Draft opinion shows Supreme Court about to revoke women's co

[admin]

Lawrence: Samuel Alito's Lies Did Not Stop In His Confirmation Hearing
by Lawrence O'Donnell
MSNBC
May 5, 2022

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell details the years of lying and hypocrisy from Republicans and Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justices on abortion rights.

WELL, I'VE NEVER BEEN REALLY
ENRAGED BY A SUPREME COURT
DECISION.
I HAVE DISAGREED WITH THE SUPREME
COURT I'VE STRONGLY DISAGREED
WITH THE SUPREME COURT I HAVE
BEEN DISAPPOINTED BY SUPREME
COURT DECISIONS.
BUT MOST OF THE TIME, I
UNDERSTOOD THE LEGAL REASONING
ON EACH SIDE AND BELIEVED THE
DECISION-MAKING PROCESS WAS
LEGITIMATE, MOST OF THE TIME.
BUT NOT UNTIL THIS WEEK HAVE I
EVER FELT WHAT IT IS LIKE TO
HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT
REVOKED FROM ALL OF US, AND IT
IS, FIRST OF ALL A FEELING.
BEFORE WE GET TO THE ANALYSIS
OF THE DECISION, WE FEEL THE
PAIN OF THE DECISION.
AND THE AGONIES THAT THE
SUPREME COURT DECISION IS GOING
TO INFLICT.
AND I JUST WANT TO HAVE A WORD WITH
THE MEN OF AMERICA, HERE.
THIS IS A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT
THAT BELONGS TO ALL OF US, THAT
BENEFITS ALL OF US.
WE HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT
TO THESE SERVICES TO HELP PROVIDE
THESE SERVICES FOR OUR
DAUGHTERS FOR OUR
GRANDDAUGHTERS FOR OUR SISTERS
FOR OUR WIVES FOR GIRLFRIENDS WE
HAVE THAT WE MEN HAVE THAT
CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT.
AND BECAUSE WE ARE BEING ROBBED
OF A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT IT IS
IMPOSSIBLE FOR SOME OF US TO
MUTE THE RAGE THAT THAT THEFT
DESERVES.

>> [SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, (D) NEW YORK] I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO
AMERICA'S MEN FOR ONE MINUTE.
IMAGINE YOU DO NOT HAVE
AUTHORITY OVER YOUR OWN BODY
FOR TEN MONTHS.
IMAGINE IF THAT DECISION-MAKING
WOULD NOT BE TAKEN AWAY EVEN IF
YOU WOULD DIE IN CHILDBIRTH.
EVEN IF YOU COULDN'T DECIDE
WHO YOU ARE HAVING CHILDREN
WITH, EVEN IF YOU
COULDN'T DECIDE WHEN YOU ARE
HAVING THAT CHILD.
I DON'T THINK A MAN IN AMERICA
COULD ACTUALLY IMAGINE NOT
HAVING CONTROL OF HIS BODY, HIS
BODILY FUNCTIONS, WHAT HAPPENS
TO HIM, AND WHAT LIFE WOULD BE
LIKE FOR TEN MONTHS.
IT IS AN OUTRAGE THAT WE HAVE
FIVE JUSTICES ON THE SUPREME
COURT WHO LIED, WHO LIED, IN THEIR
CONFIRMATION HEARINGS, IN ORDER
TO BE CONFIRMED.

>> REMEMBER, IT IS MEN WHO
CREATE PREGNANCIES.
WE CREATE PREGNANCIES THROUGH
LOVE, THROUGH LUST, THROUGH
IMPATIENCE, SOMETIMES,
IMPULSIVELY.
WE CREATE PREGNANCIES THROUGH
ASSAULT, WE CREATE PREGNANCIES
THROUGH RAPE.
AND EVERY ONE OF THOSE PREGNANCIES
IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF A MAN.
AND THE SUPREME COURT BELIEVES,
NOW, THAT EVERY ONE OF THOSE
PREGNANCIES, EVERY ONE OF THEM,
SHOULD RESULT IN A BIRTH.
THE SUPREME COURT WANTS TO BE
THE CHAMPION OF RAPE DADS.
IT WANTS TO CREATE A CLASS OF
RAPE DADS IN AMERICA.
BECAUSE THE SUPREME COURT IS SAYING
THAT THERE SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY
NO EXCEPTION TO BANNING ALL
ABORTION IN AMERICA.
NO EXCEPTIONS FOR RAPE, NO
EXCEPTIONS FOR INCEST.
SUPREME COURT WANTS TO CREATE
THIS NEW CLASS OF DADS.
THE RAPE VICTIMS WILL HAVE TO
SUFFER, AND THE SUPREME COURT
IS HOPING WHAT, THAT WHEN THESE
RAPISTS GET OUT OF PRISON, IF
THEY EVER GO TO PRISON, THAT THEY
WILL THEN RECONCILE WITH THE
CHILDREN, THE GIRLS THEY
HAVE RAPED.
THAT IS THE FUTURE THAT THIS SUPREME
COURT IS IMAGINING?
FILLING THIS COUNTRY WITH RAPE
DADS?
THEY LIED.
THAT ACCUSATION HAS NEVER BEEN
MADE WITH BY A UNITED STATES
SENATOR IN THE HISTORY OF THE
UNITED STATES SENATE, IN THE
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
SUPREME COURT.
SENATOR GILLIBRAND WAS JUST
SAYING THAT FIVE MEMBERS OF THE
UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT LIED
THEIR WAY ONTO THE SUPREME
COURT.
THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SAID BEFORE
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE.
AND THEY ARE NOT THE ONLY ONES.
THE DAY AFTER ROE V. WADE WAS
DECIDED BY THE SUPREME COURT IN
1973, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT
RICHARD NIXON TOLD WHITE HOUSE
COUNSEL CHUCK COLSON WHAT HE
REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT ABORTION.

>> [PRES. NIXON] ... I MEAN THERE ARE TIMES
WHEN ABORTIONS ARE NECESSARY. I KNOW THAT.
YOU KNOW [UNCLEAR] YOU HAVE A BLACK AND A WHITE.

[CHARLES COLSON]: OR RAPE.

[PRES. NIXON]: OR RAPE.

