It has only been a week since the explosive leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that heralded the end of 50 years of legal abortion in the United States. But the GOP is wasting no time building its shadowy, authoritarian successor state.
Having seemingly won their victory sign on abortion, Republicans have no time for complicated things like participatory democracy, only for the crude exercise of power.
What Republicans are planning goes far beyond ending legal abortion as defined in the landmark case. Roe vs. Wade—and beyond what even many self-identified Republican voters want. In court challenges and proposed legislation from Idaho to Florida to Congress, the GOP has expanded its war on reproductive freedom to include its wildest dreams of theocratic fever.
Criminalization of spontaneous abortions. Prohibition of condoms, IUDs and other forms of birth control. Remove pre-existing abortion protections from state constitutions.
These laws and bills represent not only the largest step backwards in reproductive freedom in the history of the United States, but finally put the twisted and totalitarian worldview of the Republican Party on display for all the world to see.
After days of dodging any comment on the content of Justice Samuel Alito’s sweeping draft decision, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell finally offered a sneak peek of the nightmares to come. Republicans would be “more definitive” in their anti-choice agenda after the court struck down Roe, McConnell said. USA Today on Saturday. that includes possibly criminalizing abortion nationwide if Republicans regain the White House and Congress in 2024.
“I don’t think it’s a big secret where Senate Republicans stand on that issue,” McConnell said.
If McConnell has his way, a 2024 abortion ban will only be the culmination of an exhaustive list of anti-choice bills now making their way through Republican state legislatures.
State Republican parties have been busy; have passed over 500 abortion restriction laws since January, and the pace picks up. The imminent reality of a post-Roe The country has state legislators who proudly put forth proposals that the GOP of even a decade ago would have dismissed as unbelievably extreme. And its implications extend far beyond Roe to attack the fundamental rights of privacy, that a growing number of Republican politicians now also say they must go.
In Tennessee, Senator Marsha Blackburn has opposed legal access to contraception; she called the milestone 1965 Griswold vs. Connecticut case that ensured that right”legally wrong”, a phrase that Americans will hear a lot as the Republicans reduce our remaining privacy and reproductive health rights.
Blackburn is not alone. Blake Masters, Republican candidate for Senate from Arizona backed by right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel, recently pledged to vote only for judicial candidates who oppose the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of legal birth control. Describing himself as “100% pro-life,” Masters drew a red line and vowed to oppose any potential judge who doesn’t “get it.” Roe Y griswold Y Casey They made the wrong decision.” In the world of Masters, contraception would exist only at the whim of red state legislators.
“There is still hope that a power-drunk Republican Party will overreach and arouse popular anger across the country against its extremist policies.”
Republican efforts are even outpacing the Supreme Court, which has yet to issue its official decision on the future of abortion. That hasn’t stopped Louisiana from changing its anti-abortion laws to prohibit the practice from the moment of fertilization of the ovum (It would also ban in vitro fertilization, which has been used by thousands of Louisiana families), an extremist position out of step with both modern medicine and the beliefs of most Americans.
Idaho Republicans are going even further, after state Rep. Brent Crane confirmed he would hold hearings to consider banning IUDs and the Plan B birth control pill. In Tennessee, not even your mailbox is safe. A new law signed by Governor Bill Lee makes it a felony, with a fine of $50,000, receive abortion pills in the mail. So much for small government.
Where Republicans aren’t trying to get contraceptives off the shelves and criminalize health care, they’re busy setting in motion the machinery to amend state constitutions where abortion is already protected. To the surprise of many leftists, the ruby red of Kansas actually codifies abortion rights in their state constitution. But that won’t be the case if the Kansas GOP passes the “Value ‘Em Both” amendment, which criminalizes abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. Instead of constitutional protections, Kansas would slap 20 years in prison in any woman who receives an abortion.
for a party that once considered constitutions as sacred documents, and denounced any talk of amending them as disrespectful to the very idea of America, Republicans are leaning into their new passion for amending state statutes. Alaska legalized abortion in 1970, three years earlier Roe vs. Wade—and the Alaska Supreme Court reaffirmed a woman’s right to privacy when making health decisions as recently as 1997. Now, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy says he’s open to overturning Alaska’s long pro-choice history, and his fellow Republicans are proposing a constitutional amendment to permanently criminalize abortion.
This new extreme, the prohibition of abortion without none exceptions for rape, incest, or the safety of the mother—goes even further than Republicans of past decades would have dared.
As a Republican congressman from Texas from 1967 to 1971, George HW Bush was known as a vocal supporter of contraception. Until recently, even some of the most conservative states had exceptions to protect the life of the mother. Not anymore. state Republican parties in South Carolina, North Carolina, AlabamaY South Dakota all are in the process of passing outright abortion bans with no exceptions, but at least the women who are likely to suffer and die under this barbaric regime have Thoughts and Prayers from Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson as they prepare for a long and unwanted forced pregnancy.
Nowhere in the Republicans’ ambitious plans have they left room for democracy, for discussion, disagreement, or speech for the millions of women whose lives they are so eager to devalue. These abortion and contraception bans are treated as edicts, debated within the party, and handed out to the people as non-negotiable truth.
The Republicans have mobilized their anti-choice agenda with incredible speed. If left unchallenged, the practical result will be a political, moral, and humanitarian disaster that will condemn women to second-class citizenship while destroying the last pieces of the shared social fabric in an increasingly polarized and disunited nation.
And while all signs point to the Democrats facing certain doom this November, where they are widely predicted to lose control of both the House and Senate in the midterm elections, there is still hope that a Republican Party drunk with power overreach, and provoke popular anger across the country against his extremist policies.
Democrats are frequently (and often quite) criticized for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But if they can articulate to the American people the fact that the GOP is coming for a set of rights we take for granted, maybe this time it will be the Democrats celebrating as a deranged GOP gropes for their much-talked-about comeback.
Reference-www.thedailybeast.com