we’re here for every parent and every baby.

 

Timor, we’re here for every parent and every baby.   After speaking with our community, we recently found almost two thirds of partners who experience pregnancy or baby loss said they need help to open up and 74% said support simply isn’t available for them.    We understand how hard loss can be to navigate as a family, especially without the right support for both parents, and knew something had to change.   Which is why, with the help of our midwives, we’ve created a new online hub of information to help partners like Paul, whose daughter Maddie was sadly born without a heartbeat.   “I’m a soldier, I’ve got a medal on my chest and everyone asks about that, but nobody asks about my daughter. There’s no medal for losing a child – maybe there should be.” Read Paul's story

Our new hub has tailored information, advice and stories for partners at every stage of the pregnancy journey – from pre-conception, fertility, pregnancy birth and loss.

Hi Timor, I appreciate you so much! You are giving babies like Shana’s a chance.

 

Hi Timor, I appreciate you so much! You are giving babies like Shana’s a chance. When I heard her story, I knew I had to share it with you. It’s just one example of how God is using your compassion and love for life to rescue mothers and their babies from the pain of abortion through our Option Ultrasound program. Option Ultrasound is a donor-funded program that equips pregnancy medical centers with ultrasound machines and nurses’ sonography training to introduce mothers considering abortion to the child growing in their womb. Shana was pregnant and set on getting an abortion when she walked by a pregnancy medical center equipped with an ultrasound machine made possible by friends like you. She glanced at the sign offering free ultrasounds. One of the workers happened to be outside and saw Shana’s glance. She raced to catch up with the young woman. “Do you need a pregnancy test?” she asked. “No, I just need information on an abortion,” Shana replied. The expectant mom agreed to a free ultrasound and stepped into the pregnancy medical center — and that’s where she met her child. Shana saw an active, fully formed baby bouncing around and rubbing its face with its hands on the screen. Shana couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She said, “Oh my, it’s a baby!” Right then, Shana changed her mind. Instead of abortion, she decided to make an adoption plan. The pregnancy medical center helped her make arrangements. For many women like Shana, one look at the precious life growing inside of them is all it takes to soften their hearts and choose life. According to our research, more than 54% of abortion-minded women who receive counseling and an ultrasound choose life.  With the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion now becomes a state matter, and the opportunity for mothers considering abortion to see the life growing inside of them is more critical than ever. Shana’s baby had a chance to live because of friends like you. You not only saved the baby’s life, but you also saved Shana from making a mistake that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Timor, thank you again for saving the baby and mom through your compassionate support. Jim Daly President, Focus on the Family *Name in the story changed to protect identity.

Focus on the Family 8605 Explorer Dr., Colorado Springs, CO 80920 1-800-A-FAMILY (232-6459)

Dear MoveOn member,

 Dear MoveOn member, 

Last week, the far-right Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and in response to that, it is easy to fall into despair. But we want to tell you that there is still hope, and there are actions we can all take right now to help fight back.

MoveOn has been preparing for this for months, and we have built out a midterm election program that is laser-focused on the states and races that will have the biggest impact on alleviating the suffering which the loss of Roe has caused.

Today, we're asking you to donate $3 directly to the gubernatorial campaigns for Stacey Abrams in Georgia, Katie Hobbs in Arizona, Beto O'Rourke in Texas, and Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan. Please click here to chip in now. 100% of your donation will go directly to their campaigns.

Why these races?

All four of these states had trigger bans on the books, and in the three that currently have Republican governors (Arizona, Georgia, and Texas), abortion is now banned.

In Michigan, the only reason that abortion remains legal is because Governor Whitmer is personally leading the charge to fight against the law and stop it from being implemented.

And that is why we need to re-elect Gov. Whitmer and flip Arizona, Georgia, and Texas blue—so that the most powerful elected officials can use their power to stop these bans and ensure that reproductive rights in their states are protected.

Will you split a $3 donation between their campaigns today? 100% of your donation will go directly to their campaigns.

Stacey Abrams, Beto O'Rourke, and Katie Hobbs have all joined Governor Whitmer in committing to repealing the bans in their states and defending reproductive rights. If they lose, the consequences will be dire.

The Trump-endorsed GOP candidate for governor in Arizona has vowed to pass new laws in the state that would make abortion illegal even in the cases of rape, incest, or when continuing the pregnancy would cause the death of the pregnant person.¹

In the moments after last Friday's decision, Georgia GOP candidate and current Governor Brian Kemp directed his office to work to immediately implement a previously blocked law banning all abortions in Georgia after six weeks, long before most people know they're pregnant.²

The current leader in the GOP primary in Michigan not only says she agrees with the state's trigger ban, but she has also spread baseless, dangerous conspiracy theories about Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health care providers.³

And in Texas, Greg Abbott cheered on the decision, celebrating the total ban on abortion beginning at conception, with no exception for rape or incest, which will go into effect across the state in the coming days.⁴

Without the protection of Roe at the federal level, it is absolutely essential that states have strong leaders who will fight to protect the right to bodily autonomy for the people of their states. This is one of the most concrete ways that we can fight back against the radical, pro-forced-birth agenda of the GOP.

