John McEntee is an Undatable Asshole

People may blame the deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller on Georgia's abortion ban, but I am holding spineless pussies like John McEntee accountable too.

My nephew has decided that I was in dire need of correction and censure because I’m the crazy one in my family, and I’m Trump-critical. Why? Because he’s the first born male heir in the family, so nephew has no compunction telling me how full of it I am, publicly, and without any apology whatsoever. I’m used to it. He’s been that way since he was 12 years old.

Families. You gotta love them.

Over the last few days I’ve been posting various posts about how abortion policy is ruinous for women. And I keep saying, it is one part of a larger strategy to control women, and this in turn was part of a movement to make the US a (Catholic, mostly) authoritarian theocracy. This is nothing new, and it’s been going on for a long time.

To be fair to my nephew, however, in posting these informative videos on Facebook, I found myself feeling triggered and upset. Yes, I even found myself a little unhinged.

Humm, I wonder why.

Nephew, who is in his thirties, married, a white privileged and relatively well off young man to you, kid to me, is an unapolegetic MAGA Republican. Because his life experience is and has always been vastly different than mine he’s going to have a different perspective. So, of course he would think the way he does.

He has nothing to lose in the election, maybe a few hundred dollars because of the tax code, but nothing signficant like his human rights and dignity. No matter how much he whines and belly aches about how high the costs of things are, he’s not in any jeopardy of losing his hard won liberties, much less the ability to express his opinion. or participate fully in society. All in relative safety. But, it is not safe for a woman of any stripe to speak candidly online without suffering the nasty ass troll, or some other form of jerkery usually by men. Or the backlash from the family.

He’s never been on the front lines of an abortion clinic making sure that women get in safely, as I have. He’s never had an actual dead baby (in a jar filled with formaldehyde) shoved in his face, the way that happened to me at an abortion rights rally in Daley Plaza in 1985. Nor has he ever been yelled act and called a baby killer at by some drunken old man, or punched in my face while marching for women’s rights at another rally by another man with one of Chicago’s finest nearby not batting an eye of coming to my defense. He’s never had friend’s lives threatened by rabid prolifers who wanted to bomb the clinic where they worked. He’s never had people shove bloody crucifixes in his face, or have people call him a demonic murderer to his face at family gatherings in front of friends just because when I had the termerity to believe (just believe mind you) that a woman should have the right to choose. He’s never had to counsel a woman who is facing an unplanned pregnancy and learn first hand just what an agonizing decision that is for nearly all women who experience that. I’m sure he doesn’t know anyone who has had an abortion, or even admit to having one. Let alone the fact that several of his female relatives have either had an abortion, or attempted one. Either he just doesn’t know about these stories because they happened before he was born, nor I am sure that if he did know about them that he would care. Not that he should, but he ought.

He’s never had a friend - we’ll call her Dawn - who at the age of 13 was impregnated by a Mexican migrant worker (significant back then because of the prejudice and the racism) and had no where to turn. She needed some help she said. And, even though her mom was recently divorced from step father, who beat her, he still stalked them. She was terrified that if she told her mom, her step dad would find out and take her away from her mom. So, Dawn looked to me for help and that’s why she called.

I was her only friend.

Me, I was only 12 years old and I knew vaguely that there were clinics that took care of these things. I knew that some girls would leave school and give their babies up for adoption. But I was terrified to call the local Planned Parenthood clinic for fear that they would call back and then my mom would think that I was pregnant by a Mexican. My folks would have been not okay with me getting pregnant at 12, much less with a Mexican. Candidly my parents were your typical “go play in traffic” type of GenX baby boomer parents. The fact that that this fate was not mine, but someone else’s is testimony to the fact that maybe, in hindsight they were not that negligent.

Oh, and in case you are too young to remember this in the bad old days of the early 1970s and it was before cell phones and answering machines. That’s why we had to use a land line, and wait for a call back.

I asked my other girl friends - let’s call them Colleen and Mary - if I could use their telephone while their mother went out to collect the rent from her tenants.

