Abortion foes are telling us who they really are

Believe them

12-14-2023 (issue No. 119)

Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

This week:

• Last week’s winning tweet

• Pro-lies — Deception is at the heart of the movement against abortion rights

• News and Views — On truth in sentencing reporting, Halley’s Comet, and the ejection of Nikola Jokic

• Welcome to the excuse of the future — “With AI, anything is possible”

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go

• “Songs of Good Cheer” recap

• Aldermanic motto: If you see something, say nothing

• “The Mincing Rascals” podcast preview

• Quotables — Jimmy Kimmel, Paul Sullivan and Mark Jacob

• Rally to save the Tribune

• Re:Tweets — The winning visual tweet and this week’s contest finalists

• Tune of the Week — Swiftie Cori Bills nominates “The Man” by Taylor Swift

Last week’s winning tweet

I just told my boss that "STFU" stands for "Sincere Thanks For Understanding" and it's really important that none of you tell him otherwise. — @MelvinofYork

Here are this week’s nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-tweets poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.

Pro-lies: Deception is at the heart of the movement against abortion rights

Consider these three stories:

• The Texas Supreme Court ruled Monday that Kate Cox, 31, a mother of two from the Dallas area whose fetus had been diagnosed with a fatal abnormality, did not have the right to an abortion under Texas law, even though carrying the doomed fetus to term stood to jeopardize her ability to have more children.

• Under pressure from anti abortion-rights groups, Illinois has agreed not to enforce a law that would have imposed heavy fines on “crisis pregnancy clinics” that used “deceptive, fraudulent and misleading information and practices” to lure pregnant women seeking abortions into their doors in an effort to talk them out of it.

• Republican lawmakers in Missouri’s state House and Senate introduced bills earlier this month that would allow for murder charges against women who obtain abortions.

What they have in common is that they expose how anti abortion-rights zealots aren’t to be trusted; that any soothing statements they may have made in the past about simply wanting reasonable limits on the practice and are open to reasonable exceptions were meant to conceal their ultimate agenda.

THE TEXAS STORY has shocked the nation. The fetus Cox was carrying — she has since traveled out of state to have an abortion — would have died quickly after birth. She’d already been to the emergency room multiple times due to complications from the pregnancy, and forcing her to undergo more than four more months of agony followed by possible infertility struck many as unimaginably cruel.

It was grotesque government overreach and showed how insincere the zealots are when they purr about exceptions in order to gain popular support.

THE ILLINOIS STORY simply reveals how dedicated this state’s conservatives are to proselytizing through deception. Their “crisis pregnancy center” advertisements and listings are designed to make it appear as though they provide referrals, support and accurate medical advice to those who are not at all sure they want to be pregnant and who want to explore all of their options.

Jennifer Welch, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, said in a statement, “Often crisis pregnancy centers provide misleading and medically inaccurate information, sometimes deliberately misdiagnosing patients or misdating their pregnancies so people think they have more time to decide about abortion or that they are past the time when they can have an abortion.”

You’d think that the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act as well as common sense would outlaw such brazen bait-and-switch tactics, but Rockford-based, Donald Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Iain Johnston issued a ruling in August calling the new law “both stupid and very likely unconstitutional,” saying it deputized the government to decide “whose speech is sanctionable and whose speech is immunized.”

From WBEZ:

Alicia Hurtado of the Chicago Abortion Fund said pregnant people regularly call their helpline to complain about (crisis pregnancy centers), saying they lie, shame and mislead them when they are looking for abortion care. … A WBEZ analysis shows that crisis pregnancy centers outnumber abortion providers in Illinois by a nearly three-to-one ratio. The analysis shows there are 42 Illinois counties with crisis pregnancy centers and no abortion providers.

Rather than sue, of course, the opponents of abortion rights could have simply decided to stick with the truth, but when you believe that your ends justify your means, fighting for your right to lie makes sense.

THE MISSOURI STORY illustrates that all the talk you’ve heard over the years from abortion-right foes saying they have no interest in punishing women who obtain abortions is designed to lull moderates into supporting their cause.

If abortion at any stage of gestation is murder, as opponents argue, then by that very logic, a woman who arranges for and obtains an abortion is as guilty of murder as someone who hires a contract killer to take out a romantic or business rival.

