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Protesters take part in the Women's March and Rally for Abortion Justice in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 2. The demonstration targeted Senate Bill 8, a state law that bans nearly all abortions as early as six weeks in a pregnancy, making no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest. SERGIO FLORES/Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Protesters take part in the Women's March and Rally for Abortion Justice in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 2. The demonstration targeted Senate Bill 8, a state law that bans nearly all abortions as early as six weeks in a pregnancy, making no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest.

The SAFE Alliance in Austin helps survivors of child abuse, sexual assault and domestic violence. Back before Texas' new abortion law went into effect, the organization counseled a 12-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped by her father.

Piper Stege Nelson, chief public strategies officer for the SAFE Alliance, says the father didn't let the young girl leave the house.

"She got pregnant," Nelson says. "She had no idea about anything about her body. She certainly didn't know that she was pregnant."

The girl was eventually able to get help, but if this had happened after Sept. 1, when the state law went into effect, her options would have been severely curtailed, Nelson says.

In Texas, abortions are now banned as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. The law, Senate Bill 8, is currently the most restrictive ban on the procedure in effect in the country. According to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist national poll, Texas' law is unpopular across the political spectrum.

Notably, the law also makes no exceptions for people who are victims of rape or incest. Social workers in Texas say that's causing serious harm to sexual assault survivors in the state.

"Devastating" for survivors of repeated rape and abuse

While many people don't realize they are pregnant until after 6 weeks, Nelson says this is a particular problem for those who are being repeatedly raped or abused.

That's because to cope with the trauma of the abuse, they often grow numb to what's happening to their bodies.

"That dissociation can lead to a detachment from reality and the fact that she's pregnant," Nelson says. "And so, there again, she is not going to know that she is pregnant by six weeks and she's not going to be able to resolve that pregnancy."

Monica Faulkner, a social worker in Austin who has worked with sexual assault survivors, says not having the option of terminating a pregnancy will make recovering from an assault even harder.

"The impact of finally coming forward and then being told there are no options for you is devastating," says Faulkner, who directs the Institute for Child and Family Wellbeing at the University of Texas at Austin.

Being forced to carry a pregnancy to term can be harmful financially, psychologically and, sometimes, physically. For survivors, that further strips away agency, Nelson says, after their sense of safety and control has already been violated.

"And so when you have something like SB 8," Nelson says, "what it is doing is, it's further taking control and power away from the survivor right at the moment when they need that power and control over their lives to begin healing."

Faulkner says it's important to give sexual assault survivors options on how to move forward in their lives. She says SB 8 "clearly is taking away any choice that they have."

Public opinion, even in Texas, favors exceptions to strict bans

For decades, public opinion even in Texas has been pretty consistent about allowing some exceptions to laws that restrict abortion. Most Americans believe there should be exceptions to strict abortion bans.

Carole Joffe, a professor and sociologist who studies abortion policy at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco, says that despite public opinion on the matter, most of the anti-abortion bills introduced across the country in recent years haven't included exceptions for rape or incest.

"What we have seen over the years is a dramatic escalation," she says. "I think what Texas shines a bright spotlight on is what disdain we have for the needs of women and girls, or people who can get pregnant even if they don't identify as female."

The history of these types of exceptions is somewhat complicated. Joffe notes that toward the end of the 20th century, it was more common than now for states to include exceptions for rape and incest.

She says this trend to drop exceptions for rape and incest started about 10 years ago, after the Tea Party gained power in Congress and in many statehouses. As many legislatures became more politically conservative, anti-abortion groups started gaining more influence in the lawmaking process.

Anti-abortion movement has a tightening hold on state legislatures

Meanwhile, even as some state legislatures have been increasing the restrictions on abortion, the public views have really remained quite stable," Joffe says, with a sentiment that abortion should be allowed in cases of rape and incest. "The kind of restrictions we are seeing are the product of growing power in state legislatures of the anti-abortion movement," she says.

In 2019, a coalition of anti-abortion groups sent letters to national Republican Party officials following the passage of a controversial abortion law in Alabama. In it, groups asked GOP leaders to "reconsider decades-old talking points" regarding exceptions for rape and incest.

In Texas, the growing power of hardline conservatives in the state has helped anti-abortion successfully push for more restrictive laws.

John Seago, the legislative director with Texas Right To Life an influential anti-abortion group that pushed for SB 8, says the political shifts in the Texas legislature have made it easier to enact stricter abortion laws.

"In the last ten years, in Texas, our Republican majority has been growing," he says. "And kind of right around 2011/2013 we were really having enough votes to pass strong legislation."