THAT IS REAL REPUBLICAN TALK
ABOUT ABORTION.
A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT PRIVATELY SAYING
"OF COURSE YOU SHOULD HAVE
ABORTION IN CASES OF RAPE, AND
OF COURSE YOU SHOULD HAVE
ABORTION IN THE CASE OF A
PREGNANCY INVOLVING SEX BETWEEN
A BLACK PERSON AND A WHITE
PERSON."
THAT'S THE KIND OF ABORTION
PRESIDENT NIXON THOUGHT
WAS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.
THAT WAS HIS WORD: "NECESSARY."
REPUBLICANS IN WASHINGTON HAVE
SPENT DECADES LYING ABOUT MORE
THINGS THAN THEY CAN KEEP TRACK
OF.
REMEMBER THAT THEY LIE ABOUT
TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH,
INCREASING REVENUE TO THE
TREASURY.
THEY'VE ALWAYS LIED ABOUT THAT,
NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES IT HAS BEEN
PROVEN TO BE A LIE.
AND NOW THEY'VE GONE ALL THE
WAY TO LYING ABOUT WHO WON THE
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
WHAT COULD EVER STOP THEM FROM
LYING ABOUT ABORTION?
LYING ABOUT WHAT THEY REALLY
THINK ABOUT ABORTION?
I FOR ONE BELIEVE THAT EVERY
REPUBLICAN MEMBER OF THE UNITED
STATES SENATE WHO FAVORS
BANNING ALL ABORTIONS, IS AN
ABJECT LIAR.
THEY ARE ALL A VERSION OF
RICHARD NIXON.
THERE IS NOT A SINGLE
REPUBLICAN MEMBER OF THE UNITED
STATES SENATE WHO WOULD FORCE A
DAUGHTER OR A GRANDDAUGHTER WHO
WAS RAPED TO HAVE THAT BABY.
THERE IS NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN MEMBER OF
THE UNITED STATES SENATE WHO
WOULD FORCE A DAUGHTER OR A
GRANDDAUGHTER WHO WAS
IMPREGNATED BY HER HIGH SCHOOL
BOYFRIEND TO HAVE THAT BABY.
THEY ALL BELIEVE IN AN
EXCEPTION FOR RAPE OR INCEST
FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR
FAMILIES.
THERE IS NO REPUBLICAN SENATOR
WITH A 13-YEAR OLD DAUGHTER OR
GRANDDAUGHTER WHO WOULD FORCE
THAT GIRL TO HAVE A CHILD.
BUT THEY INSIST, THEY INSIST
THAT ANY 13-YEAR OLD GIRL IN
MISSISSIPPI OR TEXAS, OR MANY
OTHER STATES WHO CANNOT AFFORD
TO TRAVEL, MUST HAVE A BABY AT
AGE 13, BECAUSE THEY CANNOT
AFFORD TO TRAVEL.
THE SUPREME COURT ONLY HAS THE
POWER TO DENY ABORTION SERVICES
TO WOMEN AND GIRLS WHO CANNOT
AFFORD TO TRAVEL TO A SAFE
HAVEN STATE LIKE CALIFORNIA OR
ILLINOIS OR NEW YORK.
OR TO A FOREIGN COUNTRY, WHEN
THE REPUBLICANS TAKE OVER CONGRESS
AND ALLOW ABORTION IN THE
ENTIRE COUNTRY.
OR, WHEN THE SUPREME COURT
DECIDES THAT EVERY FETUS HAS THE
FULL RIGHTS OF PERSONHOOD, AND
THEREFORE ABORTION IS MURDER IN
ALL 50 STATES.
THEN, THE TRAVEL WILL BE MORE
EXPENSIVE.
CANADA WILL BE THE CLOSEST
OPTION.
AND STILL, NO DAUGHTER OR
GRANDDAUGHTER OF ANY REPUBLICAN
IN THE UNITED STATES SENATE
WILL EVER, NOW OR IN THE FUTURE,
EVER BE DENIED ABORTION
SERVICES, BECAUSE OF THE LAW OF
THIS LAND.
THEY WILL BUY THEIR WAY OUT OF
THAT FOR THEIR DAUGHTERS OR THEIR
GRANDDAUGHTERS.
JOHN MCCAIN RAN INTO TROUBLE
TALKING ABOUT ABORTION, THE
FIRST TIME HE RAN FOR PRESIDENT
IN 2000.
IT DERAILED HIS CAMPAIGN, WHICH
WAS GOING VERY WELL AT THE
TIME.
ALISON MITCHELL THE NEW YORK
TIMES REPORTED ON JANUARY 27TH
2000, UNDER THE HEADLINE,
"THE QUESTION OF ABORTION DOGS
MCCAIN.
QUOTE, STRUGGLING TO ANSWER A
HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION, SENATOR
JOHN MCCAIN SAID TODAY THAT IF
HIS TEENAGE DAUGHTER BECAME
PREGNANT, SHE WOULD HAVE THE
FINAL DECISION ON WHETHER TO
HAVE AN ABORTION.
HE THEN BACKTRACKED AND SAID,
IT WOULD BE A FAMILY DECISION.
MR. MCCAIN SAID, "I WOULD
DISCUSS THIS ISSUE WITH CINDY
AND MEGAN, AND THIS WOULD
BE A PRIVATE DECISION THAT WE
WOULD SHARE WITHIN OUR FAMILY.
OBVIOUSLY, I WOULD ENCOURAGE
HER TO KNOW THAT THAT BABY WOULD BE
BROUGHT UP IN A WARM LOVING
FAMILY.
THE FINAL DECISION WOULD BE
MADE BY MEGHAN, WITH OUR ADVICE
AND COUNSEL, AND I THINK THAT'S
SUCH A PRIVATE MANNER.
MR. MCCAIN, WHO HAS SAID
REPEATEDLY THAT HE IS MORALLY
OPPOSED TO ABORTION, WAS THEN
ASKED WHETHER HE HAD JUST
ARTICULATED THE POSITION OF
THE ABORTION RIGHTS MOVEMENT,
WHICH ARGUES THAT THE PROCEDURE
SHOULD NOT BE OUTLAWED BUT LEFT
UP TO INDIVIDUAL WOMEN.
MR. MCCAIN BECAME VISIBLY
IRRITATED.
"I DON'T THINK IT'S THE CHOICE
POSITION TO SAY THAT MY
DAUGHTER AND MY WIFE AND I WILL
DISCUSS SOMETHING, THAT IS A
FAMILY MATTER, THAT WE HAVE TO
DECIDE," HE SAID.
A SHORT TIME LATER, MR. MCCAIN
TELEPHONED REPORTERS AND SAID,
"I MISSPOKE.
WHATI BELIEVED I WAS SAYING,
AND INTENDED TO SAY, IS THAT THIS IS
A FAMILY DECISION.
THE FAMILY DECISION WILL BE
MADE BY THE FAMILY, NOT BY
MEGHAN ALONE."
THEY ARE ALL PRO-CHOICE.
THERE IS NO FAMILY DECISION TO
BE MADE IF THERE IS NO CHOICE.
JOHN MCCAIN WAS DESCRIBING
EXACTLY WHAT' SHOULD HAPPEN IN
A LOVING FAMILY WHEN A TEENAGE
DAUGHTER BECOMES PREGNANT.
JOHN MCCAIN LOST THE REPUBLICAN
NOMINATION TO GEORGE W. BUSH,
BECAUSE GEORGE W. BUSH GOT TO
HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.
HE GOT TO CLAIM THAT HE WAS IN
FAVOR OF BANNING ALL ABORTIONS,
WITH EXCEPTIONS FOR RAPE AND
INCEST, AND LIFE OF THE MOTHER,
BUT THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM
THAT HE RAN ON CALLED FOR BANNING
ALL ABORTIONS.

