You can't stuff a 21st century genie back into a 20th century bottle

[PlanetBev]

Two very empowered generations of women have come up since the Roe ruling of 1973. I was 22 at that time and am been amazed at the progress women have made. Doctors, lawyers, news anchors, sports reporters and meteorologists, you name it. I couldn’t even get my own credit in 1973.

These religions fanatics who think they’re going to re-create a fantasy world of Grover’s Corner or Mayberry are delusional. Reactionaries will find that their attempts to crack down on progress will just result in more and more push back and chaos.

I guess they’ll just keep chasing the pickup 🛻.

[temporary311]

1. No, but they'll kill a lot of people trying.

[FalloutShelter]

9. THIS!!!!

[mopinko]

2. backlash to progress seems to be one of the laws of physics.

but i think it is equally a law of physics that the backlash cant rly be greater than the progress.

[brush]

3. Agreed. Repulicans will regret this as their damaging their chances...

in the '22 midterms. Women all over will be pissed, and so will be many women.

[Runningdawg]

4. Their agenda is the same as it was 50 years ago - Theocracy

"Reactionaries will find that their attempts to crack down on progress will just result in more and more push back and chaos." This is EXACTLY what they want. This is what they feed off of. It won't stop with abortion. They want to take away ALL power from women. No vote, no jobs, no education, no custody of children, no ownership of anything. All in the name of God.

[PlanetBev]

5. Yeah, like that comment from Mike Flynn

“There needs to be one religion and that has to be under God.”

Ain’t gonna happen, but they’ll keep trying.

[Budi]

6. We gave this 'generation' a gift to build upon. The ignorance is astonishing.

""Reactionaries will find that their attempts to crack down on progress will just result in more and more push back and chaos." This is EXACTLY what they want."

Yes. It is exactly what they want.
Good luck ever getting back what was carelessly tossed away for the guy behind door #2.

[FakeNoose]

7. 50 years ago theocracy was NOT the objective of the Republican Party

Reactionaries and extreme-right conservatives have taken over the party since 1973. That's what we're dealing with now.

The Repukes of the 1970's realized they were losing voters every year, every election. They felt they had to woo the so-called "Religious Right" and the conservative Catholics because they needed the votes. Guess what these two groups had in common? Only one thing - they were both anti-abortion. So the unholy alliance was made among the Repukes, they agreed to go after Roe v. Wade as long as they got the support of the Religious Right/Catholics.

I don't think the Repukes would ever give 2 shits about theocracy or any other religious beliefs. They just want to win elections and they're willing to lie if it helps 'em win.

[TexasBushwhacker]

8. Barry Goldwater was profoundly against mixing religion and politics

and in the 60s, you'd have a hard time finding anyone more conservative, other than the John Birch Society.

[FakeNoose]

10. Goldwater was a blip on the radar who lost by a landslide in 1964

... to LBJ. He only won his own state of Arizona and the Deep South, that's all. His campaign was so unpopular that Republicans lost everywhere because of him. I don't know how religious he was, but it didn't matter. He was a Libertarian at heart.

[Hekate]

11. All of the advances that women have made in the last 50 years actually will go away if "they" get...

…what they want out of this court.

How, you ask? Because anti-choice is, at first and last, anti-woman, and that means all our choices are in the mix. Contraception, birth control, welfare assistance, childcare, parental leave, jobs and career advancement — all of it.

They’ve been laying the social groundwork forever by redefining the most popular and effective contraceptives as abortifacients. They’ve been lying to teenagers for decades, saying condoms are completely ineffective against both disease and pregnancy.

They’ve laid legal groundwork by making sure that the US Congress inserted “conscience clauses” into every piece of health legislation — so that employers/insurers, hospitals, doctors and pharmacists all have a legal out for not only refusing to provide for abortions but for refusing to cover/provide Plan B, Morning After, contraceptive pills and contraceptive devices. The Hyde Amendment was introduced as a compromise, and somehow it has never gone away.

Legal groundwork at the state level has included “personhood” laws, and when that was too direct they did an end-run by defining the murder of a pregnant woman as a double-homicide. They’ve intruded on the health crisis that is addiction, not by providing support to beat the addiction but by imprisoning pregnant women for endangering their fetuses. They’ve worked to broaden the definition of what endangers a fetus — where there is a miscarriage, there must be a woman at fault.

Are you beginning to get the picture now?

It goes further. When Roe vs Wade was decided, it superseded state laws — but state legislatures saw no need to actually remove those old laws from the books. It may have been lazy thinking at the time, but at some point someone realized that if Roe goes away, the old laws come back automatically unless they have since been overturned by the state — and by that time the culture wars were in full swing.

They have been relentless, in part because Gawd is on their side and in part because women are just too uppity for their own good, but hey, same thing in the end. When one legislative maneuver fails, they try another in a different state, then return and try again.

That’s all I can say for now. There’s so much more.

I’m your age. At some point I realized it was not all about nasty entitled women aborting fully-formed adorable Gerber babies (as the RW likes to portray the situation, thus trying to make every one of us ashamed to speak out), but it was truly about contraception and the ability to prevent pregnancy in the first place. And contraception is foundational to absolutely every advance we women have made in the last century. That’s where we are going.

[Baitball Blogger]

12. Good title.