Want To Re-Fight The Wars Over Freedom Of Choice?

Kevin McCarthy is the Republican House Leader. But can he lead? A poll the other day from Morning Consult/Politico showed that 31% of Americans don't know who McCarthy even is; never heard of him. His twitter following (278K) is tiny compared to other national leaders-- Pelosi (2.52 million), Schumer (1.98 million), AOC (4.18 million), even the reviled McTurtle (875K)... He doesn't have much of a platform to influence public opinion, not on his own.

Many Republicans are applauding the extremist and punitive bills passing through Republican-controlled state legislatures that outlaw Choice and throw doctors in prison for life. McConnell is hiding in his turtle shell and refusing to comment until his team does some focus group-testing to find out what Kentucky voters think, but McCarthy has already spoken up-- and he's against the extremist bill. At a press conference Thursday, McCarthy decried the Alabama bill for not including exceptions for rape and incest saying that's "exactly what Republicans have voted on in this House. That's what our platform says... I believe in exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother, and that's what I've voted on."

Even psychopath Pat Robertson said the Alabama bill is too extreme. If there are any Republicans who think these nutty bills coming out of Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, etc are going to help them reclaim suburban voters and women voters, they must be stupider than they look. So far you may have noticed that Trump is staying mum on this.Republicans up for reelection in statewide contests have run for the hills rather than answer whether they support the Alabama bill or oppose it. Martha McSally (R-AZ) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), refused to answer. Susan Collins (R-ME) called it extreme and said that the courts won't sustain it. "I’m not going to try to predict court cases, but I cannot imagine that that law won’t be overturned... Obviously it’s not something I would ever vote for." But most Republicans are on trickier grounds.

Of they say they oppose it, the anti-Choice extremists could turn on them and if they refuse to take a position or say they back it, independent voters and relatively moderate Republicans could be the ones turning on them. Oh... and not just Republicans. There are still a small handful of Democrats who arte anti-Choice. Blue Dog Dan Lipinski is one of them-- and Marie Newman is running against him, in part because of that. "Most of us," she reminded me today, "trust women. Full stop. Regardless of who you are, a Republican, a Democrat or an independent, 70% of this nation supports a right to choose. Taking away that right is stripping half of that population of their civil rights. This affects every American adversely and severely-- there is no other way to view this."

Bernie: "The abortion ban in Alabama is not about protecting life. It is about controlling women's bodies." Michigan state Rep Jon Hoadley is fighting one of this extremist anti-Choice bills in the state legislature. He's also running for Congress against anti-Choice freak Fred Upton. "Most voters trust women to make the best medical choices for themselves and their families," he told us this morning. "Abortion bans moving in numerous states, including Michigan, are out of line with the values  of the majority of voters who believe women should have the access, accurate medical information, and freedom to make the best decisions they can for their health and wellbeing. I trust women. I always have, and I always will."

This screws with the Republican Party intention of using their poisonous nonsense claims about live birth baby killing against Democratic candidates. Jeremy Peters' report for the NY Times yesterday, Republicans’ Messaging on Abortion Puts Democrats on the Defensive, completely missed the point. These bills flooding out of Republican-controlled legislatures, like the Alabama bill-- are far more likely to become salient among swing voters that the crap Peters wrote about: "With grisly claims that Democrats promote 'birth day abortions' and are 'the party of death,' the Republican Party and its conservative allies have aggressively reset the terms of one of the country’s most divisive and emotionally fraught debates, forcing Democrats to reassess how they should respond to attacks that portray the entire party as extremist on abortion. The unusually forceful, carefully coordinated campaign has created challenges that Democrats did not expect as they struggle to combat misinformation and thwart further efforts to undercut access to abortion." Hogwash! The only people who believe this crap are the few suckers left who don't understand what being a compulsive liar means. Or am I wrong?

Peters reports that "Much to the distress of abortion rights supporters, their own polling is showing that the right’s message is penetrating beyond the social conservatives who make up a large part of the Republican base. Surveys conducted for progressive groups in recent weeks found that more than half of Americans were aware of the 'infanticide' claims that President Trump and his party have started making when describing abortions that occur later in pregnancy." But who could possibly believe this bullshit, even if they are aware of it?

Initially, many Democrats and abortion rights groups believed the notion was so absurd that it was not worth responding to it. But they discovered that was a dangerous assumption to make in an information environment dominated by Mr. Trump.

“Sometimes there is a temptation to let the absurdity stand on its own, but we have to recognize that this is a different time,” said Dr. Leana Wen, the president of Planned Parenthood. “He’s deliberately conflating infanticide with abortion late in pregnancy. And it’s important that we as doctors and health care providers explain the extremely rare and devastating circumstances of abortion later in pregnancy.”

Mr. Trump is using the issue to rouse his base, including the crucial voting bloc of Christian conservatives for whom abortion is an overarching issue. His false statements that Democrats would “execute” newborn babies-- which he has repeated on his Twitter feed, during his State of the Union address and at campaign rallies, sometimes as he mimics swaddling a baby-- are being picked up and repeated by conservatives all over the country.

