James GleickSep 22, 2023

This is Handmaid’s Tale stuff. We are the dystopia now.

I remember when even anti-abortion politicians were careful to say they would never criminalize the pregnant women. Now Nebraska is imprisoning a mother who helped her teenage daughter with an abortion pill.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/22/burgess-abortion-pill-nebraska-mother-daughter

US mother sentenced to two years in prison for giving daughter abortion pills

Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty in July to providing an abortion after 20 weeks and tampering with human remains

The Guardian
Show threadMarkSep 22, 2023
@JamesGleick This was under pre-existing laws before Roe v Wade was overturned.
Show threadJames Gleick
@mark So?
Sep 22, 2023 at 8:27pmWeb
Show threadMarkSep 22, 2023
@JamesGleick So “We are the dystopia now” does not make sense. Unless we have been in a dystopia already for many years.
Show threadJames GleickSep 22, 2023
@mark It says here you’re from Waterford, Ireland—what a lovely place! Ireland has had its troubles with the treatment of women, to be sure, but you have sensibly made abortion legal. In my own benighted country, I don’t know if you’ve heard, a savage right-wing minority is imposing a regimen of new laws taking away women’s reproductive rights and threatening them with dire punishments. Today’s is one barbaric example.
Show threadMarkSep 22, 2023

@JamesGleick No problem with any of that, I’m just a bit of a stickler for headlines matching the content of a linked article, as it were.

Hopefully democracy will do its thing and majority views will prevail over this savage minority.

Anyway, let’s leave it there, because it looks like you’re a bit famous, and there’s a risk of a pile on if I mince words, which I’m not up for.