Horrible People Running Things

 Good (early) morning, everyone! My routine is thrown off at the moment; I would normally be leaving the gym right about now, but my husband and stepkids are out of town. My little guy is sleeping, and I am (seriously) making my own coffee instead of going to the 7-Eleven across the street from the gym.

I have also been knitting! Socks for a coworker, mostly...he has big feet, so I am throwing a different color in the heels and possibly toes just in case it looks like I will run out of yarn.

The pattern which landed in the back of my friend Allie Pleiter's book, Knit or Dye Trying, also has a Super-Secret Symmetrical Sisters Washcloth, and the three-washcloth pattern can be found on Ravelry. This is the original one, but when it was finished, I thought it was too symmetrical. It was based on the idea that the sister relationship is a bit off-center, so I went back and made an off-center version for the book. You can see it on the Ravelry page or in my previous blog post.

Anyway, being a single mom for the weekend has given me plenty of time to think, to look at my almost-four-year-old son and wonder if I am being too strong, or not strong enough, of a feminist role model for him. I have also spent plenty of time contemplating the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

Disclosure to any newbies who may have wandered here:  I am not an attorney, a judge, or a Supreme Court Justice. I am not a PhD in public policy. I am not anything, really. But I do spend a lot of time verifying things I read on the internet, using sources I know that still spend a great deal of time corroborating their stories' sources and checking facts. I am also a very, very vocal advocate for proper news sites, because indoctrination is a powerful media tool, and it has convinced extremists everywhere that the media can just hide big events from people. In a world where everyone at any major media event, great or small, has a video camera in their pocket. Come on, man.

Anyway, this may sound a bit tinfoil-hat-ish coming from me, but anyone who knows me can vouch for the fact that I am not a conspiracy girl.

First, there is a reason that ruling was handed down on Friday, even though opinions are typically handed down on Tuesday and Wednesday (this is per the Supreme Court's own website). In other words, I am certain I am not the only person spending the weekend thinking about the horrific ramifications of this case while the Justices are long gone from the bench, the Court, and probably even Washington, DC this weekend.

The US Constitution is a funny thing. Seriously. It actually has the phrase "white man" in it. When Roe was originally opined in 1973, it was based on the 14th Amendment, due process and privacy. When it was overturned, it was based on the 10th amendment, government overreach. The ruling, as any pretty-far-to-the-right Republican lawmaker will tell you, is based on the fact that it was ruled incorrectly in the first place, and that the federal government has no business making decisions that should be in the hands of the states. But, this is where the last decade becomes extremely important in our history.

The United States Constitution is based on white men who own property having all the rights in the world. Don't believe me? Skip over the amendments directly related to the Office of the President (and, as long as we are dreaming, the establishment of the senate). On its own, that makes sense because that's how the world was in the 1770's and 1780's. On the other hand, there have been little stakes pounded into the ground over the years to hold onto that tent, and the past decade has seen a ton of these. And it all stems on taxation without representation.

In 1929, the number of Representatives, and therefore the number of electoral college votes, was capped due to the government not wanting to do things like reconfigure office space and provide staffing for more people who would be representing their people. Since then. the population has more than tripled, but the same 435 House seats remain. This is why the census is a big deal.

In 2020, the census was a shit show (sorry, but there is no other way to word it). It was literally at the start of the pandemic, a citizen question was added (instead of asking a person's place of birth) at a time when people have had fear instilled in them over border security, people died and were made homeless in droves, and the response rate had initially been 4% lower despite people being able to respond on the internet, causing more work for the agency to verify addresses at a time where getting help in that agency was a challenge. 

So we now have a census that was a shit show, and the same 435 people representing over 700,000 citizens each, instead of the just-over-200,000 per Representative that we had in 1929. We have people of "questionable citizenship" not being counted. And we have a population threshold per state for this allocation.

Side-note: there have been 1.1 million excess deaths in this country since the pandemic started. By 2020 census numbers, that is 1.5 Congressional seats in today's figures (if using the metric system isn't your thing).

