The Republican War on Women finds its front lines in Texas.
Texas, I fear, is a harbinger of what’s to come in other states.
Nancy L. Cohen, president of the Gender Equity Policy Institute
With less than two weeks to go in a hotly contested and painfully close election, Vice President Kamala Harris is spending one of those crucial days not campaigning in the seven swing states that stand as the battleground for her presidential chances, but rather the deep-red, Republican-dominated Texas. The day I write this, Democratic candidate Harris, joined by superstar singer Beyoncé and beloved Texas country legend Willie Nelson, will hold a rally in the state’s largest city: Houston. The reason is not politically strategic, as she has little to no chance of winning it, and for that reason alone maybe it is a down-the-stretch mistake, but she is doing it because what is at stake in this election: the most vital civil rights war since the early 1960s – Women’s Reproductive Rights, which have been stripped from over 50% of the electorate by a radical Supreme Court, cobbled together by former president Donald Trump and pushed through by Republicans hardliners like senators Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnel that moved heaven and earth to enslave women to the state. Texas is its ground zero.
The state’s draconian horror show – that was engineered by Republicans with enthusiastic guidance of Governor Gregg Abbott – began taking control of women’s bodies in 2019 by dramatically restricting their healthcare access and was exacerbated in 2021 by a complete abortion ban that included leans on contraception access and prenatal care. From that year until the unconstitutional Dobbs decision by the hack Court, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose 56% compared with just 11% nationwide during that time. These included women of color, as the rate of Hispanic women dying while pregnant, during childbirth, or soon after increased from 14.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 18.9 in 2022 after the striking down of the national protections previously provided by Roe v Wade. Black women, who historically have higher chances of dying while pregnant, during childbirth, or soon after, saw their rates go from 31.6 to 43.6 per 100,000 live births. Rates among white women, too, nearly doubled from 20 per 100,000 to 39.1.
The Dobbs decision further emboldened Abbott and his Republican cronies to tighten the government’s fist by implementing arguably the most restrictive abortion bans in the country, bolstered by a criminal ban in 2022, including threatening imprisonment for healthcare providers and doctors for violating the law. This fascistic insanity has forced over 35,000 residents to seek care out of state. Now, in an almost unfathomable move even for pro-life sycophants, Abbott and the Republicans are aggressively mounting a legal challenge to the federal policy to access the private medical records of patients who seek abortions across state lines.
By any measure this is totalitarian oppression aimed specifically at women that – make no mistake – is the blueprint for the Trump/Vance Project 2025 agenda nationally. Republican VP candidate, J.D. Vance proudly wrote the foreword to the project and the current GOP congress has already voted unanimously to enforce a national abortion ban. Trump has commented that his signing it into law is possible with a “We’ll see” if re-elected. With all this force behind him and his continued bragging on striking down Roe v Wade, there is no reason to believe that everyone, no matter the state, will soon face this kind of madness if Trump and Republicans win this November.
And so, Madam VP Kamala Harris, coming off a speech in Georgia where anti-woman laws denying basic healthcare has resulted in the recent deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, is going into the belly of the beast, the front lines of this fight to proclaim her message of returning freedom to her fellow woman citizens and for all those who believe in the sanctity of the United States Constitution and its purported protections against these enemies of our sovereign rights as Americans.
Moreover, what is going on in Texas flies in the face of the utterly weak argument pro-life Republicans perpetuate, including Trump, that turning women’s rights over to the states to decide is the most democratically fair solution. This, of course, is bullshit on many levels; the most alarming is its ignoring of basic civil rights and the protections provided by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which grants full and complete rights to privacy from government interference and the sanctity of habeas corpus. Where is the vote in Texas? Where is the opportunity to be represented that other states have put on the ballot and has seen reproductive rights (supported now by nearly seven out of ten Americans) secured? There is none. “Let the states decide” is an abject lie.
If voters are unaware of the list of fascist Republican-run states with reproductive rights curtailed or outright banned with no recourse to vote, here is the list: Idaho, Utah, Arizona, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and the worst, Texas. None but Florida and Arizona have deigned to put the measure on the ballot (it is on this year). Women have been summarily stripped of their fundamental rights to live free by the very hypocrites who bitched about wearing a lousy mask during COVID, yet now control what is happening inside a citizen’s body. Let that sink in, because I am fucking tired of writing it: 22 of 50 states – nearly half the nation – is ignoring our constitutional rights and have summarily put women under the thumb of government oppression.
This is why Kamala Harris is going to Houston, Texas – not for her election prospects there, but to make her stand for us, for the freedoms of all Americans denied by Republicans in these states and their aim to take over the federal government again next year (as they did when they eliminated federal protections for women and sent this modern form of Prohibition into reality). Much like Prohibition, it cannot stand under the weight of its fascist idiocy, and we all know there is only one way to defeat it: to rid the nation of the Republican scourge. And it is right and historically imperative that a woman running for president of the United States stand tall at the forefront of this sacred fight. In Houston. In Texas. To reveal its evils. To proclaim its assault on freedom and the fundamental right to exist. To promise to appoint judges and attorneys’ general, who will not deny freedom, but secure it, because Trump has and will appoint the former.
Finally, Houston calls because this is what Kamala Harris stands for and what we all must always stand for in these United States: equal liberty and justice for all.