And by "strong" Seago means not having to compromise on things like allowing abortions when severe fetal abnormalities are detected. Texas got rid of those exceptions a few years ago. And now that the new law in Texas doesn't exempt rape and incest, Seago says, it's more consistent with the underlying philosophy that groups like his hold.

"We are talking about innocent human life that it is not their crime, it was not their heinous behavior that victimized this woman," he says. "And so why should they receive the punishment?"

The problem of pregnancies arising from sexual assault is not a small one. One study estimates that almost 3 million women in the U.S. have become pregnant following a rape.

Originally posted here:
How sexual assault survivors are harmed by the Texas abortion law : Shots - Health News - NPR

Usually, its the party out of power that frets about whether it will ever win again. This time, its the party in control of government thats staring into the political wilderness.

Democrats now have a Washington trifecta command of the White House and both chambers of Congress. If the results of last weeks elections in Virginia and elsewhere are any indication, they may not retain it after next Novembers midterm elections. And a decade or longer may pass before they win a trifecta again.

The unusual structure of American government, combined with the electorates reflexive instinct to check the party in power, makes it hard for any party to retain a hold on both the White House and Congress for long.

Since World War II, political parties have waited an average of 14 years to regain full control of government after losing it. Only one president Harry Truman has lost Congress and retaken it later. In every other case, the presidents party regained a trifecta only after losing the White House.

It would be foolish to predict the next decade of election results. Still, todays Democrats will have a hard time defying this long history. Not only do the Democrats have especially slim majorities, but they face a series of structural disadvantages in the House and the Senate that make it difficult to translate popular vote majorities into governing majorities.

The specter of divided government is a bitter one for Democrats.

The party has won the national popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections but has nonetheless struggled to amass enough power to enact its agenda. That has added to the high stakes in the ongoing negotiations over the large Democratic spending package, which increasingly looks like a last chance for progressives to push an ambitious agenda.

And it has helped spur the kind of acrimonious internal Democratic debate over the partys message and strategy that would usually follow an electoral defeat, with moderates and progressives clashing over whether the partys highly educated activist base needs to take a back seat for the party to cling to its majority. The strong Republican showing in Virginia and New Jersey last week has prompted yet another round of recriminations.

But with such a long history of the presidents party struggling to hold on to power, one wonders whether any policy, tactic or message might help Democrats escape divided government.

The political winds seem to blow against the presidents party almost as soon as a new party seizes the White House. For decades, political scientists have observed a so-called thermostatic backlash in public opinion, in which voters instinctively move to turn down the temperature when government runs too hot in either partys favor. The pattern dates back as long as survey research and helps explain why the election of Barack Obama led to the Tea Party, or how Donald Trumps election led to record support for immigration.

The presidents party faces additional burdens at the ballot box. A sliver of voters prefers gridlock and divided government and votes for a check and balance against the president. And the party out of power tends to enjoy a turnout advantage, whether because the presidents opponents are resolved to stop his agenda or because of complacency by the presidents supporters.

What to Know About the 2021 Virginia Election

While Democrats can still hope to avoid losing control of Congress in 2022, Mr. Bidens sagging approval ratings make it seem increasingly unlikely that they will. Historically, only presidents with strong approval ratings have managed to avoid the midterm curse. And with Democrats holding only the most tenuous majorities in the House and the Senate, any losses at all would be enough to break the trifecta.

If the Democrats are going to get a trifecta again, 2024 would seem to be their best chance. The presidents party usually bounces back when the president seeks re-election, perhaps because presidential elections offer a clear choice between two sides, not merely a referendum on the party in power. And in the House, a Democratic rebound in 2024 is very easy to imagine, even if far from assured.

Democratic panic is rising. Less than a year after taking power in Washington, the party faces a grim immediate futureas it struggles to energize voters and continues to lose messaging wars to Republicans.

The Senate, however, may be a different and ultimately bleaker story for Democrats.

In the short term, the presidents party is relatively insulated from midterm losses in the Senate, since only one-third of the seats are up for grabs. And the presidents party usually doesnt have to defend much in its first midterm, as it has often already lost many of the contested seats six years earlier when the party out of power fared well en route to last winning the White House. The same thing insulates some Democratic losses in 2022.

But if 2024 represents an opening for a Democratic bounce-back in the House, it may not offer as favorable an opportunity in the Senate. Democrats will have no opportunity to reclaim any Senate seats they might lose in 2022. And they will need to defend the seats they won six years earlier, in their 2018 midterm rout, including some in otherwise reliably Republican states such as West Virginia, Ohio and Montana. To hold or regain the Senate and a trifecta they might need all of those seats.

The Democratic grip on the Senate is dependent on holding Republican-leaning states because the Democrats are at a significant disadvantage in the chamber. The party tends to excel in a relatively small number of populous states, but every state receives two senators, regardless of population.