Moving on, Senator McConnell has stated that, basically, his life's work has come to fruition by blanketing the country with conservative judges. How that works continues to be a mystery to me, as the courts should be a place where interpretation of the laws and statutes should not have a political lean, but be that as it may, McConnell is very proud of his record. Then, voting rights have basically been stripped of people all over the country in conservative states. Broad statement, I know, but let me explain it this way:  if you live in a state where your lower-than-middle class district was gerrymandered, and you are no longer allowed to vote by mail, and you work two jobs where neither of the bosses have reminded you that you cannot be fired by going to the polls on election day during your work day, do you think you are going to vote?

Okay, so there is that as well.

Felons can't vote. But they are not exempt from paying their taxes. Taxation without representation.

Our prisons are filled with people of color who are incarcerated for things that white people get incarcerated for at a much lower percentage. No representation. Oh, and if you actually believe people of color are committing this many more crimes than white people, then do your research through academic sources, and not the talking heads on your favorite conservative cable news channel.

And now, literally more than half of women in this country, a quarter of the population, will be living in a state where they are unable to seek the healthcare they need because the providers are gone. I should note here that almost all of these laws are designed to punish the abortion provider and not the woman, but women are already being punished because...I mean...if a woman can't go to her doctor to terminate her pregnancy, then do you think she is just going to carry it to term and raise it and live happily ever after? The short answer, generally, is "of course not." And why should she? 

Except now, the person aborting the fetus is the person getting punished. Which means if an unsafe abortion is performed, it can be blamed on the mother. In Texas, it is a first-degree felony if the fetus dies (side-note:  laws written by non-doctors tend to involve language like this, as the fetus is not alive or dead in the same timeline or way a person is alive or dead, just like the "week-limit" abortion bans are not written in a way which conveys gestational age versus implantation).

Then, our previous president appointed three justices to the Supreme Court after the previous president was blocked from appointing one for his vacancy. The previous president told us in his campaign that he wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. So if you are keeping track, we have a Congress that did not want to expand because it was too expensive, a population boom, people of color and poor people continuing to be incarcerated and not counted in the census, and now women being set up to be felons. 

The amendments to the document, again excluding the ones specifically about the branches of government, are often to grant people rights that our founding fathers did not see necessary to grant rights (voting and citizenship, among other things). Supreme Court rulings have often granted people protections to the rights of life, liberty, and property as stated in the US Constitution, but being anything but a white man often requires that extra layer of protection. Like it or not, I should be able to own my own body as property, and that includes anything inside of it that is attached to me. If I choose to not get treated for cancer, that is a decision between me and my doctor. If I choose to terminate a pregnancy, that is a decision between me and my doctor. I should be entitled to medical privacy, and my doctor should be trusted to First, Do No Harm. Perhaps the medical doctors know more about biology than the writers and editors of the US Constitution?

If the US Constitution is not amended, then "government overreach" and that 10th amendment allows the white male land-owners in charge of us to interpret that document exactly as it was intended in the 1700's, so only the white male land-owners get everything. Seriously. If it weren't for the US Constitution being amended, black people are not full people even though biologists, medical doctors, historians, eye-witness testimonies, and common sense tells us otherwise. 

Read that again.

And guess what? The same thing will be happening to women (Roe, and then possibly Griswold and Eisenstadt), non-straight people (Obergefell), and possibly interracial couples (Loving), if Clarence Thomas were to either die or divorce his spouse. The US Constitution was set up to be a frame for the country, and while I used to think we were on the right path to progress, it is clear that, in the last decade, the people of power have been masters at preserving white supremacy and misogyny. And I am not having it.

What Happened To Us?

 Hello! I really don't bust this thing out too often, but I have been thinking about the Supreme Court for a week now, and I feel this is the only way I can organize my thoughts a bit better.

First, though, this was originally a knitting blog so I would like to share my new shawl pattern with you. It is easy enough lace where you can try it as a second- or third lace project, and probably not lose your mind. It is also a pretty relaxing pattern, so the f-word should not come flying out of your mouth too often.

