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Posted by on May 3, 2022 in Blog, Politics, What's Left | 2 comments

Time to Abort Republicans: My Reaction to the Supreme Court Decision to Overturn Roe V. Wade

 

 

Politico is reporting the landmark 1973 SCOTUS decision Roe v. Wade will be overturned. READ MORE HERE

This ruling will effectively nullify a woman’s right to control her own body. It means a woman loses the right to make her own medical decisions. It’s a devastating blow to personal privacy and restricts her ability to determine her own future. It enables any state to make abortion a CRIMINAL ACT punishable by fines and imprisonment. It outlaws abortion in as many as 25 to 30 states based on the current political landscape, including as much as 70 percent of the geographical landmass of the United States of America.

This is potentially the most egregious legal ruling in our lifetimes.

Accordingly, I have several thoughts on this outrageous high-court ruling:

(1) CONSERVATIVES ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE: Is this a shock? Nope. In fact, it’s what we expected. It’s what we progressives warned everyone about — for decades. Conservatives and religious extremists — often, one and the same — have a chicken-neck stranglehold on the Republican Party. Fact: Conservatives have fought to turn back women’s rights and equality (blocking equal pay for equal work legislation, stonewalling passage of the ERA, etc.). Fact: Conservatives have implemented draconian state laws that severely restrict reproductive options (Texas, Oklahoma, etc.). Fact: Conservatives oppose sex education being taught in public schools (and even ban books). Fact: Conservatives have been fighting to outlaw legal abortion for half a century. Fact: “Handmaid’s Tale” is now the law of the land. This is exactly WHO THEY ARE.

(2) BASIC CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS SHOULD ALWAYS TAKE PRECEDENT OVER STATES’ RIGHTS: Defenders of this outrageous court decision naively try to soften the severity of this decision by insisting that it’s a “states’ rights” issue. Nonsense! When individual rights are threatened by the whims of any state, as has occurred many times throughout our common history, federal law (and the courts) must overrule injustices. Otherwise, people without power become victimized. This was clearly the case in the civil rights era. For instance, if the federal courts didn’t overrule backwater state legislatures and their neanderthal laws on race that were on the books for a hundred years, there would STILL today be states (and certainly local jurisdictions) where interracial marriage is illegal and punishable. Federal laws and court rulings must GUARANTEE the protection of personal rights and privacy for all, not create different playing fields where millions of citizens face discrimination and are irreparably harmed simply because they live on one side of an invisible boundary.

(3) GET RAPED, ENJOY THAT BABY! So, you still think this is about state rights? Okay then, NINE state legislatures at this very moment are seriously considering banning all abortions, even in cases of RAPE AND INCEST. Think about that. An innocent girl gets raped or is the victim of an act of incest, and she suffers the supreme punishment — she must carry the criminal psychopath’s child. Nine states! If you live in one of these backward states and are voting for conservative candidates (i.e., Republicans), this is on YOU.

(4) REPRODUCTIVE OLIGARCHY: I have some news for everyone. RICH women will still get abortions. Plenty of abortions. In the thousands. However, many POOR women will not. They can’t afford it, or don’t have the means to travel hundreds of miles away. Think about it. How grotesquely unfair are such laws? Consider not only the discriminatory intent of these restrictive laws, but also the utterly disastrous impacts overall on society — both in the short term and long run. Women and families with greater wealth (many who ironically profess to be “anti-abortion”) will ship their own family members off to states where abortions are legal. Count on it. What deplorable hypocrites! However, poor women — which applies to many less-fortunate girls who live in inner cities as well as rural communities — will not have the money nor the means to travel out of state and terminate a pregnancy. This “state rights” division effectively establishes what can only be described as a cruel CASTE SYSTEM straight out of the Dark Ages. This has the devastating potential to ruin countless lives, mostly poor people.

(5) MILLIONS OF PRIVACY VIOLATIONS COMING: Restricting abortion is a gross violation of the fundamental right to privacy. Conservatives love to squawk about the sanctity of the “patient-doctor relationship” and spew hypocrisy about keeping all medical decisions a private matter. I call bullshit. Well, not when it comes to women’s bodies and reproduction! Decisions made by patients and doctors will now be controlled by (make that–RESTRICTED BY) — the government! Even in states where abortion is prohibited, but allowed in cases of rape and incest, the REPORTING AND COMPLIANCE LAWS will make these very private personal matters potentially a matter of public record. Privacy advocates should be outraged.

(6) REPUBLICANS CUT THE UMBILICAL CHORD WITH AN AX: Let’s not fool ourselves. Republicans don’t give a goddamn about people, particularly once they slide out of the womb and begin having needs. They worship the fetus as divine, but once that baby is born, Darwin rules the kingdom! Sink or swim, kiddies. They certainly don’t support government protection for parents, or their kids. And the kids are innocent pawns in play here. The many examples of this are astounding and irrefutable. The so-called “pro-life” party has voted to slash every social program for kids when it comes to providing health care, balanced nutrition, and access to things that should be guaranteed as a fundamental human right. They’ve gutted school lunch programs. They’ve cut budgets for state-run health clinics. They’ve defunded Planned Parenthood. They’ve chiseled away funding and programs for mental health care, creating a mass national crisis.

