The 33-year-old Watts, who had not shared the news of her pregnancy even with her family, made her first prenatal visit to a doctor’s office behind Mercy Health-St. Joseph’s Hospital in Warren, a working-class city about 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of Cleveland.
The doctor said that, while a fetal heartbeat was still present, Watts’ water had broken prematurely and the fetus she was carrying would not survive. He advised heading to the hospital to have her labor induced, so she could have what amounted to an abortion to deliver the nonviable fetus. Otherwise, she would face “significant risk” of death, according to records of her case.
That was a Tuesday in September. What followed was a harrowing three days entailing: multiple trips to the hospital; Watts miscarrying into, and then flushing and plunging, a toilet at her home; a police investigation of those actions; and Watts, who is Black, being charged with abuse of a corpse. That’s a fifth-degree felony punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.
Remember, the lesser-evil is still evil and democrats did nothing to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution.
Democrats love this because it means they don’t have to improve.
What in ever fuck are you smoking? Is civics no longer taught in school ??? Walk us through the path to get this enshrined in the constitution. I’m really curious how that’s happening.
I’m not going to take your comment seriously because you started off insulting me.
Learn to behave like an adult or you will be treated as a child.
Ok, let me try.
What? Is civics no longer taught in school ??? Walk us through the path to get this enshrined in the constitution. I’m really curious how that’s happening.
There is that better?
I’m just baffled by how many comments I see displaying a complete ignorance of the legislative process in this country. “Why don’t the Dems magically enshrine abortion in the constitution?” Oh gosh golly mr!
The Democrats could have passed a bill, but “enshrining it in the Constitution” would mean passing a Constitutional amendment. First, they would need a 2/3rds vote of Congress. That means that the Democrats couldn’t have a slim majority - they’d need a large majority. Or they’d need to find Republicans willing to vote for a Constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights. Basically an impossibility.
Even if the Democrats managed to get the Constitutional Right To Abortion passed, they would need to have 75% of the state legislatures pass it. Democrats don’t control that name state legislatures.
So perhaps the Democrats could have passed a national law, right? Except that the Republicans would inevitably filibuster this in the Senate. The Democrats could have changed the filibuster rules, but not all of them supported changing these rules. (Mainly because it would prevent them from stopping the Republicans if the Republicans regained the Senate.) Any law that was passed would inevitably have been challenged up to the conservative Supreme Court.
You could definitely criticize the Democrats for not pushing harder to pass a law guaranteeing abortion, but a Constitutional Amendment was out of reach.
So…with all that said…what should compel anyone to vote for the Democrats since they’ve decided they’re not going to actually pursue anything to help women’s rights?
Did you read what I wrote? It’s not that they decided they weren’t going to do anything. It’s that the rules of the government limit what they can do with a small majority. They can’t just unilaterally decide that they are passing a new constitutional amendment with a few vote majority in the House/Senate. They could try for a bill, but there they are limited by various other rules not to mention the conservative Supreme Court. If the Democrats had a big enough majority, they could get more bills passed.
And that being said, what’s the alternative? Allow the Republicans to get into power and hope that they don’t take away women’s rights too much? Many Republicans have already declared that they want a national abortion ban. Others have said that they want to criminalize miscarriage and ban contraception.
Voting third party (thanks to our First Past The Post system) won’t work. Sitting out the elections and not voting won’t work. The best thing to do is get as many Democrats in office as possible from local positions to the highest offices. Then, put pressure on the higher up Democrats to get a women’s rights bill passed.
At this point, and with our current political system, not supporting the Democratic candidate is essentially supporting the Republican one.
That has never stopped the R’s from steamrolling their agenda through.
It’s time to stop making excuses and demand some action.
If the Democrats don’t force as many votes on abortion rights as the Republicans did trying to overturn obamacare then what even is the point of them?
Yes, let’s go die of exposure because there’s a hole in the roof. Throw the whole house away just because there’s glaring issues with it when there’s no other viable choice in the vicinity.
What level of analogy do you need to understand that if you abandon the power you do have (ie minute nudge control of democratic establishment) you become irrelevant due to powerlessness?
To change what’s acceptable, you shift what’s considered acceptable, nip at the bits that are trying to stay with the old status quo, and repeat until you move the window to wherever you’re trying to push it. That’s how this works (if the window goes left for democrats, you would call that an “improvement”). Revolution is anomalous. Pushing for revolution and depending on the assumption of it happening leads to total powerlessness, which is less than what lefties have right now (right now I’d only call them mostly powerless).
You can’t get away from dealing with the devil when Satan created the whole system in the first place.