The Orlando Sentinel editorialized about the DeSantis administration’s effort to kill a voter referendum that would put reproductive rights into the state constitution. Last year, Governor DeSantis signed a highly restrictive ban on abortion—that it was prohibited after six weeks of pregnancy, when few if any women realize they are pregnant.
Let it be noted that Republican legislators in Mississippi are also trying to block a state referendum on abortion. They are afraid it will pass, and they are not willing to take that chance.
The Orlando Sentinel editorial board wrote:
Next week, Attorney General Ashley Moody will come before the state Supreme Court and argue that Floridians can’t be trusted to understand a ballot initiative that would protect abortion rights in Florida — and because of that, they should be stripped of the right to demand them.
Moody is asking the state’s high court to crush an abortion rights initiative that’s already supported by nearly 1 million Floridians (and counting). If it makes the ballot, it’s likely to pass: Most polls show that voters support abortion rights, regardless of party. Without this amendment, the Legislature has already shown it will do everything in its power to destroy those rights.
Voters in six states, including solidly conservative Kentucky and Kansas, have already voted to project abortion rights. At least a dozen other states could vote on abortion this year.
That’s why Florida voters deserve to have their say — and why Florida’s anti-reproductive-rights leaders are so desperate to make sure they don’t.
Here’s what voters will see on the ballot:
No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.
The DeSantis administration insists that voters won’t understand this amendment so should not be allowed to vote on it.
One million Floridians have already signed a petition to put it on the ballot.
The DeSantis administration is afraid that voters will understand it and pass it.
Will the conservative state Supreme Court of Florida allow the people to decide?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is where the Republican Party is generally, isn’t it? It holds positions that the people reject, and so it must lie and use various machinations like vote suppression and this court case to push through minority positions. That’s why they want so desperately to end democracy. Because they know that unless they change dramatically or are able to engineer an autocracy, they will before long go the way of the Know Nothings.
The former GOP candidate who allegedly paid 4 men to shoot up the homes of Democratic lawmakers in New Mexico opposed abortion access.
Of the 4 homes riddled with bullets in the drive-by shootings, three were those of women.
The Nation (1-31-2023) reported, “Female politicians are 3 times more likely to be targeted with threats and harassment.”
Rhetorically, which institutions, past and present, deny women rights and legitimize the practice through canon?
All of them. The emergence of “civilization,” of hydrophilic city states and large-scale agriculture, in the Neolithic required centralized authority and division of labor in order to carry out large-scale irrigation and tending of grain. With this division of labor and social hierarchy came patriarchy, which has been enshrined in laws and customs ever since, not just in religious laws and customs, or in the dogmas and doctrines of particular religions, but in those of just about every religion worldwide and also IN SOCIAL MORES AND NORMS. Since that time, nonpatriarchy has been the exception, not the rule, except in societies where the agricultural revolution did not take place–ones that still practiced hunting and gathering/foraging. Industrialization, which pretty much wiped away village life and the power of women to work together with other women, which had long been a countervailing force that placed limits on patriarchy, simply made things worse, as people became isolated in nuclear family dwellings. It is only recently that we have begun to break away from this dark legacy.
An interesting note to Bob’s long view of civilization:
I was visiting Russell Cave Natl. Monument in northern Alabama several years ago. It is a late archaic site located in the mouth of one of those ubiquitous Cumberland Mountain overhangs caused by soft rock eroding under harder strata. I got into a conversation with a recent graduate of a school of anthropology, who informed me that the scholarship suggested (around 2012, I think) that archaic man in North America received his needed caloric intake by working 29 hours a week. When corn entered the diet, that went up to 44 hours a week. This was, of course, during the Mississippian period, when cities flourished in places like Cahokia, which was about as large in 1200 as London was.
I am not sure how large concentrations of population were organized in North America (Mayan, Aztec, etc), but many groups in North America retained matrilineal structure right up to the time of European encroachment, and many groups still harken to this practice.
YES!!!! And the same pattern is found worldwide.
The Kung San! of the Kalahari who still practice a hunting and gathering lifestyle work about 17 hours per week to feed themselves.
cx: !Kung san
Dictators find any excuse to circumvent democracy. When a governor and his supporters try to block the will of the people, it is time to show them the door. Florida needs to be rid of the repressive DeSantis and his extremist policies. Holding the public hostage is no way to govern. We need an active Dump Dictator DeSantis campaign!
