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Anita Sarkeesian discusses harassment of women

Supreme Court stays Texas abortion law

Rachel Maddow on the Texas abortion law

More from Rachel Maddow

Sean Fieler

George Will is fussy

Phyllis Schlafly has opinions

Transcript

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking with Sharona Coutts about a relatively unknown but extremely generous funder of all sorts of religious right causes. The Supreme Court temporarily stays part of the Texas abortion law and George Will claims the war on women is a myth.

Anita Sarkeesian, who has been subject to terrorist threats and run out of her home because, no joke, she has a video series exploring sexism in video games, gave a speech recently about the harassment she has endured.

• Sarkeesian *

The fact that there’s a rather explicit goal to “take her out”—not argue, not criticize, not persuade, but to silence through a relentless harassment campaign—shows how much these men know, in their hearts, that they cannot win an honest argument.

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I have to say I was not expecting to hear a bit of good news regarding the Texas abortion law that continues to be battled out in court.

• Texas 1 *

The stay only applies to one part of the law, the part requiring abortion clinics to meet ambulatory surgical center standards, even though first-trimester abortions done with either the pill or the vacuum aspiration machine are so simple and non-invasive that they are no more surgery than a colonoscopy is. Only eight clinics in the entire state are equipped like this, because it costs a lot of money and is only worth doing if you’re doing more intensive procedures. The Supreme Court previously denied a request to stay another Texas abortion regulation requiring that abortion providers have hospital admitting privileges. They didn’t say why one medically unnecessary regulation is okay but another is so bad it requires a stay, because the Supreme Court doesn’t need to justify these types of decisions.

Rachel Maddow explained the extent of the damage of this law.

• Texas 2 *

This stay will allow 13 clinics to reopen, though it’s unclear if all of them will have the resources to do so. But that shows how bad the damage is already, because 13 plus eight only equals 21 clinics, which is only half of what Texas had before this law went into effect. Part of that is the stay doesn’t cover the hospital admitting privileges provision. That said, I fully expect both the hospital admitting privileges provision and the ambulatory surgical center requirements to be looked at should this law reach the Supreme Court. And what is going to happen on that day is obviously what everyone is thinking about and worrying about. Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights took that question on during her short interview with Rachel Maddow.

• Texas 3 *

I realize this is complex, but here’s the most boiled down take I can make: Most of the other appeals courts have struck down laws requiring hospital admitting privileges or ambulatory surgical center standards because they are clear violations of the requirement that no undue burden be put on abortion access and because the laws are clearly meant to be an undue burden and not a legitimate attempt to protect women’s health. The Fifth Circuit court is the exception, holding up the hospital admitting privileges requirement so far and signaling a supportive attitude towards the ambulatory surgical centers requirement as well. Should they uphold that part of the law, the only way to resolve this tension is for the Supreme Court to look at it. The problem is that there’s no way to know how the Supreme Court feels about this. Only three judges have made it clear that they intend to vote for every abortion restriction that comes down the pipe, no matter how disingenuous. Four intend clearly to vote against the restrictions. But now we have a situation where two judges supported one stay on the law and rejected another. It’s already hard to tell where a judge stands on a law when it comes to the power to stay it, but this mixed messaging makes it even harder to tell. However, if they had let the law go into effect, that would have suggested there is little chance they won’t allow the law to stand in the long run. This decision creates reason to hope.

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Interview

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If you watch the Sunday news shows or any cable news, you’ll know that pundits say fool-headed, ignorant things like it’s their job, which, in the case of Fox News, it is. But rarely do they speak in ways that cause you to wonder if they even read the news. I mean, generally speaking, pundits do actually read headlines at least, and often entire news stories before they bother opining about stuff. But with this George Will comment, I can’t help but think the man hasn’t picked up a newspaper or turned on a newsfeed for at least a decade and gets all of his news from D.C. cocktail chatter.

• war 1 *

Your concern that women are being treated like they’re illiterate is noted, as is the utter and complete falseness of your pose, George. It’s really rich to pivot and pretend that you respect women’s intelligence within seconds of joking that someone’s name sounds like “uterus” and therefore he should be ashamed. Or that there’s something gross and “gynecological” about addressing women’s very real health care needs. Shorter George Will: Talking about women is gross and icky, but I respect women because I say so. But for all his concern that Democrats are supposedly treating women like they are illiterate, he doesn’t seem to be too concerned about how illiterate he sounds when he claims that contraception and abortion are settled issues and that the only reason they’re mentioned at all is because pro-choicers keep bringing them up.

• war 2 *

• war 3 *

• war 4 *

I put this montage together, and believe me, I could make it hours long if I wanted to, not to make you bleed from rage stress, but to prove the point that George Will is either illiterate himself or he’s being deliberately dishonest here. The sole and only reason the “war on women” narrative has taken off is because conservatives keep waging the war on women. The attacks on contraception are real. The diminishing number of abortion clinics due to regulation is real. Conservative pundits whole-heartedly arguing that women’s sexuality is strictly for procreation is real. I have no doubt that conservatives hate the “war on women” meme. But the way to make it go away is to stop waging it. It’s that simple.

Of course, what Will hopes he can accomplish here is to get liberals to simply stop talking about the war on women so that it can be waged without paying any political consequences for it. Or, as was made clear with his swipe at Mark Udall, he wants to return to a situation where being seen as pro-woman or associated with women is bad for you, politically. But women are more than half of voters and more than half of women are single now. There’s no going back.

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And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, Phyllis Schlafy is sad that men won’t just beat women into submission edition. I would like to say I’m overstating the case, but she quite literally blamed men’s supposed reluctance to be violent to women as the reason feminists won’t go away. She learned this lesson from watching a nature documentary.

• Schlafly *

I like how she had to tell us not once, but twice, that these were real bears and not actor bears. But that amazing bit aside, I think her implication is clear, that male violence against women is a good thing and it’s a shame that men don’t beat back feminism. You know, in the literal beating way, not the actor bear fake beating way.