Woman charged with murder over abortion sues prosecutors

In Texas a woman who was charged with murder for self-managing an abortion, and spent two nights in jail before the charge was dropped, is now suing the prosecutors for $1 million.

The lawsuit filed by Lizelle Gonzalez in federal court Thursday comes a month after the state bar of Texas fined and disciplined the district attorney in rural Starr county over the case in 2022, when Gonzalez was charged with murder in “the death of an individual by self-induced abortion”.

Under the abortion restrictions in Texas and other states, women who seek abortions are exempt from criminal charges.

The lawsuit argues Gonzalez suffered harm from the arrest and subsequent media coverage. She is seeking $1m in damages.
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According to the lawsuit, Gonzalez was 19 weeks pregnant when she used misoprostol, one of two drugs used in medication abortions. Misoprostol is also used to treat stomach ulcers.

After taking the pills, Gonzalez received an obstetrical examination at a hospital emergency room and was discharged with abdominal pain. She returned with bleeding the next day and an exam found no fetal heartbeat. Doctors performed a caesarian section to deliver a stillborn baby.

The lawsuit argues that the hospital violated the patient’s privacy rights when they reported the abortion to the district attorney’s office, which then carried out its own investigation and produced a murder charge against Gonzalez.

Cecilia Garza, an attorney for Gonzalez, said prosecutors pursued an indictment despite knowing that a woman receiving an abortion is exempted from a murder charge by state law.

Prosecutors would had to have known that even in Texas, women could not be charged for receiving an abortion but they decided on charging her with murder anyway, in what seems like a purely vindictive effort to frighten other women who may seek to terminate their pregnancies using legal medications.

The GOP gets crazier and crazier

In an earlier post, I wrote about how the GOP is on a slippery slope when it comes to some issues, where in pandering to their base by accepting certain premises like that life begins at conception, they found themselves quickly dragged to the logical end point that embryos produced in the IVF process are children and thus cannot be destroyed. Now they fond themselves struggling to extricate themselves from the mess they put themselves into without disavowing the ‘life begins at conception’ premise because doing so would infuriate their base.

But that is not the only slippery slope that the GOP find itself on. It is as if the floodgates of oil have opened on the slopes and there is no way to halt the descent.
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The GOP ties itself up in knots over Alabama IVF ruling

After the Alabama supreme court ruled that embryos are children and deserve all the protections that children are entitled to, IVF clinics in the state began to stop providing IVF services because of fears that if any embryo were to be destroyed (which is done routinely with embryos that are no longer needed), they could be culpable.

The ruling has caused an uproar because IVF treatments have broad support. So the state legislature rushed to pass a law to protect IVF doctors and parents from any legal repercussions. But apparently the law is pretty tortured in its reasoning.

The enacted legislation doesn’t define or clarify whether under state law frozen embryos created via IVF have the same rights as children. Rather, the narrowly tailored bill is designed to protect doctors, clinics and other health care personnel who provide IVF treatment and services by offering such workers civil and criminal “immunity.”

The new law will “provide civil and criminal immunity for death or damage to an embryo to any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”

It says that “no action, suit, or criminal prosecution for the damage to or death of an embryo shall be brought or maintained against any individual or entity when providing or receiving services related to in vitro fertilization.”

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The GOP is on a very slippery slope

The GOP is discovering that there is a real danger in pandering to the extreme right wing religious faction within their party because those people are insatiable in seeking to carry out their fanatical beliefs to their logical conclusions. The strategy works as long as their followers do not take things too far.

Take the case of abortion. For many on the right, the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision, that said that women had a right to terminate their pregnancies before a certain period, became a rallying cry and when the US Supreme Court did just that, they were ecstatic. But among those calling for the overthrow were those who believed that life begins at conception and that anything that prevents a fertilized egg from further growth is tantamount to murder. These people were energized and proceeded to pass state laws that prevented abortion under any circumstances, even in the case of danger to the life and health of the mother and even if the fetus had such problems that it did not have a viable chance of survival, or would suffer from all manner of serious abnormalities.

But while these people are a significant force in the GOP , they are minority nationwide. There is a whole spectrum of people on this issue. It was always the case that there was a majority of people who felt that abortion should be allowed under certain circumstances, although they were not unanimous on where the line should be drawn. But it is clear that that line is not that far from what Roe drew. But rather than negotiating about the line, the extremists took their position that life begins at conception to its logical conclusion and demanded the outright. banning of abortion This has caused a serious backlash as popular movements to restore abortion rights kept winning referenda quite easily even in so-called red states, and anti-choice extremist candidates fared poorly at the polls.
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How US conservatives learned to stop worrying and love Russia

What I find astonishing is how opinions in the US towards Russia among self-styled conservatives has shifted dramatically over the recent past. During the Cold War, and even for some years after, it used to be that right-wingers were vehemently anti-Russia in their attitudes, since it was the largest component of the Soviet Union and thus emblematic of godless Communism. It was seen as directly opposite to the capitalist Christian values that they espoused, and demonization of Russia was rampant. It was the left and liberals who tried to tamp down this feeling, seeing it as dangerously inflammatory in a nuclear age when a military conflict between the two nations had to be avoided.

But how times have changed. Nowadays the right-wing is not only not hostile to Russia, they seem to be positively supportive and enamored of its president Vladimir Putin. We even had serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) make the astonishing statement that he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO country that did not meet its NATO obligations, though it was clear that he did not understand the nature of those obligations, speaking as if it consisted of dues to be paid (like the membership in his golf clubs) rather than what it really is, a commitment by each nation to spend a specific proportion of their GDP on their own defense forces.
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The Raelian cult

In 1974, a 28-year old Frenchman Claude Vorilhon said that while on a hike by himself in a remote area, an alien spaceship landed near him and an extraterrestrial being emerged from it and conversed with him. The aliens were like us physically but much more advanced technologically and were called the Elohim. On another occasion, they took him to their home planet which he said was idyllic and that he was able to mingle with other prophets like Jesus, Moses, Buddha, and Muhammad. He said that the Elohim were wonderful people and had mastered DNA technology and used that to create all the living things on Earth. They appointed Vorilhon as their ambassador on Earth and gave him the name Rael. They told him to prepare the people on Earth for when they would return and reveal themselves to everyone.

