On this day, 30 December 1913, Spanish revolutionary and resistance activist Isabel Mesa was born. Starting work as a seamstress aged 11, she became a leading organiser in the anarchist union CNT. During a strike at the tuna fishery in her town, Isabel spoke to the North African women who had been brought in as strikebreakers and persuaded them to join the strike. Forced to flee right-wing general Francisco Franco’s advance during the civil war, she refused to leave the country and instead joined the underground resistance movement. In her activities she was arrested, tortured and even given two death sentences which she avoided by changing her name. She remained active until her death in 2002, guided by her anarchist beliefs: “Anarchism is a beautiful path, but very rough. But you have to follow it and once you’re on it you cannot leave it, it envelops you, it intoxicates you . Anarchism is love, freedom, equality, humanity in all conditions. Neither borders, nor colour, nor race, nor flags! … In anarchism there is only humanity, human feelings, hope for all, the maximum you can get …”
Learn more about the Spanish civil war in episodes 39-40 of our podcast, available on all podcast apps or on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/06/17/e39-the-spanish-civil-war-an-introduction/https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1887312654787209/?type=3
According to the doctor, Koushik Shaw, patients are telling him, “‘Hey, I’m actually here because some of these changes that [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott and our legislature have passed that are really impacting our decision-making in terms of family planning,’ so that was a new one for me as a reason—the first time, patients are citing a state law as their motivating factor,” Shaw told the Post.
State legislatures impacting “decision-making in terms of family planning” for cisgender men might be “new” for them, but I for one vividly remember the day Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, because I immediately checked my insurance and called my doctor to schedule an appointment for a Nexplanon insertion.
The telling statistic comes from the Post at a critical time for reproductive rights in this country, as Texas’ abortion ban remains in effect and has forced a significant increase in out-of-state travel for abortion, and as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the future of abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. The role of cis men in helping partners to obtain abortion or birth control or prevent unwanted pregnancy at all has long evaded conversations about the issue, beyond new breakthroughs in male hormonal birth control every few years that often fail to immediately change anything…
Sarah Miller, a family medicine doctor who provides vasectomies, told the Post that even in Boston, she’s seen an increase in patients seeking vasectomies since the Texas ban took effect. “It warms my heart to hear men say, ‘I am so nervous, but I know this is NOTHING compared to what my wife has gone through,’” she told the newspaper. Doug Stein, founder of World Vasectomy Day, is a urologist known as the “Vasectomy King” for his work in not only providing vasectomies, but also training others to provide them, and leading global awareness campaigns to promote the procedure to cis men. He markets it as “an act of Love” cis men can perform for their partners, and even “the ultimate way to be a good man.”
The GOP right now: “If we can force poor women to give birth and then guilt them into keeping the kid, and make it easy for those women to get court-ordered child support from the fathers, we can trap a lot of women and men in poverty – and their kids will be raised in poverty, too! And the women, men, and their kids will have piss-poor educations so we’ll have a lot of cheap, disposable labor to drive labor prices down – and more cannon fodder for wars. With a large enough population of poors we won’t even have to raise taxes on the rich. All we have to do is ban abortion! The plan is foolproof – wait, men are doing what now?”
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