Air Date 10/4/2024 When women's value is seen only in relation to their ability to bear and raise children, you get policies that strip them of the right to choose whether that is something they actually want for themselves - the lived consequences are devastating. Be part of the show! Leave us a message or text at 202-999-3991 or email [email protected] Full Show Notes | Transcript BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Join our Discord community! KEY POINTS KP 1: ‘Authoritarian’: Vance’s weird war on women echoes history's biggest fascists - The ReidOut - Air Date 8-15-24 KP 2: Where Did MAGA's 'Post-Birth' Abortion Claim Come From? - NowThis Impact - Air Date 9-12-24 KP 3: Woman Shares 'Trauma' of Abortion Bans During Senate Hearing - NowThis Impact - Air Date 9-24-24 KP 4: Donald wants to CONTROL WOMEN not PROTECT them. The truth behind his FALSE PROMISE. - Danielle Moodie - Air Date 9-25-24 KP 5: Georgia's Deadly Abortion Ban: The Tragic Deaths of Two Black Women, Candi Miller & Amber Thurman - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-18-24 KP 6: Texas Republicans ARE KILLING WOMEN!!! - Brittany Page - Air Date 9-26-24 KP 7: Everyone Loves Someone Who's Had an Abortion - The Defenders - Air Date 12-30-23 (48:52) NOTE FROM THE EDITOR On the further demands for reproductive justice Articles:  We Need Better Than a Return to the Roe Status Quo National Abortion Rights Groups Have the Wrong Priorities for Our Movement Abortion Access Right Now Fund DEEPER DIVES (56:49) SECTION A: THE CASUALTIES (1:32:58) SECTION B: RELIGION (2:00:00) SECTION C: THE PUNISHMENT IS THE POINT (2:26:03) SECTION D: BLACK WOMEN (2:42:41) SECTION E: THE PUSHBACK SHOW IMAGE CREDITS Description: A protestor holds a hand-painted sign that says “Justices Lie. Women Die!” with a drawing of a coat hanger. Credit: “220503_RoeVWade_Rally_Pittsburgh-100103” by Mark Dixon, Flickr | License: CC BY 2.0

Why We Must Protect the Rights For All to Direct Their Lives We want to be in charge of our own lives. Or at least feel like we are. That sense of autonomy motivates us to do purposeful things in our lives, create things that matter, and contribute to our communities. When we feel like we are in charge of how we live and work, we are also more productive, resilient, confident, and happier. Polly has been thinking a lot about our personal freedoms and autonomy this July (Happy Fourth peeps)and how essential those things are to our individual actualization. While living cooperatively in our societies according to our unique cultures, it is important that we subscribe to some social norms, like not running red lights and stealing from others. Those things aren't good for anyone. But we must also be on the side of protecting personal autonomy where we can. We cannot be in the business of compromising the personal freedoms of others by adopting legislation that dictates who people choose to love and marry and what medical care and options they have available. When we limit personal autonomy we limit the health and well-being of an entire population. We diminish motivation and increase apathy. Come on, this is something every parent knows. When you tell a teenager "No" that they can't do something, they are going to find a way to do it anyhow and that puts them and their family at risk. We don't have to do it this way at work or in our communities. We can honor people and allow people to have a say over their own medical care and work hours and still have systems that support our communities. It's worth thinking about. Because personal freedom is essential to our happiness and that kind of autonomy can't be limited to only the people we agree with. Join Polly and the Simply Said community at https://pollycampbell.substack.com where we talk about other ideas, concepts, and approaches to help us live well, do good, be happy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Japan's Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930 (Brill, 2021) traces the shifting nature of autonomy in early modern and modern Japan. In this far-reaching, interdisciplinary study, W. Puck Brecher explores the historical development of the private and its evolving relationship with public authority, a dynamic that evokes stereotypes about an alleged dearth of individual agency in Japanese society. It does so through a montage of case studies. For the early modern era, case studies examine peripheral living spaces, boyhood, and self-interrogation in the arts. For the modern period, they explore strategic deviance, individuality in Meiji education, modern leisure, and body-maintenance. Analysis of these disparate private realms illuminates evolving conceptualizations of the private and its reciprocal yet often-contested relationship to the state. Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.

What does it mean to be a political subject? This is one of the key questions asked by Massimo Modonesi in ​The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action (2019)​, published as part of the Historical Materialism book series from Brill and Haymarket books. The book takes on the theories of Marx and Gramsci to develop a philosophical triad of subalternity-antagonism-autonomy as a way of studying political subjectification under oppressive conditions and the potential for resistance. The book then looks at political developments in South and Latin America, trying to understand the underlying dynamics of both where it’s coming from, and what its possibilities are for anticapitalist resistance. Massimo Modonesi is professor and chair of the Political and Social Sciences Faculty at the Autonomous National University in Mexico, and is the author of numerous books on political theory and history in Latin America, his most recent in English being ​Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy: Constructing the Political Subject.​ He is a member of the coordinating committee of the International Gramsci Society. Maria Vignau served as a research assistant under Modonesi, and now teaches while working on her PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle.