This stuff is heavily intertwined with the increasingly militant patriarchal, mysogynistic "Christian Nationalism" movement (link to prior posts). These people are obsessive where it comes to outlawing abortion and otherwise eliminating reproductive rights.
Jus' fer grins: Search "Atwwod" on my blog.
A couple of relevant new reads:
Just begun reading those.
Below, I watched this documentary live on CNN last night. They've yet to post it to YouTube. It was outstanding. Detailed, nuanced, forthright.
Related interview with Pamela Brown:
BTW, below, you may be aware of the Fundie religious activism of our Secretary of War.
PROFESSOR MICHELE GOODWIN
In the twenty-first century reproduction translates differently across class and race lines. On inspection, examples abound in this context, but assisted reproductive technology (ART) provides a particularly provocative illustration of my point. In that sphere, liberty and risk translate into a multi-billion-dollar industry, where a woman’s reproductive possibilities resemble a candy store of options: freedom to purchase ova and sperm in her local community or across the country and world, in vitro fertilization, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) of ova, embryo grading, cryopreservation of ova, assisted hatching, embryo transfer, day-five blast transfers, and more. This dizzying array of options is mostly unchecked by federal and state regulations, leaving physicians and their wealthier patients to coordinate pregnancies according to personal choices.
Technology facilitates a degree of leisure associated with some of these practices, as a few options described above are easily coordinated from the comfort and privacy of home. Functionally, then, with the click of a computer button, an intended parent may purchase sperm, rent a womb, buy ova, and select a clinic to assist in the harvesting, implantation, or embryo development processes. For wealthy women (infertile or not), reproductive privacy and freedom are tangible concepts in uninterrupted operation. Noticeably, there is little, if any, state regulation or interference in this domain, despite considerable risks, poor health outcomes, and miscarriages associated with some of these medicines.
By contrast, recent criminal prosecutions targeting destitute pregnant women illuminate another reproductive space, where the threat of state intervention through punishment and extralegal retribution overarch pregnancies and compromise the physician-patient relationship. In this alternate reproductive realm, public regulation trumps expectations of privacy. Undeniably, in the United States a poor pregnant woman’s reproductive options are deeply constrained and contested. For example, a woman’s poverty and drug dependence or use during pregnancy might result in heightened legal consequences, including the threat of life imprisonment, birthing while in jail, and even shackling during labor, depending on the state in which the pregnant woman resides.
A poor woman determined to carry a pregnancy to term often unwittingly exposes herself to nefarious interagency collaborations between police and physicians, quite possibly leading to criminal prosecution, incarceration, and giving birth while in highly unsanitary prison conditions, sometimes without the appropriate aid of hospital physicians and staff. But make no mistake, all women should be wary of the political mobilization against reproductive health, rights, and justice.
Today, it is not uncommon for a headline to feature a tragic story about a woman giving birth alone in a jail, without the aid of anyone, let alone medical staff. This is what happened to Diana Sanchez as she screamed and “writhed on the small bed inside her cell … gripping the thin mattress with one hand,” as she tried frantically to free a leg as the baby was crowning. A Washington Post headline captured her experience this way: “Nobody Cared”: A Woman Gave Birth Alone in a Jail Cell After Her Cries for Help Were Ignored, Lawsuit Says.”
Sadly, these are not outlier incidents, but rather what has bled into the soil of reproductive politics in the United States, which now uses pregnancy as a proxy for punishment, particularly against poor women. The depth of state-sanctioned cruelty targeted toward poor pregnant women seemingly has no boundaries in contemporary American politics…
Goodwin, Michele (2020). Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood (Preface). Kindle Edition.
APRIL AJOY
1. America Is the Best
Once upon a time, a group of the greatest, strongest, handsomest, and manliest men set out on a holy quest. These men fled the tyrannical country of England to start a new country, where they would have the freedom to worship Jesus how they wanted. These great men, who were basically Christ’s disciples 2.0, embarked on a journey to fight for their religious freedom.
They loaded up on ships that sailed across the ocean on this God-ordained mission. Sure, some may have technically brought enslaved people with them, but it was a different time. And they treated them with the utmost respect, kindness, and love.
And sure, some people technically already inhabited the new land, but they didn’t really count because they weren’t Christians. They needed Jesus. And the people in the colonies, set up by the righteous men from England, helped these native people have a much better life—because they now had Jesus to comfort them on the Trail of Tears (we don’t really need to talk about that, though, because again, it was a different time).
