War on Terror, War on Women
At long last, the dream of getting Roe v. Wade is finally being realized, and it all begins with mere legislation designed to provoke a legal challenge in the hopes that newly minted Supreme Court Justices will vote against the landmark 1973 ruling.
National Socialists also used the same tactics less than a century ago in Germany. How time flies.
South Dakota has just passed a law that bans all forms of abortion, except where the mother’s life is at stake, in a cruel attempt at creating a legal challenge. This is what life is like in our country in the 21st century: craven, opportunistic politicians who chuck their social responsibilities to the poor and the destitute in order to pat themselves on the back for their "moral" triumphs and make right with God, who undoubtedly has egged them on. We were unaware that South Dakota, or other states emboldened by this measure, had solved their social and economic problems so they can turn full attention to their petty ideological issues.
Women, beware. This is a man’s country and nothing will stop men from using the law to prove it.
South Dakota governor Michael Rounds naturally explained his part on the war on women with the appeals to protecting the "the most helpless persons in our society." Never mind that in doing what he considers the right thing, he is disenfranchising the women in his state, regardless if they agree with Roe v. Wade or not. And let’s not kid ourselves about the scope of this either: Mr. Rounds may smile at himself in the mirror for doing "the right thing," but right-to-choose foes are often against access to reproductive measures to prevent unwanted pregnancies. In this quaint universe, where black and white are conveniently summoned to buttress their arguments (except when testifying before Congress), abstinence is the only true method of birth control.
It is an argument that only an elitist would advance.
It seems to us that the most helpless people in any society are the poor: those with no homes, no education, no access to improving their lives. Yet that is not true in Republican ideology — and let us not call it compassionate conservatism or even a philosophy, because Republicans do not have a philosophy. People who are poor and cannot get ahead in life deserve their lot because they refuse to work hard. In the right-wing labyrinth of self-justification for abandoning social justice and responsibility, all one needs to do is to work hard and succeed, thereby annoying liberals. If you cannot do those, then your pathetic life is the product of your choices, plain and simple.
This is the reason why Republicans are often opposed to social programs of any variety, especially those run by Uncle Sam. So a person for whom life has dealt a hard blow has nothing stacked against him but his own lack of initiative. Rather than seek local, state or federal subsistence, the Republican argument goes, a person should just work hard, otherwise he becomes complicit in the continuation of the welfare state and is a drain on taxpayer resources.
This is why a man like Mr. Rounds can bypass an entire segment of his own state’s population and make appeals to the fetus. Republicans have little taste for those in lower economic brackets (again, that is the fault of the people, not the system or the winds of economic fortune) and can waste time launching laws that are cynical ploys to advance their agenda but give them a shining moment in the Republican sun. There is nothing just about disenfranchising people and appealing to religious principles as the catalyst, and there is nothing more obscene than politicians crafting laws that are deliberately deceptive to satisfy their ideological ambitions. Yet, that is the Republican way.
We have a war on terror, and now we have launched a war on women. We have a war on those people for whom Republican elitists have neither sympathy nor patience. And now we understand that the exercise of power in this country is to put people in their place, and if women believe that an ideological law trumps social reality, responsibility and justice, then they are beggars to their own demise.
God help them, because the laws of men won’t.