AyJayDee221 hours ago edited These aren’t conservatives – they’re theocratic fascist arsonists trying to burn the country down so they can rebuild it as a white Christian supremacist authoritarian regime.
Raising the debt ceiling is not a “concession” by Republicans — it's their constitutional duty.
Republicans are extorting the American people by threatening to crater the economy to extract unreasonable demands they'd never be able to get in the ordinary appropriations process. pic.twitter.com/XTi03tmPvA
It explicitly encourages local law officers such as the sheriff and county prosecutor to not enforce state and federal laws they deem unconstitutional.
Who wakes up and decides to call businesses that operate 2000 miles away and threaten them with violence? Well a very devout christian might do something like that. Tim McVeigh was a VERY DEVOUT christian.
It is also a second charge for obstruction. Then there is the report he was showing the documents to people not authorized to see them. Remember Jack Teixeira, the kid who was arrested a few weeks ago for posting documents online? Unauthorized retention and dissemination of classified material is what Jackie-boy is facing and if these media reports are accurate then Trump is going to be facing them soon as well.
“We need to go after Target in a very serious way.” This from the guy who has complained umpteen million times about how horrible cancel culture is. It turns out, like everything else, that was a lie. He just can’t stand when he (or the white christian nationalists) don’t have power in any aspect of life.
It is always, ALWAYS about power. Never about the children, never about god/jeebus/Christianity… it is ALWAYS about more power for them… and no rights for anyone else they deem as “other.” That is the only endgame for these people.
Imagine what the MEDIA would have to say if the LEFT were calling for ANY kind of violence! THIS, because it comes from the RIGHT, gets a PASS from the corporate sellout FRAUDS! (Electoral-Vote recently said Republicans inclined to speak out are afraid to speak out against Trump because they KNOW it will place their LIVES at risk, theirs and their children’s, that THAT is the purpose of the violent rhetoric, the stochastic terrorism, coming from Trump and his followers, to silence any criticism from Republicans who are alarmed by the FASCISM that has taken control of their party! WHERE are the MEDIA, the “Guardians of Democracy,” to call out and DENOUNCE this fascist rhetoric, these fascist tactics which are an ASSAULT on the democracy it is their journalistic DUTY to DEFEND from just such attacks?! They do NOTHING to call it out–they have instead infamously NORMALIZED it, something they NEVER would have done if ANY Democrat had EVER called for his opponents to be “taught a lesson”! Imagine if OBAMA had EVER adopted such an attitude! The media would have exploded in a RAGE and demanded his resignation! But such rhetoric from the right gets a PASS–they are in no way held accountable!)
WHERE is the DOJ? Where is GARLAND, that goddamned WEAKLING? What a pathetic FARCE!
Oh, the thing is, the Wingers have no problem using violence and threats of violence to get their ways. Since they do not have a majority on the social issues, that is one way they know to get what they want.
“I will not allow my kid to be corrupted by this trans agenda.” First, the only agenda I know of is that trans people want the right to live as a man or woman depending on their perceived gender identification. That has nothing to do with your children or you. And if you don’t want your children in Target, keep them home. Some people may want the merchandise they are selling, and it is none of your business whether Target sells it or not. You right wingers are just busybodies with too fucking much interest in stuff that is none of your damned business. (He reminds me of Gladys Kravitz.)
House Democrats offered amendments to bar proselytizing or attempts to convert students from one religion to another; to require chaplains to receive consent from the parents of school children; and to make schools provide chaplains from any faith or denomination requested by students. All of those amendments failed. Rep. Cole Hefner, who authored the House version of the bill, said in debates that local school boards will be allowed to set requirements for chaplains.
As I reported on Monday, the bill is the work of a Texas evangelist who falsely testified to the Texas House that the chaplains will not be “working to convert people to religion.” In fact, his organization has been open about their desire to proselytize to public school students.
Unlicensed religious chaplains could work mental health roles in Texas public schools under a bill the Legislature passed.
