Like many Americans, I am very impressed with Roe v. Wade
is deeply disturbed . I am troubled by personal reasons because I am a woman and a mother. I’m troubled because history shows that banning abortion doesn’t stop abortion; it stops safe abortion. I am troubled because the Supreme Court ruling will disproportionately affect poor women and women of color, and because this country has done so little to help mothers.
It’s scary that a nine-person court can revoke the rights most Americans support. approximately30% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances. It’s not just 66 millions of people. Yet the six justices appointed by the three Republican presidents were able to accept that right away.
I’m heartened by what’s happening in Kansas, though. In early August, voters there came out against their representatives and rejected a referendum that would have removed abortion rights from the state constitution. A huge victory for abortion rights in a historically conservative country shows that political divisions in this country are not always as wide-ranging as many of our politicians would like us to think. The Kansas vote also showed what is possible when Americans exercise their right to vote.
at a pro-choice sign in Wichita, Kansas, last month.
Photo: Getty Images
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I live and work in the blue state, but I grew up in the red state. Most of my family lives in Kentucky, and most of them vote Republican. For all the cultural differences between blue and red states, I believe most Americans have basic common interests. We want to choose whether to have children or not. We want our children not to be massacred in school. We want and need our governments to do what they can to slow climate change and help us prepare for and recover from the extreme weather events we’ve already experienced.
We have too many career politicians who are not fighting for our common goals. They and the judges they appoint are defending other interests — religious rights, a powerful gun lobby and the extractive coal, oil and gas industries — with increasingly tragic results.
My hometown is a stark and painful example. The same week Kansas voted to preserve abortion rights, eastern Kentucky was hit by a thousand-year flood. Because the region’s Appalachian County has been surface-mined and logged by coal companies for decades, the heavy rain cannot be absorbed by the landscape. Kentucky, long represented by fossil fuel pimps and climate change deniers like Mitch McConnell, now has half the state’s population drowning.
Five According to Poynter, the poorest counties in the US are in Kentucky. The clean energy industry almost certainly employs more Kentuckians than the coal industry people — and help slow climate change — but McConnell’s personal worth is estimated at $ million and is one of the largest recipients of coal industry donations for any member of Congress, remaining loyal to fossil fuels. McConnell and his colleagues would have us believe that big government is always bad. Deadly flooding in Kentucky illustrates why this argument is flawed. By the way, this argument is also selectively applied. We have to let the big coal alone destroy the environment, but the government can force women to have children? Of course, it makes sense.
This summer, Lawrence’s Kentucky hometown was hit by catastrophic flooding.
Photo: Getty Images
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