Lindsey Graham is coming for your uterus
A never married childless Southern Baptist White Male would like to limit your access to healthcare, but only if you’re female. He really really wants the Federal Government to tell you that after 15 weeks of pregnancy you are no longer allowed to have an abortion. Bodily autonomy is no longer under your control, as dictated by Washington, D.C. Or, rather, a group of men who represent less than half the country.
Sorry, Senator Graham, but didn’t the Supreme Court just rule on this issue in Dobbs? I believe the super majority of ultra-right wing Justices, mostly appointed by Presidents who lost the popular vote, declared that the Constitution says nothing in regards to abortion, leaving the whole dirty matter to the States. Essentially, the Supreme Court decided that constitutionally the Federal Government has no role to play with regard to abortion. Roe v Wade was decided erroneously, creating a right where there was none, giving women equal standing under the law when in fact we all know women belong barefoot, pregnant and making Samuel a sandwich. Except for Ginny Thomas, she’s too busy illegally overturning free and fair elections. Really, what the six Puritans were getting at is that abortion is a State’s Rights Issue, just like slavery, and the Federal Government has no say. Lindsey, the South is rising, again. Be happy, go home.
In some ways, though, Lindsey’s timing, and undeniable fully on display disdain for women as equals in American society, couldn’t be better. After all, the mid-terms are only weeks away, and anything to once again remind women and men just how anti-democratic, anti-freedom and anti-woman the Party of Trump really is the better. Just make sure you check your conscious and priorities before casting your vote. What is more important to you and your loved ones? That extra slice of cheesecake on a Friday night out, or, you know, the ability to make decisions for yourself that affect only you and your immediate loved ones without interference or coercion by The State?
(As an aside, I’d like to point out that between the unbridled capitalism and Fascist leanings the Republicans are starting to look more and more like the Chinese Communist Party in that they promote financial wealth at the expense of personal freedom.)
With one breath Senator Lindsey Graham (not from my State, just for the record) wants to tell us Americans, the ones who work hard and earn our money not from the taxpayer’s purse, that government does not belong anywhere near our homes, our personal lives, or our bedrooms. Unless you’re a woman. Or trans. I’m also pretty sure he has his sights set on the LGBTQ+ community. But, you know, the government really needs to stay out of the affairs of law abiding cis White Christian Males (we Jews are always a question, unless we’re their lawyer or accountant). Otherwise, we live in a tyranny. And no cis White Male, especially the Christian ones, should be oppressed by other cis White Male Christians. In fact, cis White Christian Males shouldn’t ever be bothered with any reality that involves the suffering, needs, wants, or desires of anyone who is not cis, white, male or praise Jesus, Christian.
I’ll even go so far as to say that what the members of the Cult of Trump (sorry, Mr. Biden, complacency is complicity, they’re all MAGA on that side of the aisle) would really like to ensure is that no cis White Male Christian should ever have to concern themselves with showing any amount of the basic decency and kindness one should show to their fellow human, regardless of skin color, origin, creed, sexual identity, or group affiliation. Nope, not on Lindsey and Mitch’s watch.
As I, and so many others, have repeatedly pointed out what this push to ban abortion at any point that does not make medical sense is really about is control. It’s about dominance, about artificially bolstering an eroding position of authority and control by a small group of men over all others. These men, and yes, some women, who look at a fetus and declare it a fully grown, integral part of American life and society, don’t actually believe this. Sure, there’s an argument to be made that a fetus is life. On a biological level it absolutely is life. That said, it is not a full human. A fetus, up to a certain level of development, is not able to live outside a womb without serious medical intervention. How does that then become a sacred, individual life due the full protections of citizenship? How does a bundle of cells, a still forming human that is completely, absolutely dependent on the body of a specific human being become so much more important than that of the person carrying it? That is, of course, until this growing absolutely completely dependent bundle of cells leaves the womb. At that point the Trump Cultists and fake Christian Crusaders disappear behind the skewed ideology of Individual Responsibility, small government and the almighty Free Market.
What Lindsey Graham in his Trump-fever filled, Return to the Good ‘Ol Days psychosis is doing is fighting a battle to win the war against everything this nation has stood for since day one. A war started by the Religious Right, a war intended to turn America into a theocracy using Orwellian logic and rhetoric.
We must not be fooled, we must impress upon our elected representatives the immediate and imminent threat the Republican Party presents to our Republic. Biden is right, we are in a fight for the soul of our nation. The draconian laws denying abortion access, and therefore healthcare, being presented and in many cases instituted are not about saving lives. Or forcing women to take responsibility for their actions (funny how these anti-women anti-abortion laws never say anything about the fathers). They are another round in the Right’s concerted, decades in the making effort to reshape the United States of America into a few very undesirable things. A loose confederation of states that share only the basics of a unified country, namely currency and military power. A theocracy that holds the twisted and authoritarian interpretations of the Word of G-d as the absolute law. A land where only the privileged few, the white men who present themselves as heterosexual, have absolute power. A land where white men have all the control, women are second class, and all others land in the undesirable pot to be kicked and held down.
Lindsey Graham presenting his Nationwide Ban on Allowing Women to be Full and Complete Humans and Citizens is no accident. The Delusional Trumpist Right, of which Lindsey is a full-throated and accepted acolyte, fully believes they now have the Judiciary and the numbers to impose their minority world view on the rest of us. Let’s make sure they don’t get their way. Let’s ensure they remember who’s really in charge.
Addendum: Glenn H. Reynolds over at the New York Post writes that Graham’s bill is unconstitutional, which I’m sure you can tell I agree with. However, I do disagree as to the why and his conclusion that abortion is a matter left to the States by the Constitution. If you take the 13th Amendment’s prohibition against slavery, or forced labor, outside of a conviction for a crime, it’s easy and logical to conclude that this would mean that the State has no power to compel any person to engage in any act against their wishes. So, to require that a person carry a fetus to term is unconstitutional as that act of State coercion is prohibited. Of course, I am not a lawyer, so I could be absolutely wrong in my understanding and application of the 13th Amendment in regards to abortion and a woman’s right to have full control and autonomy over her life and body. But, I really don’t think I am.
