kicked out of the debate for interrupting all my opponent’s arguements by saying “me when i’m a dipshit idiot” and then threatening to kill them in increasingly erotic tones
“I got you now you fucking psycho!” The detective levels his gun at me. Eyes searing with hatred. He’s cornered me on the roof of a building.
I hold up my hands and back away. “Finally caught me red-handed, detective. I knew you would”
“You sick fuck you are going away for a long time. Now give up, don’t make this harder than it needs to be!” He advances towards me never for a moment lowering his firearm. My retreat finally stopped by the ledge at the very edge. The sounds of the city below echoing from the walls. I take a look back over the edge before turning to him with a smile.
“NO!” He shouts as I tilt back. In a second he loses sight of me and runs to the edge to look down. My body lies broken on the ground. He curses himself and me. He’ll never get the satisfaction.
Then I reappear on the ledge right in front of him flashing with i-frames. The shock on his face only lasts a moment before I do my super cool jumping spin attack and explode his head like a cantaloupe. Another fool who didn’t anticipate my extra life. I go back to my crime spree of stealing parking meters and eating all the salt in the shakers at resteraunts.
Were Fucked! Please help! Urgent!!! Trans women in danger!
Our landlord at our current place screwed around with our account so our rent bounced so now we have late fees due but critically the money still came out to someone. They are threatening us and idk what to do. We’re barely squeaking by trying to make rent for the next place but now we’re in the hole $1800 and I don’t think landlords have to wait 30 days now. We have about a day. Please help two disabled trans women. I’ve prototyped a new kind of internet, I’m working on a free html editor and I run an ad free/tracking free tube downloader (y232.live) please help us keep making good shit and stay off the streets. Also @rickybabyboy is our son.
truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.
On Monday, 26-year-old Daniel Penny was acquitted after killing Jordan Neely, a desperate Black homeless man on the subway, on the grounds that he was trying to protect others. On the same day, police detained 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, who is suspected of killing the CEO of a company that has denied thousands of life-saving healthcare claims.
Penny walks free after killing a man victim to the system. What will be the verdict for Mangione, who is suspected of killing a man symbolic of it?
As many have remarked, Brian Thompson’s tenure as CEO of insurance giant UnitedHealthcare was grisly. Thompson (alongside other higher-ups) allegedly conducted insider trading, selling millions of dollars of stock upon learning that the Department of Justice re-opened an antitrust investigation into UnitedHealth. While the company was on an upward profit swing, it has been awash in allegations and revelations of limiting mental health care coverage via algorithm, denying healthcare services needed after hospitalization at drastic rates via artificial intelligence, and denying insurance claims at a starkly high rate.
A gun killed Thompson. Paperwork has killed thousands.
Each case, obviously, is its own. But in each, contradictions of who is human, questions of who merits sympathy, and inquiries of what sort of society we tolerate, ring loud and clear.
On Monday, 26-year-old Daniel Penny was acquitted after killing Jordan Neely, a desperate Black homeless man on the subway, on the grounds that he was trying to protect others. On the same day, police detained 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, who is suspected of killing the CEO of a company that has denied thousands of life-saving healthcare claims.
Penny walks free after killing a man victim to the system. What will be the verdict for Mangione, who is suspected of killing a man symbolic of it?
As many have remarked, Brian Thompson’s tenure as CEO of insurance giant UnitedHealthcare was grisly. Thompson (alongside other higher-ups) allegedly conducted insider trading, selling millions of dollars of stock upon learning that the Department of Justice re-opened an antitrust investigation into UnitedHealth. While the company was on an upward profit swing, it has been awash in allegations and revelations of limiting mental health care coverage via algorithm, denying healthcare services needed after hospitalization at drastic rates via artificial intelligence, and denying insurance claims at a starkly high rate.
A gun killed Thompson. Paperwork has killed thousands.
