There’s a saying that, if you’re online more than just the bare minimum, you’ve probably heard: “I never thought the leopards would eat my face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces party.
In a similar vein, this New Yorker cartoon:
Today, a ProPublica story about a woman miscarrying a 17-week fetus, unable to get the D&C she needs to avoid the possibility of a life-threatening infection:
Raised Baptist in a Republican family, Waldorf struggled to understand what the doctors were saying as waves of grief hit her. How could an abortion ban aimed at women who wanted to end their pregnancies keep doctors from helping a woman who didn’t?
Waldorf didn’t oppose abortion, but she had never considered that the law could apply to her. Her father was a doctor. This was the hospital where she had worked for the past six years. The OB-GYN team treating her had delivered her daughter, and some of them lived blocks from her parents. She was a highly educated 38-year-old woman with connections to the governor. As she lay in a hospital bed, worried that infection could enter her uterus at any moment, she finally understood the ban now applied to anyone losing a baby.
I’m being too hard on this woman, comparing her to the sheep. Her only mistake was assuming she would somehow be different, because she actually needed an abortion, unlike all the women who abort pregnancies…I dunno, recreationally, maybe. Honestly, she is fully aware of the madness of the situation she was in, sitting in a hospital waiting to pass a nearly dead fetus, the infection risk growing by the hour. She becomes feverish, but her temperature has to be past 100.4 before doctors can take action to save her. She has a 17-week fetus, a broken amniotic sac, zero chance of anything other than miscarriage weeks before the outer edge of viability, because the fetus still has a whisper of a heartbeat.
It’s an enraging story. Bottom line: Don’t get pregnant in Arkansas. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will shine you on.
In other, happier news, it is finally summer, more or less. The weekend was chilly and rainy and then, on Monday, the sun broke through and we had a fine Memorial Day. Let’s hope the rest of the summer is pleasant; we certainly had a shitty enough spring.
Out for a bike ride.
Dorothy said on May 27, 2026 at 1:01 pm
I have so much to be enraged by these days, I’m afraid I’m going to have to take a pass on reading that article. As someone who had an abortion in July 1975, knowing that these days there are so many restrictions and threats and punishments facing women who have to make the same agonizing choice, I simply cannot set myself up to get more upset than I already am. How is it possible that our country is going backwards and this is what many people seem to WANT?! If I could scream I would. But it would not make a difference.
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Suzanne said on May 27, 2026 at 1:23 pm
Living in a very red state, and for years in a rural area, I can tell you from personal experience that most of the pro-lifers I met are stunningly naive. Like the woman in the article, they think abortion laws only apply to basically someone who gets pregnant by having unprotected unmarried sex and doesn’t want to bother with the baby that is conceived. The topic of anti-abortion laws came up once when I was with a group of women and when I mentioned that any laws would have to be written very carefully to avoid having anyone who miscarried coming under suspension of criminality. “Oh, that would never happen!” was pretty much the group reply. I spoke to an elderly woman once who told me she had had a D &C after a miscarriage many years before. “Did I do the right thing? Did I kill my baby?” she asked.
So that story does not surprise me one single bit.
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Sherri said on May 27, 2026 at 2:11 pm
This scenario can happen even in a blue state with explicit abortion protections, because so many hospitals have been taken over by Catholics. A Catholic hospital won’t automatically do the D&C, without approval from the ethics committee, which follows the Ethical and Religious Directives written by the US Council of Bishops.
If there is still cardiac activity in the fetus, a Catholic-owned hospital won’t approve the D&C, until the woman shows sufficient signs of infection. Women can transfer to another hospital which will, but in some areas, that new hospital may be hours away and out of network for a woman’s insurance.
Around 1 in 6 emergency beds in the country are in Catholic hospitals. In some rural areas, there might now be another option.
Abortion bans don’t “save” children, they kill women. Maternal deaths are on the rise in states with abortion bans.
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Deborah said on May 27, 2026 at 4:35 pm
I had no idea when I was pregnant with LB how dangerous pregnancy can be. But reading all the books and watching movies where mothers die in childbirth or right after makes me wonder why I didn’t think about that more. I was under normal Drs care and it all seemed so natural and normal, I never gave it a thought. I worried way more about what could happen to a fetus/baby than I did about myself. I can’t say I enjoyed pregnancy like I hear some women say, I was a stress bucket but I’m that way most of the time so nothing new there. And I was very young, I was only 24 when LB was born.
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Heather said on May 27, 2026 at 7:14 pm
Jesus. This paragraph (trigger warning for graphic language/mental image):
“When the baby started to emerge, the doctor said, Waldorf shouldn’t pull too hard or she could rip the baby’s head off. She would need to cut the umbilical cord herself and return to the hospital for care in a diaper, her fetus wrapped in towels and the cord hanging between her legs.”
