As Trump subverts elections, his most ardent fans want to overturn the 19th Amendment.

On Sunday, Fox News reported, “Calls to repeal women’s rights to vote are emerging from the online firestorm over the Lindsay Clancy trial, prompting Republican women to warn that the intraparty rhetoric could hurt the GOP.”

The fact that this article was published by Fox News was itself noteworthy. Press Baron Rupert Murdoch is one of the few remaining centers of power on the right who is strong enough to pick fights with Trump and his MAGA supporters. In recent years, Murdoch’s outlets have carved out a position for themselves as gatekeepers who work to protect the GOP brand from the most self-destructive impulses of MAGA. One recent example of this phenomenon is the decision to fire (or at least take off the air) the firebrand election denier Maria Bartiromo.

The Fox article was also significant for highlighting how the tragic case of Lindsay Clancy is being exploited by the hard right to justify misogyny. Clancy killed three of her children in 2023. Her legal defense was that she suffered from postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder. Eleven jurors voted to acquit Clancy based on this argument, but one juror resisted, leading to a mistrial.

Nine of the jurors who voted to acquit—presumably because they thought Clancy deserved pity rather than harsh punishment—were women; the lone holdout was a man. The hard right has seized on these facts to justify arguments that women are incapable of reason. The Fox article quoted a post on X that made a common argument: “The female jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial are speaking out about their deliberations and disagreements with the sole male holdout. The more they speak the better they make the case for repealing the 19th Amendment.”

  • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
    6·
    8 hours ago

    Women’s healthcare has been neglected for a long time. Health studies routinely treat women as smaller men. That includes during pregnancy and postpartum care. There are many, many women who have struggled with postpartum depression, and some psychosis, and did not receive any help from their doctors, husbands, families, etc.

    The maternal mortality rate in the US is the highest of any developed nation.

    So there are thousands to millions of women who desperately needed help, who were drowning while having to care for a newborn and possibly other children, with very little to no help at all. They were forced to tough it out. Sometimes being forced to tough out getting scant hours of sleep each night and healing from birth and dealing with postpartum depression leads to mental breaks and psychosis.

    Many mothers can empathize with that feeling of being abandoned and having to put everything ahead of taking care of themselves to their own detriment. We’re often told to lose weight, we’re hysteric, we just need to take a break, whatever when we seek help for women’s health issues. Women are often not taken seriously when we report symptoms.

    Have you read the Lemon Clot story? It is focused on having to entertain guests during the postpartum period, but it’s an eye-opening look at some of the physical ailments women deal with immediately after birth:

    You will be leaking out of places you don’t want to leak out of. Do you really want to stand up from the couch and have your father’s parents see that not only have you bled through your pad, but the blood is now running down your leg. Do you really want to say, “honey, can you come with me to the bathroom, I am bleeding all over and I feel a huge bloodclot coming out”… in front of them? Contrast that to “mom, I need your help please, now, I’m bleeding all over!” Does your husband really understand the volume of stuff that will be coming out of you, the possibility of lemon-sized clots of blood? Not 2-dimensional lemon-sized, but huge, round, 3-dimensional lemon-sized?

    How many bathrooms do you have? If only one, do you REALLY want to have to make it “guest-level clean” every time you leave it? Do you really want this gang of people ogling your diaper-sized pads, peribottle, tucks pads, and all the other supplies that will be in the bathroom? Even if you have two bathrooms, that means you can’t use the main bathroom, because you still have to leave it “guest-level clean” every time you use it.

    Do they really plan to do something other than hold the baby, pass the baby around, and sit around expecting you guys to wait on them? Are they going to sit and stare at you? Thirty minutes after they arrive, and baby wants to breastfeed, are they going to quickly and willingly LEAVE your home so that you can breastfeed in the privacy and comfort of your space? Or are they going to hang around outside, waiting for you to be done, and knocking every so often wanting to know if they can come back in? Yeah, that’s great for breastfeeding.

    Or better yet, are they going to blow you off, saying “it’s no big deal”, and expect you to breastfeed in front of them? Even experienced moms need several weeks of practice to get good at it, so to speak, so that they can breastfeed wherever they want. Learning to breastfeed is not a time for people to ogle and stare at you.

    When your breasts are engorged and painful and you want NOTHING to touch them, what then? Does your [dear husband] think it will be okay for his dad to stare at your huge naked breasts as you walk around topless?

    What if your birth is smack in the middle of their trip? So what are they going to do the first few days, before baby? Are they going to sit and stare at you, waiting for the big moment? Then what? Are they going to camp out in your hospital room every day, all day? Yeah, that’s great for resting. What happens when you leave the hospital and they beat you to your own home, and all you want to do is lay down in your own bed? Are they going to leave graciously, or are they going to sit in your living room, eating your food, messing up your house, and making noise, so you can’t nap?

    Does your [dear husband] understand ANY of these things?? Does he not understand that it is NOT about entertaining guests, but about recovery from a major medical procedure (either vaginal or c-section)? Does he not understand that you just grew another human being in your body, and will have just gone through the process of getting it out?? This is going to be an exhausting, messy, wildly hormonal time. Does he not get that??

    • Stolas@lemmy.ca
      3·
      7 hours ago

      Well, none of this was anything new to me. I have read Lemon Clot as well.

      Again, I’m very sympathetic towards this and a lot of this does apply to Clancy, but she’s also in a different class than most women. She had access to a lot more than the average woman did, hence why I struggle to understand the surge of sympathy towards her in particular.

      This is why I mentioned my possible lack of knowledge on the case.

      • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
        2·
        7 hours ago

        Even with her access to more than the average woman, she didn’t receive adequate care. It’s actually because she’s an affluent white woman that we’re even talking about this case and the overwhelming issues with women’s healthcare that helped lead to this tragedy.

        You can believe that Clancy deserves prison. But to use this case to argue that women and mothers don’t need a better system or better help when they are struggling is my main issue with most conversations surrounding this. Or worse, to argue that women are too emotional and too beholden to our hormones to make rational decisions or to be trusted with our own children.

        This woman asked for help and her family and doctors didn’t do enough. That’s my personal opinion. And having been a woman who was abandoned by her husband and family during a postpartum period, I can empathize with Clancy and what it took to push her to the point of psychosis.

        Postpartum can be an incredibly dark and scary time for women. I would never wish what I went through on my worst enemy.