Here’s a quick-read special edition of Hard to Believe It’s Only Tuesday, my weekly roundup of the top abortion news.
Good morning especially to the Ohio voters who enshrined abortion and other essential repro rights in their state constitution last night. I wrote a quick wrap-up for MSNBC looking back at the absolute circus the Ohio GOP put on, trying to block Ohioans from weighing in:
That these efforts didn’t work is no reason to suppose the GOP will give up and play fair the next time around — if anything, we can expect to see them play even dirtier. Republicans cannot win with voters unless they cheat, lie and weaponize misogynist, racist and classist notions about abortion providers, people who have abortions, and American families writ large in order to achieve their ends. They have manipulated American voters and turned us against one another, convincing us to sacrifice our most cherished rights and tried to make us believe that people who have abortions are not our friends, our mothers and sisters and daughters, our wives and our co-workers, or our neighbors or our baristas or our lawyers or doctors or military service members or legislators.
They want us to believe that people who have abortions are ghoulish banshees who have post-birth abortions for fun, sluts who refuse to submit to the calming dictates of motherhood, or greedy gold-diggers who thrill at the chance to bilk the government out of cash for a trip to the abortionist. They want us to believe that anyone who has an abortion is anyone other than us, regular folks, who have abortions for a thousand reasons to which no one, ever, is entitled.
Since my piece mostly focuses on the turn-of-the-screw tomfoolery from the Ohio GOP, I wanted to take a minute to highlight the Ohio repro organizers who orchestrated this historic victory, because they really were up against anything and everything from these anti-abortion chucklefucks.
Via Jordyn Close of the Abortion Fund of Ohio and the Ohio Women’s Alliance:
And here’s more from the Abortion Fund of Ohio on what comes next:
Since most of my readers are in Texas, I reckon you had the same question I did: … why don’t we try something like that here? Gus Bova at the Texas Observer knew we were going to ask. The answer is: because we don’t have “citizen initiatives” in Texas. We can’t create petitions and push directly for ballot measures and constitutional amendments.
For Texans to gain a direct say in changing these policies, the GOP-run Texas Legislature would need to pass a proposed constitutional amendment, which voters would then need to approve. (This yay-or-nay procedure is the only statewide policy-making power that regular Texans currently enjoy; voters weighed in on 14 such proposals from the Legislature Tuesday). One reason the Lege doesn’t want to give voters the initiative is fairly obvious: It would mean relinquishing some power—and giving interest groups a way to pass laws without lining elected officials’ pockets.
We are at the entire mercy of the Texas Legislature in this, as in so many other things, though there have been attempts over the last century or so to enact the citizen initiative here in Texas. But it’s probably not headed our way. Writes Bova:
Given the chance, Texans would almost certainly pass policies their GOP leaders oppose. Polling by the Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin shows far more registered voters approve than disapprove of expanding access to abortion, while supermajorities favor liberalizing weed laws, raising the minimum wage, and expanding Medicaid.
Since it so often feels like they ought to replace “don’t mess with Texas” with “don’t get your hopes up” in Texas, let us draw our attention elsewhere for now, to other exciting wins for abortion rights:
- In Virginia, Democrats secured control of the state legislature, a blow to GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s inability to mind his own fucking business even though his name was nowhere on the ballot. Instead, he tried to make passing new abortion restrictions a cornerstone of rallying voters to support Republican candidates, and failed spectacularly.
- In Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear secured reelection over anti-abortion superclown Daniel Cameron, already deeply unpopular because of his awful mishandling of the police murder of Breonna Taylor in her home in 2020 when he was attorney general. Beshear even improved over his past numbers, and held on to his position despite Kentucky Republicans doubling-tripling-and-quadrupling down on transphobia and anti-abortion propaganda in the run up.
- In Pennsylvania, the election of Democrat Dan McCaffery to the state Supreme Court will further preserve a pro-abortion-rights majority there.
Onward, friends!
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