Each case, obviously, is its own. But in each, contradictions of who is human, questions of who merits sympathy, and inquiries of what sort of society we tolerate, ring loud and clear.
Zeldalike where the final boss has a separate phase with the mechanics of every dorky little minigame you’ve played up to that point, reskinned as part of an epic battle for the fate of the cosmos. Fishing minigame phase. Digging minigame phase. Cooking minigame phase. Fashion contest minigame phase.
Senegalese musician Sallilou on the Cas Cas,
also known as Kashaka, which is an instrument made by connecting two
small, bean-filled gourds with a string.
[x]
I can barely keep a 4/4 beat, polyrhythms are insane! This is so lovely.
people have tagged this as life imitates art, and I need you to understand that no, I saw this picture of my friend falling off the got dang swing and thought it represented human hubris so well that i went into a made haze of acrylic paint and when I awoke I was holding this finished canvas.
She was born a slave and freed when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued (she was about 30)
She was about six feet tall and 200 pounds and once she was free she decided she’d never take shit from anyone ever again
When one of her close friends, a nun by the name of Mother Amadeus, became ill with pneumonia at her convent in Montana, Mary headed alone into the frontier to nurse Mother Amadeus back to health
After Mother Amadeus recovered, she gave Mary a job as the foreman of the convent. She repaired buildings, took care of chickens, made the long and dangerous journeys into town for supplies, and did other odd jobs.
She could drink most men under the table, and one saloon offered five bucks and a free shot of whiskey to any man who could take a punch to the face from Mary and remain standing.
She was once said by a local paper to have broken more noses than anyone else in Montana
She was outspokenly Republican, which at this time was the liberal party in America, and would get into political debates with the more conservative townsfolk
One time a man insulted her outside the saloon so hit him in the face with a rock, and only stopped when other cowboys held her back.
On one supply run into town, her wagon overturned and the horses fled. Mary spent all night single-handedly fending off a pack of wolves with her guns before she righted the heavy wagon by herself and tracked down the spooked horses. The only thing lost in the accident was a jar of molasses.
She lost her job at the convent when she got into a gunfight with a male employee who did not want to take orders from a black woman. She reportedly shot him in the ass, which angered the local bishop.
After losing her convent job, Mary spent a brief time running a restaurant, where she welcomed and served all comers
When a job for a mail carrier opened at the local US Post Office, Mary got the job because she managed to hitch six horses to a wagon faster than any of the male candidates
She was sixty at the time
This made her the first black woman mail carrier, and the second woman mail carrier in US history
When the snows were too deep for the horses to manage the long and dangerous delivery routes, Mary would strap on snowshoes, put the bags of mail on her shoulders, and do it herself
At one point she apparently had a pet eagle????
She only retired from the mail route when she was about 70 years old, and instead made a quieter living by babysitting and running a laundry business in the town of Cascade
She was a huge baseball fan and often gave the local team a big bouquet of flowers from her garden
The people of Cascade loved Mary so much that they closed the schools annually on her birthday
When a law was passed in Montana that forbade women from drinking in saloons, the mayor of Cascade granted Mary an exemption.
When her house burned down, the whole town got together to help her build a new one
She continued drinking, fighting, and going to baseball games until she died of liver failure at 82 in 1914
Mary (far right) and the local baseball team
Anyway sorry for gushing I just now heard about her and I’m in love
I’ve heard of her, but godDAMN, if her story doesn’t bear repeating. ^w^
Okay in my house we have a strange tradition. My mother builds this beautiful Christmas village.
It wraps all around our house through the rooms and under the trees and it’s wonderful.
Every year she hides the Christmas Vampire
This started when I was a very small got child and spread to all of my friends, including my best friend from elementary school who I just so happened to grow up and marry. Now that we have grown up and moved nearly 600 miles away we still always go home for a week at Christmas for multiple reasons, including the Christmas Vampire.
Needless to say we still partake and things have gotten heated.