>> [JOHN MCCAIN] THE POSITION, IS YOU BELIEVE
THERE'S AN EXEMPTION FOR RAPE,
INCEST, AND LIFE OF THE MOTHER.
BUT YOU WANT THE PLATFORM THAT
YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE LEADING
TO HAVE NO EXCEPTIONS.

>> [GEORGE BUSH] I WILL, I WILL. THE PLATFORM TALKS ABOUT --
IT DOESN'T TALK ABOUT WHAT
SPECIFICALLY SHOULD BE IN THE
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.
PLEASE LET ME FINISH, LET ME FINISH.
THE PLATFORM SPEAKS ABOUT A
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT,
IT DOESN'T REFER TO HOW THAT
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT OUGHT
TO BE DEFINED.

>> [JOHN MCCAIN] READ THE PLATFORM, IT HAS NO
EXCEPTIONS.

>> [GEORGE BUSH] JOHN, I THINK WE NEED TO
KEEP THE PLATFORM THE WAY IT
IS. THIS IS A PRO-LIFE
PARTY.
MAY I FINISH PLEASE?
MAY I FINISH PLEASE? PLEASE.
WE NEED TO BE A PRO-LIFE PARTY.
WE NEED TO SAY, LIFE IS
PRECIOUS, AND THAT IS WHAT OUR
PLATFORM REFERS TO, AND THAT'S
WHY WE NEED TO LEAVE IT THE
SAME.

>> AND THAT MAN MADE SAMUEL
ALITO A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE.
HE DIDN'T BELIEVE ALL ABORTIONS
SHOULD BE BANNED, BUT HE
APPOINTED A SUPREME COURT
JUSTICE WHO BELIEVES EXACTLY
THAT, AND HAS WRITTEN A DRAFT
OPINION THAT WILL BAN ALL
ABORTIONS IN MANY STATES
IMMEDIATELY, AND POSSIBLY LEAD
EVENTUALLY TO A SUPREME COURT
IMPOSED BAN ON ALL ABORTIONS IN
ALL STATES.
DONALD TRUMP APPOINTED THREE OF
THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL EDUCATED
SUPREME COURT JUSTICES WHO ARE
VOTING TO REVOKE A
CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT.
DONALD TRUMP WAS A BIG FAN OF
THAT RIGHT BEFORE HE BECAME A
REPUBLICAN POLITICAN IN 2004, ON
HOWARD STERN'S RADIO SHOW.
DONALD TRUMP SAID, "I HAVE A
GREAT LITTLE DAUGHTER TIFFANY,
BUT, YOU KNOW, AT THE TIME IT WAS LIKE EXCUSE
ME, WHAT HAPPENED?
AND THEN I SAID, "WELL, WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO
ABOUT THIS --
SHE [MARLA MAPLES] SAID, "ARE YOU SERIOUS, IT'S THE MOST
BEAUTIFUL DAY OF OUR LIVES."
I SAID, OH GREAT.
HOWARD STERN THEN SAID, WHAT DO YOU
MEAN WE?
DONALD TRUMP THEN SAID, DO YOU WANT
TO GET MARRIED?

