America 2022 - "Gilead Does Not Care About Children. Gilead Cares About Control" · 11:15am Jun 27th, 2022
I am two or three days late to this party, therefore I shall be brief.
The US Supreme Court's decision on June 24th 2022 to overturn the historic ruling of Roe vs. Wade, in a narrow vote of 5-4 that was primarily made possible by the death of Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg - who had turned down several possibilities to retire at a time when the Democratic Party could have appointed her successor - and the confirmation under the Trump Administration of such ultra-conservative Justices as Amy Coney Barret or Brett Kavanaugh.
This news, one of many defining events which represent the lasting legacy of the Trump Administration even after the former President's departure from office, has already made the rounds on social media; I find it hard to determine what I could add which hasn't been said elsewhere, from one end of the political spectrum to the other. Instead, I'll throw in my two cents by noting an important detail about the history of the American pro-life vs. pro-choice debate.
If you have lived in America for the last fifty years, you may think that to be "pro-life" is a fundamentally Republican stance, a core policy derived from the GOP's close association with the Religious Right.
Except this is not true. In 1973, the year when the Roe vs. Wade ruling was originally instated, neither the Republican Party nor the Religious Right made opposition to the federal ruling on abortion law a part of their platform that year. As a matter of fact, the GOP's response to the ruling at the time was, on the whole, positive. The article linked below from Slacktivist explains;
Killing in the name of | Fred Clark (patheos.com)
While there was religious opposition, the majority did not come from Evangelical Protestantism, but another group entirely. To cite directly from the article;
"In 1973, most evangelicals regarded opposition to abortion as a Catholic Thing — and therefore vaguely suspect, as though it might lead to praying to Mary or something. But throughout the 1970s and into the ’80s, that changed. The person most responsible for that change was Francis Schaeffer. He persuaded evangelicals to adopt this issue and to get so angry about it that it would come to replace even evangelism as their hallmark concern and their pre-eminent defining characteristic. The language, the rhetoric and arguments, the moral reasoning, political tactics and activist strategies of the anti-abortion movement over the last 30 years all originate with Francis Schaeffer."
Conversely, groups such as the Southern Baptist Church were all in favour.
But in the decade which followed, this was to change, until the American political landscape took on the shape which has defined it since the Reagan Administration and the 1980s. Because the abortion issue is an easy target for groups which have grown to depend on a palpable enemy to reaffirm their own righteousness; the sense that, if the "enemy" are literal baby-killers, we can never be wrong and they can never be right.
Meanwhile, in parallel, another one of the countless school shootings that have become a part of daily life in America has only resulted in a very weak gun-safety bill getting passed through the Senate, on the same day.
I mention this while reflecting on how America is the only country in the world to have, at one time, banned alcohol for twenty years. Prohibition did not provide the solution; if anything, it only worsened social ills, as back-alley deals, criminal enterprises and a desperate populace boomed to catastrophic rates. Where previously, abortion was subject to some federal regulation, now there shall be individual States who make no exception even for "rape and incest" cases.
America can ban alcohol and it can ban a woman's right to her own choices, but it cannot regulate guns, when guns have killed more living, breathing children in recent years than abortion ever has. Know that according to science, it is not until a pregnancy's third trimester that a foetus develops the nerve endings which allow it to see or hear or, perhaps most significantly, feel pain; can a foetus be called a person before then? Contrary to the myth popularly circulated by certain parties, the majority of abortions are not of nearly full-grown babies. No true doctor would recommend abortion at that stage, other than in the most extreme circumstances.
In America, being "pro-life" does not equal caring for "quality of life".
They don't seem to care about the mother's well-being either.
You know, the people actually carrying the fetus.
Why is it that a woman's rights is immediately forfeit if she's pregnant?
One would think that the common ‘Pro-Life’ Republican answer to any proposal to allocate more public funds to underprivileged children being throwing a fit about Socialism, would have been a very big clue that it was never about the well being of children or the new, unprepared mothers.
5668022, 5668025
If you look closer at the bottom of the journal, I linked to a Facebook post, put up in May of this year, in which a woman explains what being pro-life means to her - being for women's lives, and a good life for children.
Republicans are fascists. Or the Party is now, at any rate.
Thing is about the recent anti abortion ruling is that I do not believe that it will last. In ten to twenty years it will probably be overturned. Why? Because 1 the gop has a massive generational problem in that most millennials and younger are almost all democrats and even those who identify as conservative have incredibly different attitudes then the older generation of the gop. 2 also the gop usually had huge support from the suburbs in the USA before trump and now thanks to that orange fool the suburb has swung to the left because suburban populations now view them as extremist. Most of the gops support now comes from rural areas which though shrinking rapidly are still huge. 3 economic. Companies are generally less likely to move to states where abortion is restricted. As a result I can see a scenario either a company will lobby a states legislature hard to change or they will move. As for the gun laws. Number one since the last few school shootings have resulted in NO bill concerning gun control having the senate pass this mediocre law is an accomplishment. Thing is the gop which blocks most gun laws is supported by older generations like the baby boomers and the silent generation which are dying off faster than can be replaced at this point. So I am thinking in 10 to 20 years the ruling will be overturned with the Supreme Court either being stuffed (most probable) or a a constitutional amendment to ensure that this can’t happen again.