Florida and the nation-
This morning, in an interview with Sen. JD Vance (R-Oh.) on a Sunday morning ABC program, the public learned he believes the President should have rule over SCOTUS and that all civil servants should be fired and replaced with the King’s men.
Like DeSantis, Vance is a religionist with anti-abortion views.
Religion is always a bad way to run a country. So is having no insight into how people work.
Ronnie Boy is done. Politics hates losers. It is a great leveler of delusional minds.
Bye bye, Ron. It’s not that we didn’t know ya. It’s that we know ya all too well.
Obviously the republicans are the party of hypocrites. And the party of male dominated control over all those they perceived to be below them. Time to vote them out of office and ignore them when they have a tantrum. (or punish them if their tantrum breaks the law).
“Men are less religious in more gender-equal countries”
(2-9-2022, National Library of Medicine)
Everyone is less religious in more gender-equal countries.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-015-1147-7
The Florida AG says people won’t understand “viability.” Given its track record of ignoring the express will of the people on Constitutional amendments, if this passes in November, look for some member of the lapdog legislature to submit legislation that defines “viability” as the moment of conception. Look for the Florida Supreme Court to say that Planned Parenthood et al do not have standing to contest that.
SteveA
Will this fight, occurring so close to the presidential election, pull normally disinterested voters off the sidelines and throw Florida back toward its former purple self?
In time, the Bubbas and the Bubbettes will have a surprise coming. Their children do not think as they do.
I hope so. However, the state has attracted more right wing extremists as a result of its extreme policies. The “Florida Blueprint” is more like a boot print on the neck of democracy.
After a little digging with help from Google I think I may have identified the primary fascist suspects behind pro life, that also support Traitor Trump.
What is Christian Nationalism… — PBS
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-is-christian-nationalism-and-why-it-raises-concerns-about-threats-to-democracy
The Christian Right and the Pro-Life Movement — JSTOR
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3511563
On that note: Hitler’s fascist Nazis were also mostly if not all German Christian nationalists
The German Churches and the Nazi State
“… the reasons why most Christians in Germany welcomed the rise of Nazism in 1933. They were also persuaded by the statement on “positive Christianity” in Article 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform, which read: …”
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state
Now for a little editing to fit our times.
The reasons why many Christians in the United States welcomed the rise of Trumpism in 2016 and beyond …
Trumpism and Nazism are the same thing.
The US is very fortunate that there are no Christian evangelicals on SCOTUS. The nation is lucky that the influence of Steve Bannon, Leonard Leo, the Fox hosts and Ron DeSantis is waning. And, the Catholic church’s abandonment of the pro-life campaign is cause for a sigh of relief, too.
It IS waning. The SCOTUS supermajority and Leonard Leo are the last gasp of a dying worldview. Fox has declining viewership, and it’s viewership is overwhelmingly elderly people. If you look at polls of the attitudes and opinions of U.S. young people, you will find that religion, and belief in a lot of traditional tenets of Christian churches, are in precipitous decline, as are backward, repressive Repugnican political stances. The Pugs have lost the young. Furthermore, according to recent Pew polling, a clear majority of American Catholics support a woman’s right to choose, and overwhelming majorities of American Catholics support contraception and gay marriage. And, of course, not all evils are attributable to Catholics and Catholicism. For example, there is that person of low character Bob Shepherd, who finds the ancient mythologies and superstitions related to the nation’s tribal god/s utterly silly. ROFL. He’s not alone. Increasingly, people just don’t buy Original Sin (babies born sinful), heaven and hell, virgin births, wafers that turn magically into God’s body, and so on, much less stories about Moses parting the waters, the punishment of all people forever because ancestors ate a fruit they weren’t supposed to, and other primitive bs.
Oh, and the Catholic Church in the U.S. is finding it almost impossible to recruit priests and nuns, and the churches are pretty much empty on Sundays. Same but even more so throughout Europe.
Linda,
Thank you for warning up about this years ago BEFORE it got so bad. Had people not dismissed what was obvious during the 2016 election, this country would be on a very different path, with a progressive leaning Supreme Court and the conditions necessary for democracy preserved.
And calling this a “last gasp” of their influence sounds more like (dangerous) wishful thinking than a thoughtful assessment of reality.