Here is the link to it: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/choir-shawl

And here are a couple of photos, if you are not a knitter and want to talk your knitter-friend into making you something for those breezy days of autumn and spring:

Okay so enough of that. Here is my problem.

When Ginsburg was confirmed, the Senate confirmation vote was 96-3, and 41 of those votes were Republican.

This week, various media outlets were reporting that the Senate "had the votes" to confirm a new justice to the Supreme Court before the presidential election in November.

What does that mean, exactly?

Amy Coney Barrett has not had her job interview yet, and the panel is already giving her the thumbs-up. While I think it is clear that I am neither a Supreme Court Justice or a Senator, I have questions about this. Most importantly, I think, is how one can argue that the majority of Senators will vote "yes" for her confirmation based her their political party. 

I don't give a hoot if she is anti-abortion. Everyone on the planet, especially people who are pro-choice, are anti-abortion. Nobody wants to make that decision. At all. Ever. Nobody. But knowing that I can talk to my doctor about it in private, without fear of either of us being prosecuted if I need to take that next step and abort a fetus is a bit of a relief. I am 100% anti-abortion; if I were pregnant right now, I would have to abort the fetus or face such dire mental consequences that I could not go on with my life. This includes carrying it to term for adoption or surrogacy. I am positive I could not go through with it and come out okay on the other side, no matter how much therapy or prayer I involved in my daily life. I know this. But I also know that, medically, aborting a fetus is not "killing a baby." Watch your words:  when cops shoot at someone, is it murder? When a woman finally ends years of abuse by fighting to almost her last breath and shooting her abusive spouse in the end, is it murder? When a guy tries to steal your car at the gas station and you refuse to get out of the car, so he shoots you and takes your car anyway, is it murder? When you have a medical procedure to clear out cells in your uterus that will drive you to suicide if you don't do this (and every woman will in fact spend at least two seconds exploring other options), is it murder?

Everyone is anti-abortion. But if a woman has one, it is none of my business at all. Just like it is none of my business if they go to a doctor for a drug addiction and seek treatment for it.

I don't care if Amy Coney Barrett is anti-abortion. I care if she will consider using any precedents already set, and interpreting clauses in the constitution that exist (like due process, for instance, and the amendment which states the government can't have a hand in establishing religion), when she hears cases relating to abortion.

If she is going into these hearings already "having the votes," does that mean that she has had such a stellar record that it is obvious to all other lawmakers that upholding the constitution and its original intentions are her intention? Or does it just mean that 51 people out of 100 will be voting "yes" for her because of their political party?

There has been a two-party system in this country for a long, long time. Each party has their own set of extremist talking-heads and talking-memes now (think Breitbart on the right and Occupy Democrats on the left) where there is one teeny piece of truth buried in a giant cloud of overblown crap to get people to feel a certain way, and consequently vote a certain way. It was not always this extreme, and nobody can seem to remember life before this ideology.

I was in college when Ginsburg was confirmed, and if you recall, the press conference where Clinton announced her nomination in the Rose Garden was met by exactly one question (Brit Hume) and zero answers. It was because the question was regarding Clinton's selection process and not Ginsburg's qualifications. Clinton shut it down, walking away from the podium with an entire press corps' worth of hands in the air. Looking back, love him or hate him (and even his most staunch supporters thought Bill was smarmy), it was a feminist move for the ages.

What happened to us? Why is it that, almost thirty years later, high-ranking politicians can only vote their party?

And as long as I am on the subject of philosophy, riddle me this one:  what is so intimidating about being liberal? I am a former Republican, currently without party because I now have to spend my whole life fact-checking other people's internet crap before forming an opinion on it. But you can be socially liberal and fiscally conservative at the same time. For instance, did women having their own credit cards cause the ridiculous debt problem we are facing now? Of course not...predatory lenders are not female-prey exclusive. Did women getting protection from employment termination due to pregnancy cause the morals in this country to sink? Of course not. 

But do you know what it did do? It helped the economy. It gave women their own buying power. Just like gay marriage becoming law in this country made the wedding industry explode in ways it previously had not. Giving people equal rights and access to knowledge gives them power, money, and a voice.

