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Over the past week, I watched two major pop culture properties become wearily inevitable targets for the kind of bad-faith discourse that has polluted my occupation for several years now. Fans of Amazons The Boys, a scathing satire of superhero stories and corporate culture, seemed aghast that this deeply political show had become, uh, political. Around this time, as we all guffawed at the Reddit screenshots, the usual suspects started ranting about Lightyear, the Pixar sort-of prequel to Toy Story that focuses on the origin story of the action figure. Right-wing rabble-rousers like Patricia Heaton tried to start drama over the decision to cast Chris Evans as this take on Buzz Lightyear over the original voice, Trump supporter Tim Allen. The tedious claims of wokeness and cancel culture were invoked for everything, including a very brief gay kiss that saw the film banned in Saudi Arabia. The movies soft box office opening from this past weekend inspired further smarmy nonsense, but mercifully, it hasnt gained as much traction as stuff like this often does. Perhaps were all too exhausted from the heatwave to care.

I bring these two examples up, as minor and entertaining as they are, because they ended up perfectly embodying the obvious artifice and ignorance that has been maintained the past few years of trumped-up fury over entertainment. Weve all watched on wearily as pop culture became the default battleground for the current force of right-wing, anti-inclusivity fearmongering that opened the doors to a rabbit hole of radicalization. Films, TV shows, music, and so on have always inspired a certain sort of fervency, a deeply emotional investment encouraged by marketing. Im not sure weve ever had a time when such things havent led to well-crafted hysteria. Consider the Satanic Panic over the 80s targeting horror movies and rock music, or the Catholic League picketing Hollywood way back in its infancy. For as long as art has existed, someone has tried to ban it. Our current era isnt new, but it does feel more immediate, tied to the rising anti-queer and racist tide that has permeated political power on both sides of the pond.

Its easy to get people wound up over pop culture. It seems so low-stakes yet enticingly comforting in its ability to comfort and inspire us. Were hardwired to defend the things we love, taught to believe that they are extensions of our very selves. Ive witnessed more than my fair share of fandom wars to know how messy this mindset can get, and Im not immune to it myself. Nobody is. That seemingly minor sensation is scarily easy to wield as a weapon. When youve been trained from birth to view certain corporate entities and their highly profitable IPs as your childhood, breaking away from that idea is often easier said than done, especially if youre used to being exclusively pandered to by these brands. Remember the fallout from 2016s Ghostbusters reboot and how quickly that perfectly fine film was swarmed by misogynists and racists and their fake fury? That bigotry became impossible to ignore because it was amplified by the same shameless careerists who had turned hating Anita Sarkeesian into their full-time job. They saw an opportunity and they took it, and plenty of creeps latched onto them to give their movement the vaguest sheen of legitimacy.

The pattern is obvious once you notice it: take a pop-culture property with at least some mainstream appeal, latch onto a minor detail involving diversity, shout about how its yet another example of the vague concept of wokeness or cancel culture, and tag in a few bigots or Elon Musk for extra promo. Make sure to use a lot of words like erasure of whiteness or heterosexuality, and big up the frequently refuted delusion that Hollywood is an uber-liberal paradise that forces poor oppressed racists to censor themselves. Maybe throw in some incendiary claims about child grooming and critical race theory to seal the deal and guarantee some QAnon support. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I saw a Daily Mail headline recently because of course it was them that claimed British builders were going WOKE (their capitalization) because many tradesmen were now discussing their feelings with colleagues and shunning greasy fried breakfasts. We know that the appropriation of woke to now mean anything vaguely diverse was always a dog-whistle sham, but seeing it applied in such an evidently ridiculous context only emphasizes that. Woke and cancel culture and culture war are meaningless terms, barely legitimate covers for wannabe provocateurs who are mad that they cant say the N word on stage. When even eating well and being open with colleagues is positioned as something damning, you have to wonder what kind of future these people want for us.

As with all culture wars, the goalposts are always moving. The targets change, sometimes flipping from fine to abhorrent for no other reason than its convenient to do so. The smallest of details are elevated to criminal status, and the targets are predictably marginalized voices and individuals. A half-second gay kiss is wokeness going too far. A Black woman in a story about space wizards with laser swords is unthinkably evil. A female protagonist of any kind elicits abject fury. Theres no reason behind this hate, not that reason would justify it. The aim is to destroy progress in all its forms. If that werent the case then we wouldnt see the likes of Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and the chucklefuck GOP congressmen of the week latching onto these moments with practiced zeal.