Critics fear the bill is an attempt at evangelizing kids and will worsen mental health through disproven counseling approaches. https://t.co/Bbup8Pv6Vt
When the Texas House was debating SB763, the bill that allows districts to replace counselors with chaplains, @DiegoBernalTX flat out asked Cole Hefner if a district could replace ALL counselors with chaplains. The answer was YES.#txlege#txedpic.twitter.com/NixV3KV18D
— Christopher Tackett @cjtackett@mastodon.social (@cjtackett) May 10, 2023
That jumped out at me too. So their long-standing argument that parents should have a voice in their children’s education has been bullshit all along? Got it.
This is the goal of the fundamentalist right wing maga Christians racists bigots. It is not about protecting kids. It is about returning to a 1950s social public morality and enforced gender roles. It is about rolling back all social advances gained since the civil rights era. It is entirely about wiping minority rights away and pushing the LGBTQ+ back into the closet while making them afraid to come out openly into society. It is about returning to a time of white straight Christian superiority and automatic assumed authority, with subservient women to do their bidding. So now that this very vocal aggressive arrogant violent minority that feels laws and polite society norms don’t apply to them feels as they have the right to make the entire population follow their religiously driven views from a book written 2,500 years ago. Hugs
“Matt [Walsh] made this point, he articulated it directly, but this has been the point that has been building for months now, which is we need to make that symbol toxic, the pride flag symbol, we need to make that toxic.
“We need to have companies think twice about it. Everyone was talking about the Dylan Mulvaney incident as being harmful to the Bud Light brand. That’s true.
“But more importantly, it was harmful to the Dylan Mulvaney brand. Now, other companies are going to think twice before sponsoring Dylan Mulvaney because they don’t want to lose $6 billion in market cap in two days. That’s what we got to do.
“And then once we make these things culturally toxic or as we’re making these symbols culturally toxic, we’ve got to bring in the cavalry, we’ve got to come back in with more political force to ban some of this stuff and to say no.” – Daily Wire host Michael Knowles.
Knowles appeared here last week when he declared that millennials should not have the right to vote.
Last month Knowles appeared here when he declared that the bible instructs us to burn books. Knowles, who has called for televising executions, previously declared that banning drag shows and burning books is “very American.”
Earlier this year Knowles declared from the CPAC stage that “transgenderism must be eradicated.”
Knowles performed in a gay sex scene for a college film.
I just found an old short film that Michael Knowles acted in.
The current headliner of conservative homophobia and transphobia played a gay twink. So much for restoring "traditional masculinity" 💀 pic.twitter.com/sC8fcoQ3HC
That’s exactly where this is going. Does anyone think that a company that caves to homophobic and transphobic terrorists won’t do the same when it’s antisemites calling in bomb threats?
Can’t stop thinking about the highway construction blinky sign in Florida with KILL ALL GAYS flashing away. I’m looking forward to my death because I’m so fucking tired of having to live with people like that on this earth.
It’s amazing how people fail to realize how quickly a tolerant society can become an oppressive one when you have a disciplined and determined far-right movement that will stop at nothing to win.
Pride parades need to change. They need to be more political and less celebratory. We are in the middle of a right wing assault on our very existence. We need to make pride more like the silence=death activity in the ’80s and ’90s.
It’s not enough that they’re trying to ban drag and trans healthcare – now they’re going after corporations that support LGBT people to try and bully them into turning their backs on us. Today, it’s Bud Light hiring a trans spokesperson and Target selling Pride gear. Tomorrow, it’s any company that says or does anything to support us or offers benefits for same-sex spouses of employees.
Something tells me that sooner rather than later, all those people who complain about Pride becoming too corporate are going to miss the days before corporations stopped having floats at Pride for fear of terrorism and boycotts.
…and how many of those who complain about corporations, etc .. actually work for corporations?
A lot of the corporate donations / flags / pride months came *because* the corportate suite realized how many lgbtq’s etc they employed when those employees became vocal — started lgbt work groups, awareness campaigns, etc … it comes from within, and from without, too ..
The Texas family finds Oregon welcoming — but urges vigilance
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PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — When Karen’s daughter was 3, she knew how she felt. She didn’t know the word “trans” but she knew how she felt. She felt like a girl.