The traditional response to this observation is that abortion rights opponents consider women who get abortions to be victims of circumstance, of their own addled judgement, of pressure from partner or society. They are under duress, morally confused and often unaware of their range of options — therefore, we’ve been assured, legally blameless.

But talk about moral confusion! Under no other circumstances outside of legal insanity does the law excuse an adult or even a teen of methodically conspiring with another to commit a serious crime. Duress? Moral confusion? Unsure of where to turn? These factors may mitigate culpability, but they never erase it.

No amount of infantilizing and patronizing women to deny them agency can avoid one of two logical conclusions.

1. Abortion-rights opponents don’t really think abortion at every stage of fetal development is tantamount to murder. Their actual gripe is with nonprocreative sex.

2. Abortion -rights opponents are using a smokescreen of anodyne platitudes to hide the inevitability that meaningful prohibitions against abortion must include harsh punishments for women who have them.

Conclusion No. 2 obtained in Missouri, where state Rep. Bob Titus explained his desire to allow homicide charges against those who get abortions: "To me, it’s just about protecting a baby’s life like we do every other person’s life. The prosecution is just a consequence of taking an innocent human life."

Titus withdrew his bill Tuesday under pressure from both sides of the abortion debate, saying, “The media has mischaracterized my interest as hostile toward women. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

I’m reminded of the hot water that then-candidate Donald Trump found himself in with anti abortion-rights activists when he stammered that "there has to be some form of punishment" for a woman who gets an abortion.

The response of abortion-rights opponents amounted to “Shhhhh! Donald! Not yet! We’re still just admitting to wanting to punish the doctors. Until further notice, pregnant women are frail, half out of their little minds and too vulnerable and unglued to know what they're doing.”

Prior to 1973 when the since-overturned Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in most cases, laws in 15 states called for women to be punished when they had abortions. BMJ Global Health has published peer-reviewed research that identifies 134 countries that penalize those who seek abortions. (See also “Which countries have the strictest laws and what are the punishments?” in the Independent.)

What makes anyone think that the mendacious abortion-rights foes in the United States don’t want to make us the 135th?

Join the battle to stop them or cheer them on as you will.

But don’t believe that after they’ve taken away women’s reproductive freedom, they won’t next come after women’s literal freedom.

News & Views

News: Father released from jail after serving less than 30 days for helping son obtain gun permit prior to Highland Park shooting

View: No matter what you think about Robert Crimo Jr.’s legal or moral culpability for his adult son’s alleged responsibility in the deadly attack on the 2022 Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, I hope you will join me in reiterating my call for journalists to start emphasizing actual expected jail and prison sentences rather than the fictional sentences announced from the bench.

Every story I read, heard or saw after the father’s Nov. 15 sentencing in Lake County highlighted the 60-day sentence. The first paragraph of the Associated Press account, for example, said, “The father of the suspect in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago turned himself in Wednesday to begin a 60-day jail sentence.”

That was so misleading as to be false. Six paragraphs down came the disclosure that in such cases, the law gives convicts “the opportunity to reduce their sentence by half for good behavior, meaning Crimo Jr. may only serve 30 days.”

But even “may” was grossly misleading. Good behavior — technically called “meritorious good time" — does not mean that an inmate is doing chores or knitting sweaters for the needy. It simply means that he or she is not committing serious violations of the rules behind bars. And so the provision ends up cutting the sentences of about 4 in 5 Illinois inmates at least half when combined with other sentencing credits earned by such actions as completing substance abuse, educational or behavior modification programs.

“Crimo Jr. will almost certainly serve just 30 days” would have been more accurate way to phrase it, as would a first paragraph that concluded “turned himself in Wednesday to begin serving an expected 30 days in jail.”

As a reader, I glossed right over this fact at the time and assumed the father wouldn’t be free until mid-January.

When I wrote about this “good time” practice 30 years ago, an Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman told me that the provision "is a useful carrot and stick" in controlling unruly behavior among inmates and is thought to reduce assaults on guards and other dangerous activities in prison.

Which is fine. But let’s have more truth in sentencing reporting.

