Sunday, April 28, 2024

No Extreme is Extreme Enough

No extreme is extreme enough for extremists.

That's really the state of social interactions and intellectual debate in the United States.

Attorneys General in seventeen states which have already enacted strict abortion limits are now suing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions (EEOC) to halt enforcement of a nationwide regulation requiring employers to provide paid time off to recover from abortion procedures. Clearly, we've outlawed abortion so no one should be having them so why should employers have to pay for time off to recover from them? Of course, the reality is these AGs are filing this suit not merely to change this regulation WITHIN their jurisdictions but to eliminate this regulation NATIONWIDE, including within states still allowing abortion.

Even setting that aspect of the strategy aside, the core thinking on this is really quite twisted and intentionally cruel -- features that are becoming standard with ultra right-wing thinking on all issues. The sadomasochism isn't a side effect or a bug, it's a feature of the program. It's hard to formulate a strategy for combatting this type of thinking that stems from a location so far in right field. Even if everyone in the US was one hundred percent against "elective" abortions, pregnancy has never been and never will be a condition with a one hundred percent success rate. Things go wrong in pregnancy. Abortions will ALWAYS be required in a properly functioning healthcare system and in a properly functioning ethical / moral world.

The lawsuit filed by these state AGs is simply aimed at extending the extraction of political momentum from an issue they never thought they'd "win" by showing their own extreme base how more extreme they can continue to be to continue capturing that voting and funding base. The outcome of any win in this case for these AGs would not only continue the pattern of using fringe district courts throughout the country to impose national outcomes that cannot be obtained legislatively but would impose SEVERE physical and mental harm on women who STILL needed an abortion to terminate an unviable pregnancy or one threatening the life of the mother.

Where are the Joseph Welchs of today? Who is going to keep asking these extremists the real questions that need to be asked?

How much is enough?

Have you no decency?


WTH