Woe Over Roe: Why Democrats Deserve Blame
The Left's knee-jerk outrage will undoubtedly be directed squarely at the Right when they should be blaming the Democrats for sabotaging the pro-choice movement. "Huh? What?" Here's how they did it.
The right to an abortion exists solely because of Roe v. Wade, the infamous Supreme Court decision of 1973. Everyone knows that. What many Americans don’t know is that Congress never followed up with a law to secure it.
Why is this so important?
Because according to the Constitution only Congress has the power to legislate federal laws. The Supreme Court does not make laws. Same as any judge, they can only interpret existing law. And since there isn’t a federal law at the foundation of Roe v. Wade, the right to an abortion has remained vulnerable to repeal for decades.
Democrats have perpetually purported to be pro-choice, touting themselves as champions of women’s reproductive rights. If they were truly sincere, then they would have passed legislation to codify Roe v. Wade. Instead, they intentionally kept abortion rights tenuous so they could deflect and point fingers at Republicans. While Republicans certainly haven’t helped, they aren’t the primary obstacle.
SELF-SABOTAGE
If Democrats had a majority in both the House and Senate plus the White House, thereby allowing them to take unilateral action, then there would be no one for voters to blame but the Democratic Party itself. Right?
Yet Democrats have had this opportunity multiple times. The last two years of the Carter Administration plus the first two years of both the Clinton and Obama Administrations. So what the hell happened?
THE FREEDOM OF CHOICE ACT (FOCA)
Jimmy Carter himself wasn’t pro-choice, so the Dems in Congress could get away with using him as a scapegoat for inaction.
”I think abortion is wrong. I don't think the Government ought to do anything to encourage abortion, but I don't favor a constitutional amendment on the subject.”
But Bill Clinton was pro-choice, so when he took Office and the Democrats had won a federal government trifecta for the first time since 1979, that was a perfect moment to act. They’d secured 57 seats in the Senate and a 258-seat (59%) majority in the House.
The Freedom of Choice Act or FOCA (originally introduced in 1979 but with no hope of becoming law at the time), was brought back to life and could finally be passed. And this time the Democrats even had 7 Republican co-sponsors onboard. But, inexplicably, the Dems simply allowed the bill to expire without a vote. One can only presume they didn’t want it to pass.
Democrats did, however, take the time to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on November 16, 1993. Not exactly a priority for their liberal base, eh? Yet somehow the Democratic Party continued to be viewed as a defender of women’s reproductive rights while actually transforming themselves into a Republican-lite organization beholden to Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, and right-wing voters.
(For extensive details on how exactly the Dems became a right-wing corporate party under Bill Clinton, please read Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank).
OBAMA-MANIA
With Americans sick to death of having the country run by a war-mongering fucktard (aka George W. Bush), even a first-time black Senator with a Muslim sounding name was able to take back the White House. All it took was not being a Republican and having a campaign slogan of “hope and change”.
Then-Senator Barack Obama co-sponsored the 2007 version of FOCA (S.1173). During a campaign speech given to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on July 17, 2007, Obama declared:
"The first thing I'd do, as president, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do."
When he won the White House, the Democrats also won a 59-seat majority in the Senate and a 257-seat majority in the House. On April 29, 2009, Obama did a 180 and told the press:
”The Freedom of Choice Act is not my highest legislative priority”.
To be fair, Obama broke nearly every campaign promise he ever made, often pursuing policies that went in the exact opposite direction, so…. at least he was consistent.
Instead of ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, he kept them going plus added Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen to the list of targets. Instead of pushing for single-payer healthcare that would have ended Big Insurance and reduced healthcare prices by 30%, he signed a healthcare plan that mandated Americans to purchase health insurance, massively boosting the profits of Big Insurance and Big Pharma, with a few bells and whistles sprinkled on top to disguise the overall awfulness that is Obamacare.
And Liberals still re-elected that jackass in 2012. Go figure.
BIDEN TIME
FOCA had no chance of being signed into law under Trump, so the next opportunity the Democrats had came in 2021 after winning a slim 50-seat majority in the Senate (with Vice President Harris as a tie-breaker) and 222-seat majority in the House.