Stay tuned for the epic conclusion and to see my husband and father in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s sooty costume when I find the Christmas Vampire First!
Happy Haunting!
Dad has no fricken clue how to trash talk and I don’t trust him in the slightest.
The saga continues. Mom hasnt finished the village yet and it’s starting to get to her….
Hahahaha, I mean I love this on multiple levels. But what really threw it over the top was the mom’s anxiety over the world-building and city design being right. I feel you vampire-hiding mom, I feel you.
I can bet it will be the Dad who’ll find the Christmas Vampire first. I wonder what would he ask the kids to dress up as?
Of Dad wins the we don’t even GO TO THE MOVIES! We stay home and watch it’s a wonderful life and a Christmas Carol but the muppet version because dad doesn’t like people, tight places, or ghosts.
THE HUNT HAS BEGUN
GUESS WHO FOUND THE CHRISTMAS VAMPIRE
The Christmas Vampire was hidden in the lobster shanty. The story this year is that were was a terrible accident. He accidently spooked the carrousel operator who poured his drink into the switch board and caused a death. The Christmas vampire had to flee but he didn’t get far.
Dad husband and I had to conduct a police investigation but the number one detective, ya girl, caught him!
Context: In 1977, Exxon researchers gave executives a definitive report that burning fossil fuels was causing climate change. Exxon went on to spend at least $30 million funding public skepticism about climate change and lobbying against federal action.
More than half of the world’s industrial carbon emissions have been produced since 1977. ExxonMobil’s 2018 earnings were $20.8 billion.
Context: In 1977, Exxon researchers gave executives a definitive report that burning fossil fuels was causing climate change. Exxon went on to spend at least $30 million funding public skepticism about climate change and lobbying against federal action.
More than half of the world’s industrial carbon emissions have been produced since 1977. ExxonMobil’s 2018 earnings were $20.8 billion.
Were Fucked! Please help! Urgent!!! Trans women in danger!
Our landlord at our current place screwed around with our account so our rent bounced so now we have late fees due but critically the money still came out to someone. They are threatening us and idk what to do. We’re barely squeaking by trying to make rent for the next place but now we’re in the hole $1800 and I don’t think landlords have to wait 30 days now. We have about a day. Please help two disabled trans women. I’ve prototyped a new kind of internet, I’m working on a free html editor and I run an ad free/tracking free tube downloader (y232.live) please help us keep making good shit and stay off the streets. Also @rickybabyboy is our son.
Re the last couple reblogs: the thing about all of it isn’t necessarily that having the private discord fic servers is bad. And maybe if commenting is something that makes you anxious, you want to be able to react there first and that’s a great idea.
The problem becomes if you never then share that reaction with the creator, because even if we aren’t writing for you/for the audiences and responses, we’re only bothering to post it where you can see it for that.
I mean I’m not going to lie: often we do in fact write for the response. Writing is work; I write very fast, and a thousand words of the very raw-est first-draft story still takes at least an hour just to do the physical writing, let alone the dreaming up, the planning, the editing, the remembering, and everything else. Sometimes the existence of the art in and of itself at the end is enough reward for that work - but bluntly sometimes it really isn’t.
But in addition, posting is also work in and of itself. It is effort; even when I had it moooore or less down to a cut-and-paste for YBEB it was several minutes for sorting it out, posting it and double-checking it per single-chapter fic (multi chapter fics, all the more so).
Fan-creators put their stuff up for free; fanwriters in particular create the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of novels a year which are then available for free to those who like them. (Other fan creators also make amazing efforts but as my thing is writing writing is the one I have equivalent-estimates for).
Some kind of response that the author can see and is made aware of - that is positive - is the only reward the author gets for going to the effort of, if not writing it, at least posting it where you can see it.
If you want that to keep happening, it’s probably a good idea to give the authors you like some kind of reward. And I really am speaking just of the fics you actually like a lot!
