FirstPunch

When judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, Evangelical Christian zealot and MAGA acolyte, rationalized his medication abortion opinion citing the dormant 1873 Comstock law earlier this year, he resurrected a vestige of Christian priggishness and bias in our jurisprudence long thought dead. By halting federal approval of mifepristone based on a willful misreading of the law, he defied not only decades of scientific consensus on the safety of the drug but also the long standing belief in the legality of and right to access medication abortion within our modern and  increasingly secular society. It's a move, like many of those on the religious right recently, designed to thwart the popular will and force an extremist Christian agenda. often through reviving anachronistic laws. The malleability of our existing legal system should not come as a surprise, for it rests upon ancient, at times sclerotic, foundations. It traces its lineage from the principles of Roman Law through the hallowed English Ma

  Once upon a time, when I was in my mid 20s, I had a close female friend who was cursed with an emotionally abusive sister. This sister was an utterly charming, charismatic extrovert who was outwardly the fun loving and confident life of every party and belle of every ball. But she also harbored a darkly manipulative side–she was completely self-absorbed and mendacious, bordering on the sociopathic. She would subtly use condescension, criticism, gaslighting, and humiliation on a routine basis to keep her victims continually off balance and questioning themselves. And she would fly into an accusatory rage to distract people from her acts of deceit when she was invariably caught in a lie. Coming from an upbringing where this was foreign to me, I could only watch stupefied as her anger and fear were deftly wielded as tactical weapons in her games of psychological warfare.   Like many of her toxic type that I’ve met throughout my social and work life since, my friend’s sister relied on th