Dems brainstorming using federal land, tribal land, and the military to provide abortion nationally

"Among their ideas: covering expenses for federal employees who need to travel to receive abortion services, helping pay for out-of-state abortions, enshrining abortion access for active-duty military and opening up federal lands to abortion counseling and procedures. Some Democrats are even examining whether tribal governments could help provide abortion services."

The military are a bunch of baby killers, they should be able to help!

Reason Bazillion and Ten the Dems are Losing: Due to absence of policy/leadership (Joe? Joe??), they are reacting, rather than acting.

There are tribal leaders who have declared before that they would be open to having clinics on tribal lands if Roe were overturned. The Dems aren't pulling that one out of their asses. But it wouldn't work, because wingnuts would invade and harass them and shoot things up, you know they would. And the tribes don't have anything approaching the resources to deal with something like that.

As for action...the time for action was back in 2016, when the purity Left turned a blind eye to what was at stake in favor of sucking Bernie's dick.

I think the strategy a year ago was that the Supreme Court would be too afraid of rioting to rule against abortion.

R4 Which tribes?

Tribal govts would do it if they could monetize it but overall citizens of tribal nations, even if Democrat, are generally against abortion... even those that rely on rolls instead blood quantum.

Joe has better things to do!

Joe has to generate more money. No silly not for us. Hunter needs a new laptop. And the cost for his Kremlin hookers has to renegotiated, since that video leak. Loved how the Ruskie Hooker did the standard, I no talk to you or look at you till I see money!

R7 I can't think of any tribal government I'm familiar with that could ever get away with that.

I do think the more likely scenario is that they will be strong armed into it unwillingly through the threat of withholding federal money. That's how the government handles them the majority of the time.

The Clinton Library is on federal property

R10 LMAO

[quote]But it wouldn't work, because wingnuts would invade and harass them and shoot things up, you know they would.

If history is any suggestion, the native peoples would fight back, and rightly so. If we had even a marginally competent president, they would put a stop to right-wing terrorism ASAP, otherwise we'd end up in an actual war with a tribe or two, which I don't think even the most far-right nutjobbiest politician wants.

Here is a new way to further reduce your populations!

R12 I don't think there's much risk of that, but also what are you smoking?

The main problem is the blurry nature of tribal sovereignty.

In Florida, tribe members are basically untouchable by the State for anything they do on tribal land... but NON-indians (or even indians of a different tribe) CAN be prosecuted for breaking Florida laws on tribal reservations in Florida.

Scenario: Seminole doctor runs luxury abortion clinic at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Fort Lauderdale (on the tribe's reservation), and all staff are Seminoles as well. They're untouchable.

Scenario: non-Seminole doctor pays tribe a shitload of money to open an abortion clinic on the reservation. A Florida prosecutor builds a case, indicts the doctor, and has him arrested one day as he's driving home to Weston or Parkland. He's convicted & sentenced to death. Because, you know, the lawmakers are pro-life & have no concept of irony.

There's also the fact that many aspects of tribal sovereignty have never been rigorously tested in court, and kind of exist because nobody has ever pushed their luck and rocked the boat. Few Chiefs REALLY want to push their luck & be the guy who got half the traditional rights of indian tribes declared null & void by the US Supreme Court.

Also... most tribes really don't have the drive & business acumen of the Florida Seminoles, and just can't ever get their shit together to make real money. The Seminoles themselves aren't interested in running abortion clinics, because Florida's law -- though restrictive compared to Roe -- is still good enough to allow ~97% of desired Florida abortions. So... it's a small market that would draw excessive & unwanted conflict.

The Miccosukee are even less likely to open a shiny new abortion clinic out on Krome Avenue, because the tribe's members tend to be HARDCORE Evangelicals. As in, Holy-Roller Pentecostals.

I think there's an unrecognized group of Lakotas living at a trailer park somewhere in Florida, but they don't have a reservation & therefore don't matter.

Tribes in the western states have free reign to ignore gambling laws, liquor laws, and tobacco laws. Also fireworks! It's possible they could skirt an abortion ban, I just don't see them doing that. They are incredibly socially conservative and almost all deeply religious (with exceptions, but still.)

They are also incredibly poor though, like third world poor, so ultimately I doubt it's up to them. They'll be forced to allow clinics on the threat of having their government aid cut off. That's just how it is. That's how "development projects" and oil leases usually get onto Indian land.