An easy way is just to have a lot of standard Delighted Responses that you can use - that much itself is actively worth it to share with the author, because that’s specifically the recognition/awareness that someone has loved it that counts. Others have suggested the also delightful idea that you just c/p the gushing you may or may not do in the private servers, and so on.
But frankly “this was delightful” or other simple handsfuls of words expressing happiness to read it is all you really need.
In case you were worried, it isn’t creepy or overly familiar to leave a comment on a fic when you don’t know the author. If the author doesn’t want comments, they wouldn’t have put it out on that platform, or they would have turned audience commenting permissions off. They put it there so you could read it and engage.
Fanworks creators LIVE FOR INTERACTION. We WANT to know what you liked about what we just did (not what you didn’t like, shut up about that, we’re here for fun not for criticism).
We would LOVE to receive a comment gushing about something you saw in what we did that made you feel something. We appreciate likes and kudos. But we LOVE the interaction of reblogs and comments. It means that you saw what we did, and you liked it enough that you put the effort into making sure we knew that.
Please don’t hide your positive interactions from fanworks creators. That’s part of why we do it.
“I love this character/fandom so much I wrote/drew this! Look!”
So if you did indeed look… please let us know. You can’t scare us with your enthusiasm. That’s why we’re here.
“Surely a tabletop RPG whose conflict resolution mechanics instruct its players to spend all night playing cards doesn’t mean it seriously” like, I’ve bumped into tabletop RPGs whose player-facing instructions have in all apparent sincerity included directives to variously start a fight club, violate the Migratory Birds Act, set your own character sheet on fire, and menace the other players with a knife. You tell me!
Hate it when someone assumes everyone has access to internet all the time (especially outside)
what do you mean “look this up”? Where’s the nearest free wi-fi I can connect to? Then make your request
mmm, understandable
those kind of people, imo, should really go on a camping trip out in the middle of nowhere with no internet access to be able to appreciate the luxury of internet.
i dont think fandom people who only think about male characters and only create content for male characters are like horrible misogynists but i do think they often have some shit they need to unpack. like how can you , for example, play life is strange and the only thing you come away with from that is you want nathan and warren to fuck nasty. how can you watch birds of prey, and the only thing you come away with from that is you want roman and victor to fuck nasty……… like idk! idk! i just find it strange especially when people will engage with media Specifically about women and then put no effort in to empathize or care about them, sometimes even going far enough to say they HATE the female characters and that theyre bitches… IDK!!!!
I’ve seen a number of people worried and concerned about this language on Ao3s current “agree to these terms of service” page. The short version is:
Don’t worry. This isn’t anything bad. Checking that box just means you forgive them for being US American.
Long version: This text makes perfect sense if you’re familiar with the issues around GDPR and in particular the uncertainty about Privacy Shield and SCCs after Schrems II. But I suspect most people aren’t, so let’s get into it, with the caveat that this is a Eurocentric (and in particular EU centric) view of this.
The basic outline is that Europeans in the EU have a right to privacy under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive (let’s simplify things and call it an EU law) that regulates how various entities, including companies and the government, may acquire, store and process data about you.
The list of what counts as data about you is enormous. It includes things like your name and birthday, but also your email address, your computers IP address, user names, whatever. If an advertiser could want it, it’s on the list.
The general rule is that they can’t, unless you give explicit permission, or it’s for one of a number of enumerated reasons (not all of which are as clear as would be desirable, but that’s another topic). You have a right to request a copy of the data, you have a right to force them to delete their data and so on. It’s not quite on the level of constitutional rights, but it is a pretty big deal.
In contrast, the US, home of most of the world’s internet companies, has no such right at a federal level. If someone has your data, it is fundamentally theirs. American police, FBI, CIA and so on also have far more rights to request your data than the ones in Europe.
So how can an American website provide services to persons in the EU? Well… Honestly, there’s an argument to be made that they can’t.