They dont want to see queer people existing. They dont want to see people of color existing. They dont want to see trans kids living. They dont want to see toxic masculinity be challenged in any shape, way, or form. When the most audience tested, watered down and corporate mandated forms of entertainment we all consume reflect even the tiniest signs of progress, its seen as going too far and must be stomped out of life immediately. It may not seem like much to many at first because hey, its just a movie, right? Its no big deal. But we all know the road its leading towards. Thats why I felt the need to write this piece, to note how blatantly flimsy the theatrics are when they fail, yet remain so potent when theres a real force behind them. Calling it out isnt easy when the other side reject reason and exist only to hate, but it still feels worthy. This wont stop anytime soon, especially as conservative politicians target trans kids, book banning has come back in style, and Black educators are stalked over ludicrous fears of critical race theory. These are the punching bags that rile up the most violent people in our society, all of whom are buoyed by a media landscape that wont condemn the rising ride of fascism. Pop culture is but one of their chosen battlegrounds. It may fail once or twice but its success rate is shockingly high, and that should worry us.

Kayleigh is a features writer and editor for Pajiba. You can follow her on Twitter or listen to her podcast, The Hollywood Read.

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'Lightyear,' 'The Boys,' and How to Start a Fake Culture War - Pajiba Entertainment News

Talk about abortion is dominating the US culture wars, again. A leaked US Supreme Court majority opinion foreshadows the overturning of 1973s Roe vs. Wade decision protecting a womans liberty to terminate a pregnancy without excessive government restriction, sparking joy among anti-abortion campaigners and dread among choice advocates. Anyone naive to the last 50 years of abortion politics might think the sides are concerned with two entirely different phenomena. One advocates a womans right to reproductive and bodily autonomy, whereas the other condemns what it considers to be a form of homicide.

Many self-declared pro-lifers consider the termination of a pregnancy the moral equivalent of taking a newborn life. Their strategies, including the endless debates over when a fetus becomes viable, seek to blur distinctions between aborting a fetus and killing a newborn child. So much so that few on the pro-choice side welcome discussion about the relationship between abortion and infanticide. I argue here that an understanding of that relationshipdrawing on evidence from centuries of history and millennia of evolutionleads to the conclusion that abortion is the most humane alternative to infanticide, adding to the case for safe, legal, accessible abortion for women who need it.

Infanticide

According to infanticide researchers Susan Hatters Friedman and Phillip J. Reznick, the day during which a person is at greatest risk of homicide is the first day of life. Neonaticide, the killing of infants soon after birth, might sound like a rare crime committed by the occasional deranged adult, but the reality is more disturbing. In every society, contemporary and historic, for which adequate accounts exist, infants have been killed or abandoned to die. And not just the occasional infant here or there. By some estimates, as many as 10 to 15 percent of newborns throughout history have been killed.

Before the 1970s, scholars usually explained high historic levels of infanticide as somehow serving societies. They posited that the Carthaginian enthusiasm for child sacrifice, Platos eugenic advice that inferior Athenian parents expose their newborns to the elements, and countless other examples somehow aided social cohesion. And yet humanitys high levels of neonaticide and infant abandonment long predates the philosophic and religious beliefs that provided cultural cover for infanticide. It long precedes the invention of those religions that now condemn abortion and even the rise of those societies that invented the philosophies and religions. The ancient capacity for infanticide needs a proper explanation that begins with the motives of those individuals who kill or abandon their young.

The individual motives that lead to infanticide come into view when we recognise that the newborns own mother is responsible for nearly all neonaticides (killings of infants in the first 72 hours after birth). This is not a peculiarity of human mothering. Mothers of many mammalian species kill or abandonto certain deathsome newborns.

Understanding lion infanticide - Africa Geographic

Lion infanticide: A look into why lions sometimes kill the offspring of their own species.

Infanticide is the kind of behaviour one might expect natural selection to weed out. To understand why it sometimes does the opposite, it is worth a short field trip to the great plains of North America, where rabbit-sized rodents called black-tailed prairie dogs live in vast networks of communal burrows. Mothers invest a lot in their pups, producing nutritious milk and energetically defending them against predators and other breeding females. Between conceiving and bearing a litter, a mothers prospects for holding her own against other females can dwindle, reducing the chance she will see her pups safely through to independence. When this happens, some mothers cut their losses at birth, abandoning the pups to be consumed by others.

The mothers decision to cut her losses with pups that probably wont survive to maturity is economically rational, although it entails neither consciousness nor deliberation. When animal mothers kill or abandon their newborn young, they do so because their current circumstances are so poor that rearing those young will not be worthwhile. They can then immediately start feeding and get a chance to breed again under better conditions. Abandoning a litter in this way can eventually deliver the female more offspring, grand-offspring, great-grand-offspring, and so on, than she would have had by persisting with the original litter.

Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, more than any other researcher, built the modern evolutionary understanding of motherhood. Her exceptional book Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection strips away the idea of the boundlessly loving and caring mother, endowed by evolution with instincts to selflessly serve and protect her young. Hrdy builds a nuanced view of mothers as adaptive multi-taskers, balancing their investments in current offspring against their likely future relationships, reproductive opportunities, and social status. That has long included abandonment, neglect, or infanticide when it suited a mothers evolutionary interests.