...Trump’s rhetoric has caught on in Congress and state legislatures, and with candidates running for office in states like North Carolina and Wisconsin, and it is drawing Democrats into a difficult debate over abortions that occur in the second and third trimesters, which make even some self-described pro-choice Americans uncomfortable.

What is new about Republican attacks is that they have presented the extremely rare circumstance of ending a far-along pregnancy-- terminations after 24 weeks comprise less than 1 percent of all abortions-- in a way that abortion rights groups say leaves a false but evocative impression: that women who are about to deliver a healthy baby are asking for and receiving abortions, and that Democrats support that.

The right is also vastly outspending Democrats on digital advertising on the issue, devoting hundreds of thousands of dollars so far this year on targeted Facebook campaigns that are reaching voters in battleground states.

An array of outside groups are involved. There are traditional anti-abortion organizations like the Susan B. Anthony List, which is advertising against Democrats who picked up Republican-held seats in the 2018 midterm elections. And there are newer players like Restoration PAC, which has been funded with large contributions from Dick Uihlein, a Midwestern businessman who often underwrites controversial candidates and causes.

One of Restoration PAC’s recent Facebook ads featured pictures of six Democratic senators who are running for president and attacked them as the “Party of Death” for their votes against legislation that would further regulate abortion in the later stages of pregnancy; the senators, like others who voted against it, said the legislation was unnecessary, containing redundant provisions to protect babies if they were born alive during an abortion.

“If nobody pushes back,” the ad said, “Life will not be cherished. Its destruction will be reclassified as a Planned Parenthood revenue source.”

Candidates, state Republican Parties and the National Republican Congressional Committee are also using the messaging. A Facebook ad from Dan Bishop, a Republican running for an open House seat in North Carolina, who won his party’s nomination in a primary race on Tuesday, said he was proud to have cast the deciding vote “to end infanticide in North Carolina.”

Abortion rights groups are not absent from the online advertising wars, but they are playing catch up in messaging and spending.

“They’re out there, but it’s always a disadvantage to be on the defense,” said Tara McGowan, chief executive of Acronym, a progressive firm that tracks online spending and messaging.

“There are just so many groups on the right running on this,” she added, “and further defining these issues on their terms while Democrats are left to react.”

As abortion rights supporters assess their current situation, many say they made an initial mistake by trying to answer questions based on implausible and often outright false premises.

A more persuasive way to talk about the issue, said Dr. Wen of Planned Parenthood, is to explain that abortions that occur far into pregnancy are not done on healthy mothers but because of serious medical complications discovered late in the pregnancy.

“These are families that have assembled a crib, picked out little clothes and put them into little drawers and had baby showers when they’ve received the most devastating news of their lives,” she said.

...An appearance by Senator Bernie Sanders on Fox News illustrated the difficulties Democrats have had in discussing the issue as Republicans have reframed the debate squarely on their turf. The moderator, Martha MacCallum, asked the senator, “Do you believe that a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy up until the moment of birth?”

Mr. Sanders responded, “I think it’s rare, it’s being made into a political issue, but at the end of the day I believe that the decision over abortion belongs to a woman and her physician, not the federal government, not the state government, and not the local government.”

His position was one that women’s groups have adopted for decades: That decisions about abortion are a woman’s personal choice. But that language is not useful when conservatives have made the conversation more extreme, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster.

“The initial response from a lot of well-meaning politicians was one of two things,” Ms. Lake said. “It was the language around personal decision making and Roe v. Wade, or it was the language around late abortions. And that’s just not sufficient for addressing infanticide and abortion survival and these kinds of new frames.”

“Whoever sets the frame,” she continued, “wins the debate.”

The debate is still very much an open one. But it may come down to what Americans find more persuasive: the kind of nuanced explanation and argument abortion rights supporters are making, or a searing, one-word label like “infanticide.”

According to now-consistent polling, only a third of Americans find Trump truthful. Yesterday Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin sent an e-mail to her supporters talking about Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, Iowa, and now, Missouri. "What," she asked, "do they all have in common? These states have passed the most extreme anti-choice bills in this country-- outlawing abortion, punishing and controlling women, threatening doctors, and stripping health care away from millions. Let me be direct here: this is a coordinated effort by right-wing politicians and anti-choice groups to overturn Roe v. Wade. It's unconstitutional. It's unprecedented. And it makes me sick to my stomach.

They are going after women's health care in an attempt to get these laws challenged, struck down, and then appealed all the way to the Supreme Court-- where Brett Kavanaugh and others are chomping at the bit to topple Roe v. Wade and outlaw abortion in this country.

We have all heard horror stories from the days of unsafe, back-alley procedures and needless deaths. We cannot go back to that. This war on women-- driven by the likes of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump-- must be stopped. But that means we need to fight like our lives depend on it because they do.

...The hard truth is, if Republicans get their way, women will die. We cannot allow them to get away with these attacks and drag our country backward.

Politicians may think they know better than women and their doctors. The fact is, they don't. A woman deserves the freedom to make her own personal decisions about her health care, her family, and her body, without government interference.

