Writer Erynn Brook has posted an important thread on Twitter that begins with a simple question: why does she, a Canadian woman, care so much about abortion law in the US? The answer isn’t just that it’s a moral position, that if you care about women’s rights you should care about women’s rights everywhere. It’s that the same people – and their finances – turn up in other countries too.

When Brook encountered anti-abortion protesters in Canada, she was struck not just by the callousness of the protesters but by their expensively produced, professionally designed materials. When Brook’s photo was used by the protesters online she discovered that the protesters were “a company. Like a real company with directors and managers and a lawyer on retainer.”

Protest groups generally aren’t serious businesses too, so Brook investigated. What she found was effectively a PR company supporting anti-abortion protesters, and that company had deep pockets. As she dug further she discovered the company’s links with a prominent anti-abortion group founded by a US activist, and that group’s links with anti-abortion campaigns overseas. Ireland is a notable example.

Brook:

This isn’t an America issue. It’s a global issue, and the US is a megaphone. Not just that, they have actual companies, representatives and campaigns running in other countries promoting their propaganda.

What you’re seeing on the streets and online isn’t a spontaneous protest. It’s a PR campaign.

The funding is opaque, deliberately so, and in many cases groups use crowdfunding to disguise the source of their income.

The same thing happens here in the UK with various groups raising suspiciously large amounts of money incredibly quickly, the timestamps and amounts of the donations strongly indicating that most of the money is coming from the US. This opacity isn’t just about hiding donors’ identities. In many cases it’s also designed to evade electoral law, which limits political spending during elections and referendums.

Much of the social media activity and advertising against minority groups and/or progressive legislation is the work of bots (software) and sockpuppets (multiple fake accounts), much of which comes from internet addresses in the US: in the recent Irish abortion referendum, half of the online activity was by bots.

From anti-abortionists to anti-trans activists, climate change deniers to far-right rabble-rousers, dark money from the US has gone global – and money’s coming from the other direction too, with Russia deliberately trying to sow discord and division in the West. It too runs bot networks, sock puppets and fake news factories, boosting the far right and activists working to restrict the human rights of women and minorities.

The issues may differ but the story’s the same: whether they’re outside family planning clinics or primary schools, the protesters are pawns in a global game.

Writing on Medium, Jessica Valenti discusses the horrific anti-abortion legislation in Georgia, which from 2020 will ban abortions after six weeks – a period during which many women aren’t even aware that they’re pregnant. It’s going to ruin the lives of many women.

The law may also consider women who have miscarriages as murderers in the second degree.

Valenti:

Republicans want to ensure that women are forced to carry pregnancies no matter how far along they are, and these so-called heartbeat bills do double duty: They prevent women from legally being able to obtain an abortion, and were written with the hope that they’d be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court to help overturn Roe v. Wade.

The open viciousness of the legislation, which would treat mothers of stillborn children as murderers, is staggering.

Up until recently, the anti-abortion movement would have taken great pains to pretend that women wouldn’t be punished under such a law. That the GOP no longer has the need for such niceties should scare every single one of us.

…Those who once fought so hard to seem “woman-friendly” have seemingly given up on their public image problem — embracing the most radical rhetoric.

For some years now, the religious right in the US (and beyond; the anti-abortion mob’s money funds groups here in the UK too) has attempted to camouflage its anti-women views and its anti-gay views for fear of seeming extreme. But it’s become emboldened by the success of its anti-trans campaigning, and by the support of the criminal in the White House.

…before now, the country and culture necessitated that they shroud their most extreme views.

It does not bode well for the women of America that this is no longer the case.

It won’t be the case here in the UK for much longer either. The religious right has had great success here in mainstreaming viciously anti-trans views and campaigning for the removal of trans people’s hard-won human rights, something that until very recently the chattering classes would have reacted to with horror. Emboldened by that success, the campaigning has long abandoned its “reasonable concerns” posturing to become a hate campaign that targets the very groups who work with society’s most vulnerable women.

That’s no accident. The religious right has deliberately and cynically targeted anti-trans feminists in order to legitimise a long-term strategy that is also against women’s reproductive freedom, against equal marriage and against anti-discrimination protection for the victims of religious extremism. And it’s working. Again and again we see the anti-trans crowd apparently having no problem linking arms with the enemies of feminism: the anti-abortionists, the “women know your place” crowd, the right-wing religious fundamentalists.

