U.S. military are without a Senate-confirmed leaders because of stupid Tuberville stunt

Three service secretaries to (incompetent!) Tuberville: Stop this dangerous hold on senior officers.  By Carlos Del Toro,  Frank Kendall and Christine Wormuth. Opinion published in The Washington Post*:

Carlos Del Toro is secretary of the Navy. Frank Kendall is secretary of the Air Force. Christine Wormuth is secretary of the Army.

As the civilian leaders of the Navy, Air Force, Space Force and Army, we are proud to work alongside exceptional military leaders who are skilled, motivated and empowered to protect our national security.

These officers and the millions of service members they lead are the foundation of America’s enduring military advantage. Yet this foundation is being actively eroded by the actions of a single U.S. senator, Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who is blocking the confirmation of our most senior military officers.

The senator asserts that this blanket and unprecedented “hold,” which he has maintained for more than six months, is about opposition to Defense Department policies that ensure service members and their families have access to reproductive health no matter where they are stationed.

After the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, this policy is critical and necessary to meet our obligations to the force. It is also fully within the law, as confirmed by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Senators have many legislative and oversight tools to show their opposition to a specific policy. They are free to introduce legislation, gather support for that legislation and pass it. But placing a blanket hold on all general and flag officer nominees, who as apolitical officials have traditionally been exempt from the hold process, is unfair to these military leaders and their families.

And it is putting our national security at risk.

Thus far, the hold has prevented the Defense Department from placing almost 300 of our most experienced and battle-tested leaders into critical posts around the world.

Three of our five military branches — the Army, Navy and Marine Corps — have no Senate-confirmed service chief in place. Instead, these jobs — and dozens of others across the force — are being performed by acting officials without the full range of legal authorities necessary to make the decisions that will sustain the United States’ military edge.

Across the services, many generals and admirals are being forced to perform two roles simultaneously. The strain of this double duty places a real and unfair burden on these officers, the organizations they lead and their families.

The blanket hold is also exacting a personal toll on those who least deserve it.

Each of us has seen the stress this hold is inflicting up and down the chain of command, whether in the halls of the Pentagon or at bases and outposts around the world.

We know officers who have incurred significant unforeseen expenses and are facing genuine financial stress because they have had to relocate their families or unexpectedly maintain two residences.

Military spouses who have worked to build careers of their own are unable to look for jobs because they don’t know when or if they will move. Children haven’t known where they will go to school, which is particularly hard given how frequently military children change schools already.

These military leaders are being forced to endure costly separations from their families — a painful experience they have come to know from nearly 20 years of deployments to places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The leaders whose lives and careers are on hold include scores of combat veterans who have led our troops into deadly combat with valor and distinction in the decades since 9/11. These men and women each have decades of experience and are exactly who we want — and need — to be leading our military at such a critical period of time.

The impact of this hold does not stop at these officers or their family members.

With the promotions of our most senior leaders on hold, there is a domino effect upending the lives of our more junior officers, too.

Looking over the horizon, the prolonged uncertainty and political battles over these military nominations will have a corrosive effect on the force.

The generals and admirals who will be leading our forces a decade from now are colonels and captains today. They are watching this spectacle and might conclude that their service at the highest ranks of our military is no longer valued by members of Congress or, by extension, the American public.

All because of the actions of a single (stupid!) senator.

Any claim that holding up the promotions of top officers does not directly damage the military is wrong — plain and simple.

Rather than continue making sacrifices to serve our nation, some might leave uniformed service for other opportunities, robbing the Defense Department of talent cultivated over decades that we now need most to maintain our superiority over our rivals and adversaries.

Throughout our careers in national security, we have deeply valued the bipartisan support shown for our service members and their families. But rather than seeking a resolution to this impasse in that spirit, Tuberville has suggested he is going to further escalate this confrontation by launching baseless political attacks against these men and women.

We believe that the vast majority of senators and of Americans across the political spectrum recognize the stakes of this moment and the dangers of politicizing our military leaders. It is time to lift this dangerous hold and confirm our senior military leaders.

Army, Navy, Marines All Without Senate-Confirmed Leaders Thanks to GOP Stunt (Tuberville-Sluberville stupidity.)

*P.S. By the way, Tuberville never served in the military.

Vote to keep abortions safe, legal and protect access to women's health care

Echo opinion editorial published in the Daily Collegian, an independent Penn State University newspaper, written by Christa Hasenkopf and Abe Amorós, who are Penn State alumni. Check the source at this link here.

Unbelievable, but the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court ruling took away an individual’s bodily autonomy in the United States. In the words of the dissenting Supreme Court justices, the decision “consigns women to second-class citizenship.”

With this ruling, if a person is pregnant in the United States, their body is no longer automatically under their own purview. The state can mandate that individuals risk their well-being through pregnancy and be forced to alter the trajectory of their life’s course against their will and judgment. In fact, this federal abandonment of human rights now has enabled some states to require a pregnant person take to term a child conceived by rape or incest.

No matter the state in which one lives, overturning the country’s nearly 50-year precedent of protecting the right to self-determination is profoundly disturbing and distressing. Even for those in states where one can currently still technically receive abortion services but where the right to those services are not enshrined in state law, like Pennsylvania, access now hangs by a thin electoral thread.

