Oog. Not coping well. Too little sleep, combined with a series of bad events. The Virginia Tech shooting and Michael Bishop's son. Kevin's sister's dog, Bailey, a very sweet golden retriever, being diagnosed unexpectedly with cancer a few days ago and having to be put down. The Supreme Court upholding an abortion ban with no provisions for health of the mother, which means that they've taken a decision about my health out of my doctor's hands, which frankly, terrifies me in and out itself. And the long-term potential ramifications for other such decisions they (or the states) may make on this subject scares me. Scared me into a full-scale hysterical weeping fit yesterday when I tried to talk to Kevin about it. Scares me for myself, for my daughter-to-come, for women. I can't talk about it more, I'm sorry; it's just too stomach-churningly awful, and I somehow have to get through at least the next five hours of teaching and advising today.
Bad week.
Small consolations -- dinner with Lakshmi and Satya and Sujata last night; Sujata visiting briefly before going off to grad school at Princeton. And reading Tim Pratt's The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl which I thoroughly enjoyed. A wonderful page-turning strange and unexpected Bay Area fantasy novel, which gave me some of the same pleasures as Pat Murphy's The City, Not Long After. Tim, thanks. It helped.
So glad you liked the book, Mary Anne, and that it gave you some happiness in sad circumstances. That’s one of the best things fiction can do.
According to the NPR report – it did make consideration for health of the mother.
My understanding is that the original bill did, Andrea, but that that part was excised before it came up before the Supreme Court. See this:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in dissent:
“Today’s decision is alarming. It tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists….And, for the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman’s health…”
“Retreating from prior rulings that abortion restrictions cannot be imposed absent an exception safeguarding a woman’s health, the Court upholds an Act that surely would not survive under the close scrutiny that previously attended state-decreed limitations on a woman’s reproductive choices.”
damn