ONE WOMAN'S CRUSADE TO EJECT ANTI ABORTION EXTREMISTS FROM THE TEXAS SUPREME COURT

WOMEN HAVE DIED THANKS TO THE STATE'S ABORTION BAN. NOW, GINA ORTIZ JONES URGES TEXANS TO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATIC JUDGES ON NOV 5TH!

Screenshot from the homepage of the Find Out PAC.

Donald Trump is desperate to try and make women forget that HE promised to appoint judges who would overturn Roe V Wade and ban abortion. Now he’s claiming that he will ‘protect women ‘ if he’s elected president. I call B.S. on Trump . On Earth 1, it’s thousands of real women like Gina Ortiz Jones in Texas who are fighting to protect our reproductive health, our fertility and our lives. Here’s what Gina is doing.

Gina Ortiz Jones is on a mission—one that may be her most challenging yet.

And that’s saying something for the former Under Secretary of the Air Force, who served under President Joe Biden until March 2023.

“The Texas Supreme Court took our ( reproductive ) freedoms. And what we need to do about it in November is vote out ( Republican justices) Jimmy Blacklock, John Devine and Jane Bland,” she tells Texas Courier, in an interview.

Jones is on a blitz to convince Texans to instead elect three pro- choice Democratic judges - Christine Weems,  DaSean Jones and Bonnie Lee Goldsteinto the Texas Supreme Court on Nov. 5th.

No Democratic justice has served on the Lone Star State’s top court since 1994. If Jones is successful in electing just one of these three impressive judges running onto the bench, it will be historic.

To make her case to Texans preparing to vote, Jones has established and now heads up the Findoutpac which is spearheading the effort to inform voters that there is something that they can do to free themselves from Texas’s near total abortion ban - vote for these Democratic judges.

The ban, among the most extreme in the country begins from conception, provides no exceptions for rape or incest and has left dozens of Texas women bleeding out from miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies and suffering from near-deadly sepsis infections. 

Plus over 26,000 rape -related pregnancies occurred in Texas in just 16 months after the first Texas abortion ban bill Senate Bill 8 ( SB8) was passed.

Doctors face up to 99 years in jail, a $100,000 fine and a loss of their medical license if they perform an abortion except if a woman is at risk of death or ‘substantial impairment of a major bodily function.’

Now Texas voters have the power in this Nov 2024 election to kick three of the most extreme anti abortion judges who have upheld the state’s abortion ban, off the top bench, instead of re-electing them to another 6 year term, according to Jones.

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It’s the only way that Texas voters can get on a path to reproductive healthcare freedom without a miraculous Democratic sweep of the state legislature plus voting their Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and Governor, Greg Abbott, out of office. It’s functionally impossible to get a ballot initiative on the ballot in Texas, as has been done successfully in Ohio, Kansas and Michigan for example.

That’s why the The Findoutpac takes direct aim at three Republican justices up for re -election on its dramatic website stating that  “Jimmy, John & Jane : Three Texas Supreme Court Justices F*cked Around With Our Reproductive Freedoms, and now they’re going to find out.”

Jones wants ‘Jimmy, John and Jane’ to “find out” on Nov 5 that the people of Texas are fed up with “what this bench has done, which is essentially to take medical decisions away from doctors and women and give them to politicians,” she tells Texas Courier, in an interview.

The San Antonio resident tells Courier Texas that she was propelled into action after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Kate Cox, a mom of two whose fetus suffered from a fatal genetic disorder, Trisomy 18, didn’t qualify for an abortion under the state’s ban.

“I just remember reading that six or seven pages of the Kate Cox opinion and I thought you don’t have to be a lawyer to know that those folks ( the  Supreme Court justices) are just blowing smoke up your dress,” she says.

“And certainly as I was reading that opinion, I was like, this isn’t right,” she continues.”Who are these folks who are elected judges, to tell this woman that they know more than her doctor?”

Jones says that she related to Kate’s situation because as an “out lesbian woman of color”, she has experienced injustices in her own life.

“I served under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ( military policy) So I was willing to die for my country. But my country was not ready for me to serve openly. And so I think every time I see these injustices and I can do something about it, then I think it behooves me to do that.”

It’s an approach to life that the Findoutpac founder learned from her mom Victorina, who came to America from the Philippines because she believed so strongly in the American Dream.

Jones tells UpNorthNews that her mom had a saying: “when something wasn’t right, she would do something about it. And that’s been a powerful example for me throughout life.”

It’s an attitude that propelled her into service for the country beginning when she earned a four - year Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) scholarship.

After graduating from college she became an intelligence officer in the United States Air Force, where she was deployed to Iraq. After three years of active duty, she reached the rank of captain.

She later joined the United States Africa Command and then moved to the Defense Intelligence Agency, where she was a special advisor to the deputy director. Finally, she served as a director in the office of the United States trade Representative,  and continued that work into the Trump administration.

“As a civil servant, you’re apolitical,” she explains. “So I wanted to see, frankly, what good I could do from within.” However, after six months, she left. “Some of the folks that were appointed to the administration were not interested in service or the public, much less public service,” she says.

Jones wanted to find a new way to serve and that calling turned into two campaigns to run for Congress as a Democrat in Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, her home district - in 2017 and 2019 - both of which she narrowly lost. 

Now, she sees that by far the most consequential way for her to serve the women and families of Texas is by effecting change on the Texas Supreme Court, which has refused in key decisions to help preserve the lives, health and fertility of Texas women.

If three Democrats are elected in 2024, then in two more years, another three Republican judges will be up for re-election and at that point, there would be an opportunity for Democrats to actually become the majority on the state Supreme Court. 