“I just shot that down real quick,” Karen told KOIN 6 News. “‘You’re not a girl, you’re a boy. You don’t have to worry. You don’t have to be a girl to like girl things.’”
But the feeling didn’t ever go away.
“I just saw her disappearing into herself and she came to me in the kitchen again. She was 6 years old and she said, ‘Mom, I’m a girl.’ And I repeated the same thing, ‘You don’t have to be a girl to like girl things.’ She went, ‘I know. But I’m a girl who likes girl things.’ And she just held my gaze,” Karen said. “I knew. And I knew she meant it and I didn’t understand but it was my job to find out because I’m her mom.”
Karen’s love for her child turned into advocacy — in Texas, where she, her husband and children lived.
Karen is the mother of an 11-year-old trans girl who moved her family from Texas to Oregon, May 2023 (KOIN)
In 2021, Karen joined other people rallying at the state capital in Austin against a slate of bills targeting health care for transgender children, like puberty blockers, or even seeking therapy from a behavioral health provider.
The bills and the attacks were relentless. The attacks focused on their health care, tried to go after providers of care that has been deemed best-practice medical care by literally every major medical association. After advocates and some push back from the business community, many of the bills did not pass that session.
Then in 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott — facing primary challenges to his reelection — ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate providing gender-affirming care as child abuse. He also ordered the parents who provided it to their children to be investigated.
“I would always say, ‘Well, I’m going to stay here and fight until they try and take my kids away.’ And I would say it as, like a, well, you know, that’s never going to happen. But then it did,” Karen said.
“We were advised to leave before we couldn’t leave.”
Karen is the mother of an 11-year-old trans girl who moved her family from Texas to Oregon, May 2023 (KOIN)
Her lawyers said her public advocacy made her a target. She remembers the children of family friends were approached at school by Protective Services agents. She had to train both her children about what to do if that happened to them.
“We had to talk about, ‘Here is the little card that you will carry around with you in your pocket and in your backpack. And if CPS shows up at your school you show them the card that says, ‘I don’t consent to talk to you. This is my lawyer’s information.”
The tipping point to move
A year ago Karen feared not only for her daughter’s safety but the affect the politics in Texas was having on her.
Her daughter was having panic attacks. One day in the car, the stress became clear when Karen asked her daughter if she wanted to record a statement for a rally in front of the Texas governor’s mansion.
“She was very quiet and she was sitting behind me,” Karen said. “Then, I just heard her little 10-year-old voice ask, ‘Am I going to die?’”
“It seems to come from out of nowhere except, no, that kind of question must be on her mind constantly hearing about all of this hate, all of these lies about her. So I pulled over and I asked, ‘Why would you say that? Of course you’re not going to die.’
“She looked at me and said, ‘Because everybody hates me here.’ And I just knew I can’t ask her to grow up in a place like this.”
Karen is the mother of an 11-year-old trans girl who moved her family from Texas to Oregon, May 2023 (KOIN)
The order by Gov. Abbot to investigate families of trans kids was struck down by a court last summer around the same time Karen and her family fled their native Texas.
Her husband’s employer saw the stress the political battle was having on their family and helped accommodate their move to Portland.
It was immediately a reset for Karen’s daughter.
“When we got into Oregon we went downtown. Then there’s this massive Pride festival and I thought it was really cool,” she said. “I felt like I’m in the right place. This is where I live now and I don’t plan on moving ever again.”
Karen sees a freedom in her daughter she didn’t see when they lived in Texas, a freedom from worry, freedom of thought — and freedom to be a kid again.
“I remember before she first started school (in Oregon, I asked) ‘Are you going to tell them that you’re trans?’ And she went, ‘Probably. It’s safe, right?’ I went, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ She just feels so supported.”
Her daughter said she was really nervous at her new school. “But I knew there was another trans kid in my class because when I visited, everyone told me this other person was trans just so I could know. And I was, like, cool. Then I felt more safe. Then I adjusted to my school more because everyone was so nice and so friendly. And it was so beautiful and I spent most of the time playing.”