My girlfriends were Irish Catholics, and their mother - we’ll call her Nancy - was straight off the boat Irish, with a beautiful brogue and impish sense of humor. She road on a fat tired old pink 1950s Roadster bicycle to go to the apartment buildings in the Austin neighborhhood where collected money from her rental tenants in cash in a paper bag, taking 10% off the top of it just to give to the Irish Republican Army. Sometimes these young men from Ireland would stay at her house to avoid prosecution from the British government, and for a while during the 1970s there was a revolving door of young Irish men who stayed in her home as her guests. “Cousins” they called them. But we all knew better. That’s how Irish Catholicish they were.

Thinking I was joking they allowed me to call the Planned Parenthood clinic in downtown Chicago. In fact they dared me to do so, like it was some sort of prank. I made the call explained the situation to the woman at the other end of the line. The nurse was patient and thought I was calling for myself. “No,” I said, “I’m calling for my friend. She’s not feeling well. She needs to see a doctor. What can she do?” When I told her that my friend was 13 years old, she told me that was not allowed to make appointments unless she had permission and was accompanied by her parents. I called Dawn later to let her know what I found out, and I was devastated that there was nothing I could do to help.

I know what you’re going to say now, didn’t minors have a right to an abortion? No. That’s not true. You listen to the lifers and you would think that anyone shy of a human zygote could get an abortion. Nope. Mind you, this was a few months before Roe became law.

Before I hung up the phone, Colleen ripped the phone out of my hands and yelled into the receiver, “You’re a bunch of dirty, filthy whores and murderers.” She hung up the phone and she, and her sister laughed hysterically. Then she turned to me and said,

“Don’t you realize,” she bellowed, “That she’s in the one who is trouble now? That’s not your problem, and she deserves what she gets.”

Near tears, I said, “She still needs to see a doctor.”

A few days later, I got another call from Dawn. She just miscarried and had passed the baby in the toilet. She told me she scooped up the remanents from the toilet and buried them in a shoe box in the back yard. She was in tears. She said it was like a bad period and then it was over. She said she was okay and told me that her Mexican boyfriend had returned to Mexico.

Colleen told my mom about the call, and called me into the living room and gave me a lecture. “You are not allowed to visit Dawn ever again.” I didn’t fight my mom on that one. Though I felt bad for Dawn, I didn’t want to end up like her either.

A few years passed, and I was a junior in high school. I was baby sitting for the woman next door, which was where I was when Dawn stopped by to visit. She had stopped by my house and my mom told her that she would find me minding Mrs. B’s children.

We talked and then cried over a cup of instant coffee, as Mrs. B.’s kids watched Sesame Street on television in the playroom.

She told me that she had moved out of state and but was in Illinois to visit her dying grandmother. She told me that she lost another baby and nearly her life. You see, when she got pregnant the first time when she was 13, she had activated Rh- antibody so when her Rh+ baby started to grow she had an immunological response and ended up in the ICU and losing the baby and nearly her life. She told me that she had to have a hysterectomy because of the damage. Had the doctors known about this fact earlier, she could have been treated for it earlier, thus making her tragedy worse. But they didn’t because Dawn never told them about the first pregnancy she had had when she was 13. Had she been able to obtain nonjudgemental and comprehensive medical care, she might have had a Rhogam injection. Maybe. I don’t know. I certainly didn’t know such technicalities at the age of 12. But here she was barely 17 when she had gotten pregnant with her second, unplanned pregnancy. This boyfriend, she said was with her through the whole ordeal, and said he was going to marry her. But there was no ring on her finger, and no doting boyfriend waiting for her in the car parked in front of Mrs. B’s house. I wondered briefly it any of what she just said were true or if that was what she had only hoped for.

She said good-bye to me and on her way to her car, she said, “Good luck in college. I am not going, and I know that’s why you stopped being my friend.” But instead of getting upset, I replied, no, pleaded with her, “Dawn, you can still make something of yourself. Finish high school. You can, you know.” She looked at me one last time, tears in her eyes, “I’m just not that smart as you are, and you know it.”

I never saw Dawn again.

