Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
Can't keep up with the whirlwind of grift and shit? Neither can we. It hasn't even been three weeks, but we're falling behind in cataloging all the doings, sayings, and insane appointments of the 2nd Trump administration.
Why are we doing this? Let's be honest, the first time around was a fever dream and if asked to name the top five worst things Trump did as president from 2021-2025, we all might be able to ramble on about "very fine people" or Sharpiegate or Mueller or 2 impeachments, but it's a 4 year long incoherent nightmare for most of us.
We're doing this for history. We're doing this so it's cataloged in order, all of it, while cutting away the chaff of conjecture, maybes, and unrelated news. We're doing this so we don't forget.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
After more than 2 years, I'm back. Rumors of this story's death have been only mildly exaggerated. One more chapter to go, and this time I promise to try to have it finished before the universe suffers a heat death.
Thanks so much to everyone who kept reading and posting comments. I never stopped thinking about this story, and It was a comment left on my other WIP that made me dig myself out of my hole, sit down, and bang on the keyboard for a while.
hi. i’m not american. WAS ANYONE GOING TO TELL ME THAT THE OFFICIAL ARBY’S SLOGAN IS “WE HAVE THE MEATS” OR WAS I SUPPOSED TO FIND THAT OUT FOR MYSELF TODAY JUST NOW
WE HAVE THE MEATS???????????? WE HAVE THE FUCKING MEATS????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
In school, I learned U.S. history through a shallow, carefully constructed narrative that was more concerned with instilling patriotism than it was with imparting contextualized, factual accounts and records of times that came before. What I learned is America started when England was trying to tax us to pay for their imperialism and foreign wars and we didn’t like that, so we fought a revolution and then we didn’t have to have a king anymore and we were free. Most of us. Next up in the timeline was slavery, which was bad, but we fought the Civil War and then didn’t have slavery any more, which was good.
Around that time, the country was expanding and we couldn’t share the land with the native peoples, so we forced them west, which was sad. And then we never talked about them again, except a casual mention about the trouble they made on our road to achieve Manifest Destiny. There was the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age and people got tired of working all the time in dangerous conditions, so then there were some strikes or whatever and now we have weekends. We even allowed former slaves and women to vote: good job, America!
Then there was WWI, which got botched somehow so we had to do WWII. Hitler was bad and we beat his ass, and we also locked up Japanese Americans but that belongs in our blooper reel and we were sorry for that. Later. Kind of. Then it turned out maybe all the problems of racial inequality actually weren’t solved by the Civil War, so we had the Civil Rights movement and then things were basically fine.
Then came Vietnam and some stuff about communism, a hand wave through the later decades of the 20th century, then the War on Terror, the Great Recession, and now here we are in 2023, paying taxes to put more money into our military than most other developed nations combined because, you know...we love imperialism and foreign wars when we’re doing it, but shame on 18th century England for doing the same. Those assholes. Anyway, the best storytelling always comes full circle without beating you over the head with the symbolism and irony.
And that is how U.S. history was taught to many modern inheritors of this great experiment in democracy even before the culture wars got involved and people clutched their pearls over equity, diversity, and inclusion training, critical race theory, and the 1619 Project. But whatever you think about telling kids that most of the founding fathers owned slaves or that maybe Jim Crow didn’t end as much as it was transformed into the industrial prison complex, consider the inevitable fate of the Covid-19 pandemic in our history books.
It seems strange to think of events from three years ago as history, because we were there. It feels almost like a foregone conclusion that decades from now, chroniclers will reflect on the start of the 2020s as a time the nation, no, the world, was blindsided by an unseen enemy but how we all came together to fight back. They’ll tell about how science raced to develop treatments and vaccines in record time. There might even be pictures of the parades for healthcare workers and people singing to each other from NYC balconies.
But the stories about people who didn’t believe it was real, even as they gasped their last breaths in hospital beds, will disappear. So will the stories of the abuse frontline workers faced every day just for asking people to wear a mask. The stories about hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitizer and affordable housing and those who sold it at exorbitant markups will fade into the background, as will the reality that millions of people refused the very vaccines that the history books will tout as marvels of modern medicine and the American can-do spirit.