>> SO, WHEN DONALD TRUMP'S
GIRLFRIEND TOLD HIM THAT SHE WAS
PREGNANT, HE SAID EXCUSE ME
WHAT HAPPENED, AND THEN HE SAID
WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT
THIS?
HIS GIRLFRIEND KNEW THAT HE WAS
ASKING ABOUT HAVING AN ABORTION,
TO WHICH SHE THEN SAID, ARE YOU
SERIOUS?
IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT
ANYONE NAMED TRUMP, OR ANYONE
RELATED TO DONALD TRUMP WILL
ALWAYS HAVE ABORTION RIGHTS AND
A PRIVATE PLANE IF NECESSARY
IN ORDER TO EXERCISE THOSE
PRIVATE RIGHTS.
ONE OF THE MOST SANCTIMONIOUS
PROSECUTORS OF PRESIDENT
CLINTON IN HIS IMPEACHMENT TRIAL,
WAS CONGRESSMAN ROBERT BARR OF
GEORGIA.
ROB BARR WAS ON HIS THIRD WIFE
BY THE TIME HE WAS STANDING IN
JUDGMENT OF BILL CLINTON, BOB BARR'S
SECOND WIFE RELEASED AN
AFFIDAVIT THE YEAR AFTER THE
IMPEACHMENT TRIAL, SAYING THAT BOB BARR PAID
FOR HER TO HAVE AN ABORTION IN
1983, AFTER THEY ALREADY HAD
TWO CHILDREN.
SHE SAID THAT CONGRESSMAN BARR
DROVE HER TO THE ABORTION CLINIC,
AND PICKED HER UP TO BRING HER
HOME.
AND THERE IS NO REASON TO THINK
THAT THERE AREN'T MORE
REPUBLICAN MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE
AND SENATE WHO HAVE PAID FOR
ABORTION SERVICES FOR THEIR
WIVES, FOR WOMEN WHO THEY WERE
HAVING AFFAIRS WITH, FOR
THEIR DAUGHTERS, FOR THEIR
GRANDDAUGHTERS.
TO FORCE A RAPED 13-YEAR-OLD
GIRL, TO FORCE A RAPED
12-YEAR-OLD GIRL TO HAVE A BABY.
TO FORCE A RAPED CHILD TO
GIVE BIRTH TO A CHILD.
TO FORCE HER TO DO THAT IS
BARBARIC.
AND EVERY REPUBLICAN SENATOR
KNOWS THAT.
ON PAGE 66 OF HIS DRAFT OPINION,
SAMUEL ALITO SAYS THAT ABORTION
IS BARBARIC.
HE APPROVINGLY QUOTES THE
MISSISSIPPI LAW AT ISSUE IN
THE CASE, CALLING ABORTION,
QUOTE, A BARBARIC PRACTICE.
THE MISSISSIPPI LEGISLATURE WANTS
TO FORCE RAPED CHILDREN IN
MISSISSIPPI TO HAVE CHILDREN.
SAMUEL ALITO HOLDS TO HIS
TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC OPINION
THAT ABORTION IS MURDER, BUT
JUDGES DON'T LIKE TO MAKE
PRONOUNCEMENTS LIKE THAT
THEMSELVES IF THEY CAN FIND
SOMEONE ELSE TO QUOTE.
SAYING WHAT THEY WANT TO SAY.
SO SAMUEL ALITO DOES THAT ON
PAGE 17 OF HIS DRAFT OPINION,
WHERE HE QUOTES SIR
EDWARD COOK'S SAYING IN 17TH-CENTURY
ENGLAND THAT ABORTION IS
MURDER.
BUT EVEN SIR EDWARD COOK,
SOUNDS LIKE A ROE V. WADE
SUPPORTER, BECAUSE HE DOESN'T
BELIEVE ABORTION IS MURDER
UNTIL THE FETUS CAN BE FELT TO
BE MOVING INSIDE THE WOMB.
AND AT THE SAME TIME THAT SIR
EDWARD COOK WAS THINKING ABOUT
WHERE THE LINE SHOULD BE DRAWN
ON LEGAL AND ILLEGAL ABORTION,
HE WAS ALSO REWRITING
ENGLAND'S LAWS AGAINST
WITCHCRAFT, TO STRENGTHEN THOSE
LAWS IN 1604, TO PROVIDE A
DEATH PENALTY FOR WITCHES WHO,
QUOTE, INVOKE EVIL SPIRITS.
SAMUEL ALITO IS ASKING THE
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED
STATES TO TAKE MORAL GUIDANCE
FROM A MAN WHO BELIEVED IN
WITCHES, AND BELIEVED IN
PUTTING THEM TO DEATH.
JUST AS WE DID IN THIS COUNTRY
THROUGHOUT THE 17TH CENTURY, AN
ERA THAT SAMUEL ALITO REVERES
IN OUR LEGAL HISTORY.
SAMUEL ALITO AND HIS CLERKS
PLAY AMATEUR HISTORIAN IN THEIR
DRAFT OPINION, AND THEIR
SCHOLARSHIP IS SHABBY, IT IS
BIASED, AND IN THE CASE OF
EDWARD COOK, IT IS DERANGED.
THE LIES OF SAMUEL ALITO DID NOT STOP
IN HIS CONFIRMATION HEARING.

[admin]

There's another War Between the States coming over abortion: Before the Civil War, Northern and Southern states did battle over fugitive slaves. Once again, something legal in one state is illegal in a state next door.
by Ken Dilanian
ABC News
June 27, 2022, 2:54 PM MDT

The Supreme Court’s abortion decision is likely to set off a wave of legal and political disputes among states and the federal government unlike anything seen since the years before the Civil War, legal experts say.

With some states allowing private lawsuits against out-of-state abortion providers — and other states prohibiting cooperation with abortion investigations — the abortion issue is likely to pit state law enforcement agencies and court systems against one another in dramatic fashion. The federal government, meanwhile, faces a choice over how to deal with states that seek to ban Food and Drug Administration-approved abortion medication, now used in about half of pregnancy terminations. And whatever the Biden administration does, federal policy could change dramatically if the Republicans take the White House.

Experts say it is conceivable that a person could be wanted for a felony in an anti-abortion rights state but protected from extradition in a pro-abortion rights state. The governor of Massachusetts has already imposed rules forbidding state officers from cooperating in abortion investigations. California’s governor signed a bill seeking to protect from civil liability anyone providing, aiding or receiving abortion care in the state. Texas law, however, lets private citizens sue out-of-state abortion providers, and Missouri is considering a similar law.

“What we had in the years leading up to the Civil War was a failure of what lawyers call comity, the idea that states will respect other states’ laws” for reasons of courtesy, consideration and mutual respect, said Ariela J. Gross, a professor of law and history at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. “That starts to break down when you have these really stark differences over an issue involving a fundamental right, and that’s what happened in the years leading up to the Civil War.”

After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, federal statutes required Northern states to assist Southern slave owners and their bounty hunters in capturing enslaved people who had escaped north to states that had banned slavery. But many Northern states passed laws to impede cooperation and enforcement.

The parallel to abortion is that “you literally are pursuing people across state borders for seeking medical care that is legal,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. “It’s a completely mind-blowing concept.”

Legal disputes between the states are not uncommon, even over big social issues. An example is cannabis — legal right now in some states, illegal in others. But no other recent issue of dispute among the states comes close in terms of its implications — and the passion on both sides of the argument — as abortion.

“It’s one thing to have states fighting with each other about a tax on interstate cargo or mudflaps on trucks,” said Wendy Parmet, a professor of law and public policy at the Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. “It’s not the kind of thing that tens of thousands of people take to the streets over. … We certainly have not seen since the Civil War these kinds of conflicts between the states in a context of such heightened controversy and anger.”

Many pro-abortion rights states moved quickly after the Supreme Court decision.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a moderate Republican, signed an executive order Friday that prohibits any executive agency from assisting another state’s investigation into a person or entity for receiving or delivering reproductive health services that are legal in Massachusetts.

