I can believe it's a desirable issue for the Rs to hang onto for reasons you noted.
But... Roe v Wade is steadily becoming irrelevant. Women don't choose abortions because that's actually their preferred method of choice to avoid bringing a dependent into the world. Especially now that one may have to travel hundreds of miles in the USA even to reach a clinic that still provides abortions.
Women would rather have a way of preventing conception that's safe and convenient. There are now contraceptives one can even have implanted in the arm for up to three years. That of course is why the Rs have started to bear down on those choices too: trying to make it a matter of religious freedom for a clinician or pharmacist to decline to fill birth control prescriptions or to implement measures like insertion of IUDs or the in-arm birth control measures. And it's why Republicans also oppose workplace health insurance coverage of contraception.
It's not about protecting a fetus from conception forward to birth (when the Republicans figure a delivered child is on its own and is the sole responsibility of the woman who bore it). It's about undoing gender equality and suppressing a woman's autonomy.
The results of being kept "barefoot and pregnant" are pretty effective at keeping a woman in what Republicans imagine is her place: dependent throughout all her childbearing years on others legally empowered to define the boundaries and terms of her existence.
Well it's time to throw all those mofos the heck out of office. If men could be impregnated, abortions would be free by appointment in sterile rooms off the side of barbershops all over the USA. Not a states' rights issue, either. Federal mandate, fully funded by the good ol' boys of House and Senate. Believe it.
Seems to me a better idea is let a woman implant a contraceptive in her arm if she doesn't want to bring a child into the world until and unless she's prepared to focus on raising a family. Her right of the choice can only be beneficial to our public health, economy and so our national security. Look at the effort and money it takes to try in vain to subjugate women in American society. And for what, really? For what purpose? And how's it working out for the nation overall?
Terrific post, and I agree with every single syllable.
In my experience, most of those who class themselves as "pro-life" - or, pro the foetus (naturally, at the expense of the mother), have very little interest in that selfsame foetus once it has been born.
Then, it is the mother's problem, and instead, she is berated for her "lack of responsibility" in getting pregnant in the first place.
Their stance would be a great deal more logical, not to mention compassionate, if they sought to support the women who give birth, with the provision of state financial supports, healthcare, maternity leave, and so on; but, they don't.
This is not about protecting the foetus; this is about controlling, condemning - and punishing - women who are sexually active, especially if they are sexually active outside of the structure of the "formal" family, people such as single mothers, divorcees, and so on. The recent attempts to roll back access to terminations for children - and others - who have been raped, tells its own story.
As
@lizkat points out, if they were truly serious about ensuring that abortion is not something that desperate women reach for, safe, affordable and reliable birth control, contraception, would be made readily available and easily accessed.
But the very fact that those who seek to deny access to abortion, also seek to deny women access to safe, affordable and reliable birth control makes abundantly clear that this is not about abortion, but about punishing and condemning and controlling women for daring to think (or dream) that they can attempt to exercise a degree of autonomy in their sex lives, and hope to do so without negative consequences, a happy state of affairs which has been the lot of men since the dawn of recorded time.
thehill.com
www.npr.org