Societies that hunt and gather their food provide some insight into what life was probably like for our ancestors throughout prehistory. Anthropological accounts show that more than 90 percent of infanticides in those societies occur either because difficulties in birth or development give the infant little chance of flourishing, or because the mother hasnt the support she needs to raise another child. The same logic underpins the custom in many traditional societies of killing one, or both, newborn twins if the mother and her helpers cannot give them both a good start in life.

Infanticide cases in 1970s and 1980s Canada fit a similar pattern. Even though young mothers made up only 14 percent of new mothers, they represented 45 percent of the mothers who killed their infants. And while unmarried mothers represented only 13 percent of all new mothers, they committed 60 percent of infanticides. Worldwide, mothers who commit neonaticide tend to be free of psychiatric disorders, young, and unmarried. What distinguishes these mothers is a lack of experience, means, and support, making a birth far from welcome.

Evolutionary theory neatly predicts the observed relationship between maternal age and infanticide. Young mothers, with most of their reproductive future ahead of them, might sometimes be better off by deferring motherhood until they have the support and resources they need to adequately care for and invest in a child. Older mothers, however, will have fewer chances to conceive again, and losing out on the chance to rear the current child will represent a bigger cost to the lifetime fitness of an older mother.

Alternatives to infanticide

Throughout human evolution, infanticide has been the last resort of mothers in untenable or deteriorating circumstances. History confirms that mothers will grasp at any more palatable alternatives, including abandoning an infant in the hope that someone else might raise it. As many as 20 to 40 percent of children born in Rome in the first 300 years of the common era may have been abandoned or exposed in public places. There, they might have been claimed by another family and either adopted or enslaved. Those who were not quickly adopted usually died.

From a distance of two millennia, one could look at ancient Roman exposure as an unfathomable dimension of a harsh culture. But infant exposure raised the same moral dilemmas, elicited similar shames and disapproval, and inflicted on parents the same anguish and grief that it might today. Infants selected for exposure were either unhealthy and unlikely to thrive or from families who could not afford to raise another child.

Despite changing public opinion and stronger preventative laws after the Romans adopted Christianity, abandonment remained widespread for centuries, particularly when economic conditions deteriorated. Throughout the Middle Ages, so many newborns were abandoned that many European churches provided drop-off places for mothers to safely leave newborns. In more recent centuries, records kept by parishes, cities, and hospitals tell of millions of babies abandoned in European cities. From 1500 until the middle of the 19th century, for example, between 10 and 40 percent of all babies baptised in Florence were foundlings.

Once found, however, a high proportion of infants were more permanently lost. In some institutions, fewer than one percent survived their first year. Abandoning an infant might not be psychologically the same thing as killing it, but outcomes for the infant were almost identical. Like infanticide, abandonment was a symptom of maternal circumstances. Foundlings came overwhelmingly from mothers who were unmarried, widowed, extremely poor, or domestic servants. Mothers, that is, without the help and financial support of a husband or close relatives and for whom the demands of caring for an infant would not have been compatible with earning a wage or securing a long-term partner.

The circumstances under which mothers abandon their children match the circumstances that contribute to infanticide in traditional societies. Abandonment replaced infanticide in the societies of Europe and elsewhere. While less common in most contemporary societies than at any time in the last two millennia, abandonment still happens, especially when economic or social circumstances deteriorate. Fortunately for foundlings, the survival rate of those who are abandoned at birth is far greater now than it has ever been in the past.

Many shades of mother

Anti-abortion attitudes form part of a broader tension about mothering, polarising good mothers who go to any lengths to provide for their children from bad mothers who neglect or abandon their offspring. The reality, of course, is far more complicated. Sarah Hrdys comprehensive research reveals a continuum in investment between these extremes, with most negotiating the middle ground.

This view places infanticide and abandonment in the context of maternal investment, and like any kind of investment, mothering comes at a cost. Mothers with neither reliable partner nor other support, for example, are less inclined to breastfeed. In impoverished communities with poor sanitation, this can imperil the baby as formula made up with drinking water becomes a recipe for diarrhoea and, often, death. But mothers with a partner who earns a living, or with other familial support, are more likely to breastfeed, making early infant survival less of a lottery. Sometimes, the same women who bottle-fed and lost children to diarrhoea earlier in life choose to breastfeed and form a much closer attachment to subsequent infants when their circumstances improve.

Evolution moulded human mothers into strategic investors, sensitive to each childs chances of thriving, and attuned to their own projected costs of breastfeeding, protecting, and caring for the child over the coming years. The story of strategic mothering is, in wealthy contemporary societies, a mostly happy one. More infants are born to mothers who can afford to invest in them than at any time in history, or in humanitys deep pre-historic past. And thats because women have better, safer ways of ensuring they dont bear offspring they cant afford to invest in. One of those ways is safe, legal abortion.

Abortion is the same thing

Abortion isnt a modern invention. Botanical abortifacients of variable efficacy were available in many ancient societies. Women in many traditional societies also have ways of aborting a pregnancy. But they are so unsafe that mothers more often find neonaticide a better option. As Hrdy puts it:

Safe abortion, then, is the modern cure for the ancient heartbreaks of neonaticide and abandonment. The circumstances that predict abortion rates in contemporary societies are the same as those that led mothers to abandon, neglect, or kill their newborn infants throughout history and deep into humanitys evolutionary past.

