No one can force you to use your body to save their life

My Sunday movie was Mank, the story of Herman Mankiewicz and the writing of Orson Welles’ most famous movie. Yeah, Mank did the writing. Welles got most of the credit. The writing happened in the late 1930s at a ranch in the California desert. Much of the movie is flashbacks about what prompted Mank to write a veiled skewering of William Randolph Hearst. What did that prompting was the old battle of those with power protecting that power. The 1934 campaign for governor of California had a Republican whose name I don’t remember and Upton Sinclair as the Democratic candidate. I remember reading one of Sinclair’s books in high school that featured descriptions of the meatpacking industry that brought regulations protecting what we eat. Yeah, Sinclair was on the side of the common man and has socialist sympathies. Louis B. Mayer, a friend of Hearst and head of MGM Studio, created videos (I suppose at the time they were called newsreels) to sway public opinion. Many scenes used actors to pretend to be a voice from the street. I enjoyed this one. Mank was usually quite good with a comeback line and it’s an interesting story. A lot of the actors portray real people and it was at times hard to keep them straight. At other times I think, yeah, I’ve heard that name, so why is he famous? I finished the book The Guncle by Steven Rowley. A guncle is a gay uncle. In this case it is Patrick (never Pat because that sounds too straight). He had loved Joe, who had been killed in an auto accident. Patrick had been a TV star and when his series ended he moved to Palm Springs to get away from LA. Patrick’s best friend was Sara, who ended up marrying Patrick’s brother Greg. When Sara died Greg realized he needed to go into rehab and asked Patrick to take his children Maisie, 9, and Grant, 6 in the meantime. Patrick refused, until his sister Clara said she’d take them. Then he wanted to make sure Clara didn’t. This story could have been the hapless gay guy faced with caring for children. It wasn’t. Patrick turned out to be reasonably competent at the parenting thing. Patrick had another thing going for him – he knew grief, though he hadn’t yet dealt with it, and could begin to guide the kids through theirs. It wasn’t all about grieving. He and the kids had some fun times too. Patrick instituted Guncle Rules. An early one was when Maisie saw Patrick’s caftans and was sure they were dresses. This was when Maisie hated the swim suit Aunt Clara had packed. This rule (and I’m paraphrasing) is there are no girls clothes and no boys clothes. There are only comfortable clothes. That’s a nice thing for an uncle to teach. I enjoyed this book. In addition to being a good story it is also quite well written. There were several times when I thought a cultural reference (and there were many) might not be so well understood a few decades from now. I’ve accumulated a bunch of browser tabs about abortion. I’ll get through as many as I can within today’s writing time. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine who discussed the filibuster. It matches what Moscow Mitch wants to get done. Not surprising since he shaped it. The things Mitch wants passed, tax cuts and spending cuts, get passed. Things Mitch wants blocked are blocked. That includes both new regulations and what he considers radical measures, such as a national abortion ban. That last bit is obvious from the way they talk about the leak of the draft Supreme Court ruling and not the contents of the draft. Hunter of Kos reported that Clarence Thomas complained about that leak. Thomas said it is the worst thing to happen in his career. Hunter added that’s a career of stripping away American civil rights. So no sympathy. If I felt I had more time (and a lot fewer things I want to blog about) I’d go more into Hunter’s complaints about Thomas and Alito. And into the New York Times for saying the leaker was being rude to Thomas and that rudeness could lead to the destruction of democracy. Hey, NYT, Thomas and Alito are already got that covered. Hunter discussed a story from Mother Jones about Brighton, New York and their opposition to a new Planned Parenthood clinic in their neighborhood. I can described the basic outline from Mother Jones (though I only read Hunter’s discussion). You’ll have to read Hunter’s post to take in his disdain for the people being described. The basic argument of the residents is that all the aborted fetuses would be flushed down the toilet where it would clog and pollute their pristine waterways. Don’t they understand what happens to the other stuff we put in a toilet? The other complaint is that the clinic would attract undesirables to loiter and play loud music as they smoke marijuana. Sheesh, nope. Hanging out at the abortion clinic is not high on anyone’s idea of a great Friday night. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary:

