Abortion rights advocates protest a possible decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade at the Federal Courthouse in Downtown Las Vegas Tuesday, May 3, 2022.
Sunday, May 8, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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Since 1990, every major poll conducted on the issue of abortion shows that roughly 80% of Americans support allowing abortions in at least some circumstances. For the small minority of about 20% who believe that abortion should be banned even in the case of rape, incest or direct danger to life of the mother, you can stop reading now, this editorial is not for you.
For the 80% remaining, you have a choice, either defeat the extreme anti-abortion wing of the Republican Party now, in this election cycle, or accept that the United States is likely to have a national ban on all abortions, in all circumstances, by 2025.
The renewal of this war on women kneels to the fringe of reason and values. You can find 20% of Americans who will believe in almost anything. For example, a Gallup poll in 2000 found that 31% of Americans believed ghosts were real and 21% believed in witches.
Despite the rhetoric that each state should have the ability to choose what their laws will be on abortion, evangelical extremists have made it clear that their actual goal is a nationwide ban on abortion in all circumstances — including the aforementioned cases of rape and incest.
It wasn’t a coincidence that after 30 years of not issuing any significant rulings on abortion rights, the Supreme Court took up the issue almost immediately after conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed. It was simply a matter of waiting for the proper majority on the court. This majority was handed to them by the mendacious Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who gleefully shattered established Senate rules and the notion of fairness itself to accomplish the feat.
Evangelical extremists have spent 50 years trying to overturn Roe, and they’ve had a lot of help along the way. Setting aside the apparent staggering naivete of Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the GOP has willingly and knowingly sold its standards, its ethics, its values and its common sense for the steadfast support of the evangelical right. The only requirement: Ending abortion must be at the top of the GOP priority list.
The result is a highly successful political and marketing strategy that dates to the presidency of Ronald Reagan. It’s a strategy that, despite steady public support for the right to choose and waning public support for Republicans as a party, has helped Republicans secure a 30-year stranglehold on governance in the United States.
After so many years of hard work and planning, why would they stop short of banning all abortions across the entire country when they are so close to securing the power to finally achieve their ultimate goals?
States like Nevada, which has a voter-affirmed statute that guarantees a woman's right to an abortion and can only be changed by another statewide referendum, must take this threat seriously. Congress can pass regulatory legislation that effectively accomplishes the goal of a ban despite a state’s wishes and despite the winking falsehood of Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked argument that states should decide this issue.
Polls show that Democrats are all but certain to lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 election cycle. The Senate is up for grabs, but only because it’s unclear whether Republicans can save the seat currently held by Pennsylvania’s retiring Sen. Pat Toomey, or two-term Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson — a senator so immensely talented at putting his foot in his mouth that even the party of Trump is struggling to justify his inclusion.
On the Democratic side of the Senate, there are three first-term Democratic incumbents up for re-election in toss-up states:
•Raphael Warnock, elected in a special election run-off in 2021, captured the seat vacated by the resignation of Republican Johnny Isakson.
Warnock won the special election by 2% in a year in which Georgia Democrats took advantage of the Stacey Abrams campaign organization and infrastructure, combined with a highly motivated anti-Trump sentiment. They’ll have neither advantage this time around.
• Mark Kelly was elected in a special election in 2020 to fill the seat vacated by the death of Republican John McCain in Arizona. Unfortunately for Kelly and the Democrats, until the 2019 anti-Trump election, Arizona had only sent one Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1969.
The third Democratic senator up for re-election from a toss-up state is Nevada’s own Catherine Cortez Masto. Nevada’s changing demographics and electoral identity favor Masto in this fall’s race. But given that Cortez Masto won her last election by 25,000 votes and fellow Democrat Jacky Rosen won by less than 50,000 votes just two years ago, Masto is far from a shoe-in, and her current poll numbers are weak enough to cause concerns. The national GOP has targeted Cortez Masto’s seat as a must-win race and will roll out heavy spending to secure the seat.
Significantly, every GOP candidate for major office in Nevada has applauded Alito’s leaked draft opinion without reservation. A vote for any Nevada Republican in the next election cycle is a vote to ban abortion through, at minimum, regulatory changes even if the process of changing Nevada's abortion statute is out of reach at this time.
Combine all of that with President Joe Biden’s approval rating hanging consistently in the low 40s and it’s reasonable to believe that Republicans, under Trump’s leadership, will have unified control of both houses of Congress and all three branches of government in January 2025.
If that happens, a federal ban on abortion is all but certain. Followed by federal legislation to curb other controversial family planning, education and health care practices that the court previously justified under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause. Likely targets include limiting education and access to contraception, a ban on same-sex couples adopting children, and limitations on individual’s abilities to engage in certain health care procedures such as hormone therapy, gender reassignment surgery and more.
That sounds bad enough, but it’s only the beginning for a GOP power structure unified under Trump or a Trumpist clone. With only a few notable exceptions, GOP leadership imagines a dystopian anti-democracy for America. The coming midterms and 2024 presidential election carry stakes this nation hasn’t seen in modern times.
Voters in the past ignored warnings about the potential for Roe to be overturned. They rationalized their votes for pro-life politicians based on other priorities, often financial, such as lower taxes. But trading the basic civil and human rights of others to put a few extra dollars in our pockets is morally bankrupt. It was wrong to gamble with other people’s bodies and lives then, and it is even more wrong now that we know with certainty the direction the GOP is headed.
Since Monday’s leak, GOP leadership has been insistent on talking about everything but Roe — immigration, law and order, etc., but we should not allow them to take the focus off the sharp end of the GOP culture wars, now that they’re plunging that sharp end into American life and women’s bodies.
If Republicans are allowed to gain control of both houses of Congress and all three branches of government, even voting rights and racial segregation will be on the ballot for the foreseeable future. Think we’re being alarmist? Less than 48 hours after the court’s decision overturning Roe was leaked, a former editor of the conservative magazine National Review called for the Supreme Court to overturn Brown v. Board of Education, the ruling that outlawed “separate but equal” racial segregation.
The next right to be taken away cannot be blamed on ignorance of the GOP’s strategy and will lie squarely on those of us who fail to use our voice and our vote to stop the curtailing of our liberties and freedoms.
We have the power to stop this madness. But first, we must move beyond the lie that this is about states’ rights and accept that it is a highly planned and well-executed strategy for imposing the personal religious beliefs of one subset of Americans onto everyone within our society. Then, we must do everything in our power to prevent the GOP from winning in the next election.
This editorial was updated to clarify that Nevada voters affirmed a woman’s right to an abortion by statute.