Tiumothy, will you join us and chip in $3 right now to help elect Beto O'Rourke, Stacey Abrams, Katie Hobbs, and Gretchen Whitmer? 100% of your donation will go straight to their campaigns.

Thanks for all you do.

–Mana, Emma, Nakia, Rahna, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "How Far Will The Arizona GOP Candidates for Governor Go to Attack Reproductive Freedoms?" Democratic Governors Association, May 16, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/164007?t=5&akid=326714%2E38938583%2EtXX8p0

2. Tweet by Stacey Abrams, June 26, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/164008?t=7&akid=326714%2E38938583%2EtXX8p0

3. "Tudor Dixon Used the First Debate of the Republican Gubernatorial Primary to Praise Michigan's Dangerous 1931 Abortion Ban As A ‘Good Law,'" MI Dems, May 17, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/164009?t=9&akid=326714%2E38938583%2EtXX8p0

4. "Here's how Gov. Greg Abbott, Beto O'Rourke will use abortion ruling in the Texas governor's race," Houston Chronicle, June 24, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/164010?t=11&akid=326714%2E38938583%2EtXX8p0

Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.  Pol. Adv. paid for with regulated funds by MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, PO Box 96142, Washington, DC, 20090.

Want to support MoveOn's work? Donald Trump's preparations for being able to steal the presidency in 2024 are well underway and include working to replace top election officials in battleground states with his own loyalists. Which is why MoveOn is doing something we've never done in our 23-year history: We're launching a powerful, multimillion-dollar effort to defeat Trump-backed secretaries of state across the country and elect individuals who will count every vote and ensure fair elections.

Will you chip in to power our campaign to defeat Trump and protect our elections in 2022?

Click here to chip in $3, or whatever you can afford.

---

PAID FOR BY MOVEON . ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

This email was sent to Tiumothy on June 28, 2022. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. MoveOn's privacy policy was recently updated. To read our new privacy policy, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.

America divided

 

Dear Reader, The story of “America divided” has played out in the media and political news for decades. Isn’t it time to find areas of agreement and common evolution on moral and political attitudes? One striking trend line is with regard to animal rights at the ballot box. Whether it’s Florida or California, Massachusetts or Missouri, it turns out that animal rights have won 70 percent of the time at the ballot box over the past three decades. That’s a political supermajority. The potential for building a wider moral consensus in a divided country from an animal rights perspective is worth exploring. The Independent Media Institute’s Earth | Food | Life project gives readers a path to consider the lives of the animals who are raised for our food or who share our environments, as you’ll see in IMI’s recent stories below. It’s important to keep in mind these and other moral issues that unite this country under the surface, even as the divisions and challenges facing society continue to build. Check out the recent work our journalists have been up to:

Pictured: Steven Rosenfeld, Editor, Chief Correspondent and Senior Writing Fellow

During the 2022 midterm election year, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested. As Americans gear up to vote Tuesday, November 8, Steven Rosenfeld, Voting Booth’s editor, chief correspondent, and senior writing fellow, reliably provides the play-by-play. In his recent reporting, he notes that while the far right gains ground in the East, out West among the five states that held their 2022 primary elections on May 17, a string of GOP candidates for office who deny the 2020 presidential election results and embrace various conspiracies were rejected by Republicans who voted for more mainstream conservatives. And yet, Pennsylvania state legislator Douglas Mastriano, an election denier and white nationalist, won the gubernatorial primary with votes from less than 7 percent of the 9 million registered voters in Pennsylvania. Unlike many Republican candidates who are mimicking Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, or who initially rejected Trump’s claims but are now flirting with conspiracy theorists, Maricopa County’s top elected Republicans called out Arizona’s attorney general, Republican Mark Brnovich, for lying about the 2020 election. Meanwhile, Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who in November 2020 refused Donald Trump’s demand to “find” the votes for the ex-president to win the state and defended the accuracy of Georgia’s results and recounts, is “being bent to the will” of 2020 election deniers as his May 24 primary approached, civil rights advocates say. Rosenfeld’s reporting remains an independent account of the truth that is essential to restoring shared public faith in democracy.