The order also seeks to protect Massachusetts providers who deliver abortion services from losing their professional licenses or receiving other professional discipline stemming from out-of-state charges.

And it decrees that Massachusetts will not cooperate with extradition requests from other states pursuing criminal charges against people who received, assisted with or performed reproductive health services that are legal in Massachusetts.

Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation Monday that shields providers and patients from civil liability in connection with abortion-related claims from out of state.

Her office said the legislation also prohibits state courts from cooperating in civil or criminal lawsuits stemming from abortions that take place legally in New York and prohibits law enforcement from cooperating with anti-abortion states’ investigations into New York abortions.

“Today, we are taking action to protect our service providers from the retaliatory actions of anti-abortion states and ensure that New York will always be a safe harbor for those seeking reproductive healthcare,” Hochul said in a statement.

Experts say a huge unanswered question is what will happen with abortion drugs, which, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights organization, are used in about half of pregnancy terminations.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday that states may not ban abortion drugs on the grounds that they are dangerous, because the FDA has approved them. But legal experts say it is not clear the federal government can force states to allow people to receive the drugs for use in abortions from other states through the mail.

The federal government regulates the mail, but states regulate doctors and pharmacies.

“It’s going to be hard to say that the federal government overrides the state completely,” Gross said.

Moreover, whatever approach the Biden administration takes can be reversed if Republicans win the 2024 election. The other wild card is how the conservative majority on the Supreme Court might rule on such issues.

“Nobody can know what the law is,” Parmet said, “because we have an ascendent conservative legal movement that is pushing the boundaries.”

[admin]

Ep. 239: A Handmaid's Country (feat. Cynthia Conti-Cook).
by Michael Moore

Last week we blinked and opened our eyes to a vision of a different world. A nightmare foretold is to become our future — a U.S. citizen who becomes pregnant can be stripped of their bodily autonomy and forced, by the U.S. government, to give birth. Attempt to abort the fetus, and you can be charged with murder. The idea of that reality is draconian and horrific.

But what most people don’t know is that we are already living in a reality that is much more sinister. Confide in a desperate text to your friend your fears of being pregnant, or simply Google the word “abortion” before having a miscarriage… and you can be charged with murder.

On this episode of Rumble, Michael is joined by Cynthia Conti-Cook, award-winning civil rights attorney and current Technology Fellow on the Ford Foundation’s Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice team. She is an expert on the expanding use of surveillance technologies and talks with Michael on the current and potential use of technology to criminalize people who seek or aid abortions.

************************

President's Day Massacre
https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/w ... y_Massacre

“We're saving them. We are doing God's work.”
— Serena Joy approves homicide for a higher purpose [1]

The President's Day Massacre was a large-scale terrorist attack orchestrated by the Sons of Jacob and marks the earliest stage of Gilead's founding. The attack is shown to have occurred in both the TV series and the original novel, though it is only referred to by this name in the latter[2].

Depiction in canonical sources

The attack

The specific date of the attack is unknown, but it is confirmed that it took place in Washington, DC and targeted the highest echelons of the US government. Specifically, the attackers succeeded in bombing the White House and firing on the US Capitol building, resulting in the deaths of the (unnamed) US President and most of the US Congress. Plans for a similar attack on the US Supreme Court are mentioned by Fred Waterford and Serena Joy in a conversation that takes place in the attack's planning stages[1], though the specifics of that attack have yet to be clarified on-screen.

Aftermath

Following the massacre, the Sons of Jacob seized control of the US government and armed forces through unspecified means, declaring martial law, suspending the US Constitution and gradually reshaping American society into the "utopia" of Gilead. According to the original book, the Sons of Jacob were able to blame the attack on Islamic terrorists, a detail which has not yet been explicitly mentioned in the TV series.[3]

The country, as described in the novel ("a suspended state of animation"), is said to not have a government (though whatever is left will continue to function); martial law in effect; and with much suspense and little details regarding the attacks. There, terrorists were blamed but their identity isn't specified at the time.[3]

In the TV Series: Later after the Provisional Government splits. The faction of the Provisional Government that later becomes the legitimate US Government based in Anchorage would blame the Sons of Jacob and the Civil Servants members (Male too perfect) of that group as being behind the massacre.

Depictions in the TV series

The attack

In the television series, a still of a newspaper prop from the second season reveals that the attacks took place in September 2014 in Washington, D.C.. The date of the publication is listed as September 15, 2014; this means that the attacks took place on September 14 or in the days before. Coincidentally, this date is very close to the 9/11 attacks in 2001 carried out by Al-Qaeda militants. It also contrasts with the date of the real President's Day holiday, which occurs on the third Monday of February.

The still image also documents the immediate shock and reaction by the remaining United States government and citizens. The president's death was reported to be the result of fatal gunshot wounds to both the chest and shoulder. He was pronounced dead at Georgetown University Hospital, indicating that it wasn't the bombing of the White House that killed him. Additionally, it is revealed that it wasn't just elected officials who were attacked, but also ordinary citizens. The headline calls the attack "America's bloodiest day," implying a death toll exceeding that of the 9/11 attacks, which further suggests that the great majority of the victims were civilians.

Aftermath

After the attack the Government was put under martial law, under Martial Law all non-essential businesses were required to close devastating the already dying economy of the USA. People belonging to many religious denominations, as well as atheists, were reported to be joining condolence gatherings around the country for prayer and comfort.

Ironically, the Sons of Jacob, who orchestrated the attacks, are said to have raised millions of dollars with the intention of donating the said amount to the families of the individuals that they covertly massacred while also calling for "empathy and unity".[4]

A mandatory prayer was apparently instituted shortly after the crisis,[4] suggesting that the Sons of Jacob had already heavily infiltrated and/or influenced the government at this point.

References

• Episode 1.6, "A Woman's Place"
• The Handmaid's Tale (Novel), Epilogue, "Historical Notes on The Handmaid's Tale"
• The Handmaid's Tale (Novel), section 28
• see Boston Globe Front Page

A Fandom user
1/16/2022

Also if it was Late summer 2014 their would had been election posters on the streets. The attack took place February 2014 on a Monday and sons of Jacob took Boston in Late April and the final phase in of their laws were done in Late November 2014 to January 2015. Then reaching Chicago 11 months later when resistance was built up to sustain an attack. The paper is not correct. Long sleeve Polo would be correct if the training began in September for a wintertime attack when Tourism would drop so Hotels can be filled up by armed terrorist.