Centers for Disease Control and Preventions reporting on legal abortion in the USA reveals that, by far, the highest ratio of aborted pregnancies to live births (the abortion ratio) occurs in teenagers. In 2019, the abortion ratio was 873 per 1,000 live births among those younger than 15 and 348 per 1,000 in those 15 to 19. This number declines steadily until the 3034 age group in which only 132 pregnancies were terminated for every 1,000 live births.

Few 13-year-olds, their whole adult lives ahead of them, wish to become mothers. Girls that young seldom get pregnant in hunter-gatherer societies, where food is hard to come by and it takes longer to accumulate enough body fat to become fertile. Most young teens are psychologically unready to become mothers, and societies now recognise this in age-of-consent laws.

Parental and legal concerns may make termination of pregnancies in children younger than 15 somewhat more acceptable, but that only complements the evolutionary logic that the youngest women have the most to lose from becoming mothers. And the offspring of those that do become mothers suffer far poorer prospects, on average, than the offspring of older mothers, especially those who are in stable relationships or are financially independent.

Just as unmarried mothers are more likely than married mothers to commit infanticide or abandon their offspring, they are also almost nine times more likely to terminate a pregnancy (394 abortions per 1,000 live births) than married women (46 abortions per 1,000 live births). That observation reflects that a single woman is less likely than a partnered woman to have the financial, emotional, and practical support she needs to raise a child.

Before we can talk about abortion law with any degree of sincerity, we need to face the uncomfortable truth that, in all societies, past and present, many pregnancies were, and are, unintended and unwanted. In the USA, almost half of all pregnancies are unintended at the time of conception. In the developing world, mothers who do not want to get pregnant conceive an estimated one-third of all pregnancies, amounting to 75 million unwanted pregnancies each year.

Most unintended pregnancies constitute a calamity, at least for the mother. Especially if she is very young, poor, isolated, in an abusive relationship, or if she already has as many children as she can care for. The best scientific studies of the consequences of being able or unable to obtain an abortion bear this out. Women denied an abortion end up significantly poorer, in worse health, and more likely to be in an abusive relationship than an otherwise identical sample of women who were able to terminate their unwanted pregnancy. Their other children also experienced worse physical, psychological, and relationship development.

In the past, when induced abortions were all illegal, unsafe, and hard to arrange, a much higher proportion of unwanted pregnancies resulted in the infants death soon after birth. The availability of safe, legal abortion has prevented many of those deaths. In the USA, for example, neonatal deaths plummeted in the early 1970s as a direct result of the protected abortion rights flowing from Roe vs. Wade.

The availability of abortion also reduces infant abandonment. In Romania, the communist regime of dictator Nicolae Ceauescu strenuously opposed abortion and family planning. As a result of this ban, Romanians abandoned a remarkable proportion of children to be raised in institutions. The State wanted them, the State should raise them became the refrain as families abandoned newborns in maternity wards, hospitals, or dedicated institutions. When Ceauescu fell in 1989, the lifting of the abortion ban caused rates of infant abandonment to plunge.

Anti-abortion campaigners overlook the crucial fact that safe and legal abortion provides far and away the most successful solution to the longstanding historic problems of neonaticide, infant abandonment, and neglect. If they are not available legally, women will seek illegal abortions, which are far less safe. Each year, an estimated 68,000 women and girls die and seven million women are treated for complications, many suffering permanent disability, due to illegal abortions.

Controlling sex

The bad news for anti-abortionists is that abortion presents effective society-level prevention for infanticide, infant abandonment, and neglect. But theres plenty of good news for those genuinely committed to reducing the number of terminated pregnancies. A similar cure exists for abortion. Ample scientific evidence shows that unwanted pregnancies can be prevented via evidence-based sex education and access to reliable contraception.

The Contraceptive CHOICE Project in St Louis, Missouri, illustrates how effectively reliable contraception can prevent unwanted pregnancies and reduce abortions. The project recruited 9,256 sexually active women who expressed a wish for reversible contraception. Women received counselling that covered all reversible methods but emphasised that long-acting reversible contraceptives (intrauterine devices and implants) were more effective than methods like the pill or the contraceptive patch. Participants then received their chosen contraceptive at no cost. Follow-up interviews over two to three years then established if each woman had become pregnant or had had an abortion.

Participants in the CHOICE project were dramatically less likely to become pregnant than women of the same demographic makeup in the same region of the USA. There were fewer than one-fifth as many teen births. Abortion rates halved. And by reaching nearly 10,000 at-risk women in a city of over 1.3 million, abortions in the entire city of St Louis dropped by 20 percent. By comparison, abortion rates in demographically similar Kansas City remained stable.