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tajalli said on May 27, 2026 at 8:30 pm
I just finished watching Misbehavior, the story of the women’s liberation disruption of the 1970 Miss World contest. 76 years have passed and we’re still circling the drain.
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EDMUND TOBIN said on May 27, 2026 at 10:37 pm
Lurker lately, but longtime reader who appreciates your writing and photos, and respects your service as a lifeguard.
When I saw this from a 2020 New York magazine story, linked to today via Nolan Hicks, thought you and your readers might be interested in the politics and corruption of NYC lifeguarding.
This is the least of it:
Lifeguards were out of control too. They ordered kegs at pools and tapped them while on duty. Coney Island guards threw cocaine-fueled parties and made T-shirts that read WE DRINK, YOU SINK.
Much more here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/peter-stein-nyc-lifeguards.html
It’s a classic long-form magazine story, with lots of sources and juicy details.
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alex said on May 28, 2026 at 7:45 am
That was some amazing reporting, Edmund. I was curious whatever happened to Peter Stein, so I googled it and found that he resigned in 2025 ahead of his disciplinary trial. What a scumbag.
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Jeff Borden said on May 28, 2026 at 9:15 am
This nation IS going backwards…and at high speeds…in every way. All the progress, however halting, made on addressing racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. is under siege. The world is marching forward while we return to the 19th century. America First is, as predicted, becoming America Alone. The mess younger Americans are inheriting is sprawling and growing.
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alex said on May 28, 2026 at 11:10 am
The mess younger Americans are inheriting is sprawling and growing.
I tried to warn my brother’s kids, but they went and voted for Trump and Jill Stein. Those dumbasses are gonna get what they deserve.
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Deborah said on May 28, 2026 at 12:21 pm
Our neighbors upstairs voted for Jill Stein, and to this day they think they taught the Democrats a lesson. Our next door neighbor could not believe they did that and completely lost respect for them. All of our neighbors are liberal, some are off the deep end.
It’s nice being in a liberal bubble though, we used to have a neighbor who was a Trumper, and he was hispanic, I wonder what he thinks now?
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jim said on May 28, 2026 at 12:55 pm
NPR reported this morning that the DOJ is investigating E. Jean Carroll. Claiming she may have committed perjury in a deposition.
Blanche and his asshole brigade are unbelievable.
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Deborah said on May 28, 2026 at 3:08 pm
The white trash White House. I can’t believe they’re having a cage match on the lawn for Trump’s birthday. How tacky can you get? That and all the gilding in the oval. It’s sickening and sad. I do not get fake wrestling, what is the god damned point? It’s absurd. At least nascar is an actual competition, at least I think it is. Maybe that’s fake too? What a bunch of dupes. Idiocracy indeed, watch the movie if you haven’t already.
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David C said on May 28, 2026 at 3:42 pm
They say they need BALLROOM! for security, but this will be out in the open. OK.
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Jeff Gill said on May 28, 2026 at 6:53 pm
Jill Biden is taking flak for some not great quotes, but I want to toss out here something I said in a more conservative quarter and got near hysterical replies back for it — one right-wing critique said oh so archly “the Bidens are worth $10 million, and she’s doing this just to get another $10 million in a book deal and attention trolling, so pathetic.”
Yeah, I think $10 million is a lot of money, too. But. Jill & Joe were worth maybe $2 million in 2016. Their current $10 million is over two-thirds the house in Delaware and a vacation property that is I forget where. Anyhow. They’re land rich, and relatively speaking, cash poor — Jill knows a) Joe will die someday, and b) she’s gotta cover costs. You may have heard security is cut back for them, thanks to the Current Occupant. It’s not my problem, but if she’s got two homes she loves and a few million in the bank… earning another $10 million isn’t greed, it’s stability.
Meanwhile, even the Obamas are widely conceded to have a net worth of at least $70 million. Bush? Anywhere from $50 to $400 million (God bless those trust funds, hard to parse). Clintons? $120 million. Don’t even get me started with the Trump family. Romney is around $300 million, ditto Al Gore; McCain’s widow is worth some $100 million thanks to her father’s beer distributorship. Ironically, Sarah Palin & Kamala Harris appear to be both around $8 million net worth (we could discuss that at length).
My read on the whole Biden family mess boils down to this: in 2016, in a mix of depression & resignation, Joe said to his surviving son & his brother “go ahead, cash in, whatever.” He was done, and left the Senate as he began, one of the “poorest” Senators in his long tenure. If some money came in for his golden years, so what, he was done with politics. It certainly came back to bite him, but he couldn’t see all of the next eight years coming. James & Hunter went to town, thinking they were playing a short hand, and maxed out their bets. Most crapped out, a few went large. Compared to most of the above, it was still chicken feed. Or the other end. Stupid, indefensible, but still a pittance.
