The Progressive Populist Today Blog: Editorial: Pro-Birth is Not Pro-Life

Saturday, May 25, 2019

Editorial: Pro-Birth is Not Pro-Life

Say what you will about a woman’s right to choose, but many on the left — nominal supporters of abortion rights — overlooked the vacancy on the Supreme Court in 2016 when they argued about whether they would vote for “centrist” Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. Opponents of abortion kept their eye on the prize, however, and when the election approached, many church-affiliated, anti-choice voters didn’t let the amorality of the Republican presidential nominee get in the way as long as Donald Trump promised to name a judge to the Supreme Court who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion under the “right to privacy” that protects a woman’s freedom to choose an abortion at least until the fetus reaches viability, usually at 24 to 28 weeks.

In 2016, exit polls showed 56% of Trump voters said Supreme Court appointments were the most important factor in their support, while just 41% of Clinton supporters said the Court was the most important issue, Politico noted.

We doubt Trump, who used to support Planned Parenthood, has strong feelings about about abortion rights; his main concern seems to be finding Supreme Court justices who would back him up in his determination to cover up his high crimes and misdemeanors, but if naming anti-abortion judges was the price of the support of evangelical Christians, he was willing to go along. He promised Roe would be erased.

So the abortion foes made their deal with the devil and now they expect to claim their prize. Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, speeded up the process with new rules that let them ram polarizing Supreme Court appointments through on a simple majority vote, allowing the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, as well as 40 circuit court judges, on nearly party-line votes.

Now the right is pushing the extremes of anti-choice legislation. They have abandoned any pretense of concern about the welfare of mothers or their children. When the Alabama Senate approved a bill 25-6 May 14 to make it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion — which Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed into law — the only exception was in cases where the pregnancy carried a serious health risk to the woman. A proposed exception for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest was defeated 21-11. The state Senate also rejected, 23-6, an amendment that would have required the state to provide prenatal care and medical care for the mother and child in cases where a woman was denied an abortion because of the law. The Senate also rejected an amendment to expand Medicaid to cover working families, despite Alabama having the nation’s highest rate of cervical cancer deaths, and infant mortality rates are among the highest in the nation, while rural hospitals in the state continue to close. So don’t tell us this is a “pro-life” bill. It’s merely pro-forced-birth.

Similar bills have been passed in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio that ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and Missouri passed one that bans abortion after eight weeks. Two states, North Dakota in 2013 and Iowa in 2018, passed six-week bans that courts struck down, so they retreated to 22-week bans. Arkansas and Utah have voted to limit abortions to the middle of the second trimester, or about 18 weeks.

For what it’s worth, the public does not want a complete reversal of Roe v. Wade. A December 2016 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 28% of US adults said they would like to see the Supreme Court overturn Roe while 69% said they would not. More generally, in June 2017, 57% of US adults said abortion should be legal in all or most cases while 40% said it should be illegal in all or most cases. Public support for abortion rights has remained relatively steady in recent decades.

Americans’ views about abortion differ markedly by their political and religious affiliation and educational background, Pew noted. Three-quarters of Democrats, for example, believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, but around two-thirds of Republicans (65%) take the opposite view. Six-in-ten independents say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

While 61% of white evangelical Protestants think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, 67% of white mainline Protestants say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Catholics are more divided, as 51% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases and 42% say it should be illegal.

As if the assault on choice wasn’t bad enough, the right-wing justices who can be counted on to dismantle the Roe decision also are very bad on other progressive and populist issues, such as worker and minority rights, regulation of businesses and environmental protection. Trump seems to leave it to the right-wing Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation to come up with the names, and they have been working to veer the courts right for a generation.

In January 2010, the Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case, overturned laws dating back a century to rein in the corruption of politics by special-interest and corporate money. In June 2013, the Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote in the Shelby County case, overturned an important provision of the Voting Rights Act that the Republican majority said was outdated, which effectively stopped the requirement that certain states and local governments obtain federal “preclearance” before they implement changes to their voting laws or practices. June 2018 the court upheld, 5-4 Ohio’s practice of purging voter rolls, which has become a favorite tactic of voter suppression.

Voters who consider themselves truly pro-life must commit themselves to working not only for successful pregnancies, but also parents’ rights to work for a fair income that provides for adequate food, clothing and housing; the right of every family to have a decent home; the right to health-care for parents and children, the right to child care if both parents are expected to work; educational opportunities for children; and the right to economic security in retirement. These ideas have been knocking around since Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a Second Bill of Rights in January 1944.

If you can’t sign off on these rights, you’re merely pro-birth. And you aren’t impressing Jesus, by the way. He never mentioned abortion, but he had plenty to say about taking care of the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the unclothed, the imprisoned and strangers — and if you consider yourself a Christian, you don’t want to be numbered amongst those who ignored these unfortunates. After all, Jesus was once a refugee who was unjustly executed. The Mammonite preachers who have backed Trump and Republicans, who insist on empowering plutocrats at the expense of working people, might not spend much time on what Jesus actually said, but you can check out what Jesus had to say about the Judgment of the Nations in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25: 31-45.

At least, for Christ’s sake, if you believe in banning abortion, try to promote family planning first, as well as supporting candidates who otherwise support organized labor, voting rights, subsidized housing and nutritional assistance for working poor families, clean air and water, and health care for all so no family needs to fear cancer or other catastrophic medical condition will drive them into bankruptcy.

In any case, we don’t need Trump naming any more Supreme Court justices. Thus endeth the lesson. — JMC