News: Halley's Comet began its return journey to Earth Saturday

View: There is something resonant about the 76-year orbit of the world’s most famous dirty snowball. Halley’s Comet, which comes around just once in the average lifetime, built most of its reputation in 1910, when it missed Earth by only 15 million miles and was a dagger of light in the sky. Last time, in 1986, when I wrote a feature story for the Tribune about disappointed stargazers, it wandered no closer than 38.8 million miles and was decidedly humdrum as heavenly phenomena go.

My first paragraph in that story:

 A.J. Murphy of Wheaton stooped low to the cold, dark ground to look her 4-year-old son, Patrick, in the eye. "The next time you see that comet," she said. "I'll be dead. And I want you to think of me."

It’s been out of sight for the last 20 years — too small and faint for astronomers to see — but it’ll be back in our skies in 38 years. That will be 2061, when Patrick Murphy will be roughly 80.

News: Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic was ejected from the first half of Tuesday’s game against the Bulls at the United Center for reportedly complaining to the referee, “Call the foul, motherfucker.”

View: That’s a technical foul, for sure. But ejecting the superstar whom many Bulls fans had come to see because he quickly cussed out the ref — another report had him saying “call the motherfucking foul” — was a disservice to the paying customers, many of whom loudly booed the ejection even though it stood to benefit the Bulls (who lost anyway).

At the end of the day, it’s entertainment. Getting rid of the star of the show before intermission because your feelings are hurt was a mistake. NBA refs need thicker skins.

Welcome to the excuse of the future: ‘With AI, anything is possible’

Video from a Zoom conference call that leaked Tuesday showed Teresa Haley, the state director of the NAACP, likening new immigrants to rapists and savages.

“These immigrants have come over here, they’ve been raping people,” she says at about 1:05 in this nearly two-minute-long excerpt. “They’ve been breaking into homes. They’re like savages as well. They don’t speak the language.”

When the leak prompted condemnation and calls for her resignation, her initial response, when contacted by WLS-Ch. 7 while on vacation, was “With AI, anything is possible.”

Well, no. Not yet. Not quite. Artificial intelligence programs can’t generate deep-fake videos nearly as realistic as the above. Haley’s denial was manifestly unbelievable and comically pathetic. Not even worth a shot in 2023.

But by 2028? 2033? I have little doubt that deep-fake technology will be advanced enough by then to generate hyper-realistic videos of people saying and doing things they would never say or do. And it will also provide plausible cover for those caught on video saying and doing things they should never say or do.

The erosion of the line between truth and lies, between real and artificial, is a threat not only to democracy, but also to civilization itself. We can fulminate and fret about it all we want — pass restrictive laws and penalize scammers — but I don’t see a way of halting this march toward chaos.

Meanwhile, the gist of Haley’s other remarks offers interesting insight into the brewing resentments in some minority communities about the aid and attention showered on the new arrivals.

Land of Linkin’

Jimi Hendrix, who died at 27, aged by artificial intelligence

• “See How These Dead Stars Would Age With Artificial Intelligence” includes many images like the one above that are both plausible and sobering.

• From “One Year,” a Slate podcast series: “A middle-aged single dad in Chicago was outraged by all the cigarette billboards popping up in Black communities. In 1990, he picked up a paint roller and became an anti-tobacco vigilante. And he did it all under a secret identity.”

• An American Bar Association update on the lawsuit filed by University of Illinois at Chicago School of Law professor Jason Kilborn who was suspended from teaching for alluding to the n-word — not writing it out — on an exam in 2020. Short version: The case was dismissed last month, but Kilborn is taking it up to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

• Attorney Jeffery Leving makes an excellent case in the Tribune: “Illinois should emulate Massachusetts and make prison calls free.”

• ChatGPT has assigned me a new wife. It will be an adjustment.

• Steve Chapman: “A reelected Trump could make himself president for life.”

• Andrew and Abby Borden were butchered 131 years ago. Is it funny yet?

• Famous Paintings Updated With 21st-Century Gadgets

  

• Slate writer Aymann Ismail’s article, “A 6-year-old boy’s killing outside Chicago stunned the country. The people left behind can barely fathom the future” is an intimate, heartbreaking account of October’s stabbing death of Wadee Alfayoumi in unincorporated Plainfield.