US websites can promise in their terms and conditions that they will keep your data as safe as a European site would. In fact, they have to, unless they start specifically excluding Europeans. The EU even provides Standard Contract Clauses (SCCs) that they can use for this.
However, e.g. Facebook’s T&Cs can’t bind the US government. Facebook can’t promise that it’ll keep your data as secure as it is in the EU even if they wanted to (which they absolutely don’t), because the US government can get to it easily, and EU citizens can’t even sue the US government over it.
Despite the importance that US companies have in Europe, this is not a theoretical concern at all. There have been two successive international agreements between the US and the EU about this, and both were struck down by the EU court as being in violation of EU law, in the Schrems I and Schrems II decisions (named after Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist who sued in both cases).
A third international agreement is currently being prepared, and in the meantime the previous agreement (known as “Privacy Shield”) remains tentatively in place. The problem is that the US government does not want to offer EU citizens equivalent protection as they have under EU law; they don’t even want to offer US citizens these protections. They just love spying on foreigners too much. The previous agreements tried to hide that under flowery language, but couldn’t actually solve it. It’s unclear and in my opinion unlikely that they’ll manage to get a version that survives judicial review this time. Max Schrems is waiting.
So what is a site like Ao3 to do? They’re arguably not part of the problem, Max Schrems keeps suing Meta, not the OTW, but they are subject to the rules because they process stuff like your email address.
Their solution is this checkbox. You agree that they can process your data even though they’re in the US, and they can’t guarantee you that the US government won’t spy on you in ways that would be illegal for the government of e.g. Belgium. Is that legal under EU law? …probably as legal as fan fiction in general, I suppose, which is to say let’s hope nobody sues to try and find out.
But what’s important is that nothing changed, just the language. Ao3 has always stored your user name and email address on servers in the US, subject to whatever the FBI, CIA, NSA and FRA may want to do it. They’re just making it more clear now.
Fun fact! You don’t currently have to worry that a US spy agency has taken your data from AO3. (Have they spied on you in other ways? Eh, probably.)
AO3’s parent nonprofit, the Organization for Transformative Works has a neat thing on their website called a warrant canary.
This thing. It’s hard to read on my screenshot, so I’ll copy the text here.
“The Organization for Transformative Works has not received any National Security Letters or FISA court orders, and we have not been subject to any gag order by a FISA court.”
What’s that mean? National Security Letters and FISA courts are how US security agencies secretly subpoena data from US-based websites. They send the website owners and order to turn over data and NOT TELL ANYONE that they’ve done so. That’s called a gag order. Disobeying this gag order is big time illegal and the US government WILL ruin your life over it. You cannot tell people, “The US government gave me a secret order to turn over my data.”
BUT! The government cannot compel you to lie. A FISA court order cannot make you say on your website, “We have never received a FISA court order.” So websites put the warrant canaries on their sites, and if they ever get an order for data that they aren’t allowed to tell you about, they take the order down. Like a canary fainting from gas in a mine, the warrant canary stops singing.
So right now, we know that the OTW, and therefore AO3, has never had to secretly turn over data to the US government. Keep an eye on that canary. Check in on it occasionally. As long as the little bird’s singing, don’t panic.
I’ve seen a number of people worried and concerned about this language on Ao3s current “agree to these terms of service” page. The short version is:
Don’t worry. This isn’t anything bad. Checking that box just means you forgive them for being US American.
Long version: This text makes perfect sense if you’re familiar with the issues around GDPR and in particular the uncertainty about Privacy Shield and SCCs after Schrems II. But I suspect most people aren’t, so let’s get into it, with the caveat that this is a Eurocentric (and in particular EU centric) view of this.
The basic outline is that Europeans in the EU have a right to privacy under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive (let’s simplify things and call it an EU law) that regulates how various entities, including companies and the government, may acquire, store and process data about you.
The list of what counts as data about you is enormous. It includes things like your name and birthday, but also your email address, your computers IP address, user names, whatever. If an advertiser could want it, it’s on the list.