It doesn’t matter if the attitudes of young people are changing if our country continues on its march to authoritarianism.
Young people in Russia have different attitudes and it makes no difference as long as the “popular” Putin is in power.
I remember the hopefulness when the young seemed to be starting a movement in China in 1989, until Tiananmen Square.
Current conditions signal it’s more likely the last gasp of democracy, and not the last gasp of the influence of those who spurn democracy who have already been empowered to take over most statehouses, the Supreme Court, and if they get the presidency and one branch of Congress, all bets are off.
Do people here really believe that Florida is no longer a toss-up state in presidential elections because the people of Florida – especially the young – have experienced the benefits of far right Republican anti-progressive, right-wing rule and have become MORE right wing?
Isn’t more likely that once the anti-democracy DeSantis’ Republicans were able to seize power with a far right Republican majority, they have passed laws specifically designed to insure that what the majority of voters want doesn’t matter?
That’s the future, progressives who thought it didn’t matter if Trump wins. It did matter. Because once you empower the pro-authoritarian Republican party, you get Florida — a toss-up state that is now likely to be in right wing Republican control for a long time.
Did Florida become such a red state because “the people” of Florida love DeSantis and Republican policies so much once they got to experience the joy of them? Or did empowering DeSantis and the right wing Republican party for even one election end the possibility of voters ever ending their hold on power?
Your analysis is not without its merits. There is, indeed, a struggle going on right now between these regressive forces and the progressive ones that are being born. I am more hopeful now than ever because of the young people coming up. The Reich-wingers seem desperate, and with good reason. I was much encouraged by the Midterm results. But it is always the case that there is the threat of a descent into rule by strongman.
But by a great many measures, it is clearly the case that the Catholic Church in the United States is on life support. Much of what is extreme in the Repugnican Party in the age of Trump is, I think, the howling of people whose Weltanschauung is no longer shared by the majority culture, by people who are angry that their kids are coming home from high school and college and telling them to stop being racist and sexist and homophobic and superstitious and, well, backward.
The Republicans have been in control of Florida for the past quarter century. The last Democrat to be elected governor was Lawton Chiles in 1994. He died before the end of his term and his term was filled by his Lt Gov McKay. Jeb Bush was elected in 1998, in time to save his brother’s presidential bid. No Democrat has been elected since then.
NYC,
What you wrote means a great deal to me
because it reflects a common purpose to thwart future or to overturn past Catholic/Christian church authoritarian wins that were gained through actions of the GOP legislative, judicial and executive (e.g. Gov. Voinovich, Ducey and DeSantis).
The sheer number of GOP led states and legislatures is a roadblock to democracy.
They do not exist without right wing religionists’ votes.
In my estimation, a woman or girl’s life lost today has as much gravitas as one lost in the future. That understanding mutes predictions about the waning influence (but, not waning money for political purposes) of the Catholic Church
What you wrote saddens me because I believe you are correct, the ability to stop the march of theocracy/oligarchy may have been in the past. The window was at the time that the agendas of Catholic organizations and Charles Koch were married and the political influence of men like Robert P George and Leonard Leo grew, including on campuses e.g. the right wing turn of Newman Centers, Koch-funded economics centers and George’s James Madison centers, etc.
You may, perhaps, know better than I about the following. Are wealthy Jewish libertarians aligning with Christian/Catholic theocrats? Is the war in Gaza a convenient catalyst for development of the axis? If so, I’ll express that it scares me for the Jewish people. In a nano second, the right wing turns on a minority.
What we have seen at the blog are some who gain knowledge only from the present without interest in extrapolation. The fact that taxpayers have made Catholic organizations the nation’s 3rd largest employer should be on the same list of alarms as a SCOTUS
dominated by right wing Catholics. The influence of Catholic coffers gains with
expansion of its organizations.
I desperately want to see, because I believe democracy depends on it, a change in the false, media narrative about right wing influence that excludes Catholic Conference politicking, Catholic Republican influence as embodied in the views of the recently elected JD Vance who is doubling down on authoritarianism and, the accurate history of the Catholic Church. (The Church’s PR has crowded it out.)
I am exasperated by the writings of Adam Laats at The Atlantic, Anthea Butler at MSNBC and, the author of the PBS story link that Lloyd provided.
For any who read my comment, I appreciate it.
