Wedge Colored Glasses

Let’s say that, sometime in the near future, the great dream of the pro-life movement comes true, and Roe v Wade is overturned in the Supreme Court. As a refresher, the biggest and most obvious repercussion of this would not be the outlawing of abortion as such, but it would simply set the legal precedent that the federal government cannot dictate to states what their practices and laws should be on abortion. So, Southern and Midwestern states, like Ohio, Missouri, Mississippi, Texas, etc., would most likely thoroughly restrict abortions and would not pay for them with taxpayers money, nor would they attempt to force religious hospitals or religious institutions to include abortions under their medical coverage. Let’s say even further (and I acknowledge that this last one is a stretch) that the Democrats take the Supreme Court decision relatively well and basically give up trying to make abortion a federally-mandated and protected right to all women. They drop the issue from their platform, as the Republicans probably would, too and focus instead on the coastal, liberal states, like California, New York, Massachusetts, etc., where abortion rights would probably still be upheld at the state level.

OK, now, with this scenario in mind, how many religiously conservative people out there would consider voting Democrat some of the time? Notice that I didn’t include the gay marriage debate here, as I believe that that is being sorted out at the state level, which doesn’t seem to be bothering people as much as the abortion issue does at the federal level. I also didn’t include the stem cell research controversy, seeing as more and more scientists are coming out and stating that they have found other ways to extract viable stem cells without having to “terminate” embryos. With all of these things in mind, I really wonder what kind of a platform the Republican Party would have left. Lower taxes? Less government? More aggressive foreign policy? NRA? I don’t know how it seems to you, but none of those positions carries nearly the moral weight that abortion does. I almost can’t help but wonder what this country’s politics would have been like over the past 40 years or so without the constant skirmishing brought on by Roe v Wade. Maybe the Democrats would have held more power over those years, and then the issues of alternative energy and the Iraq War would never have come up. I almost feel like the abortion issue is the trump card for the Republican Party. Whenever the Democrats come up with other, viable ideas for policy, the Republicans remind morally observant voters in a timely manner that a vote for the Democrats is a vote for abortion. Hell, I’m pretty sure that President Bush rode that fear tactic all the way to the White House in 2000 and 2004.

I’m not bringing up this conjecture to mock religious conservatives for voting their consciences about abortion. That’s not my place at all. But I am angry at the Republican Party for turning so many unrelated issues, like the environment and health care, into debates about abortion. It’s like an abortion “tag” has been permanently attached to the Democrats, so that even saving the environment from degradation has been tainted by the their take on abortion. I even sometimes wonder if I should be angry at the Democrats, as if their insistence on universal, federally-funded abortion rights has been driving a wedge into this country and crystallizing opposition against them. I almost want to ask the Dems: Why not give a little rhetorical ground on the whole abortion debate, thereby taking the wind right out of the sail of your opponents and allowing for a more even-keeled political debate to take place in this country? What’s so terrible about letting the states decide this issue?