It’s astonishing to see. To use a colourful metaphor, it’s watching chickens recruit hungry foxes to protect them from something the foxes promise is really, really bad.

It’s a funny image, but it’s not funny unless you’re one of the foxes.

The rise of viciously anti-women legislation in the US is because the bigots aren’t afraid any more. When Donald Trump and his supporters in the media victimised muslims and trans people, the message was clear: you don’t have to hide your bigotry any more. Dangerous, hateful anti-abortion and “religious freedom” legislation were the inevitable next steps.

Here in the UK we’ve seen a very similar process, although in our case it was Brexit rather than a travel ban that put racism back in mainstream society. We’ve got the racism, we’ve got the vicious anti-trans sentiment.

You don’t need to be a Very Stable Genius to predict what’s next.

[Content note: vicious transphobia, racial epithets and trauma]

This is a photo of Tyra Hunter. She died in 1995.

Hunter, who was 25, was injured in a car crash. When first responders arrived on the scene, they cut off her clothes and discovered that she was transgender. Instead of treating her they verbally abused her and mocked her, and at DC General Hospital she received shockingly inadequate care. She died of internal bleeding in the ER.

The District of Columbia was subsequently and successfully sued, with damages of $2.8 million awarded to Tyra’s mother. Dana Priesing, who observed the trial, wrote that the evidence clearly showed that “ER staff, as evidenced by their actions, did not consider her life worth saving.”

Tyra was knocked out by the crash, but by the time the firemen arrived, she was conscious but dazed, and developing airway trouble from teeth knocked into her mouth. Tyra looked female at first glance, but in their initial injury assessment, a fireman discovered Ty’s male genitals, uttered the epithets (“This ain’t no bitch. It’s a nigger. He’s got a dick and balls.”), and ceased treating her.

They failed to clear her airway for some period of time while they laughed at her as the crowd yelled at them to get to work. Other emergency personnel on scene approached some time later, after treating the other injured passenger. They found Tyra still lying on the grass, gagging and combative, apparently trying to escape the taunting firemen.

…she suffocated from lack of oxygen in her blood. Dr. Baker testified that the sensation would have been “sheer terror.”

None of the first responders or the medical staff involved in her death were ever disciplined.

Imagine reading that and being on the side of the bigots.

That’s where the Trump administration is.

The US Department of Health and Human Services has announced a long-expected rule that would enable healthcare workers to deny people treatment based on “moral or religious objections”.

According to acting Department of Health and Human Services secretary Eric Hargan a few months ago, this is necessary because “For too long too many of these health care practitioners have been bullied and discriminated against because of their religious beliefs and moral conviction.”

The rule would allow workers to refuse to provide basic health care like birth control, refuse to treat women who have had abortions, and discriminate against gay or lesbian individuals and their families, including their children.

It’s important to note that the healthcare being talked about here is not limited to healthcare that the religious people object to such as hormones for transgender people. It’s any healthcare for people they have a problem with. Fixing broken arms. Chemotherapy for cancer. Pediatric care for your children. Life-saving help after a car accident.

What this rule says is chilling: if you’re gay or lesbian, trans or a sexually active woman, the Trump administration considers you less than human. Bigots’ hatred is more important than your right to life.

Today’s stupid ideas: rape victims should hand over their phones to police or have the investigations dropped.

There are two big problems with this. One, it’s victim-blaming: the number of false allegations is incredibly low and massively overshadowed by the solid, evidence-backed allegations that don’t lead to prosecution. The idea that a victim’s communications history and social media should be demanded before investigating rape is despicable. It’s also a gift for defence lawyers who could ask for such history so they can try to paint the victim as somehow responsible for her own assault if she didn’t live the life of a Carmelite nun.

Two, you can’t trust the police to get it back to you. I’m seeing lots of women on social media with tales of phones held by the police for as long as three years, three years in which the bills still had to be paid; one woman was hounded by a debt recovery agency over her Vodafone bill for a device the police kept for months. By the time it was finally returned, the hugely expensive phone had been in police hands for so long that it was effectively obsolete and completely worthless. As the woman put it on Twitter: “I had to make do with an old handset (not a smartphone, an ancient handset by today’s standards) on a pay-as-you-go basis until I could afford otherwise. Having been the victim of a crime, I now felt I was being punished for reporting it.”