Soup of the Week - Bitch Soup
So this week I thought I'd change it up and talk about this soup recipe I am loving. This is a one pot meal that will please everyone in the family.
You'll need:
- Chicken thighs, boneless and skinless
- wild rice
- cream of mushroom soup (canned)
- chicken broth (4 cups)
- half and half
- celery - 2 stalks, diced
- carrots - 2 carrots, diced
- onion - 1/2 white
I'm just kidding. I want to talk about the horrors of living as a woman in the USA right now. But here is a link to a soup I really love: https://www.food.com/recipe/copy-cat-panera-cream-of-chicken-and-wild-rice-soup-438883
I forgot to do a post last week, because the election had just happened. Needless to say, I am gutted by the result. Many advisors and business owners try to walk a fine line with politics so that they don't alienate any potential clients. Look, chances are very slim that anyone I might alienate with my political opinions is going to come to me for anything anyway. So fuck it.
My friends are very nervous. Some are downright scared. I have a friend who changed her voter registration simply because they are afraid Trump will come after all of his opponents. I have a friend who deleted all their social media and will only use email and text now. I have friends joking about coded language for things. I have a friend who is paranoid about using her period tracking app. There is a lot of fear and paranoia afoot. I am simply angry as fuck. I have wondered if I should be scared...in fact, I have thought about this a lot. But girl...there is no amount of scrubbing I can do to erase my opinions from the internet. I've been very outspoken since...well about 1973. I guess more like 1976 as those first few years I was figuring it out. I have always been a react first think later kind of girl. But since the internet came to exist, I've been on it, spewing my opinions. Goddess bless the internet. It has become a real dangerous and misinformed and fake and AI and WTF machine the last decade, but it started out so great.
I grew up with a Reagan loving dad. I think many of us did. So because I idolized my dad and my dad idolized Reagan, I idolized Reagan. I grew up in a Pro Life household and I believed everything that the Pro Life community teaches, which is that abortion is this bloody, meaty, painful, horrendous massacre that would likely leave women depressed and infertile. Yep.
Somewhere along the line, thanks to the internet, I became exposed to points of view outside of my normal sphere of people. And I learned from them. Much of that learning was accidental. But my curiosity led the way. When someone would make an off handed comment about trickle down being stupid I would then go look it up and I would find out that indeed, it is a stupid concept that a privileged white guy sold to a bunch of other white people and boom, it is Conservative gospel. The same thing happened with countless other topics, including abortion.
As it turns out, most abortions are done very early in pregnancy and they aren't bloody massacres, they are heavy, manageable, periods. I learned a ton of other things along the way too. Like the fact that all late term abortions are happening in a tiny percentage of all abortions, and all of those situations are awful, heartbreaking situations that you would never want to even know about. Women are not skipping along to their 7th, 8th, and 9th month of pregnancy, and then going "nah, nevermind. I changed my mind. I like vacations". That's absurd. But I'm sure you know that. Pregnancy is HARD AF even when you desperately want it. Imagine going through all that and just going "nah". It is not happening, ever. And sane people know babies are not being murdered after birth. Come the fuck on!
Should Chicken Be Organic? What about Bone-in?
The romanticized idea of "the heart" has even spread to medicine. The idea of "heartbeat bans" seems quaint. Except the thing you see and hear at 6ish weeks of pregnancy is not an actual heart. It is specialized cells that have started thrumming to an electrical beat. They will become a heart much later in the pregnancy - about 17 to 20 weeks - before there is a true 4 chambered heart that functions to move blood.
Abortion is not mentioned in the bible. Period. Abortion IS allowed by Jewish law. And I believe even Muslim law allows abortion if the mother is at risk, or for fetal anomaly before 4 months. Muslim law is more generous than Florida law at this point. What the fuck, America?! You voted that this shit is fine?!?!
My very first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. It was devastating. I mean I was completely flattened by it. But it was a "missed miscarriage" meaning my body was not expelling it. So I required a D&C. In some states, that very procedure is under attack for women with non-viable pregnancies. There are so many fucked up scenarios happening, I cannot possible summarize them here. I am not the expert, I am just an activist. But Jessica Valenti IS an expert and you should look her up on Instagram and subscribe to her newsletter. Every day she sends us news of what is happening with our right to not die at the hands of politics and bleeding to death because of a gray area in a state law.
The Broth - to make or to buy...
Trump will not make this better. Trump is saying he won't sign a ban. But that is just word smithing. What he will do is sign a "National minimum standard", which is still a ban. Whatever the national standard is will supercede all state laws. So if they make it a 10 week national standard, here's what that looks like: a woman who is in a situation, relationship, or whatever, has a missed period. Maybe she notices it immediately because she's very regular, or maybe her periods are not super regular so doesn't get concerned for a week or so. So she pees on a stick and it's positive. If she tested on the first day her period was late, she's 4 weeks pregnant. (I know most of you know this, but there are some who don't...like Congress and the President). So now she makes an appointment at Planned Parenthood and they can't get her in for 3 weeks. So now she's 7 weeks pregnant. Or maybe she's 8. Or maybe the Ultrasound determines she's 9.5 and there's a detectable "heartbeat" so now maybe she's shit out of luck! Maybe she tries to mail order them, which is currently legal in most states, but they take weeks to arrive and now she's kinda pushin' it with the efficacy of the pills and with the law. All of this is absolutely far more horrific than a legal, safe, medical procedure! I will never understand this.
And I will never be quiet. Like I said, there is no amount of internet scrubbing or profile deleting that could make me safe at this point. The idea that women in 2024 America are changing their voter registration and deleting their social media to save their lives is INSANE. It's insane!
You can, in most cases, order abortion pills if you are NOT pregnant. It's called the Advance Provision and sooooo many women have ordered since November 6th, suppliers are scrambling.
Meal Planning
- SOUP - PlanCpills.org
- STEW - AidAccess.org
- GOULASH - HeyJane.com
Those are all services to help women get safe, medical abortions with pills.
In Texas this week, a bill was introduced that, if passed, would mandate that internet providers ban all websites that provide INFORMATION about abortion, provide services for abortions, or provide pills. They've gone past banning books and now they are banning infor-fucking-mation.
I fucking hate raw onions, and every single one of the monsters behind this bullshit and I won't be quiet about it. So please pray for a sister because I'm getting old and partially disabled but my mouth works way too well!
Do what you feel you need to do in these troubling times. But for sure you should do it with the most information possible. To tie it back to the ridiculous opening, you gotta strain your information soup to make sure you have a broth that contacts only facts and laws. Constitution soup. Freedom soup. Bitch soup!
Serve it piping hot and share it!