The general rule is that they can’t, unless you give explicit permission, or it’s for one of a number of enumerated reasons (not all of which are as clear as would be desirable, but that’s another topic). You have a right to request a copy of the data, you have a right to force them to delete their data and so on. It’s not quite on the level of constitutional rights, but it is a pretty big deal.
In contrast, the US, home of most of the world’s internet companies, has no such right at a federal level. If someone has your data, it is fundamentally theirs. American police, FBI, CIA and so on also have far more rights to request your data than the ones in Europe.
So how can an American website provide services to persons in the EU? Well… Honestly, there’s an argument to be made that they can’t.
US websites can promise in their terms and conditions that they will keep your data as safe as a European site would. In fact, they have to, unless they start specifically excluding Europeans. The EU even provides Standard Contract Clauses (SCCs) that they can use for this.
However, e.g. Facebook’s T&Cs can’t bind the US government. Facebook can’t promise that it’ll keep your data as secure as it is in the EU even if they wanted to (which they absolutely don’t), because the US government can get to it easily, and EU citizens can’t even sue the US government over it.
Despite the importance that US companies have in Europe, this is not a theoretical concern at all. There have been two successive international agreements between the US and the EU about this, and both were struck down by the EU court as being in violation of EU law, in the Schrems I and Schrems II decisions (named after Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist who sued in both cases).
A third international agreement is currently being prepared, and in the meantime the previous agreement (known as “Privacy Shield”) remains tentatively in place. The problem is that the US government does not want to offer EU citizens equivalent protection as they have under EU law; they don’t even want to offer US citizens these protections. They just love spying on foreigners too much. The previous agreements tried to hide that under flowery language, but couldn’t actually solve it. It’s unclear and in my opinion unlikely that they’ll manage to get a version that survives judicial review this time. Max Schrems is waiting.
So what is a site like Ao3 to do? They’re arguably not part of the problem, Max Schrems keeps suing Meta, not the OTW, but they are subject to the rules because they process stuff like your email address.
Their solution is this checkbox. You agree that they can process your data even though they’re in the US, and they can’t guarantee you that the US government won’t spy on you in ways that would be illegal for the government of e.g. Belgium. Is that legal under EU law? …probably as legal as fan fiction in general, I suppose, which is to say let’s hope nobody sues to try and find out.
But what’s important is that nothing changed, just the language. Ao3 has always stored your user name and email address on servers in the US, subject to whatever the FBI, CIA, NSA and FRA may want to do it. They’re just making it more clear now.
Fun fact! You don’t currently have to worry that a US spy agency has taken your data from AO3. (Have they spied on you in other ways? Eh, probably.)
AO3’s parent nonprofit, the Organization for Transformative Works has a neat thing on their website called a warrant canary.
This thing. It’s hard to read on my screenshot, so I’ll copy the text here.
“The Organization for Transformative Works has not received any National Security Letters or FISA court orders, and we have not been subject to any gag order by a FISA court.”
What’s that mean? National Security Letters and FISA courts are how US security agencies secretly subpoena data from US-based websites. They send the website owners and order to turn over data and NOT TELL ANYONE that they’ve done so. That’s called a gag order. Disobeying this gag order is big time illegal and the US government WILL ruin your life over it. You cannot tell people, “The US government gave me a secret order to turn over my data.”
BUT! The government cannot compel you to lie. A FISA court order cannot make you say on your website, “We have never received a FISA court order.” So websites put the warrant canaries on their sites, and if they ever get an order for data that they aren’t allowed to tell you about, they take the order down. Like a canary fainting from gas in a mine, the warrant canary stops singing.
So right now, we know that the OTW, and therefore AO3, has never had to secretly turn over data to the US government. Keep an eye on that canary. Check in on it occasionally. As long as the little bird’s singing, don’t panic.