CHOICE is estimated to have prevented 6,794 abortions over three years. Evidence-based and ethical counselling emphasising reliable methods of contraception, together with free reversible contraception of a womans chosen type, represents the most effective known way to reduce abortions. Anti-abortion activists should be heralding this study from every Sunday and social media pulpit they command.

And yet, when New York Times journalist Emily Bazelon asked Charmaine Yoest, the peppy then-president of Americans United for Life, about the CHOICE project, Yoest said, I dont want to frustrate you, but Im not going to go there. Because that would be, frankly, carrying water for the other side to allow them to redefine the issue in that way.

Instead of finding common ground with family planning advocates over a phenomenal intervention that is scientifically shown to reduce unplanned pregnancies and terminations, Yoest and other anti-abortion leaders chose to fuss about the framing of the issue and to reinforce the partisan side-taking that so contaminates this issue. If preventing abortions compels such an urgent moral priority for anti-abortion campaigners, why dont they mobilise their formidable energies to raise funds for family planning and contraception services? Is the American pro-life movements obsession with slashing support for Planned Parenthood really only about abortion, or could it have something to do with the other services they provide? Like contraception?

The only consistent answer to these questions is that what disturbs most anti-abortion campaigners is not abortion itself, but the sex that causes unwanted pregnancy. That makes the abortion issue and the starring role of sex in the culture wars a far more difficult tangle to untie.

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The Tragedy of the Unwanted Child: What Ancient Cultures Did Before Abortion - Quillette

As with so many aspects of the culture wars, the American debate over abortion seems to spend little time considering what policies will actually do to the people at whom theyre aimed.

Proponents of restrictions or outright bans believe theyre fighting to save unborn lives. But while the question of when an unborn fetus becomes a person is more a question of faith than science, those restrictions can have profound impacts on many who are undeniably people.

Of course, the people who will be most profoundly affected will be women and families who dont or barely have the money to leave the state for an abortion in the likely event that Ohio severely restricts or bans the procedure after Roe v Wade is overturned.

So it seems important to see what data can say about who these women are and what restricting their ability to end unwanted pregnancies means for Ohio and the rest of the country.

Each year, the Ohio Department of health compiles abortion statistics in the state, giving a partial picture of who is getting them.

One striking fact is how many fewer women from all backgrounds are terminating their pregnancies. The number has plummeted from just under 45,000 in 1977, the first year for which the state published the statistics, to around 20,000 in 2020, the most recent year for which numbers are available.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the largest group of women who got Ohio abortions in 2020 were in their 20s 59% followed by women in their 30s, 29%. Also unsurprising is that 62% of women got abortions before they were nine weeks pregnant, while less than 2% got them after 19 weeks of pregnancy.

And, while its not surprising that unmarried women are more likely to get abortions, in 2020 they were much more so. The Ohio health stats indicated that 82% of the 20,605 women who received abortions in the state were never married, separated, divorced, or widowed.

But what is perhaps most striking among the Ohio statistics is how overrepresented Black women were.

Ohio is only 13% Black, but Black women received 48% of all abortions in in 2020, the largest single group. Whites, by contrast, make up 82% of the states population, but white women made up only 44% of the group receiving abortions.

The fact that so many unmarried and Black women were having abortions might suggest they didnt believe they have the emotional and financial support they needed to raise a child often in addition to children they already have. Also, more than 27% of Ohios Black people were living in poverty in 2020, compared to just 10% of white people.

However, there is evidence that at least nationally, the poorest women are less likely to seek abortions than their more affluent peers.

A 2015 study by the Brookings Institution found that while women living below the poverty line were much less likely to use contraception and more likely to become unintentionally pregnant, those who did were less likely to get abortions.

Between 2011 and 2013, 32% of women making four times the federal poverty level who had become unintentionally pregnant got abortions, the study said. That compares to less than 9% of women living below the poverty line during the same period.

Cost might be something keeping the poorest women away from the abortion clinic.

Planned Parenthood reports that its lowest-cost, early-pregnancy procedure in Ohio costs $650. If so, further restrictions seem likely to force up the cost particularly if they force women to travel out of state for the procedure.

It seems important with the U.S. Supreme Court apparently poised to overturn the 1973 decision to look at the consequences it might have for women who wont be able to get abortions and for society generally.

One paper published in 2020 by the National Bureau of Economic Research attempted to do that.

In it, two economists and a demographer used credit data to build on the 2016 Turnaway Study, which followed 1,000 women who had sought abortions at 30 clinics across the country. Through follow-up interviews, that study sought to compare women who were turned away from abortions to those who received them.

In the follow-up analysis, The Economic Consequences of Being Denied an Abortion, the research team compared credit information between women who were denied abortions due to gestational limits in states to those of women who received abortions, but were within two weeks of those limits. It sought to look at financial stress caused not only not only from the costs of having and raising a child, but also from a well-documented large and persistent decline in earnings (i.e. child penalty) that women experience on average following the birth of a child.

The three researchers detected a lot of financial stress.