That’s my take.
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Sherri said on May 28, 2026 at 8:16 pm
I refuse to listen to any right winger complaining about a politician or their family cashing in, ever again, not with the incredible corruption being tolerated by the GOP in the White House.
I expect that Trump will do anything and everything to stay President forever, because he’ll never make this kind of money any other way.
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Sherri said on May 28, 2026 at 9:09 pm
There’s so much corruption it’s impossible to keep track of it, from Trump recently buying Dell stock in advance of Dell getting a big Pentagon contract, to the ridiculous licensing deal he got for the Palm Beach airport being named for him, to the obvious and straightforward bribe that is TrumpCoin.
He’s really increased his stock transactions this year; guess he figured out that he had lots of inside information and nobody was coming after him for insider trading.
But sure, Jill Biden is the real corruption.
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Jeff Gill said on May 29, 2026 at 7:40 am
Oh, and Dick Cheney on his passing had a net worth of $100 to $150 million. I agree with Sherri’s point, but I also find myself in the odd position of arguing a net worth of $10 million is really pretty modest around the circles they are operating in. And having maybe $5 million in two properties plus $5 million in the bank, plus annual expenses for basic security running as high as a million a year, Jill Biden has every reason to need to make another $10 million off her book.
Having said all that, I find her statements made public so far about Joe’s condition before & after the infamous debate (we won’t hear the whole until Sunday morning) implausible. And both the Biden & Trump case studies will need to be candidly reviewed someday as we try to figure out how to appropriately give oversight to aging presidents in the future . . . as we watch an 80 year old in poor health delaminate in real time.
Meanwhile, my 91 year old mother with major dementia still has long intervals of semi-lucidity that fool new staff at her memory care facility all the time. It’s just not the case that a person with developing cognitive issues is all kersplat and obvious to all at a particular point, and my mother has been clearly delusional & dysfunctional for seven years now. Between my father-in-law’s situation 2019 to 2023 & now my mother’s, I watch Trump with an extra measure of unease. He’s not going to jump up one day on camera and start brushing at himself screaming “get these spiders off of me.” Cognitive decline is one sneaky bastard of an ailment, and it may surge & recede, but it won’t heal itself.
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Julie Robinson said on May 29, 2026 at 11:23 am
What Jeff said, especially the last sentence. I have to keep telling myself these are actually the good old days. In six months I’ll wish things were this good. And they ain’t.
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Sherri said on May 29, 2026 at 2:40 pm
If you count your primary residence in your net worth, then $10 million is not that unusual in many places where housing is expensive. It sounds like a lot, but it’s less than the inheritance tax exclusion (which I think is up to $15 million per person, $30 million for a couple.)
Besides, what is the issue? That she’s writing a book? That a publisher is willing to give her a lot of money to write a book? Who cares?
Back in the very beginning of NBA free agency, the Atlanta Hawks gave a 6 year, $13 million contract to their backup center, a 7 footer name Jon Koncak. The contract was widely derided as overpaying for someone who wasn’t close to a star, but as Koncak said, what am I supposed to do? Turn it down?
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Dexter Friend said on May 30, 2026 at 2:10 pm
I long ago realized women do not need me mansplaining abortion thoughts to them, so…I do not.
But the John F. Kennedy Center is back, sans the Trump signage, thanks to The Contrarians, a DC based group of lawyers who got it done.
On the lively YouTube channel that I appear on live every day, my thought that the gold drapings of DC statues was sure to happen, I was assured The Contrarians are already “on it”.
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alex said on May 31, 2026 at 9:07 am
I subscribe to the Contrarian substack and it’s one place where I know the money is doing some good. They’re challenging Trump in the courts, and though the process may be slow, they always prevail on the merits. They are in fact responsible for the current effort to expose and challenge the wrongdoings that resulted in Trump giving himself a $1.776 billion slush fund.
Meidas Touch keeps e-mailing me with discount offers. The latest one says 50 percent off for a lifetime, but when I click on it, the available packages sure don’t look like any discount to me. Much as I agree with them politically, I find their self-importance a bit tedious and off-putting, which is why I haven’t joined. Their free content is more than enough for me anyway, at least when I have time for it, which I mostly don’t.
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Sherri said on May 31, 2026 at 3:42 pm
Interesting article about how much effort went into carefully crafting an image Bill Gates as Mr. Roger’s, only to have the Epstein files crater all of it.
(Gift link) https://www.wsj.com/business/bill-gates-image-epstein-e0b83243?st=PA1V92&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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