After decades of divisive conflict, with countless casualties, TMM asks: Can we agree both sides (pro-life and pro-choice) have legitimate beliefs – and neither side will surrender? Can we find solutions neither side is HAPPY with – but both sides can LIVE with?
In The Abortion Wars, Part One, TMM discussed recent history of these wars and how conservative Republicans are winning them. Now let’s summarize both sides’ positions, in a good-faith effort to clarify them.
Conservative Republicans have been winning these wars in recent years, curtailing women’s rights to access abortions. Steadily capturing state legislatures and governors’ mansions, they’ve enacted ever-tighter restrictions in many states. Women accustomed to decades of safe, legal abortions as a right they could count on, have watched that right undermined – until it may be too late, someday soon, to keep it.
In winter, it’s easy to forget horrific wildfires and hurricanes last summer and fall. Harder to forget: the deadliest day of American tornadoes in six years, killing 23 in Alabama recently – not in summer, but barely in March.