This is supposed to be a Big Thing, since it’s on the opinion pages of the NY Times, and prominently featured on the web homepage. Susan Bevan and Susan Cullman are the leaders of the group Republican Majority For Choice. And, yes, choice means exactly what you are thinking it means. Abortion on demand.
When the obituary for the Republican Party is written, the year 1980 will be cited as the beginning of the end. Reaganism was in full flower, but the big tent was already folding. Republican leaders endorsed a constitutional ban on abortion at the convention that summer, ending the party’s historic commitment to women’s rights and personal freedom.
“We are about to bury the rights of over 100 million American women under a heap of platitudes,†protested Mary Dent Crisp, the co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. Her colleagues assured her that the platform was nonbinding and that reproductive health services were not in danger.
But she was prescient. As pro-choice Republicans, we refuse to support a party that has rightly earned the labels anti-woman and anti-common sense. Our organization, the Republican Majority for Choice, the organization founded by Ms. Crisp in 1988, is shutting its doors. The big tent has collapsed for good.
So, it took these “Republicans” over 30 years to make their decision? Their talking points about abortion sure sound like Democratic Party ones, do they not? If they want to leave, leave. No actual Republican needs to apologize or feel bad about being against the murder of unborn children.
It gets really cute later on
Our argument was simple: True fiscal conservatives should embrace family planning because it reduces poverty, increases educational attainment and work force competitiveness, improves health and provides people the opportunity to make educated moral choices. We incorrectly assumed that our fellow fiscal conservatives would join us in applauding the reduction in the number of unintended pregnancies, which saved taxpayers billions of dollars spent on the welfare state.
This is much like the “Republican” argument for carbon taxes, when they say big government taxation and control of the economy and private entities is totally free market. In this case, they’re saying that true conservatives should embrace infanticide because it means less people in poverty and such. The two ladies seem to believe that abortion is the proper alternative to “unintended pregnancies.”
Instead, the policies and programs that led to these outcomes came under constant fire. The far right was more interested in conflating abortion and birth control for political purposes. It is fiscally disingenuous to deny birth control coverage and then bemoan unintended pregnancies and abortion.
That’s a big strawman. If people want to purchase birth control, no one is stopping them. The government shouldn’t have to use taxpayer money to pay for them. If people want to have sex with people they do not want to have children with, then they should pay for their own birth control. And government should not be advocating for casual sex for people, especially when they are very young and/or no position to have a child.
We can no longer support a Republican Party that is shutting down low-cost health care clinics offering cancer screenings, basic health services and much-needed family planning services. It has become a party that wants to punish pregnant women by limiting their economic choices, that wants to reduce access to sex education programs that prevent unintended pregnancy and disease.
Say it. Planned Parenthood. Which makes more than enough to survive without government money, and, really doesn’t offer cancer screenings, but, does offer a lot about abortion.
It has become taboo within the party to even say “pro-choice.†Most of our supporters gave up on the party as it moved to the extremes not just on abortion but also on other social and fiscal issues.
This Republican Party is no family of ours. And so we say goodbye.
OK, bye. Go hang with the party that requires members to support abortion 100%, and demands zero restrictions. Seriously, are we supposed to feel bad that people whose number 1 belief is on abortion are leaving? No.
Well… Bye.
I seriously doubt many of them voted Republican anyway. It is a favorite tactic of activist groups to pretend to be a part of the opposition in order to poison the well, hold back real legislative efforts and be the “conservative voice” whenever one is needed in the media to criticize the Republican party or conservative agendas. In this case, it’s not even really republican or conservatives. They are being anti-Trump.
Perhaps Trump’s poll numbers within the GOP are increasing because all those that oppose him are leaving the party.
Too bad. Those are the ones always eager to “reach across the aisle to their friends in the Democrat Party”.
The rest are the ones who want to fight back.
I can see why Jeffery is despondent about it.
I’m delighted when someone leaves the GOP. Fewer Republican voters is good for America.
President Trump’s poll numbers within the GOP are improving because he is actually trying to do what he said he would do, do the things the people who voted for him wanted him to do.
The Demonkrat KKK is bringing back their eugenics platform again, didn’t work out so well last time…..