Playing at school, like an 11-year-old should.
Karen feels relief in Oregon. She’s finally able to testify on legislation she supports. But during testimony in Salem earlier this spring she heard similar false arguments made here that she heard in Texas.
Just this year there have been more bills targeting the existence of transgender children introduced than the last 8 years combined, according to TransLegislation.com.
She hopes Oregonians remain vigilant in protecting equal rights for transgender people.
A controversial six-week abortion ban bill is headed to South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster’s desk to be signed into law after the measure cleared the state Senate Tuesday. The state Senate approved a House-amended version of the bill by a vote of 27-19, after that chamber passed it last week.
A bipartisan group of five women lawmakers in the state Senate banded together to try to stop the bill from passing Tuesday. Republican state Sen. Katrina Shealy, before she voted no, attempted to push through an amendment to change the limit on abortions to 12 weeks, and 20 weeks for victims of rape and incest.
“Men are 100% responsible for pregnancies,” said Shealy, as she introduced her amendment. “Men are fertile 100% of the time. So, it is time for men in this chamber and the ones across that hall and all across the state of South Carolina to take some ejaculation responsibility.”
“It’s time for men in this chamber and the ones across that hall and all across the state of South Carolina, to take some ejaculation responsibility,” South Carolina Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, says in her remarks. pic.twitter.com/5o0x4CZFAS
— Maayan Schechter (@MaayanSchechter) May 23, 2023
The bill passed despite protest from the Senate's five women. “We in the South Carolina Legislature are not God. We do not know what’s going on in somebody else’s life. We do not have the right to make decisions for someone else," Sen. Katrina Shealy said.https://t.co/GnOxZpnLBW
If you’re a man, who isn’t a physician, you likely know diddly about women’s reproductive system. Women have ALWAYS carried the total responsibility of contraception, pregnancy and all that goes with it, yet it is primarily men making these arbitrary laws governing what women can and cannot do with our bodies, while they accept zero responsibility for the circumstance. All I have to say is, straight men better pray to their Jesus that women never rule because when it happens vasectomy, at the request of the woman, will become LAW. SNIP, SNIP mother Fuckers. Sorry boys, no ill will towards y’all. 😂
If they are going to pass laws prohibiting abortion, I have no problems with a law that requires vasectomy for all men over the age of 16. You can reverse it only upon proof of marriage, and a signed statement from your wife that you are ready and able to raise children. You will have to prove you have the income or assets to provide for your children, and the mental stability etc just like people have to prove for adoption. This will have the added benefit insuring that children have real parents.
Men never understand how difficult and dangerous contraceptive medications are for women. The pills are difficult to manage and are not 100% effective. They also pose risks of breast and uterine cancer and the devices pose risks of infection, sterilization and tubal pregnancy. Women’s choices for contraception all carry significant risks, including invasive surgical procedures. For men a vasectomy is a fast, in office procedure, with minimal risk and usually reversible. But, men don’t want to be bothered or have their potency jeopardized, it’s preferable to let women take 100% of the risk.
I’m reminded of how many forced birthers apparently believe women get pregnant all by themselves.
And as a side note, I still remember the forced birther people who lambast women for having sex at all eagerly kissing Roy Moore’s ass and claimed his creepy predator behavior was biblical and shit.
Well she definitely has addressed the unmentionable other half of the problem We always point the finger and point AT the pregnancy but never HOW the pregnancy began Oh no the male is always a silent champ
I’m imagining abortion bans leading to a new trend of paternity lawsuits, child support judgments and pissed off dudes. And maybe that’s the only path back to sanity.
Do No Harm, a nonprofit that launched last year to oppose diversity initiatives in medicine, has evolved into a significant leader in statehouses seeking to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths, producing model legislation that an Associated Press analysis found has been used in at least three states, including Florida.
The nonprofit, not widely known outside conservative medical and political circles, describes itself on its website as a collection of doctors and others uniting to “protect healthcare from a radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology.”