“Let’s not forget what’s really the prize here. Wisconsin shows us the prize,” says Jones, referring to how Wisconsin voters were able to reinstitute reproductive freedom and democracy itself in their state by finally electing a Democratic majority to the Wisconsin state Supreme Court, with the addition of Judge Janet Protasiewicz in 2023.

Since then, the court has rolled back the 1849 total abortion ban that women in the state were living under and has ruled that voters deserved fair non gerrymandered electoral maps. That decision has allowed Wisconsinites to actually choose the representatives they want in their state legislature for the first time in 12 years in this 2024 election.

“That’s what we need to do here,” says Jones, who hopes that eventually with a Democratic majority in the Texas Supreme court, the judges could undo the state’s highly gerrymandered electoral maps and review its voter suppression tactics which make it harder for Texans to both register to vote and to vote. 

However, with the immediate election just two weeks away, Jones’s Findoutpac is using digital ads featuring Texas women like Amanda Zurawski, Lauren Miller, Kaitlyn Kash and others who have nearly died because of the state's abortion ban to spread the word about the opportunity to vote for change.

The goal is to convince at least the 49% of Texans who believe that the state’s abortion law should be less strict, to vote for the three Democratic judges running for the bench.

The three Democratic judges that Texans will see on their ballots are Judge Christine Weems, Judge DaSean Jones and Judge Bonnie Lee Goldstein.

Chistine Weems who is running against religious anti abortion extremist Justice John Phillip Devine is endorsed by Emily’s List a national organization which works to elect pro-choice women to office.

Devine, who was first elected in 2012, says he was arrested 37 times at anti abortion protests, has served 34 days in jail for blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic and  has blasted legal challenges to Texas's abortion laws as “a mockery of God”.

He’s spoken out against the separation of church and state and has suggested that Democrats will cheat in the 2024 presidential election to prevent Donald Trump from winning the presidency.

DaSean Jones, an army combat veteran, who is running against Justice Jimmy Blacklock, served two tours in Iraq. He says it’s important to “achieve equilibrium” on the Texas Supreme Court and cites abortion and voting rights as two areas that need a broader perspective.

His opponent, Jimmy Blacklock, was appointed by Governor Greg Abbott in 2018, who praised him saying “ I don’t have to guess or wonder how Justice Blacklock is going to decide cases because of his proven record of fighting for pro life causes.”

Judge Bonnie Lee Goldstein who is challenging Justice Jane Bland has the endorsement of Eric H. Holder Jr, the 82nd U.S. Attorney General and now Chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC).

Holder also endorses both Christine Weems and DaSean Jones and says, “Texans deserve a state Supreme Court that is fair-minded, conducts an independent evaluation of the law, and is dedicated to ensuring rights and protecting freedoms.”

Republican Justice Jane Bland, on the other hand, was also appointed by Greg Abbott in 2019 and wrote the opinion dismissing the case led by tech industry exec Amanda Zurawski and 19 other women who were seriously harmed by Texas’s strict abortion ban.

Bland effectively rubber - stamped the restrictive Texas abortion law which is unclear about exactly when doctors can intervene to save a pregnant woman’s life by providing an abortion. The 20 women plaintiffs had asked the court to clarify the law. Bland refused.

The question that Jones is hoping to get a positive answer on Nov 5th, is whether Texans are disturbed enough by far more women dying in the state since the abortion ban -  56 % more between 2019 and 2022, including almost doubling for white women, increasing 38 % for Black women and Hispanic women by 18.9% -  to vote for pro choice judges? Maternal mortality only increased 11 % in the same time period nationwide.

At the same time that more pregnant women are dying in Texas, 13 % more babies died after birth in Texas, in the year after the first abortion ban was enacted.

“ A lot of time has passed ( since the first ban was enacted in 2021) so it ‘s hard to meet somebody that doesn’t know somebody or wasn’t themselves impacted by this,” points out Jones.” I even know somebody at my church who had a miscarriage and unfortunately was denied a D&C ( Dilation &  Curettage procedure ) initially because her life wasn’t at risk…” This is not something that is going to fix itself.”

Jones is optimistic that she can get Texas voters to “fix” the situation. She herself was highly successful in fixing a number of Air Force policies when she was the Under Secretary during President Biden’s administration.

She enabled pregnant female pilots to be able to continue to fly during their pregnancies, she set up a hub for services at seven Air Force bases for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and also clarified that the Air Force would help their families with LGBTQ children who might need to leave states with laws targeting their kids.

Now, she is confident that “people are very motivated to hold somebody accountable” for their loss of freedom in Texas.

Others may tell her that trying to flip three seats on the Texas Supreme Court from Red to Blue is a longshot but she counters that “When people say oh, that’s really tough, well how do we know, we’ve never tried?”

Jones calls out the Republican - controlled Texas legislature and the three Republican judges up for re-election for torturing Texas women.

Women like Amanda Zurawski, whose sepsis infection after her water broke at 18 weeks destroyed her fallopian tubes, or Samantha Casiano, who was forced to carry a baby with a fatal diagnosis for months and then watch her die for four hours after birth.

“ The real tragedy is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We have the answer. All we have to do is vote,” she says.” This is too far. Regardless of what your thoughts are on abortion, what is happening to these women needlessly, is we need better. We deserve better.” 

Justice Jimmy Blacklock, Justice John Phillip Devine and Justice Jane Bland are the three incumbent justices who are running as Republicans for another 6 year term on the state Supreme Court.