My main topic today is the leaked Supreme Court decision on abortion, but I went to the Met game so will start with what I know best.
My beloved Mets played a rare weekday day game yesterday versus the Atlanta Braves. Everything went perfectly … except for the game. I had my fastest commute to Citi Field since I’ve lived here; there was no wait for the D, E, or 7 trains. This was my first time using the E as in intermediary as Google maps told me that the connections would work. It’s a good guide to public transit in New York. As the weather was overcast and it was a day game the crowd was small. That meant I got to sit in good seat, the lowest part of the upper deck behind the plate. Security won’t let you sit in better seats than that without a ticket. The game started great. In his last start Magill pitched five no-hit innings and the relievers preserved the no-hitter. He started this game with four no-hit innings. He lost the no-hitter in the five but preserved the shutout. He lost it in the sixth, the dreaded third time through the batting order. Pitchers have a marked loss of effectiveness then. He loaded the based. I would have taken him out after the second hit, they were both hit hard. He was removed after loading the bases but the relief pitcher, Ottavino was ineffective as was the next pitcher, Williams. The Met lost 9-2. So sad.
The trip home was not quite a smooth, I had a long wait for the D, I didn’t take the E but had the rush-hour advantage; the D runs express in the Bronx them. I love skipping all those stations. I had a no harm no foul idiot story. I fell asleep quickly in the D. I woke up as the train pulled into 125th street an in my daze thought I had to change trains then. I forgot I was on the D. I so rarely change there I was surprised that happened. As I stepped off the train, I saw it was a D and got back on. I lost my seat but gone another one the next stop.
For dinner I planned to make mac & cheese. When I went to make it, I discovered that I was out of the cheese I use for that. I could have substituted the shredded cheese I had but instead made gnocchi. I used the shredded cheese in the sauce. I read that for mac and cheese you should use freshly shredded cheese. I will have to buy more. A nice thing with gnocchi is that I always have leftovers. It will make at least three meals.
Our main story tonight is the leaked Supreme Court preliminary abortion opinion by Judge Alito. I’m not going to preach to the choir. I suspect that most of My Gentle Readers are pro-choice and aghast at the opinion as am I. I tried reading it but couldn’t get through the entire thing. I know the consequences of the decision if it holds and was saddened by Alito’s arguments. So, what am I going to write about? How I think we should respond.
Abortion has gone from a legal fight to a political one. It has always been a political one but that was an attitude much more strongly held by the pro-lifers. The working class whites that swung to Trump are for the most part pro-choice but thought it safe to support him as the courts protected the right to abortion. That was true until it wasn’t. Perhaps some like Senators Collins and Murkowski allowed themselves to be fooled by the Trump appointees into thinking that they would put their respect for precedent above their ideology. Nobody that I know thought that, it seemed at least likely that this is how they vote and should have come as a surprise to no one. I can accept someone not involved in politics falling for it but not United States Senators.
So now that it’s political it means making it a priority in every election at every level, especially the state. I never list abortion as one of my top three priorities, but that’s never caused a conflict for me as candidates that consider climate change a threat and are concerned with social and economic justice are overwhelmingly prochoice. But I would never support a candidate that was prolife. The people we have to appeal to are the ones without ideological commitments but chose their candidates based on their general feelings. That’s actually most voters. We need the people that think, “we just need a change” to see prolife candidates as a threat and prochoice candidates as a hope.
Though for now the effect of the decision, providing that it holds, is devastating there is room now for other types of progress. Abortion rights can become like gay marriage, something that spreads through the country, state by state, until it becomes the norm. Then a new supreme court or congress can formally make it a national right. There’s a chance that many of the states that are rushing to outlaw abortion won’t be happy when they see the results and there will be a return to legalization.
I want to address one form of rhetoric on the prochoice life that I find counter-productive and if honest, not the whole truth. I often hear that the motivation of prolifers is the repress women. People talk as if only men are against abortion, which is just not true. The gender breakdown is smaller than the general left-right gender breakdown. You don’t think a fetus is a person, I don’t think a fetus is a person, that doesn’t mean that nobody does. The people that view feti as babies will be against abortion. When a fetus becomes a person is a philosophical issue with no clear cut answer. Those that take it as from the moment of conception are unreasonable, just as unreasonable as someone that said it’s not until the baby takes it’s first breath. There’s a continuum. The fetus gets closer and closer to being a person, there’s no one magic moment. We should acknowledge that fact or we let the anti-abortion advocates argue that prolifers are for killing babies until the moment they are born. As it is a philosophical question with no clear cut answer the choice should be that of the person with the strongest stake, the person most involved, the mother.
It’s not that a feti is not entitles to any consideration but that the fully human mother deserves more. Women that are denied abortions have inferior physical, mental, and economic outcomes than those who can get them. This is why abortion rights are important. They are vital for woman to have equality. The interests of the woman are far more important than those of a zygote. They are somewhat more important than a late term fetus which is why we allow some third trimester abortions to protect the life and health of the mother but not for lesser reasons. Somewhere in between by practicality we have to draw lines, where no lines exist. We can reasonably argue where those lines are. Most of the world restrict, perhaps all of it, restrict abortions more than the US under Roe v Wade. If it were up to me, I’d stick with Roe v Wade, but I can live with drawing the lines differently, but not where the anti-abortion activists want it. Can the country have such a discussion? Not right now but perhaps in the future.
For now, we must take this as a political call to arms. We need to become not just choice supporters but activists. It means caring about every election, right down to school boards and county clerks. It’s a call to arms but we shouldn’t think of it as a war. We want people to think rationally, not just choose sides. Rationality is on our side. Vilifying abortion opponents as necessarily being misogynists doesn’t help. For those that aren’t rational and are just choosing sides we want to be the kinds of people others want to be on the same side as. Those who are personally opposed to abortion but that don’t think that their personal philosophy should be imposed on others should be vocal about that. It’s a moving argument.
I don’t know if I’m making effective arguments, but I know I’m being honest about my thoughts. I hope this helps somebody think about the issue. That’s my goal.
Wise Madness 