The rapid & continued ascension of the 2024 Election’s primary issue.
The egregious, unconstitutional, and highly partisan Supreme Court decision to strike down the Roe v Wade protections for women’s bodily sovereignty in this purported democratic republic 22 months ago has been a voting bonanza for Democrats, the only party supporting its return as the law of the land, and a death knell for Republicans. The GOP spent decades appointing judges, filing lawsuits, raising money from evangelical groups, running ads, holding rallies, and giving speeches to strip women of rights, and now with its horrid realities being perpetuated by Republican-run states (currently 14) across the union, and the audacity (or stupidity) to run a candidate for president who appointed the corrupt justices that caused this has put Reproductive Rights squarely in the crosshairs of the 2024 presidential campaign.
Since the terrible “Dobbs Decision” in June of 2022, the bottom has fallen out of Republican election politics. Between the disastrous midterms that historically should have sunk Democrats (What happened to the Red Wave?) and the ensuing special elections victories with abortion rights on the ballot (six in 2022 – a record – and one last year), the ascension of this issue in electoral politics is staggering. So much so I floated a lifeline for Republicans to come to the table for at least a national 20-week moratorium (99.9% of all abortions occur before 20 weeks) with non-negotiable exceptions for the woman as a negotiating ploy to save the party from themselves but mostly to free women in red states from government bondage.
Alas, since my rare display of empathy for fascist scum, the Republican-run House of Representatives has continuously introduced legislation for a complete eradication of women’s rights federally and red states keep passing draconian laws to jail women (the most recent, Arizona) or deny travel rights to leave to find suitable 21st century health care (Texas), and in Alabama one conservative judge banned in vitro fertilization (IVF), which even stunned Republicans.
This is what not having the national guard Roe provided.
The outrage has been palpable and quantified in poll after poll – certainly in its unbeaten record in ballot-measure voting. This has also led to an undefeated record for pro-choice candidates in both red and blue states. In a recent special election in New York’s Third District out in Long Island, which a Republican won by six percent less than two years ago, Democrat Tom Suozzi flipped it with a decisive seven-point win mainly due to his leaning into the reproductive-rights issue.
Today, 70% of Americans (a new high since Roe was instituted in 1973) want reproductive rights protections back. Only 22% support the heinous six-week bans that are all the rage in most red states. These numbers in a highly partisan electorate that is seemingly 50-50 on all issues is astonishing. Pro-choice is on a roll, and it is showing no signs of slowing. In fact, it has gained steam beyond any issue we have seen since 9/11. We can’t even get Americans to agree with any semblance of sanity that armed lunatics smashing into the Capitol to halt the sacred democratic rights to the vote is bad, but allowing the government access inside the bodies of 51% of the populace is a monumental loss.
Those straddled with the losses? Republicans.
Good news is that they are finally aware of it, or at least some of them are, which means it’s reached its saturation point.
This has always been the plan since Dobbs was enacted: hang losses, shocking in red states and conclusive in blue ones, on Republicans time and time again until they buckle, cut the shit, and join Democrats in instituting federal protections for women’s rights or suffer extinction. And, as written here, either one is fine as it still gets us to the same place. And the buckling is happening! Sure, some fanatical Republicans continue to dig their own political graves, but the fact that many are flip-flopping to survive reveals the end game is afoot. The tide has indeed turned.
Elections, as they say, have consequences.
The best evidence that the issue is electoral gold for Democrats and a steaming turd for Republicans is found in formally staunchly Pro-Life politicians now running in the other direction. GOP legislators, governors, and candidates for state and federal positions are in a mad scramble to crank out statements and post tweets distancing themselves from their previously zealous part in this national calamity. Even its architect, Donald Trump, wholly and proudly responsible for killing Roe (he can’t help touting himself as its architect) with his hand-picked litmus-test SCOTA justices, recently put out a video statement forgetting his recent call for a 15-week national ban he’s proposed for months in a pathetic attempt to remain neutral, lauded the states’ rights aspect of his actions.
This retreat, while speciously entertaining, has gone badly.
No less than 24-hours later, Republicans in the battleground state of Arizona, which incumbent president Joe Biden flipped from red to blue in 2020, put into effect an 1864 law which bans all abortions at any time with criminal penalties for women and doctors. A law that was enacted years before Arizona was even a state by slave owners when Abraham Lincoln was president, the country was embroiled in a Civil War, and women – never mind all Black people – had no rights, is on the books.
“Leave it up to the states,” Trump heralded. Apparently, he is ok with this, although he was quick to denounce it (a cynical ploy to deflect from the truth). This raised the cockles of his most ardent supporters, evangelicals, and his former vice president, Mike Pence, whom he nearly got killed on January 6, 2021, and has come out against his re-election. They are just another in a long line of suckers Trump has grifted for his own gain, but in his feckless wake the growing chasm inside the Republican Party, already embroiled in their own civil war between MAGA extremists and former “normal” Republicans of Reagan and Bush, has widened.
Divide and conquer. That’s the ticket.
All this lunacy is on the heels of midnight secret laws banning abortion passed by North Carolina’s legislature after its Democrat governor vetoed it, and thousands of women in health crisis fleeing Texas and Florida – Texas’s historically horrifying laws have inspired Florida, which is one month from having a six-week ban go into effect that has forced a ballot measure this fall. These states are injuring and killing women, not in some post-apocalyptic world, but right now.
Let’s face it, leaving it up to the states didn’t work for civil rights or gay rights and it ain’t working for women’s rights. It is quite frankly working against women.
And so, here we are, a little more than seven months out from a presidential election and the decision is clear: if you wish to have the very real threat of a national ban on reproductive rights in all 50 states, then vote for Donald Trump and Republicans. You might want this, and it is your right to do so. If not, you must vote for Joe Biden and Democrats. Sorry, but this is the choice. Tossing your vote away now to go Independent (and this is an Independent talking, one who has voted that way in far more elections than not) puts women in jeopardy of being wards of the state. While Trump is busy shouting in videos at two in the morning in front of a bay flags, orange-caked makeup melting down his cheeks, Joe Biden is promising to return sovereign rights back to women.
I’ll let Democratic strategist, Simon Rosenberg sum it up for us: “If Republicans are not defeated this year they will be emboldened, they will continue to escalate their attacks on our freedoms, and far, far worse will be in store for the good people of the United States. The stakes in this election, somehow, got much, much higher in the past week.”
And those stakes are real and not going away until we make it go away.
Regardless of what shenanigans Trump and his cabal conjure to eradicate the Constitution and democratic protections, this is how the system works.
Choose wisely.
