiana abortion seekers out of ordering the pills online, even if the bill itself technically excludes them from prosecution. These abortion seekers, dissuaded and threatened out of seeking the most reliable and safe method of self-managed abortion, may then turn to less safe options.But the new drug classification also has implications for a wide array of healthcare treatments. Mifepristone and misoprostol are not only used in elective abortions. They are also the standard of care for spontaneous miscarriages – the management of which has already become legally fraught for doctors in Louisiana, causing women to suffer needlessly and endanger their health. Misoprostol is used in labor, too, and in the treatment of some ulcers. The drugs’ needless, cruel and medically senseless reclassification as “controlled” substances will make these medical practices more difficult in a state that already has one of the worst rates of maternal mortality in the country. That’s part of why more than 200 Louisiana physicians signed a letter opposing the bill.The Republican legislators who have pushed the new criminalization do not pretend to actually believe that abortion drugs are habit-forming. Thomas Pressly, the state senator who introduced the bill, frankly said that his aim was to “control the rampant illegal distribution of abortion-inducing drugs”.But there is something to the notion that abortion access might be “habit-forming”. In the Roe era, after all, women began to conceive of themselves as full persons, able to exercise control over their own destinies – as adults, that is, with all the privileges and entitlements of citizenship. They formed a habit of independence, a habit of imagining themselves as people entitled to freedom, equality, self-determination and respect. It is these habits that the Republican party is trying to break them of.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Harrison Butker’s jersey sales rise as right wing lauds Chiefs kicker after rant

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      Harrison Butker’s university commencement address at Benedictine College excoriating Pride month, working women, abortion rights activists and others has prompted the National Football League to disavow his remarks – but the Kansas City Chiefs placekicker’s jersey sales have spiked as conservatives seize on their latest culture war.Butker has also drawn an impassioned statement of support from Josh Hawley, the far-right US senator from Missouri known for his opposition to abortion and a viral video which showed him running away from the mob he incited during the US Capitol attack on 6 January 2021.“We need a different generation of kids that are willing to say no that’s not right, there is such a thing as right and wrong, I’m not going in for all of this lefty garbage and I just thought that his calls for folks to stand up and be bold was great,” Hawley said in reference to Butker during an interview on Wednesday with Spectrum News.An NFL spokesperson on Thursday said the comments Butker delivered as the graduation speaker at Benedictine College five days earlier ran contrary to the league’s “commitment to inclusion”.“Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity,” said the statement from the NFL senior vice-president Jonathan Beane, the league’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization.”The NFL’s statement aligned relatively closely with a separate one issued by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (Glaad), which dismissed Butker’s 20-minute address as “a clear miss” and “woefully out of step with Americans about Pride, LGBTQ people and women”.Another notable rejection of Butker’s opinions came in the form of a statement from the Benedictine Sisters of Mount Saint Scholastica, which co-founded the college where the kicker spoke.“The sisters … do not believe that Harrison Butker’s comments … represent the Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts college that our founders envisioned and in which we have been so invested,” their statement said. “Instead of promoting unity in our church, our nation, and the world, his comments seem to have fostered division.”Yet, in scenes that called to mind the political right wing’s enthrallment with the film Sound of Freedom last year, Butker’s jersey was among the most sold as of Thursday, according to NFL.com.His jersey sales still trailed that of his Chiefs teammate Travis Kelce, whose support for vaccines and the Black Lives Matter movement – as well as his relationship with Taylor Swift – have infuriated the far-right set that is now coddling Butker. However, Butker’s jersey sales were outpacing that of the Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who has led Kansas City to three Super Bowl victories since the 2019 season.The Kansas City news station KCTV reported that a local store named the Rally House had completely sold out of Butker jerseys amid his speech’s controversy.“Just the demand after the speech – it’s been men and women. It’s been both calling to get his jersey,” the store’s manager, Aaron Lewis, reportedly told KCTV.Hawley on Wednesday then offered himself as one of the most public faces of the conservative delight inspired by the offense Butker caused with his speech.“He talks about not being too nice when you’re standing up for your convictions,” Hawley said to Spectrum News, a little more than three years after he threw up a clenched fist at – and then was caught on video running from – a mob of Donald Trump supporters who carried out the deadly Capitol attack after the former president’s 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden. “And I just think he’s right about that.”In his speech to the conservative Catholic school’s graduating class, Butker referred to “dangerous gender ideologies” in an apparent allusion to Pride month, which has been celebrated annually in June since the Stonewall riots in 1969.He also told the women in the audience that “homemaker” should be the “most important title” they hold.“I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world,” Butker said.Among a host of other arguments, Butker contended that access to abortion – which most Americans favor – stemmed from “pervasiveness of disorder”.The 28-year-old Butker’s conservative Catholic beliefs are well known, and so are his on-field exploits, including booting a field goal that forced the decisive overtime period in Kansas City’s Super Bowl victory over the San Francisco 49ers in February.Benedictine, a private liberal arts school about 60 miles north of Kansas City, invited Butker to be its commencement speaker nearly three years to the day after the college removed its chaplain from his position after he disclosed “inappropriate conduct” with a female student.Meanwhile, a report on Friday from the Chicago Sun-Times documented how an Illinois-based monk belonging to the religious order which is associated with Benedictine pleaded guilty to a felony battery charge against a former student of the school where he taught – and has now landed on a list of organization members deemed to have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse.
      The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Arizona supreme court delays enforcement of 1864 abortion ban