Tribal one is not a good idea and shows how thoughtless people can be. It’s not just that many Native Americans are pretty socially conservative. It is the very concept of using Tribal land to solve America’s issues. How completely disrespectful.

R17 Ding ding! All of these options are thoughtless and borne of ignorance (the military, seriously?) but I did find the tribal one to be very racist and offensive in particular.

R17 it’s a loophole and if they’re ok with it, who cares.

"Among their ideas: covering expenses for federal employees who need to travel to receive abortion services“

🙄. It’s always some stupid shit like this that they pretend is a priority. I doubt most of the people who need access to abortion are federal employees. More public money going to government officials.

Biden isn't going to build an abortion clinic in the middle of the Grand Canyon. Doubt very much that it's a viable option to build on federal land.

Perhaps they could encourage states that have legal abortion to build clinics at their borders to allow for easier access. Also, push RU486 as much as possible.

Tribes will do it if they can make money off it.

They won't use their current health clinic (they dont have the capacity for thousands more women), They'd have to build new clinics.

Don’t believe everything you read in Politico. Before Roe, women used a combination of DIY and underground contacts to obtain birth control and abortion, and that’s what they’ll go back to. The female drive to not bear an unwanted child is every bit as primal as the drive to have a wanted one. They’re not going to obediently wait for the people in charge to sort it out for them. This is going to get gory.

It's going to get gory and it's going to get expensive, with flying people all over the country to get abortions and increased health insurance premiums for all because many will actually be forced to have their babies. Apart from the human cost (which Repugs clearly don't care about), the abortion ruling will be terrible for businesses, the stock market, and the economy. It's hard to buy nice things when you're driven into poverty by too many babies. It boggles the mind to think the billionaires funding the Repug party wanted such an outcome. This will hurt them where they will feel it most—on their balance sheets.

[quote] but overall citizens of tribal nations, even if Democrat, are generally against abortion

Interesting. I never hear what stand Native Americans take on abortion.

This is a ludicrous solution.

Besides, today's federal government is run by pro-choice types, but what about ten years from now? You risk turning the issue into yet another hot-button campaign issue. "Vote for me and I'll shut down those federal clinics ON DAY ONE!"

R25 It varies from tribe to tribe, region to region, and depends a lot on the economic circumstances and level of assimilation of a given person. Tribes are like ethnic groups, they often aren't similar beyond having the same general racial background.

That being said, Native Americans are usually economically liberal because they support welfare and socially conservative because they rely on traditional family groups.

r25, Evangelical sects and the Catholic Church have been proselytizing HARD on indian reservations since... well... FOREVER, and most tribes have had one or more sink their teeth in pretty hard & effectively.

Back when the Federal Government's official policies fell somewhere between 'active genocide' and 'indifference', missionaries were building schools, wells, and latrines & pushing a not-so-subtle message that Christianity was the path to modernity & social acceptability. It worked, and today most of today's ruling-elite indians are members of those sects.

The above notwithstanding, liberals botched their sales pitch to the tribes about as badly as possible by failing to present it as a lucrative business opportunity involving substantial outside new investment rather than acting like it's the indians' duty to serve oppressed white women or something similarly patronizing.

The truth is, leaders of poor rural tribes aren't exactly the most entrepreneurial folks around. You have to make it crystal-clear to them that you're talking about a brand new facility (paid for by outside investors, on land profitably rented from the tribe), not "doing it from their existing understaffed & underfunded government clinic", and pitch it as "new, high-paying jobs for tribe members". And there can't be *anything* that even *remotely* looks like arm-twisting.

Oklahoma is the state to watch... dozens of independent tribes with reservations in close proximity to cities where abortion is practically banned, all competing for the same cash cow. Most will say 'no', but at least ONE will eventually say, "fuck it, show us the money & make it rain, bitch!"

R28, SCOTUS JUST said that state police can investigate state crimes on Indians reservations, narrowing it's ruing of two years before giving Indians complete control of their territories.

Abortion will be a state crime.

Indians are not in the business of offering healthcare to those outside of its tribes. I doubt they will start now

R28 How is abortion a cash cow? Is it even possible to make money on it?

If you're running the only abortion clinic within 1200 miles and aren't making money hand over fist, you're seriously incompetent & have no business skills whatsoever.

Consider an Oklahoma employer like Citibank that offers fully-paid abortions & travel expenses. Even if the indian clinic is out of network & costs $2,500 after coinsurance, it's a bargain compared to giving her 3 paid days off, airfare to LAX, and a night in a middle-class hotel chain.