We find that abortion denial resulted in increases in the amount of debt 30 days or more past due of $1,750, an increase of 78% relative to their pre-birth mean, and in negative public records on the credit report such as bankruptcy, evictions, and tax liens, of about 0.07 additional records, or an increase of 81%, the paper said.

It added, These effects are persistent over time, with elevated rates of financial distress observed the year of the birth and for the entire 5 subsequent years for which we observe the women. Our point estimates also suggest that being denied an abortion may reduce credit access and self-sufficiency, particularly in the years immediately following the birth, although these estimates are not always statistically significant.

Of course, worse economic outcomes for those mothers and their babies dont just affect them. They also affect any other children and family members the woman is caring for.

Being forced to carry a child to term might also increase the chances that a child is unwanted and that can cause bad societal outcomes, such as an increase in crime.

In 2001, economists John J. Donohue III and Steven Levitt published The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. It tried to explain the precipitous drop in crime through the 1990s from all-time highs in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

After ruling out other theories for the drop, it concluded that the 1973 legalization of abortion resulted in many fewer unwanted children and, as that cohort came of age, a lot less crime.

Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50% of the recent drop in crime, it said.

The paper stirred a ferocious response across the political spectrum. Some, including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, compared it to the pseudo-science of eugenics, which advocated sterilization of people with traits deemed undesirable.

In a 2019 podcast, Levitt said subsequent research reinforced their earlier work. He also denied that his and Donohues research advocated forcing anybody to do anything.

I actually think that our paper makes really clear why this has nothing to do with eugenics, Levitt said. In our hypothesis what happens is abortion becomes legal, women are given the right to choose and what our data suggest is that women are pretty good at choosing when they can bring kids into the world; when they can provide good environments for them.

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Beyond the rhetoric: Abortion restrictions will affect poor & minorities unequally - Ohio Capital Journal

For months and even years I have seen this coming, and yet the reality of the Supreme Courts decision is still a shock. How can it be that people had a constitutional right for nearly half a century, and now no more? How can it not matter that Americans consistently signaled that they did not want this to happen, and even so this has happened?

The Courts answer is that Roe is different. Roe, the Court suggests, was uniquely, egregiously wrong from the beginninga badly reasoned decision criticized by even the most ardent supporters of abortion rights, including the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The majority suggests that the best comparison to Roe (and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the decision that saved abortion rights in 1992) is Plessy v. Ferguson, the 19th-century decision that held racial segregation to be constitutional.

From the May 2022 issue: The future of abortion in a post-Roe America

If this decision signals anything bigger than its direct consequences, it is this: No one should get used to their rights. Predicting with certainty which ones, if any, will go, or when, is impossible. But Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization is a stark reminder that this can happen. Rights can vanish. The majority wants us to think otherwise. They tell us that a right to abortion is unlike other privacy rights, such as the right to marry whom you wish or to use whatever contraception you choose. Abortion, in their view, is distinct from these, because it puts someone elses life on the line. And so if we believe the Courts conservative justices, this is a reckoning about abortion and nothing more.

Even if this is the case, the Courts decision is staggering. Emphasizing that no other rights will be lostconvincingly or notsuggests that there is no problem if this right disappears with the stroke of a pen. The majority opinion spends precious little time on the damage that reversing Roe will do.

Often, when the Court considers whether to reverse a past decision, the justices ask whether anyone has relied on the status quoand whether unsettling it will devastate those people. The majority in Dobbs says almost nothing about the kind of disruption that is likely to come now that Roe is goneand ignores the possibility that people have thought differently about intimate relationships, career decisions, and even how to make ends meet based partly on the idea that abortion is available. The Court stresses that it does not care about the publics reaction to its opinionthe justices must simply do their jobs and interpret the law. The justices seem to simply not care if this decision breaks the country in two. Wrong is wrong, the justices declare. The rest hardly registers.

Molly Jong-Fast: What my mom told me about America before Roe

But if the Court can so blithely reverse Roewhen all that has changed is that conservatives finally had the voteswe should wonder whether this is just about abortion.

After all, this decision did not come about solely because Roe was a weakly reasoned decision. This opinion did not come down because Roe launched our culture wars (a comforting but completely ahistorical lie). This decision reflects decades of organizing by a passionate and savvy social movement that argues that fetuses have fundamental rightsand that, in fact, the Constitution does have a view on abortion, and that view is that abortion is unconstitutional. This movement has been brilliantly successful in its efforts to control the Supreme Court, influence the rules of campaign spending, and remake the GOP.

And Americas politics have changed too. Dobbs is a product of a deeply divided country. The laws emerging from conservative states would have once seemed politically toxic, but now the gap between red and blue states has widened to the point that once-unthinkable laws are the new normal. Dobbs shows that the Supreme Court reflects and reinforces the dysfunction and ugliness of our politicsand does so at a time when faith in democratic institutions is already fraying.

In some ways, this has long been true. Progressive scholars have criticized a system in which five judges can determine which rights we have. Others have written for years that courts are not engines of social change and do not meaningfully protect constitutional values, and that the Court has, throughout its many years, been regularly partisan and out of step with popular opinion.

