We saw that happen when Republicans defied health experts and went their own deadly way on Covid-19. On abortion, too, Republicans are sacrificing decency, compassion, and common sense to dogma.
In an opinion piece at NBC News (read it here), a law professor diagnosed with breast cancer wrote,
“On the day I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer … I became a person who would need an abortion if pregnant because cancer treatments would compromise a healthy birth and delay needed cancer care. I also became someone, like other hormone-positive breast cancer patients, who was advised to discontinue hormonal contraception because it might stimulate the growth of cancer cells.”
There you have it: A medical need for abortion. But think she could get one, even for those valid reasons, in a Republican state? How about states that won’t even make exceptions for a 10-year-old victim of rape? Like the GOP’s “freedom” argument against masks and vaccinations, this is mindless dogma run amok.
The professor’s solution was to relocate and change jobs; she now lives and works in Virginia. She didn’t feel she had a choice: “We now live in a world of vastly divergent health care systems for women.” Republicans in Kentucky, the state she left, passed laws that now endanger her health.
But this solution may be only temporary for her and others like her, because Republicans have made it clear that if they get national power again — control of Congress and the White House — they plan to ban abortion, on the cruelest imaginable terms, in the entire nation.
It’s up to America’s voters to make sure that doesn’t happen. Nobody likes high gas prices or recessions, but that’s not a good reason to vote for Republicans, who can’t do anything about gas prices or the business cycle anyway. On the other hand, protecting women’s health and well-being is a compelling reason to vote against them.