Founder Dr. Stanley Goldfarb is a kidney specialist and a professor emeritus and former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school. Goldfarb retired in 2021 and incorporated Do No Harm in January 2022.
Do No Harm initially focused on race in medical education and hiring. “The same radical movement behind ‘Critical Race Theory’ in the classroom and ‘Defund the Police’ is coming after healthcare, but hardly anyone knows it,” it warns on its website.
Goldfarb declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press but said in an email that “Do No Harm works to protect children from extreme gender ideology through original research, coalition-building, testimonials from parents and patients who’ve lived through deeply troubling experiences, and advocacy for the rigorous, apolitical study of gender dysphoria.”
The organization’s executive director, Kristina Rasmussen, previously was chief of staff to former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, and served as president of the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, according to her LinkedIn profile. Perhaps coincidentally, Rauner donated $250,000 to DeSantis’ former political committee.
An AP analysis of statehouse bills to restrict gender-affirming care for youths found passages identical or nearly identical to Do No Harm’s model legislation in Montana, Arkansas and Iowa.
The organization had lobbyists registered in 2022 in at least three states — Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee — and in Florida in 2023. People associated with the group have appeared as witnesses in statehouses, including Chloe Cole, 18, listed on its website as a “patient advocate” who has spoken to lawmakers about her gender-transition reversal.
In states including Florida, Idaho, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Ohio, Cole described her transition beginning at age 13, surgery to remove her breasts at 15, and stopping her transition a year later saying it was a mistake. Republican supporters of bills restricting or banning gender-affirming care often cite Cole’s story.
Cole told the Kansas news outlet The Reflector this year that Do No Harm was reimbursing her travel expenses as she testified before state lawmakers. She and her lawyer did not respond to requests for comment from the AP.
Do No Harm originally organized as a charitable organization whose tax-exempt status would be endangered by substantial lobbying.
On March 9 this year, after the group had already made significant inroads in legislatures with its model bill, lobbyists and hearing witnesses, it incorporated Do No Harm Action as a separate nonprofit with a tax status that allows for more lobbying, according to records obtained from the Virginia Office of Charitable and Regulatory Programs.
Goldfarb did not respond directly to questions about Do No Harm’s lobbying, nor did another representative for the organization.
In the application for nonprofit status obtained from the Virginia agency, Do No Harm projected revenues of $910,000 in 2022, more than $1.1 million in 2023 and over $1.5 million in 2024.
The organization is so new that federal tax forms that typically reveal nonprofits’ spending details have been either not received or not processed.
It won a $250,000 award last year called the Gregor Peterson Prize. Its previous recipients include the Center for American Liberty, led by Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer who advised former President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and who is representing Cole in her lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente over gender-transition treatments she now says she regrets. The prize was announced in December at a summit held by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a prominent provider of conservative model legislation.
Duke Health’s antiracist “pledge” is nothing more than a political assertion forcefully made on behalf of its employees, who were in no position to push back.
When did health institutions start acting politically under the guise of medical science?https://t.co/3aalgjq47S
We hope the inquiry into DEI spending at Virginia’s public colleges and universities will begin to dislodge this divisive ideology from medical education.
The people pushing this madness are right about one thing: systemic racism is real. They’re proving it by bringing racial segregation back into the higher education system. pic.twitter.com/MWQd2lqsKs
.@FLSurgeonGen’s guidance against socially and medically transitioning children is a well-thought-out and evidence-based approach.https://t.co/8xn8vg3qgk
The Florida state legislature and @GovRonDeSantis passed two commonsense bills that will help restore fairness and sound teaching in higher education, including in medical schools. pic.twitter.com/IPDsATjvXV
When it became obvious that the targetted religious war on just the LGBTQ+ community was starting to lose public support, they simply changed to hating the non-defined “WOKE” giving them a faceless generic enemy to rake in tax free money and run political campaigns, and giving them an even larger base of fellow Americans to focus their hate upon, and rally their “Christian Warriors” around.