The size of the Democratic disadvantage in the Senate can be overstated: Mr. Biden won 25 states, after all, and the Democrats control the chamber today by the margin of Vice President Kamala Harriss tiebreaking vote.

But the Democratic majority is tenuous, and there are few opportunities to solidify it: There are only 27 states where Mr. Biden was within five points of victory in 2020. And since there are only 19 states where Mr. Biden won by more than he did nationwide, Republicans could easily flip many seats if they benefit from a favorable political environment.

With Republicans commanding such formidable structural advantages in the chamber, some Democrats fear they could be reduced to just 43 Senate seats by the end of the 2024 election. If Mr. Biden won re-election, Republicans could claim even more seats in 2026. The path back to a Democratic trifecta would be daunting.

Even if Democrats do hold down their Senate losses next year, it would still be a long road back to control of the chamber. They might struggle to win it back until theres a new Republican president, when the benefits of being the party out of power will again work to their advantage.

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Why Democrats May Have a Long Wait if They Lose Their Grip on Washington - The New York Times

Iowa is represented in the U.S. House by three Republicans and one Democrat. After last years census, an independent advisory commission drew a new map that reaffirmed the current balance, but made one of the Republican districts slightly more competitive.

This entirely reasonable adjustment was rejected by the state senate along strictly partisan lines: All Republicans opposed the map and all Democrats supported it. Afterwards, Democratic Sen. Tony Bisignano warned: The partisanship is killing this country. The partisanship is killing this body. Its killing local bodies. Its killing neighborhoods and friendships.

States are now drawing new district lines for a Congress where Democrats hold a very narrow margin. As Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution writes, The stakes could not be higher, since the new maps will dictate politics for years to come.

Those maps wont just determine which party controls the House, however. They will influence which legislators come to Washington and how they perform their jobs.

Today, the center of the Congress has been hollowed out. Pragmatists in both parties who represent swing districts and actually pay attention to voters from the other party are headed for extinction. The U.S. House closely resembles a European parliament, where theres virtually no negotiation or even conversation across partisan lines. And the rigidity is getting worse.

Of the countrys 435 congressional districts, Trump or President Biden won just 50 of them by 5 or less percentage points, reports The Washington Post. Those swing districts could be reduced by at least a third after redistricting, experts estimate.

In Texas, Democrats were eyeing two districts with growing Latino populations as possible takeovers, but Republicans drafted new maps that probably puts them out of reach. In Ohio, Republican governor Mike DeWine signed off on a new plan and admitted, This committee could have come up with a bill that was much more clearly, clearly constitutional, and Im sorry we did not do that.

Republicans shoulder most of the blame, but only because they control more state legislatures and governorships. When they have the chance, Democrats can be equally perfidious. In Oregon, for instance, the legislature made two swing districts more heavily blue. In Maryland, Democrats are contemplating a map that would eliminate the only remaining Republican congressman in a state that has a Republican governor and almost 1 million Trump voters.

In Illinois and New York, Democratic mapmakers could eliminate districts represented by Adam Kinzinger and John Katko two of the 10 Republicans who stood up to President Trump and backed his impeachment.

Right now, Democrats in Illinois are picking their own voters behind closed doors using their power to make sure their party stays in power, Kinzinger said in press statement. We see this on both sides of the aisle, and this adherence to party politics will only further the divide we have in this country. Tribalism is absolutely ruining politics, and its leaving many to feel politically homeless as a result.

Jason Altmire, a moderate Democrat who was gerrymandered out of his seat near Pittsburgh a decade ago, told the Post, If youre representing a district where you have to listen to both sides, you hear both points of view, and then you go to Washington and you find most everyone else comes from a district where they only hear one viewpoint.

In todays Congress, the extremes prevail: the tea party on the right and the Sanderistas on the left. If you draw a district thats safe, the party no longer cares about recruiting a broadly appealing candidate, David Wasserman, an election analyst for the Cook Political Report, observed in the Post. This is a vicious cycle in that the decline of competitive seats leads to a more extreme and dysfunctional Congress.

For many years, voting rights advocates hoped the Supreme Court would step in and rule that radical gerrymandering violates the Constitution. But in 2019, five justices nominated by Republicans threw up their hands and said redistricting was a political issue, not a legal one. Justice Elena Kagan warned in an angry dissent: The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government.

Ten states now use some form of independent commission to draw district lines, and Congress should pass a long-stalled bill that would mandate those panels for all states. As Iowa demonstrates, commissions can be subverted by partisan warriors, but they are far preferable to a system dominated by raw political power.

A legislature without centrists will only continue the vicious cycle that makes Congress increasingly extreme and dysfunctional.