U.S. history books might note how more than 1 million Americans ultimately died—no mention about all the lives that were maimed by long Covid or the loss of a parent, partner, or breadwinner—but as Stalin once said, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. 9/11 was a tragedy that killed 3,000 people and permanently altered the social and political landscape. To this day, I still can’t board a plane without taking off my shoes. But when that many were dying every day during some of the pandemic’s peaks, we had other people demanding we re-open restaurants and movie theaters and concerts because “we can’t live in fear.” The uglier parts will inevitably get left out of our story because they aren’t conducive to national pride.
I’ve learned a lot of things about American history since leaving school. It broke my heart to learn just how many Americans in the 1930s thought Hitler made some good points about Jews. To learn Lincoln wasn’t really opposed to slavery so much as he was the expansion of it. To learn just how pervasive lynching was in the American south or how relentlessly coordinated the genocide of the Native Americans was for more than a century. And I have a feeling that around the time I’m ready to breathe my last, I’ll hear young people insisting that while the pandemic was terrible, it was a unifying, equalizing force that brought out the best in us.
Never mind it only brought out the best in some of us. It brought out the worst in just as many others. Because to tell the story of everyone who resisted every single measure to slow or stop the pandemic with the dedication and ferocity of suicide bombers takes the “we’re all in this together” version of events and turns it into a disjointed narrative. That isn’t good storytelling. That isn’t good history worthy of an American classroom.
So someone pointed out to me recently that in a few years, maybe a few decades, the history of the us during covid is probably going to get twisted. The fact that we all had to make and wear cloth masks is going to be hailed as a symbol of how we “"came together as a nation”“” or whatever the fuck propaganda spin they try to put on it.
So I just want to say, for the record, the time of the corona virus pandemic was not a time when america came together.
This was a time when people hoarded toilet paper and sanitizing supplies either for themselves or to sell at absurd prices to the desperate people who didn’t get to the store soon enough during the shortages
This was a time when scared parents were sending their kids to finish school in the spring in plastic trash bags because they couldn’t think of any other way to possibly keep their families safe
This was a time when grocery store and retail and service workers were forced to keep working whether they wanted to risk their health or not because they couldn’t make rent otherwise and the people with enough privilege to have remote jobs tried to repay them with applause instead of fair wages
This was a time when nurses had the hold the hands of multiple dying people every day as their families watched their loved ones die over a video call because the hospital couldn’t risk having visitors
This was a time when city governments had to handle so many eviction hearings that they rented out convention centers and called in the national guard instead of doing a rent freeze to stop predatory landlords
This was a time when racism and police brutality were so unbearably horrible that people protested in the streets for months even though there was a god damn pandemic that our federal government wasn’t doing shit to stop and the cops were so mad that they were being asked to stop beating up black people that they were beating up everyone
This was a time when schools being forced to reopen in the fall or lose their federal funding had to draft templates for letters if a teacher or a staff person or a fucking child died from exposure to corona at school
This was a time when the president of the United states demanded that the cdc stop releasing data about all the people who were dying because of the warnings he ignored for months were making him look bad
This was a time when some state governments didn’t mandate masks and forced businesses to reopen because they didn’t want to pay unemployment to people trying to stay safe at home anymore
This was a time when Jeff Bezos was on track to be a fucking trillionare because everyone was ordering things on amazon instead of going to the store and the people he worked to death to get it didn’t see a single cent of it
This was a time when instead of providing homeless people with housing, we painted boxes on the ground to show homeless people how far away the had to be on the street to maintain social distancing
We did not come together to make cloth masks. Cloth masks represent nothing less than the absolute and utter failure of a nation’s government to inform and protect its citizens
This was not a time when we came together. This was a time when we survived, and not all of us made it.
This was a time when people casually talked about how many human lives the economy was worth without considering the evil that had just come out of their mouths.
This was a time when thousands of us died for profit and the ego of a cheating narcissists con man who scammed his way into the white house
This was a time that we survived. Most of us tried to do the right thing, stay home, limit trips to the store and socializing, wear a mask. And still, so many of us were lost. Thousands every day.
