Remember That Was The Week That Was? No? Well, I suppose most of you are a little young. It was a comedy hour, or 47 minutes or so, a few years back...sort of like The Daily Show or Bill Maher's weekly program. Mostly meant to be funny but with a deadly serious side. Sort of like the movie I saw last night, Stop/Loss where I head young people laughing at the foibles of post traumatic stressed smalltown Texas soldiers returning from Bush's War, that seemed to me to be deadly serious but in the early going deemed funny by some of the younger folks in the audience.
What follows is a That Was The Presidency That Was, about his other war, Bush's War On Women. Maybe it will seem funny in retrospect, when when a Democrat replaces George W. Bush and we can truly say, that was the presidency that WAS.
I suppose I should have called this diary The Republican War On Sex, Women, And Their Doctors, since it began under Ronald Reagan, continued during the reign of Bush the Elder and only seems to have reached its zenith under the reign of our very own neroic President, George W. Bush...he and the Republican members of the US House and Senate figuratively fiddling while our country burns.
Since the presidential election year of 1980, the Republican Party has had as a major plank in the party platform, the overturning of Roe v. Wade. For a few years, at least until 1983, I considered this a pipe dream, placed there only to win the votes of radicals on the Religious Right, who considered SEX, rather than money, as the root of all evil. But now, with the re-election of TGDSOBGWB to a second term and his appointment of two new Supreme Court Justices, Roberts and Alito, who have proven themselves as radical on a passel of "conservative" subjects like abortion as Scalia and Thomas (appointed by the aforementioned RR and GHWB presidencies).
While a majority of Americans support safe, legal abortion care under most of the circumstances and timing when most abortions occur, many are easily confused by much of "Pro-Life" rhetoric and language. The Religious Right and the "Pro-Life" politicians and stratagists have been excedingly clever and smart in confusing to most of the public that really knows little about this very private and very secretive subject. And will continue to be confused and secretive until women who have had abortions and the physicians who have provided them beging to speak out.
I speak to many groups every year about abortion care, and have done so for many years. One of the questions I always ask my audience before starting my speach is, "How many of you know someone, friend or family member, who has been involved in abortion as either the potential mother or father?" Universally, every hand is raised if the audience is older than 7th graders, and some of these raise their hands. I also as if they know anyone who is having unprotected sex and not using birth control. Again, every hand is raised if the audience is 7th grade or older. So while most American girls and women have not needed or had an abortion, probably close to 100% have known someone they like or love who has needed these services.
And in most of these United States, if John McCain becomes our next president, it is highly probable that safe, legal abortion care will become ever more unavailable in our country. And unlike the war on drugs and the war on poverty and the war against terrorism, the Republicans and religious crazies will have won their war on girls and women, with ever mounting casualties.
It seems to me that both our Democratic candidates, smart, articulate, informed and by any measure, either a thousand times more desirable as our next president than John McCain are working as had as they can to receive our party's nomination. At the same time that some of the supporters of these same candidates seem to be working as hard as they can to make certain that if they "chosen" does not receive the Democratic nomination, that John McCain will be the next President of the United States.