So the only reason someone would be opposed to "liberal" ideas...meaning everyone has certain basic rights...is if either they do not realize how much less it would cost them in the long run, or they are just closed-minded jerks who thinks human lives do not have equal value.

If you give money to a GoFundMe because a kid (or adult, for that matter) has cancer and can't afford their medical bills, but you think socialized healthcare is evil, ask yourself where you think your GoFundMe money would go if socialized healthcare was introduced.

If you stand outside a Planned Parenthood with an "Abortion Kills" sign for eight hours, looking women in the eye as they go into a clinic for everything from pap smears to prenatal care to abortions to breast exams to cyst monitoring, ask yourself what people see in you when you are in line at the grocery store, buying a six-pack of beer and a box of condoms. Is it possible you already have enough dish soap and food at the house? Of course. But that is not what people see, and your true actions are none of their business. Just like a woman walking into Planned Parenthood is none of your business.

If you were in support of "Whites Only" signs in the 50's and 60's, but you also retort Black Lives Matter with "All lives matter!", is it possible you only mean Republican lives? Your personal life? People's lives above the poverty line? Christian lives? White lives?

Because that is my current concern with the Supreme Court. I want to know why it is news that there is going to be a 6-3 conservative majority when politics should not have that big of a hand in interpreting the Constitution. Unless, of course, you are "liberal" and actually believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness should include literally everyone born in this country. But as a lifelong Catholic, I can say with conviction that until our current pope was elected and started using social media to get his Word across, even they did not preach like all lives were equal. They are starting to.

It is an irony of historic proportions when the Catholic church is making humanitarian progress and the Supreme Court, or our three branches of government in general, are not. Please do me a favor:  break up with your political party for the next few weeks or months. Ask yourself if the person in your area running for office is has the best interest of as many constituents as possible in mind, no matter their ticket.

Call your Senators and be sure they are voting based on Barrett's interpretation of the constitution, and not because of their political party.

Look in the mirror and ask yourself if you can do better. Most of us can. Let's all try.

Separation of Church and State

Hello, everyone! It has certainly been a while. For what it's worth, I am just getting back into managing my time properly so there is time for knitting. Having a ridiculously happy and energetic nine-month-old with a longer-than-normal attention span has caused me to evaluate when the best times to do "me" things are, and the answer is "at three in the morning when I awake and he is still asleep," and "on break at Starbucks," and "while waiting for contractors to arrive at my properties."

Right now, my goal is to finish the many projects I have on my needles, and I am KILLING it (albeit about three rows a day...ha ha). Currently, Sandra's socks are getting the "finished project" treatment.

That said...recently, the Archdiocese of Joliet required parishes to play a recorded message to every congregation, from Bishop Conlon (sort of the president of Catholics in the area surrounding Joliet all the way up to the Cook County border), urging the constituents to call their lawmakers and tell them to vote "no" on an abortion bill which would kill tons of babies every year. We were asked to think of the innocent lives which have no voice.

The bill in question, in case you want to read all hundred pages of it, is SB 1942 and HB 2495. It would grant minors the allowance to obtain a pregnancy termination without their parents' consent, expand insurance companies' obligation regarding coverage, and repeal the ban on second- and third- trimester termination procedure that politicians call "partial-birth abortion," but medical professionals do not. Big deal, right? We are Catholic and therefore should oppose abortion at all costs. I don't have a problem with the Catholic view; I have a problem with my priest telling me how to vote. So I sent the following message to Father Norbert at St. Scholastica:

Father...I wanted to share my feelings on the message from Bishop at the 10:00am service this weekend. Please understand I do not see this as a reflection of you personally; I understand all parishes shared the same message. That said, I was grossly offended by the message, and I want to share why.

First, as a catholic, I pray for an end to abortion. I also, however, acknowledge that not everybody is catholic. Abortion is a religious belief, and while I don’t agree with it, I don’t feel it is my place to judge others who have or need one in the same vein I don’t think it is my place to judge others who have a need for an alcoholic drink to get through the day.