But that wasn’t a good enough reason for some people, for those among us who were too selfish to recognize the responsibilities we have toward one another as human beings.
This was not a time that we came together
This was a time that we survived
Not all of us made it
And those of us who did survive will never forget the evil we saw daily in our politicians and those around us
Fanart for Amok Time After Time
by @tomfooleryprime
This is OC Voren, poor dude is rather sick at this point (hence the unkempt look - for a Vulcan), and people somehow just don't notice :( And our dear OC Saeva in her dark green - gold dress (does she know she's wearing mating colors?!?!). The two of em are at one of Pike's dinner parties and I know they have diff wineglasses but whatever XD Roll with it :P
Maybe one day I'll feel like shadowing this proper? I just wanna draw shiny hair tbh haha :D
Cross-posted on my Twitter (@ maaiker2) and Instagram (@ jaxifye)
Fanart for @tomfooleryprime's fanfic Amok Time After Time
I'm obsessed with original Vulcan characters lately and I felt like doodling a scene of their fic :D Since it was supposed to be JUST a doodle, I hadn't been drawing on proper layers and that's why it looks different than my usual drawings ^^;
Cross-posted on my Twitter (@ maaiker2) and Instagram (@ jaxifye)
➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.
➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”
➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”
➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”
➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”
➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.
“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.
“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”
➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”
➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”
However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!
➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.
If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)
➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“
“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.
➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.
➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”
➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.
“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”
➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.
“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”
I’ve seen a lot of op-eds talking about how the overturn of Roe v. Wade will have a chilling effect on reproductive healthcare. There’s this fear that providers will be hesitant to treat women suffering from miscarriages for fear of prosecution, since miscarriage and abortion are medically indistinguishable.
If that’s your biggest fear, you're suffering from failure of imagination and an inability to pay attention, considering there are plenty of recent examples of prosecutors trying to pin charges on women for failing to carry a pregnancy to term.
Most recent cases involve women being prosecuted after taking illegal drugs like methamphetamine or opioids and maybe it’s easy to think, “Well, illegal drugs are bad.” But all kinds of things have been linked to bad pregnancy outcomes that aren’t alcohol or hard drugs: soft cheese, undercooked meat, rollercoasters, hot tubs, deli meats, caffeine, litter boxes, hair dye...
If SCOTUS really thinks the decision to place “reasonable” restrictions on pregnant people’s rights for the sake of their fetuses truly belongs to the states, just wait and see what states consider reasonable in the inevitable wave of resulting lawsuits.
Many state courts have sided with pharmacists who refuse to fill kind of family planning prescriptions if they violate their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” What’s going to happen when a pregnant woman tries to buy an energy drink and the devout Walgreen’s cashier is worried for the life of her unborn fetus?
And what about women who aren’t visibly pregnant? Can businesses refuse service on the off chance that they might be? What happens when amusement parks start insisting women of childbearing age take a pregnancy test prior to riding a rollercoaster because they’re afraid of felony murder charges for playing a role in potentially harming a fetus thanks to poorly-written and vague state laws? How will you feel when the manager at La Quinta asks you to get out of the hot tub until you can provide some kind of evidence you’re not cooking your fetus on their property?
What about literally any healthcare for any pregnant person that isn’t actually related to their pregnancy? There's a lot of overlap between the people cheering this decision and the people who reject Covid vaccines. What happens when those same people start whispering in the ears of state lawmakers and all of a sudden, pregnant women aren’t allowed to receive recommended vaccines anymore because there “may be concern” it will harm the baby?
Nevermind the CDC recommends flu shots during pregnancy to protect mom and baby. Why would CDC recommendations matter to the same people who wrote laws requiring abortion providers to lie to patients and say abortion is more dangerous than childbirth and may lead to everything from breast cancer to future infertility? Will SCOTUS say that because flu shots aren’t explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, a pregnant woman’s right to make an informed decision about vaccines and avoid dying of the flu can be superseded by the state’s interest in “protecting” the fetus, even when that interest is based on junk science and a religious agenda?
