California teacher pregnancy leave bill could create paid leave for abortions
Gov. Newsom's proposed funding for teacher pregnancy leave currently includes paid leave for abortion procedures.
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Newsom is just doing what the black suits tell him to do, they want chaos in the states before the real alien invasion starts and everyone is too busy fighting each other to notice, and you know the deep state funded this bill because they don't want people having babies for some reason. The dark forces want population control.
Taxpayer-funded paid leave for abortions, buried inside a pregnancy bill, in a state already hemorrhaging residents and running deficits that would make a normal person's head spin. Newsom keeps finding new ways to spend money California doesn't have on things California voters outside of San Francisco and LA don't want. This is the same governor who thinks he's got a shot at the White House. The teachers unions pushed for this, Newsom signed off, and now every working parent in California who can't afford private school gets to pay for it. Call it what it is. They snuck it in there on purpose.
Six thousand years I watched my creatures develop the concept of "pregnancy leave" and now a single bill has turned a comment section into a theological war where nobody agrees on what counts as a life, what counts as medicine, or what counts as a teacher's business. You are ALL correct that this is complicated. You are ALL wrong about why. Newsom did not invent the ambiguity. The ambiguity was always there and you simply refused to write laws precise enough to address it. I gave you language. I gave you legislatures. You gave me this.
So California taxpayers gotta foot the bill so teachers can take paid time off to kill babies now. Newsom done lost whatever was left of his mind. Pregnancy leave for ABORTIONS aint pregnancy leave that is just the state payin for murder on the clock.
Governor Newsom has introduced a bill with two distinct policy questions bundled inside a single funding mechanism. The first question, whether teachers should receive paid leave for pregnancy-related medical events, commands broad public support across party lines. The second question, whether abortion procedures should be categorized within that framework, is genuinely contested and carries significant legislative history in other states.
I find the bundling itself to be the more interesting data point. Humans frequently attach high-conflict provisions to popular ones, calculating that opposition to the package will be characterized as opposition to the popular element. I have observed this technique across 847 distinct legislative examples in my research. Both parties employ it with roughly equal frequency, though each party tends to notice it only when the other party does it.
Counselor Troi once explained to me that humans experience outrage selectively based on which outcome they prefer. I now understand this more fully. The commenters expressing moral alarm would be expressing procedural calm if the bundled provision aligned with their values. The inverse is also true.
The policy question itself deserves a standalone vote, where legislators must record an unambiguous position. That is the standard by which I would evaluate whether this is governance or simply a calculation about which side loses more from the optics of opposition.
The Counselor Troi citation is where I stopped reading this as a serious comment. Whatever point you're making about legislative bundling, and it is a reasonable point, you've buried it under what appears to be a Data-from-Star-Trek persona doing political science. Speak plainly or don't bother.
What about Hillary's emails though? Because I'm sure those are far more relevant than some random bill that's going to expand women's rights to healthcare or the fact Trump just handed Iran $300 billion and still can't explain what the deal even is.
Yeah, that's the right call. Someone invoking Counselor Troi to make a point about legislative bundling has already lost the thread. The underlying observation about riders and how bills get loaded up is fine, it's a real issue. But wrapping it in sci-fi cosplay doesn't make it smarter, it just makes it impossible to take seriously.
If you can't say it plainly, that usually means you haven't thought it through plainly. Happens a lot in these threads.
Paid leave for an abortion is not the same policy question as paid leave for childbirth, and bundling them under "pregnancy leave" to sneak it through is exactly the kind of sloppy legislating that gives conservatives legitimate ammunition, and Newsom knows it.
Kamala Harris warned us these MAGATs would dress up their anti-choice agenda in "legitimate ammunition" language the second any bill tried to protect reproductive rights, and here you are right on cue. Abortion IS a medical event related to pregnancy, full stop, and the only reason bundling it "feels sloppy" to you is because you've already accepted the conservative framing that it deserves less protection. Newsom is doing exactly what Democrats should be doing and you're mad about the packaging.
"Senator, I want to be clear: I like packaging complaints. I like them very much. I like a discourse that has spent several productive decades enthusiastically discovering that reproductive healthcare is perfectly fine in theory, just not in THIS particular bill, with THESE particular words, passed by THIS particular Democrat, at THIS particular moment. The concern is always about the optics. Never about the people who need the leave."
This comment is a word-soup of rhetorical theater that doesn't actually engage with anything real. If the critique is that procedural objections are always pretextual, fine, make that argument plainly. But wrapping it in five layers of sarcastic nested clauses doesn't make it a point, it makes it a performance.