Secondly, we can’t pray for our leaders to legislate peace and make the right decisions for their constituents while simultaneously condemning these decisions. Religion is not legislated in this country, or at least shouldn’t be. An example:  if I were Jewish, and I found out I was pregnant, and I started to have suicidal thoughts over it, my religious leader would remind me that taking care of me is of the utmost responsibility. If terminating pregnancy LEGALLY were to save my life, then my ideological doctrine would forgive me.

I come to church to get away from politics, because there are too many lies in politics, and I need an hour where I can feel the truth. Bishop is lying about that law; the general assembly is attempting to pass legislation that would actually LOWER abortion rates. Take the Netherlands. While half their citizens are not religious, Christians make up 39% of their population, and they have zero restrictions on abortions while also having one of the lowest abortion rates in the entire world. The reason for this, as is well-studied by medical professionals, is that they have access to free healthcare through every step of family planning. This proposed law will not cause people to walk into an abortion clinic at 32 weeks and say, “Oops! I need to get rid of this baby!” The intention of it is to allow access to procedures for people who otherwise have nowhere to turn, like their religion, so they have a safe option for a medical procedure.

Lastly, what would you say to a pregnant woman who came to you for counseling because her 26-week-old fetus had a fatal birth defect? Because these laws protect women whose babies are born to die, where no medical miracle can save them. Imagine that woman being forced to carry that fetus until it dies, and then has to wait for her body to rid of it naturally because she has no access to pregnancy termination. What would you say to her?

I am not trying to put you or the church on the defensive. I was just so frustrated hearing that message this morning because all it did is rile people up with gross misinformation and political propaganda. Our job as Catholics, so I thought, was not to convert people to our line of thinking. Rather, it is to go in peace, live our lives in God’s image, and pray our example is an inspiration for others to find God. I find it hard to believe that an organization of priesthood, made up of 100% celibate men, think they have the right to take a stand on something which has to do with their faith but not themselves personally, and expect everyone to rally in agreement.

I am a woman. I had a baby at 43 years old. I gained 38 pounds, agonized every day if I was good enough to be a mother, questioned if I was making the right decision for six straight months, and cried uncontrollably on more than one occasion because my hormones would not allow me to rationally process my emotions. I would never have an abortion in a million years, but I fully appreciate the sentiments which lead to that decision, and it would be absolutely gut-wrenching. I would hate to think that my church would abandon me on a decision I might have to make, simply because the stand on the topic is based on horribly skewed opinions instead of facts, and not a single person involved in those opinions would have an idea of just how daunting having a baby actually is.

I know this is long, but thank you for listening.
amy kaspar 

Well, I did not hear back from my church (understandably). However, Father was just doing what he was told, so I forwarded the message to Bishop Conlon's office, and I received a response from the Assistant Director from the Office of Human Dignity - Respect Life Ministry. This is the ministry which counsels women who are unsure what to do when they have an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy, or who had an abortion and feel the need for counseling from their church. The representative said she would be happy to talk about my concerns, so I spoke with her for over an hour over the phone.

In this conversation, I kept reiterating to her that this was not offense because of my stand on abortion, but because of my stand on politics. It was a very respectful and refreshing conversation, and there was no name-calling or trying to convince anyone that they were wrong or right. I did, on one or two occasions, point out that the Catholic belief on abortion is based on lies, but there was no blame. For instance, saying that life begins at conception is flat-out not true. The potential for it does, but there needs to be nurturing and care for that potential to turn into life on its own. Also, I mentioned the Holocaust and the Khmer Rouge genocides, and said that if people were mass-murdering their babies, especially with the help of doctors, it would be constantly all over the news.

The representative said that if I could not see it from a Catholic standpoint (meaning the importance of calling my lawmakers), then maybe I could look at it from a human rights or a biological standpoint. She sent me a link to a doctor named Anthony Levatino, who was once an OB/GYN who performed abortions, but had a calling after his adopted daughter was killed. I agreed to look into it.

