Ohio voters on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a Republican-backed measure that would have made it more difficult to change the state’s constitution, setting up a fall campaign that will become the nation’s latest referendum on abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned nationwide protections last year.
Who’da thunk that making women have their rapists’ babies would be a nationally unpopular proposition? One could never have foreseen such a thing.
Not just women, children too. Part of how this was sold was as a “parent’s rights” thing to enable preventing minors from having abortions without parental consent.
‘If I didn’t want my daughter to have a baby I wouldn’t have impregnated her in the first place.’
I think that if you’re in a position to make policy and your opponents are writing jokes like the one above, then surely you should be thinking about what you’re doing… except I cannot feature that they’re really that stupid. One thing I have heard recently is the idea that segregationists are segregating themselves by trying to make red states impossibly toxic to live in for anyone from the outgroups.
That’s true, but also it’s important to remember that part of that goal is to brutally suppress certain out groups. Yes they want trans people to flee, so their child doesn’t have a chance of learning that transitioning is a life path open to them. They want gay people who can’t pretend to be straight gone so every bisexual can be pressured into a hetero relationship. And when those who can leave are gone the women will be forced into submission, sometimes as child brides (multiple Republican states including West Virginia have rejected laws to ban child marriage with parental consent). The trans and gay people left will be criminals forced into sex work (conservative politicians and demagogues utilizing queer sex work isn’t just an old joke, it’s a lot of stories we tell each other). And the people of color and poor white people will be pushed into labor at young ages with low wages.
Beyond the social stuff, Ohio isn’t right to work. Unions can require membership as a condition of employment here. That right is always at risk and once Democrats are driven away it’ll be gone quite quickly.