Break a leg? Why would a doctor risk prison time by offering you x-rays and pain meds that could harm the fetus when you could just bite down on a strap and let the doctor do their best to set a bone they’re not even certain is broken? Suffer from migraines but someone found an inconclusive study that shows the medication you rely on might cause birth defects? Maybe you should just drink more water and pray about it. Need a root canal because pregnancy can play havoc on your oral flora? What happens when your dentist recommends pliers and a little bit of courage because there’s not enough research on how local anesthetic might affect a pregnancy and they’ll be damned if they’re gonna do time just because your teeth are rotting?
Your concern shouldn’t stop at the line of what might happen to women suffering a miscarriage: it should stop at the erosion of rights for all people capable of bearing a child to the point where they’re basically viewed as nothing but a uterus and a source of criminal liability.
this might be because I’m a family law lawyer and also an old crone who remembers when marriage equality wasn’t a thing (as in, marriage equality only became nation-wide two months before I went to law school), but I have Strong Feelings about the right to marry and all the legal benefits that come with it
like I’m all for living in sin until someone says they don’t want to get married because it’s ~too permanent~ and in the same breath start talking about having kids or buying a house with their significant other. then I turn into a 90-year-old passive-aggressive church grandma who keeps pointedly asking when the wedding is. “yes, a divorce is very sad and stressful, but so is BEING HOMELESS BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF MARITAL PROPERTY, CAROLINE!”
so, I’ve gotten this question and similar ones before, and I want to use it to go into what marriage actually is.
so, in law, there are a couple of legal assumptions made when someone is a close family member, like a parent. the assumptions are that this person knows you well enough to make decisions on your behalf in an emergency, supports or is supported by you financially, and, most importantly, that they are emotionally significant to you in a way that makes them different from a total stranger or a good friend. immigration law, for example, prioritizes families over people immigrating for jobs alone, because not getting a job doesn’t have the same emotional weight as never seeing your mom again.
the difference is that you don’t get to choose your family (outside of adoption and, uh, legally that’s not a bilateral decision). you do get to choose your spouse. the fact that you chose them is why they get priority for things like inheritance and immigration, even over your parents or your siblings or your grandma.
how does the government know that this particular person is someone you want to have as part of your family? you fill out a form and you tell them.
what happens if you don’t want them in your family anymore, and don’t want those assumptions made about them? you fill out a different form and you tell the government that.
the thing I think that’s hard for people to wrap their heads around – whether you’re a starry-eyed romantic or a pragmatic bitch like me – is that marriage isn’t an announcement of how much you love someone. that’s what a facebook status update is for. you do not need to be in love, or sexually/romantically monogamous, or be religious, or any of the other things people associate with marriage, in order to be married.
it’s a legal decision. it is choosing to get certain benefits (like taxes, because it’s assumed you’re financially supporting each other) in exchange for certain responsibilities (because it’s assumed you’re supporting each other, it stops mattering exactly who bought what after you got married, so divorce splits the whole pool of stuff even if one person bought like 75% of it).
you don’t get the one without the other, and you don’t get either if you don’t affirmatively say that’s what you want to have happen. it doesn’t happen automatically, or in every romantic relationship no matter how serious, because the choice is the point.
and, to be clear: if you do not want, or do not care about, the legal rights and responsibilities of being married, you should not get married. it’s a fucking legal contract that has serious legal implications! it’s not something you should be doing for funsies!
tl;dr: if you want all the shit that comes with a marriage, good and bad, you need to tell the government that’s what you want. if you don’t want it, then you don’t need to do it, but you need to also be aware of what you’re potentially losing (in exchange for what you’re keeping). that should be an informed decision, not one you make for emotional reasons like “I just want everyone to know I’m only having sex with this person forever” or “our love is so pure it transcends legal boundaries.”
Is there any option other than marriage for telling the government you want this person to be part of your family? Like, can you draw up some kind of homebrew contract?
Short answer: No. If there was, queer people would have done it already.