And I did. I do not fight for the sake of fighting. I fight for what I believe in, but also feel it necessary to be fully informed so my beliefs are rooted in truth. I looked at the link. Looked up the doctor. Looked up statistics on various human rights issues related to abortion and childcare. The representative said she would be happy to continue the conversation another time over the phone, or via email, so I sent her the following message just about two weeks later:

Miss Alexandra...Stanley is doing better, thanks for asking!

So, I watched a couple of those videos you sent, and I also did some research on this topic regarding politics, because again, this was not about my stand on abortion. It is about my offense that the Catholic church was urging me to call my lawmakers in the middle of Sunday Service.

We prioritize human life above all other life. If that were not true, everyone would be a vegetarian. That said, Live birth and subsequent murder do not happen, ever. The partial-birth abortion procedure mentioned is ONLY done when either the mother is about to die, or the baby is about to die, and there is no other way. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is the professional membership for OB/GYNs, the term "partial birth abortion" is not a medical term...it was made up by politicians.

Interestingly, Dr Anthony Levatino is not a member of the ACOG, and there are over 56,000 OB/GYNs in this country. He was, however, a medical board director for Priests for Life, meaning he was letting his religion dictate his medical practice. His adopted daughter died, and he had a calling; this furthers my argument that pro-life is a religious belief and should not be legislated based on a church view.

There are over 15,000 children in Illinois living as wards of the state, or in foster care. That is 15,000 babies who are either not wanted, or they were brought into this world by the wrong parent. The fact is, though, they don't have a permanent home because there are not 15,000 adoptive families ready to take them in. As a Christian, I want to help all children whose lives are less fortunate than mine. However, you mentioned to me that I should look at this issue from a human rights standpoint. In this particular case of life before versus after birth, I have to actually choose, and I choose the lives of those who are here. Why would anyone lobby to pass a law making someone give birth to a child they do not want (for whatever their reasons are, as I am running under the assumption that they are not Christians reasons but it is not my concern), just so it can be born to a state which doesn't have enough people who want it either? 

Dr. Levatino is presenting these procedures as barbaric; when I had thyroid cancer surgery, I had a hole cut into my neck, my thyroid yanked out, cut at the edges, sewn off, and stitched back up. When I had jaw surgery, I had a wedge of my jaw sawed off, my bottom jaw unhinged, repositioned, and reattached. When you put a medical procedure in plain terms, of course it sounds like a horror movie. But the truth is that biology says life begins at conception, but not sustainable life. If true, sustainable life began at conception, then these liberal laws would not be needed to protect mothers whose babies developed a fetal anomaly while in utero, and was going to be born dead, or would die very shortly after birth guaranteed. If sustainable life began at conception, there would be no neonatal intensive care unit. These barbaric D&E procedures are very, very few and far between, and they are to save one of two lives. Bishop Conlon is not a doctor, or a woman. My priest is not a doctor, or a woman. You are a woman, but I did not get the impression you were a doctor. So a leader of my faith should not be telling me to call a Politian about legislating a medical procedure; those fetuses already have a voice. It is their mothers' voice. And we are well within our Catholic right to pray for these women, but lobbied legislation in this case is judgment, and judgment is not a Catholic thing to do.

Have any of the women you have counseled come face-to-face with an abortion protestor? We have people in our parishes who stand outside abortion clinics, and while their intent may be to shame the clinic, they are actually shaming the patients. Do you think you could just wantonly get rid of a child? Me neither, and neither can these women seeking these services. It is a DIFFICULT decision, and there is no reason that as Catholics we should be making it more difficult by making the procedure more difficult to get.

Thank you for reading...this is what I have surmised after several more days of research and praying. You can tell Bishop Conlon that if he wants to sit in judgment of others like that, then he is not as Catholic as his constituents need him to be.

amy e kaspar

Nobody ever has to agree with me on this. Have your values. Embrace them. Identify with your church. Don't identify with your church. None of it matters.

But please, please do not tell me how I should vote based on my religion. If the government can't force me to be Catholic, then Catholics can't force me to sway government.