Jessica Valenti at The Guardian writes It isn't justice for Purvi Patel to serve 20 years in prison for an abortion:
Abortion is illegal in the United States. So is having a stillbirth – not officially, perhaps, but thanks to a case in Indiana, we’re halfway there. On Monday, Purvi Patel, a 33 year old woman who says that she had a miscarriage, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for neglect of a dependent and feticide. She is the first woman in the United States to ever be sentenced for such a crime.
In July 2013, Patel went to the emergency room with heavy bleeding. She eventually admitted to miscarrying a stillborn fetus and placing it in a bag in a dumpster. (Patel lived with her religiously conservative parents who did not believe in premarital sex.) After police searched Patel’s cellphone, they found text messages that suggested she bought abortion-inducing drugs online.
Despite the fact that no traces of any abortifacent were found in Patel’s blood work taken at the hospital, the prosecution argued that she had taken the drugs mentioned in her text messages and caused her miscarriage at 23-24 weeks of pregnancy. And, in legal maneuvering that defies imagination, Patel was charged not just with fetal homicide, but with neglecting a child. As the Guardian reported last year, these charges are completely contradictory: neglecting a child means that you neglected a live child, and feticide means that the baby was born dead. [...]
Patel’s case opens the door for any woman who expresses doubt about her pregnancy to be charged if she miscarries or has a stillbirth. It’s a terrifying thought, but one that is already impacting real women: the anti-choice movement is now sending women to jail for what happens during their pregnancies. So tell me again how abortion is totally legal. Or tell Purvi Patel.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at
The Washington Post writes
How to read the Iran debate:
Deals involving limits on weapons, nukes or otherwise, are intricate and technical. Only a limited number of people among arms-control connoisseurs fully grasp the meaning of every detail.
Yet in a democracy, these matters are and should be the subject of debate. Those engaged in the argument sometimes pretend to more knowledge than they have, tossing out a raft of numbers — readily available courtesy of your favorite newspaper—on centrifuges, enrichment and the like. Others are somewhat more candid in acknowledging that their view is shaped by what they thought before a single fact was published, though they, too, will rattle off a few data points just to enhance their credibility.
Head below the fold for more pundit excerpts.
David Sirota at TruthDig writes A Deepening Democratic Party Divide:
...the very same day Reuters reported on big banks threatening to withhold campaign contributions from Democratic coffers, Democratic lawmakers abruptly coalesced around Charles Schumer as their next U.S. Senate leader. CNN captured in a blaring headline how unflinching an ally the New York senator has been to the financial elite: “Wall Street welcomes expected Chuck Schumer promotion.” Notably, Democrats appeared ready to promote Schumer over Assistant Democratic Leader Dick Durbin, who once dared to publicly complain that “banks frankly own” Capitol Hill.
It would be easy to conclude that the status quo is winning Democratic politics—but a series of high-profile elections shows the trends are markedly different outside the national political arena. [...]
“We’ve put every Democrat in America on notice that there’s a political price to pay for putting the demands of hedge-fund billionaires ahead of the needs of working families,” said Kristen Crowell, executive director of the grassroots Chicago group United Working Families, a sister organization of New York’s progressive Working Families Party.
Ali Gharib at
The Nation writes
The Iran Agreement Is Historic. Will Congress Destroy It?
Just wait for the congressional freakout that comes if world powers and Iran sign a comprehensive nuclear accord this summer. [...]
Congress’s demand for a vote on a final deal isn’t on its own unreasonable. But, when Congress is controlled by Republicans hellbent on quashing every item on Obama’s agenda, seeking to avoid their official input isn’t either. The fight over getting an up-or-down vote—a Republican led proposal garnering some Democratic support is deeply flawed, for instance, and a Democratic alternative is unlikely to win many Republican votes—will now become the central front of the congressional-executive war over Iran diplomacy.
Kirk, still pressing the stalled sanctions bill he introduced this winter with Bob Menendez, who never saw a hawkish GOP Iran bill he didn’t like, has proven himself a warmonger. Any Democrat or Republican who follows his lead will expose themselves, too—and should be held to account for it.
Stephen Zunes at
The Progressive writes
Hardliners on All Sides Undermining Iran's Nuclear Talks:
If President Obama and other Western leaders could dictate terms of a nuclear agreement, they certainly would. They realize they cannot, however. Republican opponents of the talks naively want a return to Bush administration policy of threats and ultimatums, during which Iran's nuclear program dramatically expanded. By contrast, thanks to the Obama administration’s insistence on negotiations, the expansion of Iran’s nuclear capabilities has been halted and even rolled back.
Anyone familiar with the process of negotiations is that, in order to get the other party to do what you want them to do, there must be incentives as well as punishment. Imposing harsh sanctions without the hope of partial relief short of total capitulation is simply unrealistic, especially against a country with a strong a sense of nationalism and a history of humiliation by the West. There must be ways for both sides to declare victory. It now appears that, despite Republican efforts to sabotage such an agreement, this has been achieved.
