4.24.20 Edition
Fecklessness, Then Some Poetry
In this edition:
Feckless Texas
Rapid Fire
Some Poetry
The news about abortion largely relates to COVID-19, and I think we are all not in the mood. Unfortunately, the newsletter must go on. In the next edition I may try to step back from the news and do something a little different.
With the onset of quarantine, Texas—reportedly along with “at least” six other states—had moved to include abortion, both surgical and medical, on the list of non-essential procedures that should be delayed due to the virus and the need for personal protective equipment to be reserved for the fight against COVID-19. After legal wrangling, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals eventually upheld the state’s authority to include abortion on its moratorium list.
Despite this court backing, Texas has now reversed course. As of 11:59pm on April 21, executive order GA-15 from state governor Greg Abbott took hold in the Republic of Texas. It provides an exception to the moratorium on elective procedures for “any surgery or procedure performed in a licensed health care facility that has certified in writing to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission both: (1) that it will reserve at least 25% of its hospital capacity for treatment of COVID-19 patients, accounting for the range of clinical severity of COVID-19 patients; and (2) that it will not request any personal protective equipment from any public source, whether federal, state, or local, for the duration of the COVID-19 disaster.”
The quote comes from state attorney general’s office, in a district court filing, and the exception described extends to abortion clinics who meet the requirements. As the New York Times reports, the filing in question “made clear that there was ‘no legal basis’ for the [abortion] clinics to seek relief [in their suit] because they had clearly met the criteria to resume activity under the governor’s new order.”
In other words, pending any further developments, the whole affair ends where it began, with the clinics who sued against the original inclusion of abortion in the freeze now able to pick up where they left off a month ago. The fact that Texas gave clinics the all-clear just days after the 5th Circuit upheld the original order is an especially dark comic note in this latest example of mismanaged pro-life strategy.
Fundamentally, if you attempt to shoehorn specifically anti-abortion goals into attempts to regulate abortion as a “medical procedure” on medical grounds, you’ll generally either fail or you will win only comprised or short-lived victories. Though the pro-life movement often (rightly) insists that abortion is not healthcare, it nevertheless at other times tries to use healthcare norms as a weapon against it. As far as I can see, it’s a weapon that crumbles in your hand. The medical framework should be left aside.
That was long enough. Some items found while reading around for this newsletter, in rapid fire:
This piece in the NYT about Texans seeking abortions pairs with this piece on the continued efforts of two pro-life organizations during quarantine. Together, they are a reminder that organizations providing material support to economically vulnerable pregnant women are especially vital during COVID-19 and any post-COVID economic recovery. And with unemployment now being what it is, the number of economically vulnerable pregnant women is presumably poised to grow.
From a story in the Indiana Gazette: “At Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City, Illinois, close to Saint Louis, deputy director Alison Dreith says women are now less likely to change their minds once they schedule an abortion. Normally, 50% go through with it; amid the pandemic, the rate is 85%.” I was surprised to the good that the rate is normally 50%—at least at that clinic—but obviously the current rate is tragic.
Aid Access, an international supplier of pills for medication abortions, has been in a low-level war with the FDA, as the former attempts to circumvent or challenge FDA regulations around abortion pills in its business of mailing them to Americans. It appears Aid Access is now temporarily offline due to COVID-induced issues with its India supply chain.
From a story in Vice: “Planned Parenthood of Greater New York has furloughed or laid off more than 240 employees as it reckons with losses of $32 million, local news outlet the City reported. Eleven of its 28 locations have temporarily closed.”
Off-topic:
Last year I read Jane Kenyon’s poetry collection Otherwise, thanks in part to some friends from college who told me about her. Now that I think of it, I’ve mentioned Otherwise in this newsletter before. I shared two of Kenyon’s poems on the occasion of my material grandmothers’s death last April. In any case, I recommend picking up Otherwise now, if you’re into that kind of thing and not already familiar with the collection.
It’s fitting, in many ways. She’s a poet of the seasons, very much including the spring that is now unfolding around us, even if some of us don’t get out much to see it. One of my favorite poems of hers, Ice Out, is about the onset of spring. She’s also a poet of death and sickness and mental unrest, something which many people are too familiar with today and which she was deeply familiar with in her own life, as she suffered from depression and died of cancer at 48. And she’s a poet that pays attention to little ordinary details, including those pertaining to the domestic life, which we are all now living.
She is capable of expressing deep pleasure and satisfaction in those details. The quiet, domestic contentment she conveys is out of reach for many under our circumstances. But for her it was found in the face of suffering and perhaps a little of the spirit of Otherwise could creep into our lives too. “I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and / planned another day / just like this day. / But one day, I know, / it will be otherwise.”