Then the big bad godless British people wanted to stake their claim on the new land. But God would not stand for such evil in his new country, so he declared war through his chosen one, George Washington. God supernaturally blessed his troops to defeat the British. Yeah, some people died, and a lot of the British were sort of Christian, too, but it was the price of freedom. And the greatest country the world would ever know was born: the United States of America.
Okay, so maybe some bad people in the southern part of the country refused to stop owning people and tried to repeat what Americans had just done to the British, but they failed! Because God was on the side of the holiest president of all, Republican Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation and ended racism forever.
Over the next 150 years, America spread this gospel message of hope and freedom all over the world. God blessed our country in every war we ever fought. The Axis Powers of World War I? We beat ’em. Nazis? Really beat them. Vietnam? Uh… not sure but I think we probably won. The Cold War? Tear down that wall. The War on Terror? Mission accomplished. All these victories occurred because America was founded as a Christian nation, and as long as it stayed the most Christian nation on earth, it would continue to be supernaturally blessed. Hallelujah, the Great I Am and Uncle Sam were quite the team!
This—almost exactly this—is what I wholeheartedly believed about American history for most of my life. I was taught that I was on the side of good, and everything I did was done with the goal of keeping that goodness going for generations to come.
No one told me about the true, brutal history of Native American displacement and genocide. I vaguely knew about slavery, Jim Crow, and the KKK—whose members were largely Christians—and the fuzzy morality of using nuclear bombs. None of that fit the narrative I was taught. The message I received was very simple: America is the best. Period.
I know now this belief is literally the definition of “nationalism,” which Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines as “loyalty and devotion to a nation,” especially with “a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations.”
So… pretty much exactly what I grew up believing.
Of course, we never used the term “Nationalist.” It was simply called patriotism, and it ranked just below holiness. This is the first tenet of Christian Nationalism: The belief that America has been specially selected by God, and that it has a special place in God’s plan for redemption...
Ajoy, April. Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding A True Faith (pp. 3-5). (Function). Kindle Edition.
One impressive young woman. Great sense of wry humor.
SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGIES
First, a bit of current Jacob Ward. (He is da bomb)
Anyone remember "Total Information Awareness?"
Then, Michele Goodwin brings up the issue of forced drug testing of pregnant women of lesser means (disproportionately minorities. Hmmm... See my 297 pg 1998 grad thesis (pdf) on coerced drug testing policies (which was primarily focused on workplace surveillance).
Another link to a prior post. "Let Me Be Franks With You."
Lots of reproductive rights insights in her work. Plus this:
BAD FAITH
I still remember the day I was saved.
I was 8 years old. I was sitting, as I had sat nearly every Sunday morning of my childhood, in a hard oak pew with my mother and brothers, all of us dressed as respectably as our poverty would allow. As he did every Sunday at the close of services, our preacher stood in front of the altar, flanked by a Christian flag on one side and an American flag on the other, asking who among us was ready to come forward and accept Jesus into their heart. Some Sundays three or four sinners would stumble down the aisle toward salvation; sometimes no one left the pews. When those seeking salvation got to the front, they would huddle down with our pastor, and their voices would drop too low to be heard by those of us remaining in our seats. Very often they would weep. The end was always the same: Our pastor would lift his head and hands up and say the person’s name out loud, and the congregation would join him in rejoicing that one more soul had escaped eternal damnation and joined the fellowship of the church.
By the day I decided to be saved, I had watched all this happen hundreds of times. I had heard how the streets of heaven were paved with gold and how no death and no suffering would ever be found there. I had heard the thunderous warnings about the burning fires of hell, where the sinners who had been too proud to repent would spend all of their days in torment and isolation. I had heard that all one had to do to obtain immortal life, avoid damnation, and be welcomed into the fold of the faithful was to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.
It sounded so easy. I had come very close to stepping out into the aisle several times before, but I had shrunk back at the thought of all the eyes in the pews and of the preacher’s booming voice so close to my ear. I was seized with the fear that if I did step out in the aisle, the deacons would shake their heads forbiddingly and send me back, explaining that the offer of salvation was not meant for people like me.