Trevor Timm at The Guardian writes Republicans have no interest in peace. The Iran talks proved that:
A small part of the Middle East may soon be off limits to US bombing and killing, so naturally Republicans and their neocon allies are furious.
The tentative Iran deal announced on 3 April, in which Western leaders and the Islamic republic agreed on strict limits to Iran’s nuclear program, was hailed by many as a breakthrough, given that it could avert yet another US-led war in the Middle East. So almost immediately, it was denounced by key conservative members of Congress, neocons, and Republican presidential candidates, whose unquenched thirst for blood almost always outweighs their supposed commitment to peace.
David Corn at
Mother Jones writes
The Iranian Nuclear Deal: What the Experts Are Saying:
Nuclear nonproliferation is a subject that depends upon science. (Do you know how many centrifuges it takes to spin enough material for a bomb?) And it is difficult for nonexperts to assess any nonproliferation agreement. But it is rather easy to decry Tehran's leaders as evil tyrants who support terrorism, despise Israel, and cannot be trusted. Little of that sort of attack has any bearing on evaluating this framework, which may or may not lead to a concrete accord. Trust is not at issue, for example. What counts is whether the technical means of inspection agreed upon are deemed sufficient to monitor the nuclear program, materials, supply chain, and facilities that remain. Yet who can tell?
As many have noted in the past day, a framework is only a framework. There are plenty of tough and complicated details to sort out. The deal may fall apart, especially with conservatives in both Washington and Tehran—and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his crew—sniping away and looking to subvert any agreement. But as the heated debate continues, it will be important that nonproliferation experts play a critical role in the discourse. Science-based statements, not snarky sound bites, should be the weapons of choice.
Paul R. Pillar at
The National Interest writes
The Importance of the Iran Agreement:
Over the next three months as the negotiators work on the still-challenging task of ironing out the remaining details, the opinion pages and airwaves will be filled as well with details, about types of centrifuges and inspection arrangements and much else. Some of that commentary will reflect genuine and legitimate concern that the final agreement be as carefully constructed and free of loopholes as possible. Probably more of the commentary will consist of the irreconcilable opponents raising as much doubt as possible about as many provisions as possible in the hope that the net effect will be to increase political support for killing the deal. All that the opponents will really be telling us is that this agreement, like any international agreement, is not perfect and does not meet the farthest-reaching goals of either party. They will continue their doubt-promoting campaign as they always have, without offering up any feasible alternative for similar detailed and skeptical scrutiny. Almost every detail the opponents address, about uranium enrichment and inspection access and much else, is a detail on which the agreement gives the United States more than it would get from the alternative, which is no agreement. [...]
[T]his agreement is a step toward liberating U.S. foreign policy from three baleful influences that overlap considerably in terms of the people involved and the causes they espouse. One of those influences is a crude exceptionalism that believes the world is divided rigidly into allies and enemies, that the United States shares interests on everything with the former and nothing with the latter, that the only proper approach toward the latter is pressure and isolation, that what passes for diplomacy consists of the United States making demands and other nations being expected to accede to them, that throwing one's weight around is the way to get things done, and that because the United States has more weight and especially military weight than anyone else it ought to be able to get its way on just about anything.
Paul Krugman at
The New York Times writes
Economics and Elections:
One really striking thing about the British economic debate is the contrast between what passes for economic analysis in the news media — even in high-end newspapers and on elite-oriented TV shows — and the consensus of professional economists. News reports often portray recent growth as a vindication of austerity policies, but surveys of economists find only a small minority agreeing with that assertion. Claims that budget deficits are the most important issue facing Britain are made as if they were simple assertions of fact, when they are actually contentious, if not foolish.
So reporting on economic issues could and should be vastly better. But political scientists would surely scoff at the idea that this would make much difference to election outcomes, and they’re probably right. [...]
Realistically, the political impact will usually be marginal at best. Bad things will happen to good ideas, and vice versa. So be it. Elections determine who has the power, not who has the truth.
The Editorial Board at
The New York Times manages to miss the elephant in the room, which is the failure of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to deal collectively with the presence of the accumulated horror of their own nuclear arsenals. Instead it takes on the
Nuclear Fears in South Asia:
The world’s attention has rightly been riveted on negotiations aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program. If and when that deal is made final, America and the other major powers that worked on it — China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany — should turn their attention to South Asia, a troubled region with growing nuclear risks of its own.
Pakistan, with the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, is unquestionably the biggest concern, one reinforced by several recent developments. Last week, Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, announced that he had approved a new deal to purchase eight diesel-electric submarines from China, which could be equipped with nuclear missiles, for an estimated $5 billion. Last month, Pakistan test-fired a ballistic missile that appears capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to any part of India. And a senior adviser, Khalid Ahmed Kidwai, reaffirmed Pakistan’s determination to continue developing short-range tactical nuclear weapons whose only purpose is use on the battlefield in a war against India.