Bob, you mentioned that you were encouraged by the mid-term results — I don’t know much about anything but the state wide contests in Florida. Were they promising? Because it seemed to me like the Democrats just keep losing more and more ground in the state.
In the old days it seemed like Republicans could win in Florida, but their goal was to get people to like their policies, not to use their power to make it hard for them to ever lose their power. And it seems as if it is getting worse and worse there.
Wisconsin was heading that way for a bit, and they managed to head it off early enough by electing enough Democrats to (temporarily at least) prevent the Republicans from doing what they did in Florida to enshrine their rule.
It feels as if we are in such a dangerous situation because at this point, once a state goes Republican, they pass regressive laws to limit democracy.
Four years of Trump did so much damage nationally. Without Mike Pence, it is likely that Trump would have stayed in office, with the so-called liberal media (looking at you, NYT) somehow normalizing that handing the election over to the Republican statehouses was Constitutional and fine because the Supreme Court said so.
No matter what Trump or a Republican does, there will be one day outrage and then non-stop normalizing of it. Look at how Trump’s call for insurrection is being normalized as not insurrection! Even though many conservative legal scholars say it is.
The 2022 Midterm Elections
The 2022 United States elections were held on November 8, 2022. During this U.S. midterm election, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate were contested to determine the 118th United States Congress. Thirty-nine state and territorial U.S. gubernatorial elections, as well as numerous state and local elections, were also contested. A Democratic Party trifecta was prevented by a split Congress after the Republican Party narrowly regained control of the House. Democrats slightly expanded their majority in the Senate. Midterm elections typically see the incumbent president’s party lose a substantial number of seats, but Democrats outperformed the historical trend and a widely anticipated red wave did not materialize. Republicans narrowly won the House due to their overperformance in the nation’s four largest states: Texas, Florida, and traditionally Democratic New York and California. The Democratic Party increased their seats in the Senate by one, as they won races in critical battleground states, where voters rejected almost all Donald Trump-endorsed Republican candidates.
The Republicans lost two governor’s races to the Democrats, in Maryland and Illinois. In Maryland, Democrat Tina Kotek beat Dan Cox, a Trump supporter and election denier. In Illinois, Democrat J.B. Pritzker easily won reelection against Darren Bailey, another Trump ally and anti-mask activist. The Republicans also failed to win any of the other competitive governor’s races in Nevada, Oregon, and Wisconsin, where the Democrats retained their seats.
The Republicans lost four state legislative chambers to the Democrats, in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. The Democrats flipped both chambers in Michigan, the state Senate in Minnesota, and the state House in Pennsylvania. The Democrats also gained a supermajority in the Oregon state House. The Republicans did not gain any state legislative chambers in the midterms.
Bob, don’t forget the crucial state judge race in Wisconsin, which determined control of the Court and the future of abortion and gerrymandering. The Democrat won. And how about all those abortion votes.
YES!
Bob,
This is what I find most chilling, when you wrote:
“Republicans narrowly won the House due to their overperformance in the nation’s four largest states: Texas, Florida, and traditionally Democratic New York and California…”
I know why the Republicans overperformed in NY State — unfortunately the Republicans were able to benefit a huge amount from Democratic overreaching in re-drawing districts. That was an anomaly where New York State Dems tried to do a less drastic version of trying to tilt the playing field that Florida Republicans have already successfully done to enshrine their power.
Note that in NY State, they couldn’t do that. But Republican-controlled states basically ignore court-ordered redress of their gerrymandering.
And NY State Democrats believe in getting as many voters as possible to vote, regardless of party. They don’t look for ways to make it very difficult and cumbersome for upstate voters (traditionally Republican) to vote.
Florida is getting redder and redder, if Republicans overperformed in Florida in 2022, and the scary thing is that the goal of the Florida Republicans seems to be to disenfranchise as many traditionally Democratic voters as possible, not try to win them over to the Republican side by their policies.
The nation doesn’t need to be concerned about Sen. JD Vance and Sen. Ricketts. Ricketts called the Jan. 6 hearings a partisan rehash. (Both oppose abortion.)
Well, you and I agree about something. It matters not at all what these morons say.
Many of Diane’s posts are focused on what politicians say e.g. the post to which this thread of comments applies.
