In The Pines: Our Wiggly District

In my email queue, I get lots of emails from Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the politician representing our oddly shaped, wiggly District 5 in U.S. Congress. In my physical mailbox I receive a boatload of shiny flyers from her campaign and supporters.

Chavez-DeRemer appears to be as wiggly as our newly shaped district itself.

In debates, Chavez-DeRemer positions herself as a bipartisan, non-extreme centrist in an attempt to gain the votes of District 5 NAVs like me, the non-affiliated voters who comprise more of our district’s registered voters than do Democrats or Republicans.

Not so fast.

One minute she’s wearing a MAGA hat and endorsing Donald Trump for president in 2024. Next minute she and her supporters are mailing me a blue flyer, clearly intended to mimic a Democratic Party ad. One flyer tries to convince me that DeRemer is actually supported by Oregon’s nurses.*

In another flyer, she proclaims her fervent interest in preserving our right to IVF, an infertility treatment under duress due to conservatives’ successful attack on women’s reproductive rights.

The wolf in blue sheep’s clothing wants it both ways. Anti-abortion activists proclaim that embryos (fertilized human eggs) should have the same rights as fully grown babies and children.

Well, IVF treatments require “discarding” fertilized eggs, discarding embryos.** I learned about this in depth when I was hired to write informational health brochures for an infertility clinic.

If you are in favor of preserving the rights of embryos, you are anti-IVF.

What’s her record on abortion? DeRemer voted to reduce the ability of military service members to access abortions.*** She posted on Twitter, “A vast majority of Americans want restrictions on abortion and I would be in favor of passing legislation like the heartbeat bill” a.k.a. the six-week abortion ban.

She aligns herself with Trump and the Republicans, who stacked the Supreme Court in order to overturn Roe vs. Wade which was accomplished via Dobbs v. Jackson.****

Sounds like a solid red, anti-abortion candidate to me.

If you’re part of a well-strategized plan to kill Roe and re-elect a convicted felon to the presidency?

Celebrate it publicly, Ms. DeRemer. Tell us your values—the real ones, not the fake plastic surgery values, the temporary, botoxed values with injected plump lips. Not the ones printed on imitation-Democrat-blue flyers.

Tell us what you really care about. Tell the truth.

Some people will love you for these values. Some won’t. Let us vote accordingly.

Endnotes

*The Oregon Nurses Association endorses Janelle Bynum for District 5—not DeRemer. See http://www.oregonrn.org/page/Endorsements2024.

**In vitro fertilization, or IVF, is a process in which multiple human eggs are fertilized by human sperm in a laboratory. Multiple eggs (hopefully) become fertilized. Some are placed in the woman’s womb for the blastocyst stage, so that the couple yearning to have children may have a successful pregnancy.

What happens to the other fertilized eggs, a.k.a embryos? The ones deemed unviable due to chromosomal damage and the just plain extras? They are “discarded,” like an embryo, blastocyst, or fetus from a uterine abortion or miscarriage.

***In the U.S. military, about 19,300 or 8.4 percent of active duty women experienced sexual harassment, attacks, and/or rape in one year. More info: 2021 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Military Members, Office of People Analytics, published by the U.S. Department of Defense.

****Roe v. Wade was the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that upheld United States citizens’ constitutionally protected Right to Privacy, enabling women across America to obtain abortions in many cases. A scan of the decision is available at http://www.supremecourt.gov/pdfs/transcripts/1972/70-18_10-11-1972.pdf.

Relying on a court ruling for this essential right was unwise. In recent years, the Supremes were stacked with conservative and extremist-conservative judges. Thus it became easy to take away the rights, privacy, and bodily autonomy of people with uteruses.

In states where abortion rights have been restricted thanks to Dobbs, women have died as a result of not being able to access appropriate medical care. Yep, died. Go look it up. See also: higher maternal mortality rate.

Access to IVF fertility treatment has also been restricted under Dobbs. This has resulted in a backlash that some Republicans are scrambling to undo, to score political points.

The text of Dobbs is online at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf.

For a nonpartisan, legalese-oriented explanation, see the Roe v. Wade Wikipedia page. An easier to read description of Roe and Dobbs can be found at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-is-roe-v-wade.

Readers will invariably ask my opinion on abortion. OK. I haven’t had an abortion and don’t think I could unless someone’s life was in danger. I believe that the decision to use IVF or abortion should take place between the girl, woman, or other uterus-possessing person in question and their medical care professionals—not the government, state or federal.