Turning “liberty” on its head
Access to abortion and healthcare has long been a winning issue for Democrats – at least for the past six years when they won the Trump midterms. It’s gotten to the degree where Republicans have learned that their best hope is to by and large avoid talking about the issue whenever possible – even though this is hardly the case with most of them. Their one trick has been to muddy the waters – spreading around concern trolling about why Democrats haven’t done anything about the SCOTUS ruling that Donald Trump likes to brag about.
Republicans haven’t evolved even remotely on the issue – they just see it as a distraction that they hope goes away. There’s a bit of a dilemma to that as well, however, since the pro-life voters who wanted Roe v. Wade to be overturned are less likely to trust Republicans that are silent on the issue. That’s why a ruling in Georgia on Monday was particularly catastrophic for the GOP – effectively overturning the state’s 2019 six-week abortion ban that went into effect back in 2022.
Even worse for Republicans, who like to throw around the word ‘liberty,’ despite a narrow interpretation of what it actually means, the court’s ruling made use of the word, saying that its definition incorporates the right of a woman to control her own body and what happens to it – the same right that Republicans have been going after for 50 years. This is a significant win for advocates of reproductive freedom – and an important step in the right direction – but progress is only possible if we elect Kamala Harris on Nov 5 and give her a Democratic trifecta in the House and Senate to govern.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making