Lloyd- a heads up- your link to a PBS program- the segment is limited to one religion- not the first time you’ve gone down that path. Bob will want you to report what personal trauma you experienced at the hands of religionists, and, he will be adamant.
I had an aunt, Eva, say to me back then: “The Devil put them fossils in the ground just to fool people like you.” ROFL. At the age of 9, I knew how ridiculous that was. However, I admit that I went through a period of struggle–a few weeks, in which I worried about the state of my soul given my doubts. I finally concluded that any god who would give me a mind capable of learning about dinosaurs and questioning claims about their nonexistence and then punish me for using that mind was not one worth worshipping. So, I canned the whole businesses way back then. I have not been haunted by ancient superstition and spirits in the sky since. And so, based on personal experience, I can say that fundamentalist religious teaching is a variety of child abuse. All that said, though the dominant religions of the West today are clearly ridiculous and fictitious, clearly just NOT TRUE, and I say clearly because they are part and parcel with other untrue ancient belief systems with which they share their primitive etiologies, so is the dominant Western materialist, deterministic scientism, which is just another religion, I think. Belief exceeding knowledge. It’s hilarious to me that people who believe in virgin births and talking snakes and a 6,000-year-old universe think that a girl being turned into a laurel tree (Greek) or the birth of the earth from a cosmic egg (Chinese) are silly superstitions. Bottom line: there is no idea so idiotic that vast numbers of people will not believe it if they are taught it at an early age and if they are also taught that doubting this will imperil them.
Personal trauma at the hands of religious persons (as opposed to “religionists.” what a weird coinage that is). When I was a child, I lived for a time with a fundamentalist grandmother who would haul me off to fundamentalist revival meetings and holy roller piety fests. At the time, I was, like other little kids, interested in dinosaurs. I was taught that if one questioned the church or its teachings, that was demons inside you. This seemed utter ridiculous to me. I was nine and saw through it. It’s time to put away these superstitions from the childhood of our species. There, we good?
I remember, I think I was 8, that I had to tell my Protestant friends that they were going to Hell because they weren’t Catholic.
The priest told us that yes, he was sure my friends were all good lads, but I nonetheless had to accept that they were still damned for all eternity.
I left the Catholic church when I was 15. Damned if I know why it took me so long.
We know little of ultimate realities, and Kant explained why long, long ago. We have a particular operating system that gives us access to only a piece of what is actually going on. But whatever the ultimate realities are, they certainly don’t bear ANY RESEMBLANCE WHATSOEVER to the superstitious cosmologies held by the Hebrews and other peoples 3,000 years ago. No Daddy in the Sky. No primordial ocean serpent.
Well put. Life goes on all around us on innumerable levels, and we perceive damned little of it. And still we make decisions.
Let me try to put that a little more precisely: Our particular cognitive apparatus, our operating system, as it were, shows us things as it is designed to show them, not as they are. Just as the file folders and trash cans and other items on a computer screen are fictions and the reality behind them is completely different, so the contents of our perceptions are not reads of the universe as it is in itself. But they have evolved in such a way as to enable flourishing, so there are definitely congruities between phenomena and noumena.
Damn, you took the poetry right out of it.
Damn, I thought that was about as poetic as it gets. And it’s an idea with profound consequences.
Vance, ofc, is simply an opportunist. He blows as the wind blows. I suspect he might be another trying to position himself to assume the Orange mantle once Trump enters again the primordial ooze.
It has been a source of wonder to me that such a mediocre person gets so much cred. He’s a fool.
Totally in agreement with you about Vance. A mediocrity.
But a mediocrity with a low cunning and an amorality that have served him well.
Oh, he’s a two-faced bastard, that’s for sure. And he came well-packaged: An Appalachian son of Yale, the “hillbilly” intellectual, he would open us all up to the wisdom of the Mountain Folk.
Yet, for all his “rough” upbringing, I have yet to detect an atom of compassion or insight in his leaden prose. He’s a simple exponent of the “Hooray for me and fuck you!” ethos of the Republican Party.
Which is nothing new whatsoever. It is always entertaining to hear Republicans trying to pass as deeply concerned and open to improving the lot of the downtrodden. But they always leave the unpaid bill on the table and fail to leave a tip.
Wankers.
Entirely agree, JSR, and well said!
He does a lousy job of imitating a human being.
