Roe V Wade 2022 and 2024

 

To everyone who cares about right of women to have control of their own bodies:

We are on the defensive make no mistake about it.  As of yesterday morning, half the women in the United States will shortly lose control of their basic anatomy.  I live in Maine, one of the “safe states” where women still have that right.  I would prefer the term “Free State.”  Once we were called a free state for a very different reason.  I will not say the two are comparable because the evil that was fought before was clearly worse.  However, if someone is homeless and eating in a soup kitchen saying to that person “at least you’re not starving” doesn’t really do anything to cure the person’s homelessness does it?  There have been worse things to happen in this country but this is the problem we are facing right now.  So please don’t confuse the analogy.

In 1858 Lincoln said,

 

A house divided against itself, cannot stand."

I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

 

I feel this is true for the nation today.  At the moment women have the right to choose a medical abortion in 37 states and will most likely lose it in other states within the coming months.  In the short term this will lead to a nation that is only half free. I don’t think that is going to hold. It is either going to become all of one or all of the other and that will be determined in the 2022 and 2024 elections. 

 To put it simply the Republican Party needs to be punished and needs to be punished severely for if they are not bad things will happen.  If they are only slightly damaged or even empowered, they will go for more.  A Republican controlled Congress with a Republican President WILL pass a national law banning choice everywhere!  Then they will come after contraception, marriage equality, and anything else you can think.  

So, to simplify these are the three possible outcomes.

 1)      Democrats win in the fall and win in 2024.  We can begin to fix this right away, with solid majorities in both Houses of Congress and put Roe into statutory law and maybe we can even work on expanding the Supreme Court to get this lawless court under control.

2)      Republicans take control of Congress in the fall but the Democrats prevail in 2024.  This means gridlock for two years while half the nation’s women are still living in Anti-Choice sections of the United States. Reform begins in 2025 we have recovered all that was lost by the end of the decade.   

3)      Republicans win in the fall and win in 2024.  By the end of the decade choice will be dead in America and it will not be revived for a minimum of three generations. Other rights will be on the defensive and most time will be spent on defending those.  With any luck women three generations from now will win back the right that were once taken for granted by their great-grandmothers.