UNI88 wrote: ↑Mon May 11, 2026 7:55 am
My testimony before Congress was used as a dog whistle to incite anti-abortion hate
Less than an hour from when I walked out of Congress, my phone began lighting up with emails and social media alerts (and urgent messages from security teams tracking them). Scores of the messages and posts said: You are a bitch. A whore. Slurs that can’t be published. Some questioned whether I can still be “aborted” and then answered, “I think she can.” They said things like, “this is why firing squads are back.” They asked one another where I work. They hypothesized that I am infertile and that I hate children. They said they should “exact vengeance,” that I will burn in hell, that I am Satan, that I am evil.
In less than 24 hours, I saw from the alerts and my inbox tally that I had received or been mentioned in hundreds of thousands of ugly, abusive comments.
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Gill and the others who are fiercely committed to politicizing and restricting this critical form of healthcare didn’t want to hear any of that. Instead, they used a hearing about safety to sound a dog whistle to the far right to unleash their misogyny, vitriol and hatred. Which they did.
I also want to be clear that this is right out of the extremist playbook. My colleague Cynthia Miller-Idriss has documented how gendered hate speech and slurs are misogynistic tactics of containment designed to induce fear and shrink women — and that such speech can escalate to physical violence.
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I hope the sad irony of all this is not lost: I went to Congress to testify, as a legal expert, about a federal law aimed at preventing this very type of harassment, threats and violence against healthcare providers and patients with which I soon found myself inundated. The storm against me will blow over: The peril that doctors and patients must contend with daily will not if the FACE Act is repealed.
This is not ok. These types are weak men, fearful and misogynistic lovers of patriarchy and dominance culture. They of course existed before Trump but he strongly encouraged this behavior and greenlighted the threats. And he’s too dumb to even care about it as you know damn well he’s paid for his share of abortions.