The original FOCA bill was updated and became the Women's Health Protection Act of 2021. Not only was it finally voted on in the House on February 28, 2022, but it passed. This was ultimately a symbolic gesture because the Dems knew in advance it would fail in the Senate.
But according to the media, conservatives with a minority vote were somehow responsible for the majority decision. It couldn’t possibly be because Democrats sabotaged their own bill, could it?
That’s a laughable claim on its face based on the math alone, but let’s examine which Senate Democrats were chosen to sabotage their own legislation under the direction of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
One Democrat outright voted no (Joe Manchin, unsurprisingly), but more interesting are the three who abstained. The voting record can be found here.
1) Raphael Warnock (D-GA)
Remember when Joe Biden personally campaigned for this dude in Georgia, promising that if the Dems won Georgia then we’d get those $2000 stimulus checks?
Yeah, THAT guy. With a Red Wave expected for at least the next two election cycles, Georgia is especially likely to flip both Senate seats back to the Republicans. Since Warnock was already on the chopping block, it made sense to use him as a sacrificial lamb. Yet on Warnock’s campaign website it still says the following:
2) Senator Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM)
This dipshit ran on a nauseatingly blatant campaign of identity politics against a f’n meteorologist. Any remotely competent Republican will absolutely crush him in the next election, plus he recently had a stroke. Odds are good he won’t run again, making him another ideal lamb for Schumer to sacrifice.
Even more hypocritical than Warnock, this dingleberry had the balls to tout this exact bill on his website as a legislative priority, which he’s also a co-sponsor of. But when it came time to actually voting on it he… didn’t bother? Yep.
And the third who didn’t bother to show up, an actual co-sponsor of the original FOCA bill when it was first introduced back in 1979… wait for it…
3) Senator Dianne Feinstein of “liberal” California!
If Warnock, Lujan, and Feinstein all voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act that may have been enough pressure to flip the only remaining Democratic standout, Joe Manchin, who has already been under-fire for voting against his own Party.
Or maybe not, who knows? What is known is that the Democrats did not make a serious attempt. They put on a show and liberals were stupid enough to buy a ticket.
Chuck Schumer hilariously pledged just yesterday that the Senate would move to vote on codifying Roe v. Wade. Why bother? He knows damn well that what failed to pass in February will also fail in May. But the mid-terms are coming up and Democrats want to at least pretend to give a damn about their liberal base, so there ya go. He’s assuming voters will still give them credit for “trying”.
Now, Joe Biden could encourage the Democrats to waive the filibuster and unite his Party behind codifying Roe v. Wade in the Senate. 50 votes, Harris breaks the tie, boom. Done. Instead they're all just going to weaponize public outrage over Roe v. Wade being repealed to gain leverage in the mid-terms. And it’s sickeningly manipulative. It also won’t work.
"At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law."
- Joe Biden (May 3, 2022)
That’s what the abortion issue is really about for the Democratic Party. It’s just one of many issues that right-wing, corporate Dems pretend to pursue in order to deceive gullible liberals into voting against their own interests. They only tell you what you want to hear, just like the Republicans. Break the cycle and reject both.
SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
If Democrats actually gave a damn about women’s rights they'd pass a bill right now that firmly legalizes the right to an abortion for 15-20 weeks, with exceptions for cases of incest/rape or when the mother's health is at risk. Such a proposal would earn Republican support, as evidenced by deep-red Arizona’s recent passage of a 15-week limit on abortion rather than an absolute ban. Conservatives have actually evolved on this issue and volunteered for compromise.
Liberals must do the same.
Settling on 15-20 weeks is a viable bipartisan solution that protects the majority of abortions, 93% of which already occur within the first trimester. If liberals reject an over 93% victory on this issue then a woman’s right to an abortion will be 100% repealed. If you don’t believe that, feel free to find out the hard way.
What I strongly suspect will happen is that the Left, sadly, will merely protest, potentially riot, make the usual hyperbolic Handmaid’s Tale comparisons while floating another Civil War, boiling down their position to be little more than a feeling of righteous indignation. This achieves nothing because none of the above comes anywhere close to articulating a coherent argument or a practical solution.
Emotional outrage cannot and will not win this fight. Only cooler heads united behind a coherent, nuanced strategy has any chance of prevailing.
Read the room. Do the math. And stop voting for Democrats, chump.