The GOP’s forced-birth laws create an unfunded mandate on pregnant people and their families.

The same GOP legislators, whose Hyde Amendment removed abortion funding from low-income people, who balked at funding school lunches, or providing more inspectors to ensure safe baby formula and funding for low-income women during a horrific formula shortage, are now upset that we are laying the cruel and forseeable consequences of their states’ post-Roe legislation – pregnant children, forced stillbirths, and medical bankruptcies – at their feet. Abortion restrictions in their states have already cost the U.S. more than $100 billion, even before the SCOTUS decision, and Kaiser estimates that taxpayers will be subsidizing forced births in Red states through Medicaid to about 1.3 billion dollars a year.

So now we’re going to lay on the GOP the direct financial burden their religious-extremist forced-birth and anti-already-born policies will impose on average people.

Write to your legislators!

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It’s not just Chad. Tell your senators – No more Federalist Society members and FILL THOSE JUDICIAL VACANCIES NOW!

UPDATE: The White House has pulled its nomination of this abomination! Thanks for your calls and emails!

Action #1: Tell your senators that voting for Chad Meredith, or ANY FEDERALIST SOCIETY MEMBER, is a racist and anti-democratic action. AND START FILLING THOSE VACANCIES!
Action #2: Call Biden.
Action #3: Write Biden.

By now, Biden is probably rethinking nominating Stephen Chad Meredith to a lifetime seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. Chad is a Republican forced-birther whose career has included defending abortion restrictions, participating in a pardoning scandal for the outgoing Republican governor, and working to limit the incoming Democratic governor’s executive authority. He is also a Federalist Society member, just like the six SCOTUS members who killed Roe, unleashed guns, crumbled the wall between church and state, disempowered the EPA, and degraded Native American rights.

As there’s no seat currently available for Chad, it’s clear that this is part of some larger deal on judicial nominations between the President and Mitch McConnell,” Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) said in a statement. Slate reported that the deal was a promise not to stop the confirmation of two U.S. attorneys in exchange for Meredith — effectively two temporary political appointees for a lifetime seat on the federal bench.

However, Chad is just one part of our problem. There may be no seat for him right now, but Democrats are on track to leave more than 60 open judicial seats for McConnell to fill if the GOP retakes the Senate, including NINE in California(!). This needs to be addressed NOW!

Action #1: Tell your senators that voting for Chad Meredith, or ANY FEDERALIST SOCIETY MEMBER, is a racist and anti-democratic action. AND START FILLING THOSE VACANCIES!

Federalist Society nominees are committed to protecting the structure of racism – the interests of corporations and the richest 1%. Under the cover of strengthening states’ rights, their true mission is suppressing voting rights, removing health care and safety net access, degrading labor rights and worker protections, militarizing police, impoverishing public education, and permitting the poisoning of the very air we breathe and the water we drink. They are the judicial backstop behind every choke-hold that goes awry, every shooting of an unarmed person, and now, the removal of bodily sovereignty of women.

The six of them on the Supreme Court may even end democracy.

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The rally is over. Now what?

Don’t just wait for the next rally or march. Your own pressure campaign for democracy is waiting in your phone.

At the rally we asked you to contact your legislators every day. Here is our handout on HOW to program your phone to make it really fast to do, and WHY you need to call your own Democratic legislators as well.

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Don’t hand your reproductive privacy to authoritarians without a fight!

The internet is tracking your period apps, your search history and your location. Companies are already selling that information to cops and extremists.

“I do think that we are facing a future in which the data collected by period-tracking apps could be used either as a dragnet to identify women who may have had an abortion or as evidence that a woman has had an abortion in a future in which seeking out or having an abortion is criminalized, which is something anti-abortion advocates have been eager to do.” – Eva Galperin (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Action: Call your legislators!

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Visualize this! Smacking the GOP out of office and getting the work done!

Thanks to everyone who showed up yesterday for our Ventura County Government Center action for #BansoffOurBodies. Be ready for a Planned Parenthood action on May 14.

Images and comments regarding the Ventura action are on our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/IndivisibleVentura . These rallies were happening all across the nation and Senator Warren had some choice words to share at an event near her.

READ: “The dog caught the car” – Read Heather Cox Ricardson’s cogent analysis of the GOP’s cynical history of manipulating evangelical Christians to remain in power and how it led to this moment here.

Get your phone ready for action!

These actions should take no more than 10 minutes total (waiting-for-your-coffee-time) if your phone is programmed with all your legislators numbers.

How should I do this? tinyurl.com/make-faster-calls
Why should I do this? My peeps are all Dems.: tinyurl.com/Why-call

Get a live person to talk to, say your script, mimimum (zip code) + “(YES/NO) on (bill name/#).” Add whatever moves you. Done. Rinse and repeat tomorrow. Relentless calling is how the Tea Party led us to Trump and this SCOTUS. We can do it too.

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Is CA ready to be a reproductive care sanctuary?

CA already had a list of bills to pass. We’re wondering if they are strong enough.

UPDATE: “May 5 (Reuters) – Louisiana lawmakers have advanced a bill that would abolish abortion in the state, grant constitutional rights to “all unborn children from the moment of fertilization” and classify abortion as a homicide crime.“
UPDATE: “As Idahoans plan for a future without abortion rights, a leading Republican in the Idaho House would support holding hearings on legislation banning abortion pills and morning-after pills.

Our “Deeper Dive” section below discusses the eugenics movement that’s always been behind the eyes of GOP believers. We’re not the only ones who’ve noticed.
Hint: The forced-birther movement was never about religion. It was never about babies.

Action #1: Email your assemblymember and state senator to support our sanctuary bills.

Sample email script to legislators: I’m writing because I want Asm./Sen. [___] to vote to pass every one of the 13 remaining bills advanced by Gov. Newsom and the CA Future of Abortion Council to protect those seeking reproductive sanctuary and equity in our state. I’m appalled that a bill like AB-2223, which protects California’s women who experience pregnancy loss, wasn’t passed years ago. However, I’m concerned we may have left off some important protections.

Although AB 1666 focuses on civil liability judgements, if Roe v Wade falls, 26 states will rapidly increase criminalization of abortion, stillbirth and miscarriages. I want to CA to have protections similar to Connecticut’s HB-5414. Their bill offers protection against:

CRIMINAL prosecution by those states who will use “fetal personhood” to press charges of homicide. It bars extradition by CT’s governor and cooperation with the pursuing state’s investigation or prosecution.
Abusive civil lawsuits by bounty hunters. It allows those targeted to countersue for full damages, and attorneys’ fees in CT state court.

We had hoped that none of these measures would be necessary, but Texas legislators are threatening women with execution if Roe falls, and Louisiana just advanced a bill that classifies abortion as homicide and which, if passed, they intend to enforce, no matter what SCOTUS decides.

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