In all of those hundreds of Sunday mornings, I had never seen anyone who looked like me get saved. We were the only Asian members of our tiny, all-white Southern Baptist church. We were also one of only a handful of Asian families in the entire town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a city whose population was almost evenly divided between white and black. We were a minority even within that minority, as my brothers and I were the biracial children of a Taiwanese mother and a white father. Our father had died when we were young, and my mother was raising the three of us by herself, and I was convinced that our poverty was the first thing people saw when they looked at us, like the mark on Cain’s forehead.
Church was in many ways a refuge. No one was likely to call me a “chink,” or shout gibberish at me as they pulled their eyelids back into slants, or mock my mismatched, secondhand clothes. Church meant gospel songs, grape juice and tiny tasteless wafers for communion, and a gift-wrapped present with my name on it at Christmastime. But I could never shake the feeling that even in church, we were at best pitied and tolerated rather than warmly embraced.
I wondered if salvation would change that.
That day, as our elderly church pianist hammered out the final hymn of the Sunday service, the fear of eternal damnation and the desire to belong to a community won out over my other anxieties. I made my way down the aisle, and, to my immense relief, I wasn’t turned back. That Sunday, I was the one kneeling down before the altar with our preacher, I was the one tearfully accepting Jesus into my heart, and I was the one being presented to the congregation as the newest member of an eternal fellowship, forever and ever amen…
Franks, Mary Anne. The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (Function). Kindle Edition.
UPDATE
A quick topical search, 3/25/26
Google Gemini search: “Surveilling pregnant women”
Surveillance of pregnant women is increasing in the United States and globally, spanning from public health tracking to monitor maternal health outcomes to digital and physical monitoring aimed at policing pregnancy and abortion access. The landscape of surveillance has intensified following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, with digital data, medical records, and location tracking increasingly used to monitor or criminalize pregnancy outcomes.
Center for American Progress +4
Digital Surveillance and Abortion TrackingCenter for American Progress +3
- Search History & Data: Internet search histories, location data, and search and browsing histories regarding abortion can be used to infer intent to end a pregnancy. Law enforcement has utilized these tools to track individuals.
- Period-Tracking Apps: These apps store sensitive data on menstrual cycles, sexual activity, and fertility. Much of this data is not protected by HIPAA and is vulnerable to being used by third parties or law enforcement.
- Digital Footprints: Police may use geofence warrants to identify everyone near an abortion clinic, or purchase data from commercial data brokers to track people suspected of seeking abortions.
- Surveillance Technology: In areas where abortion is restricted, technologies like automated license plate readers (FLOCK cameras) have been used to track people traveling for care.
Legal and Medical SurveillanceBrookings +3
- Criminalization: In some regions, law enforcement is increasingly scrutinizing pregnancy outcomes, such as miscarriages or stillbirths, leading to the investigation of women who self-manage abortions.
- Medical Surveillance: Some hospitals and state agencies have been accused of unlawfully drug-testing and monitoring pregnant patients without their consent.
- State-Mandated Tracking: Certain states have passed laws requiring hotlines or tracking systems that critics fear can be used to identify and track individuals seeking abortions.
Public Health SurveillanceCenters for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov) +2
- SET-NET: The CDC’s Surveillance for Emerging Threats to Mothers and Babies Network (SET-NET) tracks the effects of health threats (such as Zika, COVID-19, and syphilis) on pregnant people and their infants.
- Mortality Data: The CDC's Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System (PMSS) reviews vital records to understand the causes of pregnancy-related deaths.
- Global Health Surveillance: In low- and middle-income countries, Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSS) often track pregnancies through regular, intensive community health worker visits.
Impact of Surveillance
- Chilling Effect: The fear of being monitored has led to a "chilling effect," where pregnant people, particularly those in marginalized communities (Black, brown, and low-income), may avoid seeking prenatal care, fear discussing their health with doctors, or fear searching for information online.
- Targeted Communities: Surveillance disproportionately affects marginalized communities, including immigrants and people of color, raising concerns about deportation, family separation, and increased criminal justice involvement.
In some of my more irascible, cynical moments, I've mused "hell, why stop there, Fundies? Why not panoptically/digitally gumshoe ALL women possessing functional ova, lest they indulge in behaviors that might one day 'prove' harmful to a fertilized ovum 'person' inside them?"
Don't think for a second that such would never be proposed.
More to come...
