Roevember streak will continue unless the following happens:
Another election evening and another trouncing of Republicans under the weight of the disastrously unconstitutional Supreme Court Dobbs ruling. What is now being dubbed the annual celebration of Roevember by gleeful pro-choice advocates continues the undefeated streak at the ballot box for reproductive rights in red, blue, and purple states, adding Virginia (Dems flipping the state legislature), Ohio (overwhelmingly voting to codify reproductive rights), Pennsylvania (securing a liberal state supreme court) and Kentucky (re-electing a Democrat for governor in an ultra-red state) to the list. Since Dobbs, Democrats have outperformed polls and previous election cycles by anywhere from six to 11 points despite low approval ratings for the Democratic president under the weight of several controversial issues from immigration to crime. Stripping the reproductive rights of 51.% of the electorate is killing the Republican Party. And doesn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon, as prominent legislators, senators and media cronies continue to ignore this trend.
Unless…
Please consider this a Public Service to Save the Republican Party from Itself – Or Else. It comes from the heart; zero smarm, I promise. Ok, maybe some smarm and victory dancing on my part, but I would heed the following if I were Republicans – although, I doubt they will. They’re running a criminal for president and just elected a religious zealot for speaker of the House. But for the good of our democracy, the bleeding must stop. And I have a solution for both ends of the abortion issue and for pro-choice and pro-lifers to come together and stop the madness.
Consider it a treaty. All wars with this level of one-sided crushing begs a treaty. The Republican Party needs to come to the table or risk extinction. Democrats should recognize their incredible victory and humbly offer the defeated party a lifeline. For two reasons: a healthy democracy needs political balance, as long as that balance does not include fascism – as the current GOP supports – and it is more important that women have their rights back than to simply use Dobbs as a handy cudgel to cravenly win elections. As stated in this space, my goals to destroy the current Republican Party is not to unilaterally elect Democrats, it is to free enslaved women from this heinous Dobbs mistake and the large swath of Republican governors and Republican state legislators who have imposed draconian laws in fourteen states. The quicker we get there, the better it is for all.
First, before I submit my offer, it must be pointed out that it should have never gotten to this, and it is all the Republican Party’s fault. It used this private sovereignty issue to gin up religious-right support to win elections since the 1980s. Their president, Donald Trump, pledged to appoint judges to overturn Roe v Wade and he did, and crowed about it for years after, as is his wont on everything. They all own this and are paying for it with repeated election floggings. Ultimately, if not for Mitch McConnel stopping the vote for Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee by claiming 16 months left of a presidency was not enough time to vote for one and then ramming Donald Trump’s nominee through with a month left in his presidency, and the ensuing Supreme Court nominees lying under oath about “settled law,” and then theocratic loons in the South turning America into an episode of Handmaid Tales, we wouldn’t be here, but we are. This is prohibition all over again, and like that moralizing disaster, we need a way out.
The results of this have been catastrophic, with hundreds to thousands of women’s lives at stake. Not to mention – ok, I’ll mention – Republican-led states forcing doctors to allow women suffering with dangerous pregnancies to go into sepsis (what killed my father) rather than lose their license or go to jail. States where 10-year-old rape victims are prohibited to escape to free-states to terminate their pregnancy or states that force 12-year-old girls to bring to term the child of their stepfather. These, and many more, are actual daily occurrences and it is clear, unless there is a national protection of women’s rights in this country the ballot-box shellacking of Republican candidates will continue unabated until there is nothing left of the GOP. I can go either way, but I am assuming they want to survive.
If so, read on:
Before Roe v Wade was stupidly taken down, 99.9% of all abortions were conducted before Week 20 of pregnancies. I propose a bipartisan compromise of a 20-week federal moratorium on legal and safe abortion rights, including all health care issues for women before, during, and after pregnancy, and especially those who suffer rape and incest. There must be provisions after 20 weeks for health issues, et al, and include healthcare protections against government intervention afforded to men. This is only five weeks more than current governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin proposed before coughing up both of his state’s houses on election day. What Youngkin, a former wonder-boy of the party, wanted was a way out for Republicans to tight-rope walk this losing issue. He tried and failed to paint those who want freedom as radicals and his party as the sane ones. He’d hoped that by controlling the state legislature he could enact a 15-week moratorium, which actually polls better than the nightmare going on in the rest of the South, but voters weren’t buying. In fact, they went steps further to hand all of the Virginia’s congress over to Democrats.
Youngkin’s move was a cynical political gambit, but it shows one key thing: Republicans are cracking. Bold talk about wiping out baby killers is over. The whole heartbeat movement is toast. The pro-life movement, pardon the pun, is on life support and they now know it, but with the Virginia trouncing of the 15-week Hail Mary at the polls, Youngkin’s surrender proposal is out. Remember: Virginia is a purple state. Ohio, a ruby red state, voted overwhelmingly for 22 to 25 weeks – or the viability of the fetus – which was the 50-year Roe statute, so my 20-week compromise is sweet relief for Republicans. Take it or leave it, but make it quick, because more hurt is coming in 2024 as a half-dozen states are priming to put reproductive rights on the ballot and goose turnout, and many of them are red or battle ground states. Not to mention the architect of this catastrophe, Donald J. Trump, is on the ballot, too, as he brags about delivering the stacked Court to sink women’s rights.
The war is over. The evil axis of Republicanism and Theocracy lost. Badly.
And so, to ensure the Republican Party does not go the way of the 19th century Whigs, this is more than a fair proposal for a federal protection of reproductive rights. For a party with zero leverage and hanging by a thread, it is the best they’re getting.
To my pro-choice and Democratic friends and/or enemies, and most importantly women, many of whom I reached out to prior to writing this a received a solid majority for the plan, I think you should lay it out there and be the bigger of the two in this fight. Come with an olive branch and restore sanity to the nation. Why risk someone competent and not defending himself in four trials to run for president as a Republican or some weird shit going down and somehow Republicans own all three branches of the federal government again? They will ban reproductive rights federally. The current Republican-controlled congress voted unanimously to do so this past January the week they attained power. It’s coming, so get something on the books now. Take this issue, as it should be, off the table. Restore the rights of your moms, sisters, daughters, aunts, cousins, significant others, your friends, and more to the point, Americans.
Or, if you want (and I don’t deny it is tempting), let this go one more year and take down Trump and whatever is left of Republicans and then control everything and do what you want. As an independent and a free thinker, I disagree with this crash and burn plan. Sure, if they resist and don’t say uncle, then wipe the Republican Party out. I’ll keep helping, as I have now since Dobbs went down, but this is the fastest, best way to return the blessed sovereignty of constitutional rights to the bodies of 51.1% of our electorate while simultaneously removing this political death grip from the necks of Republicans and get back to debating election-denying, insurrection-revisioning, gun-toting, Bible-thumping, LGBTQ-hating, and win that way.
Take the W, Dems, and take the L, GOP. End this.
Women in all states deserve equal rights. Now.
You are all welcome.
PS: Next week I will let pro-choice women chime in on the parameters of my proposal by publishing the responses I received from my survey. No need for a man to be pitching a compromise on their rights without tangible feedback.