Freedom Caucus — they hate freedom Moms For Liberty — they hate liberty Alliance Defending Freedom — they’re anti-freedom Do No Harm — they’re doing great harm
ALL of Iowa’s recent book banning, gay shaming, bathroom bills are simply out of state copy/paste laws. Oh and libs of tik tok and Q anon bitches got to write a couple bills too. Non are home grown
It ALWAYS starts out with the Trojan Horse of protecting the young children, before quickly expanding to including all teens/minors, and then the banishing of LGBTQ adults from sight…”for the sake of the children,” and not for the bigoted adults hiding behind them.
bans the “instruction, guidance, activities, or programming regarding sexual orientation or gender identity to students enrolled in prekindergarten through 12th grade
Question 1. Are you married? Question 2. How do you explain that to an 18 year old without alluding to the fact that you’re a man and the person to which you are married is not?
Question 3. Why is that an exception to your rule?
This is about absolute power and control. Abortion bans/contraception bans Book bans Attacks on LGBTQ+
Can you tell the difference between Republicans/Conservatives and Muslims/ISIS and Sharia Law? pic.twitter.com/9MgNgF0AR2
— Fight4Justice Fight4Equality! AbortionIsARIGHT! (@fight4women) May 17, 2023
All 3 members of the Republican freshman class of 2020 who lectured us the loudest about family values and marriage didn’t have their marriages survive a second term. pic.twitter.com/Zel6uyB6Ut
I’ve been dubious of the word “fascism” being thrown around. But it’s the right word. After reading How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley, I am convinced that DeSantis is in fact a fascist.
“What normalization does is transform the morally extraordinary into the ordinary. It makes us able to tolerate what was once intolerable by making it seem as if this is the way things have always been.”
CNN’s Elle Reeve spoke with Darcy Schoening, the Moms for Liberty chapter chair in El Paso, Colorado. Reeve asked Schoening if she thinks there is a high-level, coordinated effort to make more children become gay or transition, and she said yes. Reeve asked who she thinks is behind that effort. Schoening said, “Teachers’ unions and our president, and a lot of funding sources.” Reeve followed up, “Why would they want more kids to be gay and trans?”
Last week, Ron DeSantis signed legislation into law requiring transgender people to use public restrooms that align with their assigned sex at birth.
The six trans men shown below were all assigned female at birth. I’m wondering if DeSantis REALLY thinks it makes sense for them… pic.twitter.com/jzG2cuU5dM
Gorgeous. Anyways. Unisex restroom could do it! We’re all first and foremost humans. The World needs to stop behaving like Russia. #NoToHateAndDivision 🫶😊
I don't care who is using the restroom when I am in it as long as they are respectful and leave me alone when I'm doing my business. Most trans women are going to look like women, maybe mannish, but a lot of women look like men! I once went into a work restroom to find someone… pic.twitter.com/sEldHxB7Bt
— Wolf River Ghost Society (@WolfRiverGhosts) May 21, 2023
I originally posted this from The Washington Post but I understand many couldn’t read it. I will add the original post here because Frank had a great comment on it. But I want everyone to realize the heartbreak of this family, the expenses they were forced to incur, and the risk to the woman’s life who had a child already who could have lost his mother, all due to some republicans on the right demanding to make the medical decisions for this woman and her family. They were forced to give birth to a child who couldn’t live risking the woman’s life, give that child a name, and then under law bury that child with all the emotions / exspeces that goes along with all of that. I cried reading this the first time, and I cried hard reading it the second time. I wonder if the radical fundmentlist religous right that forces this cry at all when they read it? Out of respect I wont color any of it as all of it is serious and important Hugs.
Frances Stead Sellers,Thomas Simonetti and Maggie Penman, (c) 2023, The Washington Post
·9 min read
Nobody expected Baby Milo to live for long.
He arrived in the world with no kidneys, underdeveloped lungs and a life expectancy of between 20 minutes and a couple of hours.
He lived for 99 minutes.
Milo Evan Dorbert drew his first and last breath on the evening of March 3. The unusual complications in his mother’s pregnancy tested the interpretation of Florida’s new abortion law.