I wrote about this weird story in my book The Great Paradox of Science (p.191-193).

Raelians argue that Darwin’s theory of evolution and descent with modification (using the mechanism of random mutation and natural selection) is wrong because life on Earth is too complex to have evolved that way and must have been designed. This same argument is also advanced by theists but for Raelians their designer is not a god. Instead it is a race of extraterrestrials. According to Raelians, on a distant planet there live a highly advanced alien community called the Elohim that long ago had reached an advanced stage of scientific and technical knowledge and developed powerful biological engineering techniques that enabled them to make living cells and to tinker and modify them. They were naturally fearful about letting loose these experimental organisms into their own environment because of the harm they could do, so they looked for a planet that they could use as a laboratory to field test their genetic engineering, to create a home for all their creations so that they could safely see what worked and what didn’t. They chose Earth to use as their vast laboratory. They took the then lifeless planet and set about building life on it. Starting with simple cells, they proceeded to create seeds, grasses and other vegetation and progressed to plankton, small fish, then larger fish, then dinosaurs, sea and land creatures, herbivores and carnivores before they tackled the big project, creating beings like themselves. Thus came homo sapiens. This, according to Raelians, is how the Earth became populated with all the life forms we see around us.

Most people, if they had heard of the Raelian mythology at all, did not take this fanciful scenario seriously but treated it as good, clean, fun.

But not everyone laughed. Vorilhon was able to get quite a bit of media attention for this fanciful tale and and while some interlocutors expressed skepticism, enough viewers were attracted by this bizarre story to join up with Vorilhon and set up a commune, calling themselves Raelians. The cult bought a large piece of land that they called Eden that had a large house with a swimming pool.
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The ‘Nones’ are now the single largest group

There is a new survey out that shows the continuing growth of those people who, when asked about their religious affiliation, reply ‘None’. What is significant in that they are now the single largest self-identified group, beating out Catholics and evangelicals Protestants.

When Americans are asked to check a box indicating their religious affiliation, 28% now check ‘none.’

A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated – a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” – is now the largest cohort in the U.S. They’re more prevalent among American adults than Catholics (23%) or evangelical Protestants (24%).

Back in 2007, Nones made up just 16% of Americans, but Pew’s new survey of more than 3,300 U.S. adults shows that number has now risen dramatically.
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Most Nones believe in God or another higher power, but very few attend any kind of religious service.

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Next step for Trump: Shrines and sainthood?

You have to hand it to serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT). He has raised the bar for snake-oil salespersons to great heights, ingeniously finding new ways to part the suckers from their money. His new pitch is a real doozy.

Despite his claims, Donald Trump’s business career has had many more failures than successes.

His record of catastrophic investments has never held Trump back, however, and now the one-term, twice-impeached, 91-time felony-charged former president has embarked on a new hustle: selling little cut-out pieces of a suit he wore during one of his arrests.
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To buy a piece of the suit, people first have to buy 47 “digital trading cards”, each featuring an illustration of Trump, through the Collect Trump Cards website. Buyers will then receive a bit of the suit, or tie, that Trump wore when he was arrested – on charges related to his attempts to overturn the election – at Fulton county jail in August 2023.

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Angels in America

A new survey finds that nearly 70% of Americans believe in the existence of angels, more than believe in the devil or hell.

American’s belief in angels (69%) is about on par with belief in heaven and the power of prayer, but bested by belief in God or a higher power (79%). Fewer U.S. adults believe in the devil or Satan (56%), astrology (34%), reincarnation (34%), and that physical things can have spiritual energies, such as plants, rivers or crystals (42%).
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The large number of U.S. adults who say they believe in angels includes 84% of those with a religious affiliation — 94% of evangelical Protestants, 81% of mainline Protestants and 82% of Catholics — and 33% of those without one. And of those angel-believing religiously unaffiliated, that includes 2% of atheists, 25% of agnostics and 50% of those identified as “nothing in particular.”

Why are angels so appealing?

“People are yearning for something greater than themselves — beyond their own understanding,” said Jack Grogger, a chaplain for the Los Angeles Angels and a longtime Southern California fire captain who has aided many people in their gravest moments.
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“For a lot of people, angels are a lot safer to worship,” said Grogger, who also pastors a nondenominational church in Orange, California, and is a chaplain for the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks.

When people have some kind of lucky escape, the idea that their ‘guardian angel’ was looking out for them makes sense, especially if the angel had some relationship with them while alive.

Jennifer Goodwin of Oviedo, Florida, also is among the roughly seven in 10 U.S. adults who say they believe in angels. She isn’t sure if God exists and rejects the afterlife dichotomy of heaven and hell, but the recent deaths of her parents solidified her views on these celestial beings.

Goodwin believes her parents are still keeping an eye on the family — not in any physical way or as a supernatural apparition, but that they manifest in those moments when she feels a general sense of comfort.

“I think that they are around us, but it’s in a way that we can’t understand,” Goodwin said. “I don’t know what else to call it except an angel.”

I kind of get it. God and the devil are formidable figures, like the CEOs of major corporations whom one may find it hard to relate to. Angels, on the other hand, are more like a hotel concierge, someone whose job it is to help you and thus one can feel a personal relationship with them.