So back to my nephew. He thinks abortion is a non-starter. A wedge issue. Not a real one, like inflation which is inching up on the capital gains on his stocks, or the national debt. I’m sure he’s concerned about the proposal to tax unrealized gains, and that is keeping him up at night. And to be fair to him, and to me as well, I also think these things are wildly important too. Of course I do.

But, at the same time I would argue, that he appears to be more concerned about his capital gains over any clump of dividing cells, much less the unintended suffering of some random woman he doesn’t know. This doesn’t make him a horrible person, but it does make him a selfish one. Very Libertarian of him in fact. Ayn Rand would be proud.

He even told me that his Republican friends and colleagues just don’t care about the issue of abortion, because it doesn’t impact them. The only thing they care about is making more money. For my nephew and his corporatist cohorts and fellow travellers, money isn’t everything: it is the only thing. Sometimes it is easier to think about how you should diversify your equities portfolio than to comtemplate whether life begins at conception, I’ll grant him that grace.

And yes, I know that this topic is just too difficult, too personal to bring up in casual conversation. God forbid if you do. Certainly it is not one to discuss on the campaign trail or take seriously, as the matter is settled, or so I’m told. Why just a few days about former President Trump said in all caps on TruthSocial that I don’t have to worry about a thing.

Ahem. Okay?

Besides that, here am I, a childless cat lady stirring the pot! How dare I go public with such an unmentionable topic. I must go back to the back of the class, because I don’t have kids and therefore I have no right to be concerned about the future of this country, no voice, no stake in the future, let alone promote policies that enhance the quality of life for other women. Never mind the fact that I have been teaching medical students how to perform a woman’s exam so that those future medical professionals can take care of said women women who will at some point in their lives give birth. And I’ve been doing that bit of public service longer than my nephew has been alive. No, I guess that doesn’t count in the Catholic Church’s scheme of things.

So! I must slither back, back behind those cloistered walls and remain silent!

Well, fuck that.

It is as if healthcare for women is a non-issue, when this country has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world, etc. etc. Talk about the unrealized future of our country. OMG it makes my head hurt thinking about it.

But like I keep telling you dear readers, that includes you neph: They are gunning for a national abortion ban, and they are not going to stop at abortion, but contraception, porn and a whole host of other things. This is part of their strategy to dismantle women’s no, our rights and construct an authoritarian theocracy. Trump’s protestations to the contrary, his running mate has oft-stated the quiet part outload, quite vociferously and he even shamelessly wrote the introduction to this very 900 page strategy. One, that has been hiding in plain sight for years, until someone finally decided it was worth looking into.

Nephew continued, “Trump’s not going to issue a ban, he say’s it’s a states right issue. Get over it and stop your fear mongering.”

I was wondering if my nephew saw that TikTok video of John McEntee stating that since he didn’t see any women bleeding out in parking lots that just might be a lie that us wacky libs are telling just to get our feathers ruffled over nothing. Deary me! What a caution those wacky feminists are. So silly, stupid and daft. Let’s make fun of them, because who cares about their lives? Much less their vote. Trust me, if they don’t care about women’s lives they don’t care about women’s vote. Yes, that’s how callous these people are and we need to start calling them out on it.

Well, I have news for you John McCuntee, just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean that there aren’t any fish in the ocean. Women’s lives are being ruined by these laws, these bans, and you have the unmitigated gall to laugh about it, as if it weren’t true.

You know what that makes you? That makes you an undateable asshole. Have you considered Ann Coulter? She’s a bit old for you, I reckon but just as big of an asshole as you are. You should ask her out for coffee.

I leave you to study John McCuntee’s assholery (and a gentlemanly response to it) here:

Sigh.

Okay, I'll admit it. Nephew is right about one thing. I’ve been spending way too much time online consuming all of this content and it is making me a little wacky. Why? because it is difficult topic to contemplate and research. It’s discouraging to have my posts unread, my comments unliked and no one giving me any indication that I have anyting worth saying. But. I have grown used to it.

Maybe I need to take a break. Touch grass. Go back to the outside pool at the rec center at night, float up on my back and look up at the stars.