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:

■ Popular Information counts off 10 alarming things Trump’s threatened for a second term.

■ In her new email newsletter, Donald Trump’s niece Mary L. Trump has been taking no prisoners, ridiculing Trump’s sale of tiny pieces of the suit he wore in that Georgia mugshot; advising his donors that he’s been “wasting MILLIONS of their dollars to pay witnesses to praise him”; and offering “a list of other alleged crimes—many from my extended family—prosecutors need to take a look at.”

■ USA Today’s Rex Huppke: “Leaders in Trump’s MAGA movement sure are scared of Taylor Swift.” Also: “Texas is showing Americans the dark future women face.”

■ The Sun-Times flags a rash of “phonejacking” crimes, in which thieves grab victims’ phones and then demand passcodes to apps like Zelle and Venmo. Although a Chicago cop recommends deleting those apps from your phone outright until you need them, a less drastic compromise is just to hide ’em—as you can do easily on an iPhone or Android device. Meanwhile, Apple says new safeguards are on the way.

■ The Daily Herald: “Illinois is the only state in the U.S. with a mandatory road test for seniors.”

■ And here’s Meyerson’s confession from 2012: “Before the whispers crescendo into a deafening roar, before someone else sullies my reputation, before the inevitable blackmail attempt surfaces, I want to come out publicly and say that I’ve come over the last few years to realize that ... I need only one Christmas song”—which just happens to be the subject of a fresh round of controversy.

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.

Cheer recap

Sunday evening, the “Songs of Good Cheer” band wrapped up the last of five shows in a packed Old Town School of Folk Music auditorium. It was the 25th year for the singalong program Mary Schmich and I started on a whim after she wrote a column bemoaning that so few people sing Christmas carols anymore.

We mixed the familiar with the unfamiliar, the old with the new, cracked a few jokes, had our contest winners tell their stories about their favorite holiday gifts and otherwise pulled off what some people told us was the best show we’ve ever done.

There was a few glitches here and there — bobbled lyrics, muffed entrances — but overall, it was almost perfect, as the chorus to band member Barbie Silverman’s parody song for the cast party Sunday night had it:

 Oh well, oh well, oh well, oh well
Almost perfect run, but what the hell
 Oh well, oh well, oh well, oh well
Almost perfect run, but what the hell

It’s a parody of “The First Nowell,” a British pub-style version of the familiar carol. The one verse you hear above refers to “the elevator jerking between floors,” which was an alarming moment before the Saturday night show when more than half the band crowded into the elevator for a ride up from the basement green room to the main floor and the mechanism balked and jerked in a way that suggested we were about the be stuck. After an alarming 15 seconds or so, it lurched on.

The “120 lost kazoos” refers to how we put kazoos on every seat for some audience high jinks, but discovered late Saturday that we didn’t have enough for Sunday’s final show. Band member/producer Gail Tyler scrambled to buy enough new ones by showtime.

Among the most memorable moments was when Anna Jacobson’s kids — Mara and Milo — joined her to lead Mary Schmich’s Christmas song, “Gonna Sing.”

Photo by Ken Carl

We’ve led this one ever since Mary wrote it in 2005, and every year we hear from people who want to play or sing it themselves and want to know more. So I’ve created a web page with the lyrics, chords, score, a video, an .mp3 file and alternative inclusive lyrics that don’t invoke death.

My hope is that “Gonna Sing” becomes a holiday standard all over the country.

If you’re into long-range planning, we’ve booked the Old Town School of Folk Music auditorium for shows from Thursday, Dec 12 to Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. Tickets won’t be on sale until September, but save the dates!

Aldermanic motto: If you see something, say nothing

Former 25th Ward Ald. Danny Solis’ appearance on the witness stand at former 134th Ward Ald. Ed Burke’s corruption trial this week resurfaced a jaw-dropping 2019 story in Block Club Chicago by Heather Cherone (now of WTTW-Ch. 11) and A.D. Quig (now of the Tribune) quoting sitting alders condemning Solis after it came out that he’d cooperated with federal agents by wearing a recording device in an effort to avoid prosecution for his own misdeeds.

“Where I come from, if you wore a wire, someone’s gonna kick your ass,” Ald. Matt O’Shea, 19th, said.

Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, said he was not “brought up” to wear a wire on a colleague.

“If I was caught doing something wrong, I’d just take my punishment, deal with the consequences … and keep my mouth shut,” Sawyer said.

Ald. George Cardenas, 12th, — an ally of Solis — said he would have preferred that Solis end his aldermanic career “honorably.”

“Jeez, what is the world coming to?” Cardenas responded when asked about one alderman wearing a wire as part of an investigation of another alderman.

Ald. Michelle Harris, 8th, called Solis’ action “disheartening.”

“I try to think we are a family down here and we all work together,” said Harris, who like Solis, is a close ally of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “Typically, we respect each other. I’m a little uncomfortable about it.”

Ald. Carrie Austin, 34th, said she was near tears after she learned of Solis’ actions.

“You don’t do that. You just don’t,” Austin said.

Disheartening indeed.

Minced Words

Host John Williams welcomed the biggest panel ever for this week’s year-end episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast: Cate Plys, Marj Halperin, Jon Hansen, Brandon Pope, Austin Berg and I offered some predictions for 2024 — about the Travis & Taylor romance and more! — and kicked around a few other news items.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Quotables

Just because you think Alfred is too old to take care of the Batcave, you don’t replace him with The Joker. … Jimmy Kimmel

As we saw this year when the Dodgers, Atlanta Braves and Baltimore Orioles all won 100 or more games and failed to make it to their League Championship Series, the (Major League Baseball) postseason is a crapshoot that renders the regular season meaningless. … Paul Sullivan

If you’re concerned about Trump, you should also be worried about his foot soldiers in your town who may be harassing teachers and librarians. Quality local news builds empathy and community, and it can expose local MAGA mischief. News is worth paying for. … Mark Jacob

Be there at Pioneer Square

The Tribune’s newsroom union was formally recognized on May 6, 2018. That’s five years and seven months ago. It still has no contract.

Re: Tweets

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• Getting visited by three ghosts on Christmas, but each of them just shakes me awake and says, “You live like this?”— @roastmalone_

• I’ll deck my halls with whatever I like. Don’t tell me what to do. — @Lottie_Poppie

• More impressive than Mary getting pregnant without having sex is Mary raising a kid without an iPad. — @ginnyhogan_

• Holy infant so tender and mild, so succulent and flavorsome, so juicy and melt-in-the-mouth. — @prufrockluvsong

• The Beach Boys were so right when they said Christmas comes this time each year. — @sug_knight

• Found a picture of me sitting on Santa's lap. Hard to believe it's been a whole year. — @WilliamAder

• Judging by my kids' Christmas lists, they think this parenting gig pays pretty well. — @sarcasticmommy4

• I never understood how the little drummer boy’s parents could just send him outside alone at night to play his drum until my daughter brought a recorder home from school. — @simoncholland

• How much did Santa pay for his sleigh? Nothing, it was on the house. — @hansabumsadaisy

• In my 20s, Jingle all the way. In my 40s, Jingle ‘til around 6:30. — @NotTodayEric

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Tune of the Week

You’ll get no argument from me about Taylor Swift being named Time’s Person of the Year. She’s a phenomenal talent, a major economic force and the first entertainer to earn this designation. I wanted to feature one of her songs as the Tune of the Week. But since I’m more into the music of Aubrey Swift than the music of Taylor Swift, I asked the Swiftie in our house — my son Ben’s fiancée, Cori Bills — to recommend a few for me.

Among her suggestions, I liked this one best:

I'm so sick of running as fast as I can
Wondering if I'd get there quicker
If I was a man
And I'm so sick of them coming at me again
'Cause if I was a man
Then I'd be the man

That’s Swift herself in makeup playing the male lead in the video.

From Billboard:

“The Man” imagines how Swift’s experience as a person, artist and figure within the music industry would have been different had she been a man, highlighting how much harder women have to work in order to succeed. … When asked about “The Man,” Swift pointed out specific double standards that exist in everyday life and explained why she wanted to turn that frustration into a pop single:

“I wanted to make it catchy for a reason — so that it would get stuck in people’s heads, [so] they would end up with a song about gender inequality stuck in their heads.”

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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