First, I am grateful to those who read what I write and give my comments consideration. I hope there is not a misunderstanding. The focus in my comments is largely about the intersection of right wing political efforts/ spending and, the Catholic Church. I want readers to know the consequences of the political influence of right wing Catholics because media consistently omits it. Lloyd’s PBS link is an example. Another example is the Tulsa World reporting about Nellie Tayloe Sanders (Oklahoma education advisor appointed by Gov. Stitt) as contrasted with the takeaway from The Oklahoman’s profile. Tulsa World’s truth is quite rarely published.
Again, thanks to those willing to review my information and POV. I strive to be long on facts and short on POV so that the reader forms his/her on conclusion.
If it concerns you that 51% of our population has been stripped of bodily autonomy, I suggest you follow Jessica Valenti at he substack, Abortion Every Day. As we’ve learned in the education sphere, this is a well coordinated effort by billionaires on the right. The same legislation popping up everywhere all at once is an ALEC hallmark. I bet there’s money to be made, too. Erin Hawley, for example, wife of chickenshit insurrectionist Josh Hawley, is Senior Counsel for the so-called Alliance Defending Freedom. Her salary is likely north of what SCOTUS judges are paid.
https://jessica.substack.com/
Thanks for the link. Josh Hawley worked for Becket Law.
ALEC was co-founded by Paul Weyrich, an extreme right wing Catholic who was funded by the Koch’s. Weyrich also co-founded the secretive and highly influential Council for National Policy.
Josh Hawley worked at Becket Law, the twin of ADF. It was founded by Seamus Hasson, a graduate of Notre Dame. Hasson has 7 kids. His wife is prominent in the DC-based organization, EPPC.
SPLC has information in an article, “Shadow agents of the religious right,” that identifies Becket Law.
Reckon.news wrote about the threat from Becket law for abortion rights, on Aug. 10, 2023.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Republicans DETEST democratic governance.
Republicans detest democratic governance because if more people voted, they would be a permanent minnority.
democracy,
Exactly. And for those of us who believe in democracy, it is frightening to see some voices from the left who keep posting right wing anti-Democrat propaganda here who also seem to embrace the Republican “truth” that democracy is expendable if abandoning it gets you what you want.
Those folks who DETEST democratic governance share a lot of values, regardless of whether they describe themselves as being on the far right or far left. They all love Putin, who also believes democracy is expendable.
They are all hypocrites, too. Those on the left will tell you with a straight face that Putin is extremely popular and elections that show huge pro-Russia/pro-Putin victories are absolutely “democratic.” But they are very quick to condemn US democracy as a total farce– but only if a Democrat wins. Any victory by a non-Democrat is apparently legit.
Both the far right and far left believe that victory by Putin or Trump or Republicans is a legitimate victory based on their widespread popularity, but Democrats “steal” elections whenever they win.
Both sides believe “democracy” really means that the white folks who agree with their politics should have their votes count more. Thus those on the left devalue southern state primaries where their own favored candidates don’t do as well with Black voters. And they overvalue early victories in majority white states like Iowa and New Hampshire and declare that victories among those white voters “prove” that there must have been hanky panky when their candidate lost southern state primaries where primary voters are more likely to be Black and didn’t vote for their candidate. These anti-democracy hypocrites will never admit that it is possible that Black voters preferred a different primary candidate than the one who was victorious in early states with mostly white voters. Instead, they practically shout fraud, doubling down on the primary being “stolen”, and then pushing right wing propaganda about how the candidate who won those Democratic primaries because Black voters supported them is racist and invoke things that happened decades ago (and not the last 20+ years) to claim that they know more than Black voters do about who is a racist.
There is a hypocritical left who believes Russia democracy is legit, but Dems steal elections from progressives in the US. And like the Trump-voting right, they ignore all evidence (hello AOC and Jamaal Bowman) that the right wing narrative they embrace is a lie.
Of course not, and soon, the U.S. will become, divided like in the Civil War Era, and, there is going to be more than likely, a Great Migration of ALL women, heading, up “north”, via something like the Underground Railroad of the, Civil War, era, as they flee the South, to get their, rights to abort, recognized, and put into, practice.
Agree, the women I’ve talked with who are educated are considering a move for their families, should Trump be elected, not just because women’s lives are at risk from abortion bans but, because oppression by right wing churches will, in other ways, turn back the clock on their rights and status.