Pictured: Sonali Kolhatkar, Chief Correspondent and Writing Fellow

Reproductive health care, global warming, and student loan debt are among the numerous social justice issues that are at stake. New York Times bestselling author and Economy for All writing fellow Thom Hartmann dissects Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Dobbs v. Jackson draft opinion, the abortion case that could reverse Roe, concluding that at its heart, it’s just insidious religious doctrine. The abortion battle is not just about religion, however; Hartmann also argues that the abortion firestorm is also a dangerous racist panic about the end of white supremacy in America. Student debt, like medical debt or the inability to pay increasing rents, is just another feature of a capitalist, market-driven system designed to ensure the health of Wall Street over the wellness of people. And those financial stresses affect people of color the most, writes Economy for All chief correspondent and writing fellow Sonali Kolhatkar in “Why Canceling Student Debt Is a Matter of Racial Justice.” “It’s time to end this collective financial burden, and the president can do so with the stroke of a pen,” she writes. Climate change too is the result of a deadly calculus: human lives are worth risking and even losing over the profits of global corporations. It’s a no-brainer for the world to quickly and without delay transition to renewable energy sources, writes Kolhatkar, in light of the World Meteorological Organization’s alarming conclusion about how close we are to reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and facing the most dangerous impacts of climate change. Instead, President Biden has fallen woefully short on his campaign promises to address the climate crisis and failed to stand up to corporate interests. But while the market-driven economy favors environmental doom, public opinion is on the side of science.

Pictured: Reynard Loki, Editor, Chief Correspondent and Writing Fellow

Can we abandon pollutive fossil fuels and avoid an energy crisis? It’s a question asked by Earth | Food | Life contributor Richard Heinberg, senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and the author of Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival. “When it comes to maintaining energy flows, there is a closing window to avert both climate catastrophe and economic peril,” he writes. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s response of imposing sanctions on Russia are forcing a reckoning, and yet we treat these fuels as though they were an inexhaustible birthright; but they are, of course, finite and depleting substances. Energy is often an area where a narrative of division prevails, and yet what’s essential for the environment is inextricably linked to what’s good for the energy industry in the long run. Meanwhile, monkeys infected with transmissible diseases are being trucked across the United States, writes EFL contributor Lisa Jones-Engel, a primate scientist and Fulbright scholar who has conducted academic research on the consequences of infectious diseases moving between human and macaque populations. Highly emotional and intelligent, macaques are seed dispersers, making them a keystone species in the environment. They are being rounded up from forests and urban areas and shipped thousands of miles across the globe, ostensibly to provide us with lifesaving treatments and vaccines. Despite macaques’ vast immunological and biological differences from humans, the cruel and unethical extraction of macaques from Asia for use in biomedical research is a multibillion-dollar industry that is pushing them over the edge. Perhaps to truly learn about nature, life, and love, we need to build better relationships with our nonhuman family. In an excerpt from Sy Montgomery’s book The Hawk’s Way produced for the web by EFL and Atria Books, the naturalist and bestselling author describes the crucial role and sharpness of the vision of birds based on their eye size in proportion to their bodies. And because of our differing brain circuitry, birds capture at a glance what it might take us many seconds to apprehend. For birds, seeing is being. “Too often humans see through our brains, not through our eyes,” writes Montgomery. “This is such a common human failing that we joke about the absent-minded professor or the artist so focused on an imagined canvas that they walk into a tree.”

The IMI team is hard at work producing these and many other important stories. Please join our cause to produce media that can change the world. And in case you missed it, here is more of our most recent work:

How Small Farms Are Reclaiming Culture in Palestine April M. Short - May 24, 2022 - Local Peace Economy GOP Split: Far Right Gains Ground in East, While Losing Out West Steven Rosenfeld - May 20, 2022 - Voting Booth Monkeys Infected With Transmissible Diseases Are Trucked Across U.S. Lisa Jones-Engel - May 17, 2022 - Earth | Food | Life As the Planet Warms, Let’s Be Clear: We Are Sacrificing Lives for Profits Sonali Kolhatkar - May 14, 2022 - Economy for All God on His Side? Doug Mastriano’s Rise in Pennsylvania’s GOP Gubernatorial Primary Steven Rosenfeld - May 13, 2022 - Voting Booth The Art of Building a Human-Hawk Relationship Sy Montgomery - May 10, 2022 - Earth | Food | Life Abortion: Why Is the Court Using Religious Belief to Alter What Should Be Secular Law? Thom Hartmann - May 10, 2022 - Economy for All Maricopa GOP Leaders Call Out Arizona Attorney General for Stolen Election Lies Steven Rosenfeld - May 9, 2022 - Voting Booth Why Canceling Student Debt Is a Matter of Racial Justice Sonali Kolhatkar - May 8, 2022 - Economy for All How Collectives Are Empowering People to Understand the Tricky Financial Side of Life Aric Sleeper - May 4, 2022 - Local Peace Economy Georgia SOS Raffensperger Flirts With Trump Propagandists in Reelection Campaign Steven Rosenfeld - May 4, 2022 - Voting Booth