Long answer: That’s a little like asking “can you become a citizen via contract rather than going through the immigration and naturalization process?” Marriage is a legal status: you either are or you aren’t. Can you cobble together very specific stuff, like advanced healthcare directives and wills and whatnot? Yes, absolutely. But anything that requires you to be legally married as a status cannot be contracted away: you can’t file taxes jointly or sponsor someone for a green card or get someone’s Social Security benefits if they die if you’re not married to that person.
Now, to be clear: some things that often require marriage do not always require marriage. For example, usually you need to be married to have someone unrelated to you be on your health insurance, but my job’s specific health insurance plan allows coverage for domestic partners, which they define as a single person who has cohabitated with you for six months or more and is in a committed relationship with you. So even though my fiancé and I are not married yet, he’s been on my health insurance for the past year and a half, because we hit the six month mark of living together right around when I had to re-enroll in my health insurance for the year.
But if we’d gotten married sooner, he’d have been able to get on my health insurance right away (getting married is a qualifying event that lets someone get on a health insurance plan outside of the enrollment period), but since he’s just a cohabitating partner, we had to wait six months for him to get on my insurance. And if he’d moved in with me a month later, we’d have to wait a whole year before he could enroll with me on my health insurance. Even though it’s allowed, it still doesn’t have the same standing as a marriage.
I guess technically adult adoption is an option, in that it is what queer people did for a while in lieu of marriage, but it’s a bad idea for a lot of reasons (not least of which being that you can divorce a spouse but you can’t undo an adoption).
this, THIS is why QPR make me so fucking nervous. i’m not trying to shit on your beautiful poly aroace love affair, i’m asking you HOW WILL THIS RELATIONSHIP HOLD UP IN COURT. cause, news flash: it won’t.
if you have shared bank accounts and a house and a kid with someone who isn’t married to you, they can wipe you out – legally speaking – and you have no recourse. none. you will never see your kid again, unless you’re lucky and contributed half their DNA.
if they have a car accident and end up in hospital, you don’t have a legal right to see them. if they’re in a coma, their parents can pull the plug and adopt that child and you can do nothing.
queers wanted marriage equality not to Be Like Teh Hets, but because it is the most legal protection you can ever have against that bad stuff that comes (and it comes for everyone).
if you don’t have that stuff, if you’re relying on your partners to do the right thing forever and be perfect people and never have a business collapse or a messy family situation or an accident or even to get sick … you’re being really, really naïve.
Pre-legal-gay-marriage, I saw this happen. I was on a parenting board and one day a woman we’d posted with for years told us her partner and one of their children had died in a car accident. And because she wasn’t the biological parent of the surviving child – the child she’d been a parent to since conception – her ex’s parents took custody and took the child away and kept her from seeing that child. Ever.
Because here’s the thing: children are not property. Specifically, in estate law, children are not, and cannot be “Real Property.” You cannot bequeath them like furniture, books, and bank accounts.
“But my will states who I want as guardian!” You say.
Welp. That statement is, in law, only a (strong) suggestion. A judge still still have to rule on guardianship of your minor child, and you cannot, from the grave, dictate where they end up.
Again: Children are not real property. If you are not their biological or legal parent, the state can remove them from your custody and hand them to someone more closely related, or not related at all but merely less gay, less queer, less “inappropriate” by your state’s legal standards.
The woman I knew back then was on good term with her not-quite-in-laws. Or thought she was. Because as soon as her partner died, their tune changed 100%, they found anti-gay legal support, and they took that woman’s child from her. Forever.
That’s not my only “my outlaws are great and fine with us and its okay we’re not legally married” story, but it’s probably the most heartbreaking. Though the image of a man who has just lost his partner of 25 years watching his ex-outlaws take ½ of his chairs, ½ of his pillows, ½ of his sheets, ½ of his napkins, ½ of his towels, ½ of his dishes, ½ of his books….. is pretty fucking close. After they made him sit behind “the family” at his partner’s funeral.
My mother was a lifelong Republican, a very conservative Catholic. The thing that pushed her over on legalizing gay marriage was stories about people being in the hospital and their partner of 20 years not being allowed to see them, because they weren’t legally married. She thought that was wrong and unfair.