Deborah Dorbert discovered she was pregnant in August. Her early appointments suggested the baby was thriving, and she looked forward to welcoming a fourth member to the family. It didn’t occur to her that fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a half-century constitutional right to abortion would affect them.
A routine ultrasound halfway through her pregnancy changed all that.
Deborah and her husband, Lee, learned in late November that their baby had Potter syndrome, a rare and lethal condition that plunged them into an unsettled legal landscape.
The state’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks of gestation has an exception for fatal fetal abnormalities. But as long as their baby’s heart kept beating, the Dorberts say, doctors would not honor their request to terminate the pregnancy. The doctors would not say how they reached their decision, but the new law carries severe penalties, including prison time, for medical practitioners who run afoul of it. The hospital system declined to discuss the case.
Instead, the Dorberts would have to wait for labor to be induced at 37 weeks.
For the next three months, the Dorberts did their best to prepare for their second son’s short life. They consulted with palliative care experts and decided against trying to prolong his life with high-tech interventions.
“The most important thing for us was to let him know he was loved,” Deborah said.
The day before Milo was born, the Dorberts sat down with their son Kaiden to explain that the baby’s body had stopped working and that he would not come home. Instead, some day, they told Kaiden, they would all meet as angels. The 4-year-old burst into tears, telling them that he did not want to be an angel.
Without functioning kidneys, a fetus with Potter syndrome cannot produce the amniotic fluid that allows the lungs to expand and that cushions the growing body. The babies who survive until birth typically have contracted limbs, club feet and flattened features from being compressed against the uterus wall.
But after Deborah’s 12-hour labor, Milo turned out to be 4 pounds and 12 ounces of perfection, with tiny, flawlessly formed hands and feet and a head of brown hair.
– – –
“When he came out you could hear him gasping for air. He was really trying to breathe. … He didn’t cry when he was born and he didn’t open his eyes at all. But I mean, he struggled.” – Deborah Dorbert
– – –
“I thought I had my miracle,” said Peter Rogell, the baby’s grandfather, who attended the delivery. He allowed himself a moment of hope until the obstetrician cut the umbilical cord that for 37 weeks had performed the functions Milo’s underdeveloped lungs and missing kidneys would now take over.
– – –
“When they pulled the baby out I thought my miracle happened. ‘Cause he looked perfect to me.” – Peter Rogell
– – –
Milo remained blue, swaddled in a blanket hand-knit by his great grandmother.
He never cried or tried to nurse or even opened his eyes, investing every ounce of energy in intermittent gasps for air.
“That was the beginning of the end,” Rogell said, recalling the persistent gulps that he thought at first were hiccups but turned out to be his grandson’s labored efforts to inhale.
Lee read a book to his dying son – “I’ll Love You Forever,” a family favorite that the Dorberts had given Kaiden for Valentine’s Day – and sang Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”
For 99 minutes that lasted a lifetime, they cuddled and comforted their newborn.
– – –
“The baby just went to my chest, and we just cuddled with him. … My parents held him for a little bit. And we kinda just gave him all the loving until he passed.” – Deborah Dorbert
– – –
At 11:13 p.m., a doctor declared Milo dead.
The nurses took some photos, clipped a few pieces of Milo’s dark brown hair and made imprints of his hands and feet on the inside cover of Kaiden’s book before taking the infant down to the morgue. Milo’s organs were either missing or too damaged to be donated; his body was so small that even his heart valve could not be used to save another baby.
Milo would be cremated, with some of his ashes embedded in a pendant for Kaiden and two spherical glass ornaments.
Deborah feared that mementos would serve as reminders of her pain.
But gradually, she realized she might want something to hold onto, or as a teaching tool for Kaiden.
“Down the road he might have questions,” she said, imagining how she might pull out an object to help explain “what I went through, how the laws dictated this.”
Two weeks later, about 40 of the Dorberts’ friends and family members gathered at Lakeland Funeral Home and Memorial Gardens for a service.
A three-inch-tall silver urn – delivered by Amazon the previous day after other child-sized urns turned out to be too big – sat on a memorial table with two vases of flowers, carefully picked out at a nearby Publix supermarket, and a photo of Milo, wrapped in the hand-knit blanket and held by his parents in the hospital bed.