In fact, in Pennsylvania, there is now movement to amend the state constitution to explicitly declare that abortion is not a right to Pennsylvanians.

This  horrible Dobbs decision makes already difficult-to-access medical services even more difficult to access. Those who live in Pennsylvania but are legal residents of other states, like many Penn State students, may fear that their state governments can criminalize seeking an abortion.

And even for Pennsylvania residents, the practical barriers to abortion, predating the Dobbs decision, limit people’s ability to access essential medical care. Pennsylvanians seeking abortions often must travel many hours and take multiple trips to one of the few clinics in Pennsylvania that offer these services — or they must go out of state, where options post-Dobbs are now even more limited.

An  important method for protecting against unwanted pregnancy!

The work ahead to mitigate the damage done by the (harmful) Dobbs ruling and to ultimately restore and improve access and rights to abortion will be difficult, complicated and necessary — and will require all of us. However, a first step is simple for any person wielding institutional power: publicly acknowledge the harms and injustices of this decision.

As leaders in this community, we believe it is incumbent to say this to Penn State students, staff and faculty: You deserve the freedom and dignity to make your own health care decisions, and we support your access to abortion.

The next step is taking meaningful action!  (In other words...Vote!)

Roe v Wade reversal a horrible SCOTUS decision because woman risk dying

After the wrong minded (stupid!) SCOTUS ruling about Roe: A high-risk obstetrician is terrified for the patients!

Opinion echo published in The New York Times by David N. Hackney

Dr. Hackney is a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and chair of the Ohio section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

My wife and I practice in medical fields — obstetrics and pediatrics — that should be filled with happiness. And often they are, though we have selected sub-specialties that are often shrouded in sadness — high-risk obstetrics for me, and pediatric oncology for my wife. We have both watched children die while held in their mother’s arms.

Often we are asked about our psychological defenses in the face of tragic outcomes: the cancer that does not have a cure, or pre-eclampsia that becomes life-threatening to the pregnant woman before viability. In my opinion, the most important defense is the voice in your head that says, “I did everything I could.” I tell myself that I used treatments supported by research and monitored pregnancies with the highest-quality technology. I performed complex procedures, listened and counseled. I did everything I could, but ultimately the preterm labor could not be stopped — or, in my wife’s case, the child’s leukemia was just too aggressive. So we provide comfort and bear witness.

On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned and a near-total abortion ban became law in Ohio, where my wife and I practice. There are no exceptions for rape, incest or fetal anomalies, including lethal conditions.

Diagnosing birth defects is what I do. Over the years many of my patients with lethal anomalies have elected to continue their pregnancies knowing that their children will die after delivery.

These patients always have my full support. Sometimes this is in concurrence with their religious beliefs, though sometimes it’s simply meaningful for them to deliver and spend time with their child, even if only for minutes or hours. Most patients, however, elect to discontinue the pregnancy.

For these patients, abortion is now illegal in Ohio. Some people will travel out of state. However, many people will not be able to do so, particularly people of color and those living in strategically disenfranchised communities. Sometime soon, I am going to meet a patient who has no ability to leave the state, and I am going to have to tell her that her baby has a lethal condition, and she is going to have to carry a pregnancy to term against her will. It might be tomorrow. It might be weeks from now. But this is going to happen, and I cannot stop it.

This patient will go through her third trimester visibly pregnant. Strangers in the grocery store will congratulate her. She will have to explain her story over and over again to friends, neighbors and co-workers. She will be forced to experience labor and delivery, and then her child will die. The risks of term delivery are far greater than the risk of abortion, so she may also experience hemorrhage, pre-eclampsia, blood clots or other complications.

Ohio’s new law is unimaginably cruel.

State legislators have proposed Draconian new laws on the assumption that, when they come before the Supreme Court, they will be used to vanquish Roe v. Wade once and for all.

What am I going to do when I meet this patient — when I am sitting in an examination room with her as a nightmare unfolds before us? I hope the voice inside my head will again say, “I did everything I could.” But this time the voice would not only be talking about my medical management. Over the years, the Ohio section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which I chair, has issued statements, engaged social media and organized action alerts and membership lobby days on a wide range of important issues, including abortion. We have testified publicly before Ohio House committees and made direct appeals to legislators in their offices. 

For instance, in 2019, we successfully fought HB 413*, which would have made “abortion murder” a crime and could have required doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy into the woman’s uterus,” which is impossible. And in February we testified against HB 598, which would ban virtually all abortions in the state and could even affect fertility services.

So I will try to tell myself that this is not my fault. I will remind myself of the politicians who either did not believe me or did not care. But did I do everything? It is impossible to not worry that I have failed the physicians and patients of Ohio.

As physicians, what would we not do to save our patients from suffering and death? We have worked in hospitals through the night. We have performed surgery for hours. We have been splashed with blood, urine and amniotic fluid. We have listened to our patients’ concerns and sometimes held their hands and cried with them. The Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe, is a tragedy for our patients, many of whom will suffer and some of whom could very well die. Did we vote in every election? Did we call our legislators? Were we always brave enough to speak clearly and truthfully about abortion, especially in settings that make us uncomfortable?

When we are in the room with our patients, will the voice in our heads still say, “I did everything I could”?

David N. Hackney is a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and chair of the Ohio section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

* Revised Code to create the capital offense of aggravated abortion murder and the offense of abortion murder.