[admin]

Chapter 28, Excerpt from "The Handmaid's Tale"
by Margaret Atwood
© 1986 by O. W. Toad, Ltd.

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I don't feel like a nap this afternoon, there's still too much adrenaline. I sit on the window seat, looking out through the semisheer of the curtains. White nightgown. The window is as open as it goes, there's a breeze, hot in the sunlight, and the white cloth blows across my face. From the outside I must look like a cocoon, a spook, face enshrouded like this, only the outlines visible, of nose, bandaged mouth, blind eyes. But I like the sensation, the soft cloth brushing my skin. It's like being in a cloud.

They've given me a small electric fan, which helps in this humidity. It whirs on the floor, in the corner, its blades encased in grillework. If I were Moira, I'd know how to take it apart, reduce it to its cutting edges. I have no screwdriver, but if I were Moira I could do it without a screwdriver. I'm not Moira.

What would she tell me, about the Commander, if she were here? Probably she'd disapprove. She disapproved of Luke, back then. Not of Luke but of the fact that he was married. She said I was poaching, on another woman's ground. I said Luke wasn't a fish or a piece of dirt either, he was a human being and could make his own decisions. She said I was rationalizing. I said I was in love. She said that was no excuse. Moira was always more logical than I am.

I said she didn't have that problem herself anymore, since she'd decided to prefer women, and as far as I could see she had no scruples about stealing them or borrowing them when she felt like it. She said it was different, because the balance of power was equal between women so sex was an even-steven transaction. I said "even steven" was a sexist phrase, if she was going to be like that, and anyway that argument was outdated. She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated I was living with my head in the sand.

We said all this in my kitchen, drinking coffee, sitting at my kitchen table, in those low, intense voices we used for such arguments when we were in our early twenties; a carry-over from college. The kitchen was in a rundown apartment in a clapboard house near the river, the kind with three stories and a rickety outside back staircase. I had the second floor, which meant I got noise from both above and below, two unwanted disc players thumping late into the night. Students, I knew. I was still on my first job, which didn't pay much: I worked a computer in an insurance company. So the hotels, with Luke, didn't mean only love or even only sex to me. They also meant time off from the cockroaches, the dripping sink, the linoleum that was peeling off the floor in patches, even from my own attempts to brighten things up by sticking posters on the wall and hanging prisms in the windows. I had plants, too; though they always got spider mites or died from being unwatered. I would go off with Luke, and neglect them.

I said there was more than one way of living with your head in the sand and that if Moira thought she could create Utopia by shutting herself up in a women-only enclave she was sadly mistaken. Men were not just going to go away, I said. You couldn't just ignore them.

That's like saying you should go out and catch syphilis merely because it exists, Moira said.

Are you calling Luke a social disease? I said.

Moira laughed. Listen to us, she said. Shit. We sound like your mother.

We both laughed then, and when she left we hugged each other as usual. There was a time when we didn't hug, after she'd told me about being gay; but then she said I didn't turn her on, reassuring me, and we'd gone back to it. We could fight and wrangle and name-call, but it didn't change anything underneath. She was still my oldest friend.

Is.

I got a better apartment after that, where I lived for the two years it took Luke to pry himself loose. I paid for it myself, with my new job. It was in a library, not the big one with Death and Victory, a smaller one.

I worked transferring books to computer discs, to cut down on storage space and replacement costs, they said. Discers, we called ourselves. We called the library a discotheque, which was a joke of ours. After the books were transferred they were supposed to go to the shredder, but sometimes I took them home with me. I liked the feel of them, and the look. Luke said I had the mind of an antiquarian. He liked that, he liked old things himself.

It's strange, now, to think about having a job. Job. It's a funny word. It's a job for a man. Do a jobbie, they'd say to children when they were being toilet trained. Or of dogs: he did a job on the carpet. You were supposed to hit them with rolled-up newspapers, my mother said. I can remember when there were newspapers, though I never had a dog, only cats.

The Book of Job.

All those women having jobs: hard to imagine, now, but thousands of them had jobs, millions. It was considered the normal thing. Now it's like remembering the paper money, when they still had that. My mother kept some of it, pasted into her scrapbook along with the early photos. It was obsolete by then, you couldn't buy anything with it. Pieces of paper, thickish, greasy to the touch, green-colored, with pictures on each side, some old man in a wig and on the other side a pyramid with an eye above it. It said In God We Trust. My mother said people used to have signs beside their cash registers, for a joke: In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. That would be blasphemy now.

You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. Not for the groceries though, that came later. It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

Look out, said Moira to me, over the phone. Here it comes.

Here what comes? I said.

You wait, she said. They've been building up to this. It's you and me up against the wall, baby. She was quoting an expression of my mother's, but she wasn't intending to be funny.

Things continued in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.

The Pornomarts were shut, though, and there were no longer any Feels on Wheels vans and Bun-Dle Buggies circling the Square. But I wasn't sad to see them go. We all knew what a nuisance they'd been.

It's high time somebody did something, said the woman behind the counter, at the store where I usually bought my cigarettes. It was on the corner, a newsstand chain: papers, candy, cigarettes. The woman was older, with gray hair; my mother's generation.

Did they just close them, or what? I asked.

She shrugged. Who knows, who cares, she said. Maybe they just moved them off somewhere else. Trying to get rid of it altogether is like trying to stamp out mice, you know? She punched my Compunumber into the till, barely looking at it: I was a regular, by then. People were complaining, she said.

The next morning, on my way to the library for the day, I stopped by the same store for another pack, because I'd run out. I was smoking more those days, it was the tension, you could feel it, like a subterranean hum, although things seemed so quiet. I was drinking more coffee too, and having trouble sleeping. Everyone was a little jumpy. There was a lot more music on the radio than usual, and fewer words.

It was after we'd been married, for years it seemed; she was three or four, in daycare.