Deborah and Lee sat rock still and silent in the front row as Milo’s aunts and uncles and several cousins walked in and took their seats. Her usually free-flowing hair was pulled back from her face and held in a bun.
The service, which mixed Christian gospels and the Lord’s Prayer with “Three Little Birds,” lasted about 45 minutes – half as long as Milo’s life.
The pastor from a local Lutheran church had a message for the congregation. “Not everything happens for a reason,” she said, echoing Deborah’s own rejection that the manner of Milo’s birth and death carried some special spiritual significance.
– – –
“Milo. Milo. For such a little love, he leaves a giant hole in our soul and in our hearts. And nobody – nothing else – can completely fill that hole.” – The Rev. Pamela Smith
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Deborah occasionally stifled sobs or turned to quiet Kaiden, until she could contain her feelings no longer, and Lee reached over to embrace her slender shaking frame.
Rogell lingered at the funeral home after others left, staring at the urn that contained his 16th grandchild’s ashes and trying to reconcile his own misgivings about elective abortion with the months of suffering he watched his daughter and her family endure.
Now, he was haunted by the sound of Milo gasping for air and the sight of his body struggling to ward off a death that had been inevitable for three long months.
“To me it’s just pure torture,” Rogell said. “The law has created torture.”
In many ways, the routines of daily life returned swiftly after Milo died.
Deborah shuttles Kaiden back and forth to preschool. The Dorberts take occasional outings to the aquarium or hike the trails near their house. They visit family.
Deborah held her brother’s baby girl, born a few days after Milo – the products of pregnancies that had followed parallel paths until Thanksgiving.
“I’m happy for my brother. He has a precious baby girl that brings so much happiness to his family, and that makes me happy,” she said. “Is it hard to see her because my son’s not here? Absolutely.”
Deborah says she is wrestling with anxiety and depression. She hasn’t returned to her part-time job filling Instacart orders. And she still hasn’t figured out how to respond to Kaiden, when he asks whether he can see his baby brother.
“We tell him he’s something he feels, like the wind. Or we point up to the stars and say he’s an angel with the stars,” she said. “We’re still kind of navigating that question, for him to understand.”
Kaiden brought a card home from preschool for Mother’s Day. It showed a family of four purple stick figures with bulging torsos – Mommy, Daddy, Kaiden and Baby Milo.
Deborah said her grief is complicated by ongoing anger that her decision to terminate her pregnancy early was thwarted by politicians she has never met and who are not experts about obstetrics.
The mail brings reminders of the Dorberts’ new financial burdens, invoices for all the things they wish had never happened: $12,320 so far in medical costs – not including induction and delivery, $7,000 for Milo’s cremation and funeral, and $500 for the keepsakes in memory of their son.
The bills keep coming. Deborah estimates that Lee’s health insurance will pick up about half of the medical costs, some of which will be offset by a GoFundMe appeal that one of her sisters set up.
The Dorberts have no idea how their grief will evolve, or if they will ever come to terms with losing control over the most painful decision of their lives.
“It’s really becoming our reality now,” Deborah said. “We don’t know what six months is going to look like. We don’t know what a year looks like. We’re just kind of taking it one day at a time. Because that’s all we really can handle, is just taking it one day at a time.”
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“If people want to really know how I’m doing, I’m not doing okay.” – Deborah Dorbert
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In the midst of that uncertainty, Deborah has endeavored to find some purpose in Milo’s short life, sharing the story of her pregnancy as broadly as she can, even as she has watched Florida legislators move to restrict state laws around abortion even further.
It surprises family members to see Deborah take such a public stance.
“I always thought of her as my shy child,” Rogell said.
But Deborah wants other people to know what happened, how politicians intervened in decisions about medical care with a law that made doctors fearful of terminating even hopeless pregnancies.
“If it helps another family or a mom, then good came of it because we’re all here to help one another,” Deborah said. “It’s not something easy to go through alone. You need all the support you can get.”
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