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      The Arizona supreme court on Monday granted a motion to stay the enforcement of an 1864 law that bans almost all abortions, a win for reproductive rights activists in the swing state.The state’s highest court agreed to the Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes’s request for a 90-day delay of the near-total ban, further pushing back enforcement of the 1864 legislation after a repeal of the ban was passed earlier this month.The stay will last until 12 August. A separate court case on the legislation which granted an additional 45-day stay means the law cannot be enforced until 26 September, Mayes said in a statement.“I am grateful that the Arizona supreme court has stayed enforcement of the 1864 law and granted our motion to stay the mandate in this case for another 90 days,” she said.Mayes added that her office is weighing the “best legal course of action”, including a petition to the US supreme court.The latest decision comes two weeks after the Democratic Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, signed a law to repeal the ban.But the most recent repeal can only take place 90 days after the Arizona legislative session ends, possibly allowing for a small window when the ban could be enforced.Last year’s session ended on 31 July, NBC News reported. If lawmakers adhere to that timeline, the ban could be in effect for approximately a month, until late October.Hobbs has said that she will not prosecute any medical practitioners under the 1864 law.The Arizona supreme court rejected a motion from Planned Parenthood Arizona on Monday to hold off on enforcing the 1864 ban until the repeal takes effect.On the latest court ruling, the reproductive health organization vowed to continue fighting to “[ensure] all Arizonans can access the care they need in a safe, caring environment”, according to a statement.“We will not be intimidated or silenced by anti-abortion extremists, because our bodies and our autonomy are at stake.”In Arizona, abortion is currently banned after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The 1864 abortion law bans nearly all abortions, except to save a woman’s life. The US civil war-era law does not make exceptions for rape or incest.Residents of the swing state will probably vote on a referendum on abortion come November after a coalition of reproductive rights organizations collected enough signatures to get the issue on the 2024 ballot. More

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      ‘We must not stop’: potential Trump VP Ben Carson touts national abortion ban

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      In a new book, the retired neurosurgeon, former US housing secretary and potential Trump vice-presidential pick Ben Carson calls for a national abortion ban – a posture at odds with most Americans and even Donald Trump himself.Hailing the 2022 Dobbs v Jackson US supreme court ruling that removed the federal right to abortion, Carson writes: “We must not stop there … the battle over the lives of unborn children is not yet finished. Many states have made abortion illegal because of the Dobbs decision, yet the practice continues in many more states.“What is needed is legislation that guarantees the right to life for all American citizens, including those still in the womb. Therefore, we must be boldly vocal about saving our fellow human beings through the legislative process. They are counting on us!”Carson’s book, The Perilous Fight: Overcoming Our Culture’s War on the American Family, will be published later this month. The Guardian obtained a copy.With the book, Carson follows other potential Trump running mates in seeking to sell himself to the reading and voting public as well as the former president, among them the extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene; the former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard; and the South Dakota governor and self-confessed dog- and goat-killer Kristi Noem.No 2 to Trump may be a dubious prize – his vice-president, Mike Pence, ended up running for his life from Trump supporters who wanted to hang him on January 6 – but contenders continue to jostle.Recent reporting suggests Carson has slipped from the front rank. On Thursday, Bloomberg said Trump was closely considering Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, and three senators: Marco Rubio of Florida, JD Vance of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina.But Carson, 72, remains close to Trump, having challenged him for the Republican nomination in 2016 – briefly leading the race – before becoming one of the only members of Trump’s cabinet to stay throughout his term, even after Trump incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Carson’s hardline views on abortion are well known: during his 2016 run he ran into controversy when he likened abortion to slavery and said he wanted to see the end of Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which safeguarded the federal right.His new book comes nearly two years after Roe was brought down by a supreme court to which Trump appointed three rightwing justices.Carson writes: “I’m grateful that in my lifetime I was able to hear these incredible words established by the supreme court of the United States: “Held, the constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”Planned Parenthood v Casey was a 1992 case that upheld Roe. Thirty years later, tilted 6-3 to the right by Trump, the court brought both rulings down.Carson continues: “The supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson was a crucial correction to the error of Roe v Wade, and I am certainly grateful for that correction. However, we must not stop there.”Many observers suggest Republicans should have stopped their attacks on abortion rights before achieving their goal with the fall of Roe.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPublic opinion remains in favour of legal abortion: according to Gallup, just 13% of Americans agree with Carson that it should be banned entirely.Since Dobbs, fueled by such voter sentiment, Democrats have enjoyed electoral victories, even in Republican-run states, when campaigning on Republican threats to women’s reproductive rights. The issue has been placed front and centre of the presidential election to come by the Biden campaign.Extreme developments among the states have included the introduction of a six-week abortion ban in Florida and in Arizona the triggering (and repeal) of a brutal ban passed in 1864, before statehood and when the age of consent there was just 10.Trump has struggled to reconcile boasts about bringing down Roe with avoiding talk of a national ban.Last month, the former president said: “States will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both. Whatever they decide must be the law of the land, or in this case the law of the state.“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks, some will be more conservative than others. At the end of the day this is all about the will of the people. You must follow your heart, or in many cases your religion or faith.“Do what’s right for your family, and do what’s right for yourself.” More