(7) KEEP ‘EM BAREFOOT AND PREGNANT: You’d think Republicans would want to reduce unwanted pregnancies, but the record reveals otherwise. Isn’t improving education on the issue the very best way to reduce the need for abortion? In other words, teach kids about sex, so they reduce the chances of an unwanted accidental pregnancy. Sounds so simple, because it works. All studies show that kids who understand “the facts of life” are less likely to have kids out of wedlock. But conservatives, collared by religious fundamentalists, are terrified of sex. School boards across the country are stacked with backward Bible thumpers who oppose sex education taught in public schools. And, the kids in private (church schools) sure as hell aren’t learning anything about the birds and the bees. So, kids are confused, ignorant, and turn to that bastion of lunacy — their peers (or worse) the Internet.

(8) ONE COUNTRY’S SLIDE INTO MASS MADNESS: I lived in Romania during the Ceausescu era. At the time, abortion was totally illegal in Romania. This created a monstrous system of mass suffering. Since women couldn’t get abortions, thousands of unwanted kids were thrown into centers that amounted to cages and treated like trash. The cruelty of this system was something that I will never forget. The irony of making abortion illegal is that the generation that was forced to endure the draconian restriction ended up becoming the catalysts for revolution in 1989 (I’ve written on this previously in my blog).

(9) MORE UNWANTED KIDS EQUALS MORE CRIME! LET’S BUILD MORE PRISONS! Restricting abortion has proven to have disastrous consequences for the rest of society. In their best-selling book Freakanomics, Levitt and Dubner showed how the DECLINE IN CRIME RATES that began in the 1980s and continued unmistakenly onward was directly linked to fewer unwanted pregnancies over the course of a 40-year period. After 1973, women weren’t forced to bring unwanted children into the world, and so rates of crime mainly associated with teenagers began to decline in the 80s. Fewer vagrant children on the streets meant less crime. Easy access to abortion has enormous other positive impacts on society. Oh, and if there’s more crime (and there will be more crime) get ready to spend lots more tax money on courts, jails, and prisons.

(10) THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Restricting abortion does NOT reduce the number of abortions. Again, numerous studies prove this. Research from the Guttmacher Institute shows unwanted pregnancies are just as common, and fearful women are just as desperate no matter what the law says. Criminalizing abortion does little to DISSUADE women in any jurisdiction from seeking the procedure. So, what do they do when access to abortion isn’t legal. Well, in many cases….they DIE (see #11).

(11) OUTLAWING ABORTION KILLS WOMEN: Pregnancy is a far riskier procedure than getting an abortion, particularly when abortion is performed in a legal and clinical setting. One published study showed that abortion bans increase the risk of death (in pregnancy) by 21 percent. Why? Frightened women in desperation turn to quacks, unlicensed pseudo-medical practitioners, and back-alley butchers to terminate their pregnancies. So, many die. Before abortion was legal and accessible, the numbers of deaths from coat hangers and other horrid techniques are impossible to measure. But they were certainly substantial, and they still happen in horrifying numbers in nations with abortion restrictions. With so much misinformation swirling around on social media on so many other subjects, what do you think will happen when a 16-year-old girl begins watching YouTube videos on how to end a pregnancy? Fact: Women are going to DIE.

(12) THE POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE: All reputable polls show between 60-70 percent of Americans favor keeping abortion legal. Fanatics have HIJACKED the political process, and now control the Supreme Court, thanks to three Trump appointees. Even though 85 percent of Americans support abortion as a legal option in cases of rape and incest, nine states have sunk so far into the moral abyss that a tiny minority (15 percent, according to polls) will make laws for everyone. Progressives and Democrats must HAMMER Republicans on this issue. As for the political fallout, I’m uncertain. Sadly, I’ve lost faith in a large segment of the American population to gather facts, think clearly, and make good decisions. I’ll try to be optimistic, but given the mass MAGA dystopia, I’m now far more cynical about the future.

Finally, I will be proposing the establishment of *abortion sanctuaries* for ALL women. If and when Roe v. Wade actually gets overturned, I’ll write about this proposal in more detail. Using the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad as an example, let’s provide ALL women with access to abortion in localities where it’s legal. Market this aggressively in red states. Bombard social media, enticing abortion as an option. Go straight to the source, and FLAUNT the fact that abortion is legal in many states (for now — watch out if Republicans end up with more SCOTUS picks).

So, do you still think your vote doesn’t matter? Still believe elections don’t have consequences? This is what precisely happens when you don’t vote. This is what happens when you stay silent while religious fanatics spew mass madness. This is what happens when you let conservatives control the narrative. This is what happens when you vote for Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, and all the other Republican knuckle draggers. You think it ends here? This outrage is just the beginning. We have only reached the edge of the final abyss.

It’s now time to abort Republicans and toss conservativism onto the ash heap of history.

2 Comments

  1. So more poor uneducated voters, more for profit prisons due to crime increase, more low income workers, etc. Sounds like GOParadise.

    • NOLAN REPLIES:

      Exactly.

      — ND

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