If Kavanaugh doesn't like the way people in his state are gathering outside his house, maybe he can just take off work and drive hundreds of miles to a different state. —Samantha Bee Just do the nine [months] and plop. Do your nine, leave it on the sidewalk, wrap it up like a little Moses, put it in a little basket and send it down the crick. … Just give it to a stork, and the stork will give it to a lesbian. I would think the lesbians would be happy because now there's more babies to adopt—'til we ban that, too. Come on, ladies, it's just nine. It's not even ten, so just do your nine and dump. —Justice Amy Coney-Barrett, channeled by Kate McKinnon on SNL

In another C&J column, Bill quoted Molly Ivins from 1984:

The other day at the Southern Legislators Conference, as I was attempting to point out that Canada has a sane, effective and cheap system of national health insurance, I was told: “Canada practices low-tech medicine. Why, in Thunder Bay, women have to have babies with no anesthetic.” ... It takes a lot to startle a Canadian. Understatement is their national art form, calmness is their national mode, and their national motto is “Now, let’s not get excited.” Canada, Land of Low Blood Pressure. I think they even have a law against rolling their eyes. Even so, I wish you could have heard the reactions over the phone from successive layers of bureaucrats at McKellar Hospital in Thunder Bay, Ontario, when I called to ask if the assertion were true. They variously and politely gasped, strangled, wheezed and giggled.

I’ve heard this basic argument before, though not this forcefully and directly. Liberal in a Red State of the Kos community wrote there is a simple response to the forced birth crowd: No one can force you to use your body to save their life. If a person is injured and rapidly losing blood in front of you no one can force you to donate blood. No one can force you to donate a lung or a kidney. Even after you die you must have previously given written permission for anyone to harvest your organs. In the same way no one should be allowed to force the use your uterus for nine months. That means the argument about when life begins is meaningless. No matter if the fetus is six weeks or twenty six weeks, no matter if it is considered a potential life or a full life, you should not be forced to allow that life to use your uterus if you don’t want it to. I and the author use twenty six weeks rather than forty because abortions in that time are rare and happen because the fetus is clearly no longer viable or the mother’s life in in clear danger. It’s her blood, she can say no. It’s her kidney, she can say no. It’s her uterus, she can say no. Anything else and it is an imposition of religious belief or a misleading argument. So, Democrats, there’s your argument. Use it. Leila Fadel and Allison Aubrey of NPR talked to employees of CHI, a maker of overhead garage doors in Arthur, IL with about 800 employees. The discussion was about what that company is doing about employee mental health. That’s a big topic as companies across the country try to attract and maintain employees. As part of an ownership change several years ago each employee was given a small ownership stake. More importantly, each employee got a say in how the workplace should change. First up: lunch. There were no healthy options near the factory. The employees asked for an on-site canteen to make fresh and affordable food. Next: health. They asked for an on-site health clinic. No need to take time off for urgent care. Perhaps next is a gym. It was more than food, health, and exercise. Those sorts of changes in other places don’t produce meaningful change. Manager Jay Scamihorn said:

I do think we get more out of these employees because they are making their decisions. They're solving their own problems. They have somebody to support them when they bring an idea forward. The idea that we didn't have a place to eat for lunch and we built a cafeteria, I think that empowers people. I think they feel like, hey, they're listening to me. And they're going to be more productive because of that.

How productive? Management recently called everyone into a meeting for profit sharing. Not thousands per employee. Not tens of thousands. But hundreds of thousands. The average for hourly workers was more than $175,000. The amount was based on seniority and wages. One long time truck driver got close to a half million. For many this is life-changing money. They can pay off debts, like mortgages and college loans. See what can happen when management listens to employees.