We'd all got up in the usual way and had breakfast, granola, I remember, and Luke had driven her off to school, in the little outfit I'd bought her just a couple of weeks before, striped overalls and a blue T-shirt. What month was this? It must have been September. There was a School Pool that was supposed to pick them up, but for some reason I'd wanted Luke to do it, I was getting worried even about the School Pool. No children walked to school anymore, there had been too many disappearances.

When I got to the corner store, the usual woman wasn't there. Instead there was a man, a young man, he couldn't have been more than twenty.

She sick? I said as I handed him my card.

Who? he said, aggressively I thought.

The woman who's usually here, I said.

How would I know, he said. He was punching my number in, studying each number, punching with one finger. He obviously hadn't done it before. I drummed my fingers on the counter, impatient for a cigarette, wondering if anyone had ever told him something could be done about those pimples on his neck. I remember quite clearly what he looked like: tall, slightly stooped, dark hair cut short, brown eyes that seemed to focus two inches behind the bridge of my nose, and that acne. I suppose I remember him so clearly because of what he said next.

Sorry, he said. This number's not valid.

That's ridiculous, I said. It must be, I've got thousands in my account. I just got the statement two days ago. Try it again.

It's not valid, he repeated obstinately. See that red light? Means it's not valid.

You must have made a mistake, I said. Try it again.

He shrugged and gave me a fed-up smile, but he did try the number again. This time I watched his fingers, on each number, and checked the numbers that came up in the window. It was my number all right, but there was the red light again.

See? he said again, still with that smile, as if he knew some private joke he wasn't going to tell me.

I'll phone them from the office, I said. The system had fouled up before, but a few phone calls usually straightened it out. Still, I was angry, as if I'd been unjustly accused of something I didn't even know about. As if I'd made the mistake myself.

You do that, he said indifferently. I left the cigarettes on the counter, since I hadn't paid for them. I figured I could borrow some at work.

I did phone from the office, but all I got was a recording. The lines were overloaded, the recording said. Could I please phone back?

The lines stayed overloaded all morning, as far as I could tell. I phoned back several times, but no luck. Even that wasn't too unusual. About two o'clock, after lunch, the director came in to the discing room.

I have something to tell you, he said. He looked terrible; his hair was untidy, his eyes were pink and wobbling, as though he'd been drinking.

We all looked up, turned off our machines. There must have been eight or ten of us in the room.

I'm sorry, he said, but it's the law. I really am sorry.

For what? somebody said.

I have to let you go, he said. It's the law, I have to. I have to let you all go. He said this almost gently, as if we were wild animals, frogs he'd caught, in a jar, as if he were being humane.

We're being fired? I said. I stood up. But why?

Not fired, he said. Let go. You can't work here anymore, it's the law. He ran his hands through his hair and I thought, He's gone crazy. The strain has been too much for him and he's blown his wiring.

You can't just do that, said the woman who sat next to me. This sounded false, improbable, like something you would say on television.

It isn't me, he said. You don't understand. Please go, now. His voice was rising. I don't want any trouble. If there's trouble the books might be lost, things will get broken ... He looked over his shoulder. They're outside, he said, in my office. If you don't go now they'll come in themselves. They gave me ten minutes. By now he sounded crazier than ever.

He's loopy, someone said out loud; which we must all have thought.

But I could see out into the corridor, and there were two men standing there, in uniforms, with machine guns. This was too theatrical to be true, yet there they were: sudden apparitions, like Martians. There was a dreamlike quality to them; they were too vivid, too at odds with their surroundings.

Just leave the machines, he said while we were getting our things together, filing out. As if we could have taken them.

We stood in a cluster, on the steps outside the library. We didn't know what to say to one another. Since none of us understood what had happened, there was nothing much we could say. We looked at one another's faces and saw dismay, and a certain shame, as if we'd been caught doing something we shouldn't.

It's outrageous, one woman said, but without belief. What was it about this that made us feel we deserved it?

When I got back to the house nobody was there. Luke was still at work, my daughter was at school. I felt tired, bone-tired, but when I sat down I got up again, I couldn't seem to sit still. I wandered through the house, from room to room. I remember touching things, not even that consciously, just placing my fingers on them; things like the toaster, the sugar bowl, the ashtray in the living room. After a while I picked up the cat and carried her around with me. I wanted Luke to come home. I thought I should do something, take steps; but I didn't know what steps I could take.

I tried phoning the bank again, but I only got the same recording. I poured myself a glass of milk -- I told myself I was too jittery for another coffee -- and went into the living room and sat down on the sofa and put the glass of milk on the coffee table, carefully, without drinking any of it. I held the cat up against my chest so I could feel her purring against my throat.

After a while I phoned my mother at her apartment, but there was no answer. She'd settled down more by then, she'd stopped moving every few years; she lived across the river, in Boston. I waited a while and phoned Moira. She wasn't there either, but when I tried half an hour later she was. In between these phone calls I just sat on the sofa. What I thought about was my daughter's school lunches. I thought maybe I'd been giving her too many peanut butter sandwiches.

I've been fired, I told Moira when I got her on the phone. She said she would come over. By that time she was working for a women's collective, the publishing division. They put out books on birth control and rape and things like that, though there wasn't as much demand for those things as there used to be.

I'll come over, she said. She must have been able to tell from my voice that this was what I wanted.

She got there after some time. So, she said. She threw off her jacket, sprawled into the oversize chair. Tell me. First we'll have a drink.

She got up and went to the kitchen and poured us a couple of Scotches, and came back and sat down and I tried to tell her what had happened to me. When I'd finished, she said, Tried getting anything on your Compucard today?

Yes, I said. I told her about that too.

They've frozen them, she said. Mine too. The collective's too. Any account with an F on it instead of an M. All they needed to do is push a few buttons. We're cut off.

But I've got over two thousand dollars in the bank, I said, as if my own account was the only one that mattered.

Women can't hold property anymore, she said. It's a new law. Turned on the TV today?

No, I said.

It's on there, she said. All over the place. She was not stunned, the way I was. In some strange way she was gleeful, as if this was what she'd been expecting for some time and now she'd been proven right. She even looked more energetic, more determined. Luke can use your Compucount for you, she said. They'll transfer your number to him, or that's what they say. Husband or male next of kin.

But what about you? I said. She didn't have anyone.

I'll go underground, she said. Some of the gays can take over our numbers and buy us things we need.

But why? I said. Why did they?

