I know I’m going to be the buzzkill on the snark (FWIW I think this is the funniest thing I’ve read during Senior Week), but the giveaway is how everybody on the ship — including the snotty hateful first class one-percenters — applauds Rose and Jack’s reunion. To me, that tells me that this is Heaven, because while…

actually i once had a fantastic relationship for 18 months when I was 28, but given time and job issues, I married someone else who was more stable, more reliable etc.... the affection with that person continued for twenty years including his parents deaths and my divorce and disabled child. we never got back together…

It’s also a necessary myth for the natural birthing industry, which advises women to avoid OB/GYNs and refuse or delay medical interventions during pregnancy and birth.

Agreed. I live in a part of Texas that lost its Planned Parenthood clinic because of all the bullshit, and I recall hearing its former director giving a very sensible speech where he made the point that PP provided lots of vital care that wasn’t even directly related to reproductive health. He gave the example of…

This is the USA class system: If you are poor enough not to be able to afford good medical care, then your life doesn’t matter anyway.

If anyone gave a crap about preventing abortions, they would be all for free birth control and medically accurate sex ed.

A general, state-wide outlook that pregnancy is this minimally invasive, non-life threatening condition that is no big deal for women to go through might lead to ignorance of all the things that can (and DO) go wrong.

Yeah, if you’re not getting weekly visits in the last six weeks it’s easy to miss big problems in woman or fetus.

I wholly agree that we ought not jump to conclusions, but I am confounded by the argument your quote suggests. They appear to be conflating birth control with prenatal care. Because it seems very straightforward that loss of access to pregnancy check ups would increase the risks of giving birth. What’s more, I’d think…

The Texas data are puzzling in that they show a modest increase in maternal mortality from 2000 to 2010 (slope 0.12) followed by a doubling within a 2- year period in the reported maternal mortality rate.... There were some changes in the provision of women’s health services in Texas from 2011 to 2015, including the…

Okay, so lack of access to prenatal care means less health care for both mothers and babies. Which means that preventable health issues are not prevented and non-preventable issues are not managed to make them, you know, less deadly.

...to the braying of some Canadian.

I’m just thinking out loud here, but, wouldn’t the shut down of these clinics have some effect on the care these pregnant women get? Maybe pregnancy red flags were not detected because these women did not have access to these clinics? I don’t know..

wrong, wrong, wrong. This is the stage when the baby is most at-risk for oxygen deprivation because they start gasping for air.

Malatesta means “bad head” in Italian. That’s unfortunate.

My personal preference is “please clap.”

Good luck and congrats on the baby.

I couldn’t think of an appropriate necklace joke, so I’m just going to post this GIF.

Gas-lighting at it’s best. It’s like hearing my NPD father tell my mother he “can’t believe she would think he’s an alcoholic, or had a problem” and that she was crazy for thinking it, right after he was arrested for a DUI, blowing twice the legal limit. Making you think you’re the problem for thinking there’s a…

The neglect of every federal agency involved in making and maintaining the levees, and responding (or failing to) the hurricane was certainly criminal. The hurricane came and went, it wasn’t until after it passed that levees and pumps failed. Katrina was a man-made crisis, and those who had the power to do more while…