Friday, March 29, 2019

The Abortion Divide Gets Deeper - Note for a Discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."


Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times, March 29, 2019

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Excerpt:
Access to abortion is already as polarized as anything else in this fracturing country, and it could become dramatically more so. ... [E]arly signs, however, suggest that radically different abortion regimes can’t comfortably exist side by side. ...

Mutual antagonism is increasing around abortion, as it is around nearly everything else. ...

As red and blue states pull further apart, the result is not a lessening of tensions. Republicans, led by Trump, now regularly accuse Democrats of supporting infanticide. Senate Republicans recently attempted to turn anti-abortion propaganda into law with the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which mandated medical care for infants born after a botched abortion, an extraordinarily rare occurrence. ...

Our electoral system gives rural conservatives disproportionate political power; that’s why a minority president, backed by senators elected by a fraction of the country, can remake the courts. But the entertainment industry, and corporate America generally, is naturally attuned to affluent urbanites, who tend to be younger and more progressive.

Fighting over the most fundamental questions of human autonomy, each side in the divide is going to use whatever influence it can muster against the other. ...

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