Also a reminder “get married” does not mean “have a wedding.” You can file the paperwork and get married in a courthouse or office. There doesn’t even need to be a ceremony, you just have to sign some papers. (Bonus: you get access to the legal privileges of marriage as well as the protections, AND you get to stick it to the billion dollar “wedding industry” that preys on us all.)
There isn’t ever going to be a “right” answer on abortion. Why? Because all the arguments surrounding it are better left to questions of philosophy and personal belief that codified law. “When does life begin?” is a concept on par with “What is the meaning of life?”
Whether you define it as the merging of two haploid gametes to form a diploid embryo, the emergence of a fetal heartbeat, the ability to live (with or without assistance) outside the womb, or the moment a breath is drawn, the line between life and non-life is debatable.
What it is to even be alive is debatable. Every entry-level high school biology class usually starts the semester by posing the question “What is life?” Scientists have proposed hundreds of ways to define it, but none have been widely accepted. Most definitions usually boil down to a set of criteria about what life should be able to do and these lists always include things like grow, reproduce, adapt, and generate metabolic processes for self-sustaining energy.
But these lists always fail because they run into exceptions. Mules, the hybrid off-spring of horses and donkeys, are always sterile due to a mismatch of chromosomes. They cannot reproduce, but few rational people would argue a mule isn’t a living thing based on that alone. Similarly, fire checks off all the boxes: it requires oxygen and fuel, and it grows, moves, and spreads. Are viruses alive if they require a host to grow and reproduce? What about parasites? So anyone who dares to argue that “science says life begins at conception” clearly slept through the first day of biology class where the instructor was forced to confess we can’t even agree on a universal definition of what life is, let alone when it begins.
There is always so much emphasis on when life begins but believe it or not, the concept of when life ends is equally murky and an often-ignored point of relevance in the “right to life” crusades. Considering everyone who has ever been alive either has died or will die at some point, it is a wonder we do not focus more attention on the boundary between what separates the living from the dead.
In the U.S., the American Bar Association and American Medical Association came to the consensus that an individual is dead when they have sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem.
The SARS-Cov-2 pandemic gave the public greater awareness of medical advances like ventilators and ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation). If according to the ABA and AMA’s definitions, if a person requires a machine to circulate their blood and breathe for them, isn't the only thing deciding whether they are dead or alive a matter of a physician's opinion on whether their condition is reversible?
Are they dead? Or are they, as the Princess Bride handily put it, mostly dead? If you unplug the machines, have you committed murder, or are you letting nature take its inevitable course? Similarly, you remove an embryo or a fetus from a womb, have you committed murder, or are you letting nature take its inevitable course?
To those who think the debates surrounding abortion aren’t relevant to them because they lack a uterus, are beyond their childbearing years, or wouldn’t personally seek an abortion if an unwanted pregnancy occurred, consider that a lesser-known facet of the right to life movement involves the right to die. Because anti-abortion activists are deeply entrenched in decisions involving the end of life too.
In the early-2000s, Terry Schiavo became a pawn at the intersection of the right-to-life versus right-to-die movements. Doctors declared she was in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery and her husband wanted to remove life support. Schiavo’s parents, informed by their Catholic beliefs surrounding suicide, sued to keep the machines on, despite Terry Schiavo herself making it clear that she would never want to live in a vegetative state prior to the sudden cardiac arrest that resulted in her condition.
A lot more could be said about the details of her specific case, but what it boils down to is that her parents violated the bodily autonomy of their daughter by forcing her to endure years of artificial life support for the comfort of their religious views. We should all consider what we might want for ourselves in such a tragic situation, then imagine what it would be like to have our wishes ignored because they violated someone else’s deeply held religious beliefs.
So even if you cannot commiserate with someone seeking an abortion because you would never find yourself in that position, consider how you might feel having the right to make decisions about your body taken away because it might upset someone else’s god. Then remember that it actually does happen frequently, even outside of well-publicized cases like Terry Schiavo’s.
