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Texas Judges, Abortion, and 2024 [1]

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Date: 2023-12-12

This decision by the Texas Supreme Court — mandating that a pregnant woman carry a dying fetus to term — encapsulates everything that is wrong with the anti choice movement. There is no compassion to be found anywhere in connection with this ruling. I don’t see how people who tout themselves as compassionate Christians would want their friends or family to experience what that poor woman has been forced to endure,

It appears that cracks have begun to emerge in the former monolithic Republican stance on abortion. Republicans should be overrun with joy since the Dobbs decision. After fifty years of incessant political pressure and dissemination of right wing propaganda, they achieved exactly what they have been fighting for. But the Republicans are not happy. They don’t want to talk about it — “it” being the new Republican scarlet letter “A”. Abortion. But talk about it they must.

For the past five decades, the conservative anti-choice right has incessantly trumpeted their belief that human life begins at conception, and to terminate a pregnancy by medical intervention is an act of murder. Not tantamount to, equivalent to, similar to murder — but murder, plain and simple. But now, after the Dobbs decision, it is suddenly morally permissible to commit murder, just so long as it the murder is committed within a fifteen week grace period?

The Republican hypocrisy on the abortion issue is truly astounding when looking at it from this perspective. But in overturning Roe, they finally got what they fought for. And they don’t know what to do. With respect to the issue of abortion, Republicans no longer want the moral high ground for the simple fact that the moral high ground no longer translates into votes. The irony would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so dire.

Truth be told, five years ago I couldn’t have imagined a world in which Republicans kept their mouths shut about abortion. But I’ve come to the conclusion that Republicans don’t really care that much about unborn children. They loved speaking down from their lofty moral high ground on us secular humanists. They judged us as godless, morally bankrupt heathens who sanctioned the extermination of “unborn children”.

But now, at least according to some Republicans like Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, abortion is okay — just so long as the procedure is carried out within the fifteen-week-post-conception time frame. Apparently, the whole “life begins at conception” thing is no longer a Republican talking point.

For the record, I am firmly, 100% pro-choice. Unlike the narrow view of many right wingers, I believe that in many circumstances, abortion is oftentimes the morally preferred course of action. As a male human being, I have little doubt that, if men were the people who carried a pregnancy to term and gave birth, abortion would be legal without restrictions and without a second thought. I don’t think abortion would not be a politically viable issue.

But abortion will be an issue in 2024, because Democrats will make it so. On every abortion rights ballot initiative since the June, 2024 Dobbs decision, the Democractic pro-choice position has emerged victorious in every instance --even in the deep red state of Kansas.

In my experience, people don’t talk about the the personal decision to have an abortion that much — even among very close friends and family members. But abortion procedures are carried out, and many of the women that decide to have abortions are Republicans. Based on the results of ballot initiatives since June, 2024, many conservative women (and perhaps the people they associate with) are not too keen on identifying themselves as ethically compromised.

Two issues must dominate this upcoming presidential election cycle — the preservation of democracy and abortion. The democracy issue will no doubt be front page news all day, every day starting with Trump’s first trial in March. The media coverage of Trump’s January 6, 2021 assault on our democracy will be impossible to ignore.

But I fear that, amid the sensational drama of the Trump’s trials, the abortion issue will be forgotten. That would be a huge mistake in my view. It is essential that democratic candidates force their Republican foes to address the issue. Their political livelihood, as well as our country’s future, depends on it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/12/2208766/-Texas-Judges-Abortion-and-2024?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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