But until recently, there were limits on what the Court would do. Historically, the justices seemed reluctant to do anything too radical, lest they cause a backlash that damaged the power and prestige of the institution.

One might have expected any such guardrails to be particularly effective at protecting Roe, the best-known of any Supreme Court decision, and one that many Americans seem to support. The Dobbs decision makes plain that those limits are gone. In their place is a kind of constitutional partisanship, dictated by the interpretive philosophies and political priors of whoever currently has a majority on the Court and nothing more.

Donald Ayer: Overturning Roe would be just the beginning

The age of Roe was not a static one. In 1973, the Supreme Court declared a right to abortionnot just for the women who wanted an abortion but also in part for the doctors who performed the procedure. But within a matter of years, that consensus fell apart, and Roe became identified more narrowly with people who have abortions and the broader womens movement. By peeling doctors away from the people Roe protected, lawmakers in red states and in Congress were able to sever abortion rights from access to the procedure, eliminating Medicaid reimbursement and then erecting a seemingly endless number of barriers to exercising the right that people theoretically had. More recently, the conversation about abortion has morphed once again: Reproductive-justice advocates, and especially activists of color, have argued that abortion should be understood neither as a matter of single-issue politics nor as a question of freedom of choice but as part of a broader social-justice agenda that helps everyone, and especially people of color, decide when to become parents and then receive support after they do.

Roe v. Wade is gone, but Dobbs is not the end of the story of abortion rights in America. If anything, the past five decades have demonstrated that the Supreme Court alone cannot forever put to rest the idea of a constitutional right to abortion. The Court has a lot of power, but so do the American people, and they still have a lot more to say.

Go here to see the original:
If the Supreme Court Can Reverse Roe, It Can Reverse Anything - The Atlantic

Welcome to POLITICOs West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice.

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SIREN EMJOI: We get a lot of feedback from readers, but we want to know if you have any burning questions. Email us at [emailprotected], and well endeavor to get to the bottom of whatever youre curious about. If we get enough of them, we may do a mailbag edition. We promise to keep you anonymous (especially if you're a Biden official, who are also welcome to submit questions)!

White House reporters from smaller outlets often feel like afterthoughts in a briefing room dominated by correspondents from legacy media outlets who hog the front row and pose the most questions to the press secretary.

But during White House Correspondents Association election season, that all changes.

Voting begins next week for the election to several open positions on the WHCA board, the organization that coordinates and sometimes battles with the White House over press access and logistics.

All of the candidates for open WHCA board positions represent media organizations in the first several rows of the briefing room (disclosure: POLITICOs own EUGENE DANIELS is running for the board seat allocated to represent digital media outlets). And over the past few weeks, theyve been very attentive to their colleagues in the back rows.

Candidates for the board have been hitting the phones and holding in-person meetings with reporters, photographers and other journalists from outlets large and small to try and win over their votes. Multiple White House correspondents from smaller outlets said it has the feeling of a high school class president election, with candidates posting flyers around the common areas in the White House briefing room, and soliciting votes from people theyve seen around for years, but rarely acknowledged.

"You know how when a popular girl runs for homecoming queen, she makes overtures to people shes never spoken to before because band geeks outnumber cheerleaders and you cant win without them? one White House reporter asked. Same thing."

Candidates for the board have tried particularly hard to woo the large and growing bloc of foreign reporters covering the White House. As of this year, foreign press make up about 20 percent of the WHCA membership, with the largest contingents representing outlets from Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Since the election of DONALD TRUMP and continuing into JOE BIDENs presidency, theres been an increasing amount of interest in the White House beat by foreign media outlets and an accompanying rise in the number of credentialed foreign reporters.

SARA COOK seems to get this dynamic.

In an email to members, the CBS News producer, who is running for the seat representing television outlets, repeatedly highlighted her previous experience working for a foreign outlet, saying her tenure as both a legacy US network and a foreign news outlet has given me a deep understanding of the priorities for organizations large and small, foreign and domestic.

Cook isnt alone in targeting members of the press corps representing foreign media outlets.

In a note to West Wing Playbook, KAITLAN COLLINS, who is running against USA Todays FRANCESCA CHAMBERS for the WHCA president slot, said she understands concerns expressed by journalists at smaller outlets and foreign media organizations as well.

A Vote Kaitlan poster | Courtesy of Kaitlan Collins

The CNN White House correspondent argued that she hasnt forgotten her experience covering the White House as a reporter for the Daily Caller, a right-leaning media organization that did not get the preferential treatment that those in the front row receive.

As I've been campaigning, I've heard from many of them that they often feel their concerns are forgotten about once the election ends, which I've assured them won't happen if I'm elected, she said of the foreign press corps. Their priorities such as advocating for a foreign press pooler to join sprays when a foreign leader is present and having access to foreign press specific background briefings will be my priorities as well.