In the United States, we have freedom of religion guaranteed to us by the first amendment. We also have an implied freedom FROM religion. Our right to private beliefs doesn’t extend to forcing others to behave in ways that conform to our beliefs. Unfortunately, a common false equivalence often stems from this argument where believers argue, “My religion says murder is wrong and so if we aren’t allowed to live by the tenets of my religion, that means we have to accept murder.”
No. Virtually every society in recorded history has taken a pretty dim view on snuffing out actual living people without just cause. Setting aside massive detour arguments about the death penalty, war, self-defense, and euthanasia, pretty much every civilization since the time of ancient Babylon has held that you can’t just walk up to someone on the street and stab them because you feel like it.
Crimes like murder and robbery have been almost always universally unacceptable throughout recorded history, including those pre-dating the religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. In modern society, we consider acts like murder and robbery to be crimes not because religion tells us we must, but because humanity has always abhorred them as detrimental to the fabric of a peaceful, functioning society. The fact that the Ten Commandments also forbids them is redundant and irrelevant.
Meanwhile, the "crime" of abortion has never been universally reviled and considering it on par with actual murder is a relatively new concept. Up until the early 20th century, English common law and the early laws of the U.S. held that life began upon the mother's awareness of fetal movement, or quickening. Notorious female pirate Anne Bonney delayed her execution by "pleading her belly," indicating that she was experiencing "the quickening" and thus couldn't be executed. It would have been seen as perfectly acceptable to execute her (and by extension, her unborn child) prior to that.
Lock 100 Americans in a room today and ask them if it's wrong to intentionally kill someone without provocation or self-defense, 100 out of 100 would call it murder. Ask those same people what they think about terminating a pregnancy, you'd probably get 100 different answers on where and how a line should be drawn. There is a consensus on many crimes, but there nothing approaching a universal line of decency on when or if abortion is a crime. According to the Pew Research Center, 61% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37% believe it should be illegal in all or most cases, with almost all of those opposed being Catholics and Evangelical Protestants.
To be fair, I am not religious and my opinions surrounding abortion are informed by personal experience and my understanding of science and medicine. While there are non-religious arguments to be made against abortion, most of them are rooted in religion. And while the Supreme Court recently concluded that abortion isn’t a right explicitly enumerated in the Constitution and therefore isn’t a right, abortion is also a concept never once mentioned in the Bible. Not every atheist is pro-choice, but not every believer is anti-abortion either. But to be honest, when I put myself in the shoes of a person of faith, if I really truly believed that God doesn’t make mistakes and makes everything happen for a reason, I would probably consider abortion to be murder. And all abortions, for any reason.
Got pregnant by your abusive boyfriend? It’s God’s plan. Got pregnant at thirteen by your drunk father? The Lord works in mysterious ways. Got pregnant on purpose and then found out your baby has a condition incompatible with life? God has a lesson for you in this suffering. Had a baby with a life-threatening heart condition? God makes everything happen for a reason—wait, are we allowed to try to fix the baby’s heart if God doesn’t make mistakes, or is the journey of long nights in the NICU and multiple surgeries part of God’s plan?
Are we supposed to let the baby die or try to save it? If aborting it in the womb is murder, is letting it be born and not intervening to save it ALSO murder if God made it with a defective heart and God is supposed to be infallible? If we hook it to a bunch of machines and decide the prognosis is really hopeless, is it still murder if we unhook the machines? If we support healthcare systems that don’t allow that baby’s parents to afford treatment, is it murder if they don’t find a way to afford it or just an unfortunate consequence of capitalism? At what point is the cruelty of keeping it alive worse than philosophical arguments about what constitutes murder? And let’s not forget, where does “God’s plan” fit into all of this decision-making?
Going down that train of thought, I am reminded why I am not religious. But even I can acknowledge that for someone who is religious it’s a very valid question to ask, “How can anyone tell me I have to support the legalization of something that I think is tantamount to murder?” Then I remember all the other horrible things society accepts as “necessary evils” of convenience and think it probably wouldn’t be that hard if they tried even just a little.