If Florida tightened access to 6 weeks & the Seminoles opened a fabulous luxury abortion clinic, wealthy women in South Florida would pay $5-10k without batting an eyebrow.

Just to add, there are lots of ways angry states could lash out at Indians for running abortion clinics.

Let's revisit the example of a Florida Seminole doctor performing abortions on non-Seminole women at a clinic at the tribe's Hard Rock Resort. Florida might not be able to prosecute & convict the doctor... but that same doctor probably has a medical license from the State of Florida, and residence at a local hospital. Even if Florida couldn't prosecute & convict him/her, it could cook up various excuses to terminate the doctor's license to practice "in Florida", pressure the hospital to revoke the doctor's staff residency, make it almost impossible to buy malpractice insurance, etc.

And we're just talking about the mean, PETTY ways Florida could try to make a SEMINOLE doctor's life miserable (even if it had no criminal-law recourse). A non-Seminole doctor (or nurse, or receptionist, or even a janitor) could be prosecuted directly.

As others have noted, even this would only last as long as the Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and Presidency. The moment Republicans got even partial control of the federal government, they'd instantly lash out & shut everyone down.

The Democrats' problem NOW isn't, "find ways to expand abortion access to poor women in red states", it's "find and deploy effective ways to make abortion rights in safely-blue states 'federal-proof' "

R32 What generates the cash? Abortions are like $150.

No medical procedure costs $150. Get real…

I foresee this ending in NAs being attacked by unhinged Christian fundies.

The Democrats' rabid support of and advocacy for abortion is disgusting.

I'm sick of this issue. It has warped and toxified our politics for more than four decades.

I used to say I was pro-choice. Now I just don't give a fuck.

Democrats = Keystone Cops

R39, what do you propose they do?

They could have been better prepared, as the writing was on the walls for years...actually, but especially with the leak of the decision a month ago. As with everything else, they are not good fighters and don't stick together as a party. I'm tired of people defending and excusing them. If it were the the other way around, with repubs in this position....they would fight like hell and find anything to stop it. This is what Democrats need to do. Politeness is a joke.

Indicting these GOP criminals, whose crimes are beyond a reasonable doubt...blatantly in our faces, is another thing they can do. An insurrection which we are finding out, even as bad as it is....was far worse and more dangerous that we thought. How about an AG with balls...Garland...so something. That's what I propose that they can do.

*than we thought

The stench of right-wing asshole is strong in this thread. Love how you are all now experts on tribal lands and Native American culture. You're a bunch of fucking liars which makes sense since you are all a bunch of fucking Repug pieces of shit stinking up DL. Did someone share the link on some forced birth lunatic site?

R44 Do you know something?

*do something...correction

Fyi, as of last year, and depending on the state, a first-trimester non-surgical (self-administered oral medication only) abortion's retail cost typically averaged $500, ranging from $75 (nonprofit, subsidized by donors, staffed mostly or fully by volunteers, no pointless 'tests') to $2,500 (state where multiple visits on multiple days, accompanied by politically-motivated ultrasound & comprehensive 'exam' whose entire purpose is to try and shame the woman into changing her mind and/or establish legal proof that the fetus still qualifies for termination).

Full-on surgical D&C, ectopic pregnancy, etc STARTS around $2,500... and if it's performed at a hospital, the sky's literally the limit. Think about how much a typical US hospital charges just to do something like lance, drain, and pack a cyst or remove an ingrown toenail. Ultrasound, X-rays and/or MRI, anesthesia, waste disposal fees, the works.

Surgical abortion is so expensive relative to pharmaceutical abortion, I'm honestly surprised large corporations don't have free pregnancy tests in employee restrooms & encourage monthly self-tests to steer female employees towards early-detection & action, regardless of when the legal limit is.

Next up for states like Texas: require women having medication-induced abortions to be admitted to a hospital ($$$), be administered each dose by a nurse ($$$), and remain there with a pad until she passes the fetus ($$$ to $$$$$) so it can be examined & certified by the county coroner ($$$) and individually cremated or buried ($$$$$), turning what SHOULD be something a woman can do cheaply & quickly into an outrageously expensive ordeal.

R48 They've already completely banned abortion.

[quote]the tribes don't have anything approaching the resources to deal with something like that.

Don't underestimate tribal police.