I wonder when incarceration replaced military service as the fundamental shared experience of the American working class
fairly skeptical about either of these really being a fundamental shared experience, but if they were, the numbers crossed over in the mid-late ‘90s from eyeballing these graphs (military, incarceration), which sounds reasonable
still just a single digit percentage of the population in either case
apparently 11% of Americans served in WWII, and that was concentrated in particular demographics (young men from rural areas), making it a fairly common shared experience, although now that I think about it incarceration has the advantage that even if there are only two million people in prison at any given time it’s an experience that people are going to pass in and out of.
the internet suggests that 5% of Americans will spend time in prison, or 9% of men, or 25-33% (!) of black men.
The whole “I wish I could be with a woman, but instead I’m stuck with my stupid, gross husband/boyfriend” sentiment I see repeated in bi circles is just the “progressive” queer version of the boomer “I hate my wife” jokes
if he’s stupid and gross you should leave him and if he isn’t you’re just being cruel for internet points and he should leave you
So I read this article a few days ago, and I have been haunted by it ever since.
This young woman, Nevaeh, had an “oops” pregnancy. As you may have already guessed, she was from a Christian background–her name, “Heaven,” spelled backwards, is popular in Evangelical circles. She, “believed abortion was morally wrong,” and “didn’t care whether the government banned it,” since she wouldn’t have chosen to have one anyway.
Instead, she decided to carry the pregnancy to term and raise the baby, with the support of her mother and her boyfriend, the baby’s father. Her boyfriend, the baby’s father, gave her a diamond promise ring, and she picked out a name–Lillian–and planned a baby shower.
On the day of the baby shower, she felt unwell, then developed a fever and began vomiting. Her mother took to her to the ER, where she was given a prescription for antibiotics and sent home. A few hours later, she felt even worse, and her mother took her to the other hospital in their town, which had an obstetric emergency room. They did some tests, including checking the fetal heart rate, and told her the baby was fine. The gave her IV fluids and antibiotics, recorded her increasing fever, fast pulse, and high fetal heart rate, and sent her home again. She had to be taken out to the car in a wheelchair, because her pain was so bad.
A few hours later, she started bleeding, and they went back to the hospital with the obstetric emergency department. There, a different doctor did an ultrasound and was unable to find a fetal heartbeat.
Under Texas law, a medical practitioner faces up to 99 years in prison for performing any intervention that ends a fetal heartbeat. So, at this point, the doctors were free to treat her like a seriously ill human being, and not an ambulatory vessel for a life more valuable than her own–however, they hadn’t recorded the first ultrasound. To ensure they could demonstrate compliance with the law, the doctor ordered a second one.
Somehow, that ended up taking about an hour and a half, during which time Neveah’s condition got worse. By the time the second ultrasound was done, and the doctor was able to order a D&C to remove the deceased fetus, she was too weak to sign the release forms–her mother had to sign for her.
Before they got her into the operating room, she was dead.
If they were going to make an exception for anybody, they would have made one for her: a pro-life, Christian girl, who responded to her unplanned pregnancy by getting excited about becoming a mom. Who was not just unwell, not just in danger, but actually dying when she was refused care.
The Texas fetal heartbeat law does have an exception when the mother’s life is at immediate risk. However, the Texas Attorney General has made clear–and several Trump-appointed judges have backed him up–to Texas doctors that they will be charged with homicide if he, who has no medical credentials whatsoever, disagrees with their professional judgment that a procedure which ended a fetal heartbeat was necessary to safe the life of the mother. That’s why the doctor needed that second ultrasound.
That’s probably why the other two doctors sent Nevaeh home: they couldn’t be accused of an intervention that ended the fetal heartbeat, if they didn’t intervene.
The leopards that eat people’s faces, like all predators, go for the most vulnerable members of the herd. The guy up front on the podium, getting rich off bloviating about how leopards just have to eat a person’s face from time to time, he’s safe–not because of any loyalty on the part of the leopards, but because others in the group are softer targets.
ALT
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