The American system of agriculture depends on migrant laborers, some of them as young as twelve, toiling in fields for slave wages to give us affordable produce. We keep our meat cheap by relying on the suffering of billions of farmed animals and regardless of what you may think about animal rights, it takes a cold heart and a strong stomach to tour a chicken plant and believe the things that occur there are perfectly acceptable. Slavery and suffering are stitched into the fabric of our imported electronics and clothes. We are killing our planet with carbon emissions and plastics. The list goes on.
I’m not arguing that we should accept these things, merely pointing out that we are all aware they exist and while we may not like them, we tuck them away in the backs of our minds as necessary evils so that we can afford everything from apples to tennis shoes to gas. And one key difference between abortion and all those other things as “necessary evils” is that even if we summoned the social will to abolish them, it wouldn’t come at the cost of telling half the population they don’t have a right to control their own bodies and futures.
So what I am saying is, maybe people who think abortion is murder could try thinking of abortion the way that everyone thinks about all the terrible things that keep our modern way of life going. If you don’t like the way factory animals are treated, don’t eat meat. If you’re worried about the island of floating plastic in the Pacific Ocean, use a metal straw. If you If you think abortion is murder, don’t get one.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Voren is quintessentially Vulcan. Born of a pon farr-induced tryst to parents who didn’t want him and raised in a family that didn’t accept him, logic was always a companion when he had nothing else.
Saeva’s ears may be pointed, but she’s never considered herself Vulcan. After spending her childhood on a war-ravaged colony world and her youth under the tutelage of a Nausicaan smuggler, it’s fair to say logic has never been a factor in any of her many mistakes.
One seeking purpose. The other seeking redemption. When chance lands them both aboard the USS Enterprise, instincts draw them together despite deep cultural differences in ways they cannot control.
Beyond the secretive atmosphere of Vulcan, pon farr exists in a place between rumor and fantasy, contrived into plotlines and punchlines alike. Yet for Vulcans who suffer from it, the time of mating is a fight for survival that often culminates in broken hearts, broken families, broken lives. As Voren will discover, Vulcan logic may be the key to serenity but Vulcan biology always exacts a price.
Rating: Explicit
Category: F/M
Fandoms:
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (TV)
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek
Relationships:
Vulcan Characters/Vulcan Characters (Star Trek)
Original Vulcan Character(s)/Original Character(s)
Additional Tags: Pon Farr | Pon Farr Aftermath (Star Trek) | Explicit Sexual Content | Strangers to Lovers | Lovers to Friends | Star-crossed | V'tosh ka'tur | Fuck Or Die | Love Triangles | Vulcan Mind Melds | Vulcan Culture | Vulcan Biology | Sex Education | Awkward Sexual Situations | Awkward First Times | Sexual Tension
Hey there! Just wanted to say you were one of the two people who got me into seriously writing for Trek, and your Sarek and Amanda content was genuinely some of the best literature I’ve seen.
How can I even respond to this? They should make specific words for occasions when a simple “thank you” doesn’t do it.
I’ve gotten back into writing some after a long hiatus and I’ve missed it, but more and more I find myself wanting to improve my writing mechanics and finally strike out into original fiction.
It is an honor to know that I was a catalyst in provoking someone else to be creative. 🙂
Hey! Would you happen to have any fic recs for sarek/amanda? I love your stories, and I'd love to see more of the two of them but I'm having trouble finding complete fics that I like (other than yours).
Regrettably, no. I've been away from fandom for so long and am only just now easing back into it.
It looks like people stopped adding much to the Sarek/Amanda archive which is a bummer, but a quick glance at the Amanda Grayson/Sarek tag on AO3 tells me other writers have picked up where I left off and I'm honestly really excited.
I haven't read any of them yet because I haven't seen Discovery since the 2nd season and haven't watched any of Strange New Worlds or Picard and so I feel like I'm setting myself up for spoilers. This fandom was so much easier to write for when canon wasn't exploding by leaps and bounds every week but I'm too excited about new content to be mad.
But even before that, I was never the best fan and did a lot more writing than reading because there are only so many hours in the day. :|