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STEVE ROBERTS: Lack of centrist candidates is harming the country - Goshen News

OPINION:

The catchphrase Lets go, Brandon! has spread like wildfire, in chants at sporting events and other large gatherings, as a G-rated transliteration of a vulgarism aimed at the president, F- Joe Biden. It also has gone viral in online memes, montages, and mashups.

That has more than a few nosesdare we say, bluenosesout of joint among Democrats and the liberal media, who apparently have short memories. (More on that in a moment.)Well concede that they have a point: The NC-17-rated version is a crude and unbecoming way to refer to any President, even one you strenuously disagree withas we do with Mr. Biden. It contributes to the downward spiral of our civil discourse into uncivil discourse.For the uninitiated, the phrase became an internet sensation on Oct. 2 after an NBC sports reporter at a NASCAR race erroneously stated that fans in the stands were chanting Lets Go, Brandon! after a win by driver Brandon Brown, when they were actually shouting F- Joe Biden!Its both laughable and galling that many of the same people now tut-tutting, tsk-tsking, and wagging fingers (index, not middle) about the ad hominem attacks on Mr. Biden never raised an eyebrow much less an objection for four years as the uncivil left strafed the public square with F-bombs (minus any dashes or asterisks) at protests against then-President Donald Trump.How soon the talking headshosts and guests alikeon CNN and MSNBC forget laughing, for example, about the vulgar pink p hats worn at the anti-Trump far-left womens march on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after his inauguration.

What should have been tut-tutting and tsk-tsking then was more like wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

Unlike now, in the lefts view, when Mr. Trump was in the White House, the vile incivility was de rigueur.Where were Democrats and the liberal medias outrage when actor Robert De Niro received a standing ovation in June 2018 from the glitterati at the Tony Awards after uttering F- Trump?Does anyone remember them castigating actor Johnny Depp, who invoked John Wilkes Booth in the United Kingdom at a June 2017 music festival in musing aloud: When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?Or that same month, when the Public Theater in New York staged an adaptation of Shakespeares Julius Caesar that featured a Trump-like character in the title role getting stabbed to death? That was just artistic freedom, we were told.Did any of those now takingor should we say, fakingumbrage at Lets Go, Brandon! criticize Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who within hours of being sworn into office on Jan. 4, 2019, vowed: Were going to impeach the motherf-!For the record, the politically poisonous rhetoric of the left is neither new nor limited to Mr. Trump. Recall that about a decade ago, todays neo-prude progressives found it side-splittingly funny to tag conservative Tea Party activists with the sexual slur tea-baggers.But that was then, and this is now.

Lets go, Brandon is Republicans vulgar governing agenda, whined liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. Post reporters Ashley Parker and Carissa Wolf lamented what they considered vitriol from Bidens critics in an article, Bidens critics hurl increasingly vulgar taunts.

CNNs John Avlon denounced Lets go, Brandon! as trollish and not patriotic.

Following reports that a pilot for Southwest Airlines on Oct. 29 concluded his preflight intercom greeting with the chant, CNN analyst Asha Rangappa likened it to a terrorist chanting Long live ISIS and suggesting the pilot should be fired.

Ive always loved flying Southwest. Dont plan on doing it ever again, complained Will Bunch, a liberal columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

As such, lets call the Democrats and liberal medias objections to Lets Go, Brandon! what they are: Selective indignation. As conservative radio talk-show host Chris Plante likes to say, If it werent for double standards, the left would have no standards at all.That said, wed like to see a return to political civility on both sides of the aisle. Regrettably, however, in the age of Twitter, thats not likely to happen.

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EDITORIAL: Selective indignation on 'Let's go, Brandon!' - Washington Times

With the festive season approaching, mayor Billy Drummond has put out an invitation for older Newbury residents to meet with him for afternoon tea.

The mayor's customary Drive and Tea Party normally held once a year has been cancelled since 2019 as a result of coronavirus restrictions.

Instead, Newbury's highest official is now inviting the public to an afternoon tea event on Thursday, December 16, taking place between 2pm and 4.30pm at St Nicolas Church Hall.

All guests must be above the age of 75 and the occasion is being ticketed, with places limited.

Bookings can be made by telephone at 07538 334106, by email via mayor@newbury.gov.uk, or by post at Mayors Parlour, Newbury Town Hall, Market Place, Newbury, RG14 5AA.

Tickets will be posted to attendees following confirmation.

Mr Drummond said: "It was upsetting that the Mayors Drive wasnt able to take place this summer during my mayoral year.

"It was important to me that I was able to offer an alternative event."

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Mayor invites older residents to afternoon tea - Newbury Today