Marqus Cole is the progressive Democrat running for Congress in Georgia's 7th district and he's been warning voters about far right extremists threatening women's Choice in Georgia since he declared his candidacy. Today he told us that "the face of Georgia's Anti-Choice movement is real and will soon be announcing her candidacy in the 7th district. The Republicans chose to use the heartbeat bill as a way to propel this state Senator onto a national stage. The celebratory picture is worth a thousand words."

Republican state Sen. Renee Unterman with anti-Choice cronies

"The 7th district has seen a massive demographic shift in recent years," he continued. "It has gone from a district won handily with a 70,000 vote margin in 2016 by the incumbent, Republican Rob Woodall, to a district where the house race was decided by 400 votes with Stacey Abrams winning handily by 1700+ in the gubernatorial race. The faces in the picture above are of opportunists hell bent on stripping women of their reproductive rights. They are not truly representative of Georgians. This picture shows why this upcoming election is so important. We are fighting for a government that is truly representative of the people it governs. We are fighting against extremists who want to take away the rights of women to make decisions about their bodies. We are fighting for the future of our country."

This morning, Elizabeth Warren demanded Congress pass federal laws to protect women's Choice from Republican men on the warpath against Choice. "Congress," she wrote, "should pass new federal laws that protect access to reproductive care from right-wing ideologues in the states. Federal laws that ensure real access to birth control and abortion care for all women. Federal laws that will stand no matter what the Supreme Court does. Here’s what that looks like:"

• Create federal, statutory rights that parallel the constitutional right in Roe v. Wade. The extremists behind proposals like the Alabama law don’t reflect public opinion in America. Polling data shows that 71% of Americans oppose overturning Roe--  including 52% of Republicans. Congress should do its job and protect their constituents from these efforts by establishing affirmative, statutory rights that parallel Roe vs. Wade. These rights would have at least two key components. First, they must prohibit states from interfering in the ability of a health care provider to provide medical care, including abortion services. Second, they must prohibit states from interfering in the ability of a patient to access medical care, including abortion services, from a provider that offers them.

Under the Supremacy Clause of our Constitution, federal law preempts state law. For this reason, the establishment of these federal statutory rights would invalidate contradictory state laws, such as the Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio bans. They would also end the political games being played by right-wing courts to try and narrow Roe’s protections. And because these federal protections would be valid on a variety of constitutional grounds--  including equal protection and the commerce clause--  they would ensure that choice would remain the law of the land even if the Supreme Court overturns Roe.

• Pass federal laws to preempt state efforts that functionally limit access to reproductive health care. States have passed countless Targeted Regulations on Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, which are designed to functionally limit and eliminate women’s access to abortion care while not technically contravening Roe. Geographical, physical, and procedural restrictions and requirements. Restrictions on medication abortion. These kinds of restrictions are medically-unnecessary and exist for only one purpose: to functionally eliminate the ability of women to access abortion services. A bill already proposed in Congress, The Women’s Health Protection Act, would provide the mechanism to block these kinds of schemes concocted to deny women access to care. Congress should pass it.

• Guarantee reproductive health coverage as part of all health coverage. All women--  no matter where they live, where they’re from, how much money they make, or the color of their skin --  are entitled to access the high-quality, evidence-based reproductive health care that is envisioned by Roe. Making that a reality starts with repealing the Hyde Amendment, which blocks abortion coverage for women under federally funded health care programs like Medicaid, the VA, and the Indian Health Service. Congress should also expand culturally- and linguistically-appropriate services and information and include immigrant women in conversations about coverage and access. Congress must also pass the EACH Woman Act, which would also prohibit abortion restrictions on private insurance. And we should ensure that all future health coverage --  including Medicare for All--  includes contraception and abortion coverage.

• Ensure equal access and reproductive justice. Securing a federal right to Roe and ensuring that reproductive health care is available to every woman in America is just the beginning. We must undo the current Administration’s efforts to undermine women’s access to reproductive health care --  including ending Trump’s gag rule and fully support Title X family planning funding. We must crack down on violence at abortion clinics and ensure that women are not discriminated against at work or anywhere else for the choices they made about their bodies.

And these issues are bigger than Roe. The women of color who have championed the reproductive justice movement teach us that we must go beyond choice to ensure meaningful access for every woman in America--  not just the privileged and wealthy few. We must go beyond abortion, to ensure access to contraception, STI prevention and care, comprehensive sex education, care for pregnant moms, safe home and work environments, adequate wages, and so much more. We must build a future that protects the right of all women to have children, the right of all women to not have children, and the right to bring children up in a safe and healthy environment.

When I was growing up, long before Roe, people still got abortions. Some were lucky. Others weren’t. They all went through hell.

The overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire to return to the world before Roe v. Wade. And so the time to act is now. It’s inspiring to see so many women coming off the sidelines in this fight --  and women must continue to speak up to make sure this conversation stays grounded in their real experiences. Men must speak up too. And Americans outraged by these efforts should get into the political arena, run for office, and make these right-wing Republican lawmakers face the consequences of their actions.

Our democracy should not be held hostage by right-wing courts, and women should not have to hope that Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump’s Supreme Court will respect the law. Congress should act to ensure that the will of the people remains the law of the land.