Current WHCA President STEVEN PORTNOY told West Wing Playbook that the election is always valuable because it gives the prospective candidates an opportunity to understand the concerns of various, diverse parts of the White House press corps.

The campaign provides tremendous value for candidates who run because it forces them to enter into a realm of the press corps that they may not be familiar with, he said. It's a real education into the makeup of the press corps.

But not everyone buys it. Nor does everyone think theres much of a point to it, noting some of the structural and even physical limitations of the White House press room.

If they could get a lunch room that doesnt face the bathrooms, Id elect Hitler, another White House correspondent joked.

TEXT US Are you KATRINA SMITH, a researcher in the office of presidential personnel? We want to hear from you! And well keep you anonymous if youd like.

Or if you think we missed something in todays edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at [emailprotected] or you can text/Signal/Wickr Alex at 8183240098.

A message from The American Petroleum Institute (API):

Given global realities, it is time for an energy awakening for the natural gas and oil supply chain and the government at all levels to open a new era of working together to ensure that essential energy resources are unlocked; to encourage investment opportunities and accelerate infrastructure development; and to strengthen global energy security, affordability and reliability. Last week, the American Petroleum Institute unveiled a 10-point plan to help America do just that. Read More.

With the White House Historical Association

Which president invited a raccoon to a White House garden party? Yes, a raccoon.

(Answer at the bottom)

HOOPS-GATE: Yesterday, aides to Vice President KAMALA HARRIS blasted out a video of her making a basketball shot (in heels, no less) while commemorating the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

Today, the full video emerged and it showed the VP missed her first five shots before sinking the one her staff posted. Republicans and conservatives gleefully pushed out the lengthier video.

Responding to one Fox News chyron about Harris missing the baskets, the veeps senior adviser for communications, HERBIE ZISKEND, quipped on Twitter: Thank you, for continuing to focus on the important issues facing the American people. Commerce Department senior adviser CAITLIN LEGACKI came to Harriss defense, tweeting out a video of NBA superstar STEPH CURRY also missing several shots.

If this is causing you a sense of deja vu, thats because weve been down this road before. Former President BARACK OBAMA was hazed pretty ruthlessly for missing 20 of 22 shots while hooping with kids on the White House court. And he fashioned himself a baller.

NEWSOM FOR PRESIDENT? California Gov. GAVIN NEWSOM has been vocal in recent weeks about how Democrats need to be more aggressive in confronting Republicans in the national culture wars, and some speculate it may be the beginning of his race for the presidency in 2024.

Everybody is trying to be relevant for the next race. He came through the recall election and hes doing a pretty good job as governor. However, I think ambition makes people do different things, former Biden administration official CEDRIC RICHMOND said.

As for what the West Wing thinks about the governor potentially running, Richmond said: I am not sure they are reading the Gavin Newsom opinion pages about his desire to be politically relevant. Our CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO and DAVID SIDERS have more details.

THE AGE FACTOR?: During todays White House press briefing, National Security Council spokesman Coordinator for Strategic Communications JOHN KIRBY got a series of three questions from one reporter.: Let me take the second one first because I tend to forget questions if I do them in order you ask them. No, its okay, its just age. Sad, but true.

MORE AND MORE ROCKET LAUNCHERS: The White House plans to send four additional rocket launchers to Ukraine, as part of its next round of military assistance as the Russian invasion rages on, our LARA SELIGMAN reports. The four additional rocket launchers would double the number of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems sent to Ukraine. The first four were sent to the country this week.

A message from The American Petroleum Institute (API):

New Biden Rules Would Bar Discrimination Against Transgender Students (NYTs Erica L. Green)

U.S. to give some Havana syndrome victims six-figure compensation (WaPos John Hudson and Shane Harris)

U.S. monkeypox response mirrors early coronavirus missteps, experts say (WaPos Lena H. Sun, Dan Diamond and Fenit Nirappil)

Biden administration announces $450 million in additional military assistance for Ukraine (CNNs Barbara Starr and Oren Liebermann)

President HERBERT HOOVER and first lady LOU HENRY HOOVER invited 4-year-old raccoon Susie, and her six cubs, to a garden party for wounded and disabled veterans in August 1930.

Inviting Susie and her cubs was attributed to Chief Usher IKE HOOVER, who received the animals from WILLIAM H. BLACKBURN, head keeper at the D.C. Zoo, according to the White House Historical Association.

A CALL OUT Do you think you have a more difficult trivia question? Send us your best question on the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.

A message from The American Petroleum Institute (API):

Washington policymakers must confront the global mismatch between demand and supply that has driven higher fuel prices by supporting greater U.S. production. To address the growing crisis we face, Congress and the President must support energy investment, create new access and prevent regulations from unnecessarily restricting energy growth. The world is calling out for energy leadership. America can and should step up now. Read the American Petroleum Institutes 10 in 2022 Plan which outlines 10 actions Congress can take to unleash U.S. energy and drive economic recovery. Read here.

Read more:
When reporters become the thing they hate: candidates - POLITICO