Ours is not to reason why, said Moira. They had to do it that way, the Compucounts and the jobs both at once. Can you picture the airports, otherwise? They don't want us going anywhere, you can bet on that.

I went to pick my daughter up from school. I drove with exaggerated care. By the time Luke got home I was sitting at the kitchen table. She was drawing with felt pens at her own little table in the corner, where her paintings were taped up next to the refrigerator. Luke knelt beside me and put his arms around me. I heard, he said, on the car radio, driving home. Don't worry, I'm sure it's temporary.

Did they say why? I said.

He didn't answer that. We'll get through it, he said, hugging me.

You don't know what it's like, I said. I feel as if somebody cut off my feet. I wasn't crying. Also, I couldn't put my arms around him.

It's only a job, he said, trying to soothe me.

I guess you get all my money, I said. And I'm not even dead. I was trying for a joke, but it came out sounding macabre.

Hush, he said. He was still kneeling on the floor. You know I'll always take care of you.

I thought, Already he's starting to patronize me. Then I thought, Already you're starting to get paranoid.

I know, I said. I love you.

Later, after she was in bed and we were having supper, and I wasn't feeling so shaky, I told him about the afternoon. I described the director coming in, blurting out his announcement. It would have been funny if it wasn't so awful, I said. I thought he was drunk. Maybe he was. The army was there, and everything.

Then I remembered something' I'd seen and hadn't noticed, at the time. It wasn't the army. It was some other army.

* * *

There were marches, of course, a lot of women and some men. But they were smaller than you might have thought. I guess people were scared. And when it was known that the police, or the army, or whoever they were, would open fire almost as soon as any of the marches even started, the marches stopped. A few things were blown up, post offices, subway stations. But you couldn't even be sure who was doing it. It could have been the army, to justify the computer searches and the other ones, the door-to-doors.

I didn't go on any of the marches. Luke said it would be futile and I had to think about them, my family, him and her. I did think about my family. I started doing more housework, more baking. I tried not to cry at mealtimes. By this time I'd started to cry, without warning, and to sit beside the bedroom window, staring out. I didn't know many of the neighbors, and when we met, outside on the street, we were careful to exchange nothing more than the ordinary greetings. Nobody wanted to be reported, for disloyalty.

Remembering this, 1 remember also my mother, years before. I must have been fourteen, fifteen, that age when daughters are most embarrassed by their mothers. I remember her coming back to one of our many apartments, with a group of other women, part of her ever-changing circle of friends. They'd been in a march that day; it was during the time of the porn riots, or was it the abortion riots, they were close together. There were a lot of bombings then: clinics, video stores; it was hard to keep track.

My mother had a bruise on her face, and a little blood. You can't stick your hand through a glass window without getting cut, is what she said about it. Fucking pigs.

Fucking bleeders, one of her friends said. They called the other side bleeders, after the signs they carried: Let them bleed. So it must have been the abortion riots.

I went into my bedroom, to be out of their way. They were talking too much, and too loudly. They ignored me, and I resented them. My mother and her rowdy friends. I didn't see why she had to dress that way, in overalls, as if she were young; or to swear so much.

You're such a prude, she would say to me, in a tone of voice that was on the whole pleased. She liked being more outrageous than I was, more rebellious. Adolescents are always such prudes.

Part of my disapproval was that, I'm sure: perfunctory, routine. But also I wanted from her a life more ceremonious, less subject to makeshift and decampment.

You were a wanted child, God knows, she would say at other moments, lingering over the photo albums in which she had me framed; these albums were thick with babies, but my replicas thinned out as I grew older, as if the population of my duplicates had been hit by some plague. She would say this a little regretfully, as though I hadn't turned out entirely as she'd expected. No mother is ever, completely, a child's idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn't do badly by one another, we did as well as most.

I wish she were here, so I could tell her I finally know this.

Someone has come out of the house. I hear the distant closing of a door, around at the side, footsteps on the walk. It's Nick, I can see him now; he's stepped off the path, onto the lawn, to breathe in the humid air which stinks of flowers, of pulpy growth, of pollen thrown into the wind in handfuls, like oyster spawn into the sea. All this prodigal breeding. He stretches in the sun, I feel the ripple of muscles go along him, like a cat's back arching. He's in his shirt sleeves, bare arms sticking shamelessly out from the rolled cloth. Where does the tan end? I haven't spoken to him since that one night, dreamscape in the moon-filled sitting room. He's only my flag, my semaphore. Body language.

Right now his cap's on sideways. Therefore I am sent for.

What does he get for it, his role as page boy? How does he feel, pimping in this ambiguous way for the Commander? Does it fill him with disgust, or make him want more of me, want me more? Because he has no idea what really goes on in there, among the books. Acts of perversion, for all he knows. The Commander and me, covering each other with ink, licking it off, or making love on stacks of forbidden newsprint. Well, he wouldn't be far off at that. But depend on it, there's something in it for him. Everyone's on the take, one way or another. Extra cigarettes? Extra freedoms, not allowed to the general run? Anyway, what can he prove? It's his word against the Commander's, unless he wants to head a posse. Kick in the door, and what did I tell you? Caught in the act, sinfully Scrabbling. Quick, eat those words.

Maybe he just likes the satisfaction of knowing something secret. Of having something on me, as they used to say. It's the kind of power you can use only once.

I would like to think better of him.

That night, after I'd lost my job, Luke wanted to make love. Why didn't I want to? Desperation alone should have driven me. But I still felt numbed. I could hardly even feel his hands on me.

What's the matter? he said.

I don't know, I said.

We still have ... he said. But he didn't go on to say what we still had. It occurred to me that he shouldn't be saying we, since nothing that I knew of had been taken away from him.

We still have each other, I said. It was true. Then why did I sound, even to myself, so indifferent?

He kissed me then, as if now I'd said that, things could get back to normal. But something had shifted, some balance. I felt shrunken, so that when he put his arms around me, gathering me up, I was small as a doll. I felt love going forward without me.

He doesn't mind this, I thought. He doesn't mind it at all. Maybe he even likes it. We are not each other's, anymore. Instead, I am his.

Unworthy, unjust, untrue. But that is what happened.

So Luke: what I want to ask you now, what I need to know is, Was I right? Because we never talked about it. By the time I could have done that, I was afraid to. I couldn't afford to lose you.