Over the last several weeks, a grim and familiar American ritual has played out across the land.
Family members in Buffalo, N.Y., arranged funerals and grieved openly as they mourned loved ones who had been gunned down as they shopped in a supermarket, for no other reason than they were black. In Uvalde, Texas, church services, one after the other, centered around tiny caskets, as parents buried their nine- and 10-year-olds, who were shot as they sat in their classroom.
In a similarly ritualized response, most American people reacted with outrage and horror, and voiced the heartfelt demand that our government take some action, to do something, that might make these uniquely American tragedies less frequent or less deadly. But not all Americans. Republican officeholders have, as they do after every mass shooting, offer empty platitudes of mourning for the victims’ families, while steadfastly refusing to do a damn thing to prevent or lessen future tragedies. Right-wingers are quick to condemn calls for action as “politicizing” the tragedy.
The risible and unctuous Ted Cruz excoriated people for “politicizing” suffering after a massacre, even as he himself would stand at an NRA convention two days later, doing that very thing. So apparently “politics” should not be part of saving American Lives. Yet we know for empirical fact that sensible gun regulations save lives. State laws that require a permit, with a background check, to purchase a firearm are associated with 60 % fewer mass shootings. Similarly, research show that states with bans on large capacity magazines are associated with 38% fewer fatalities in mass shootings, and 77% fewer nonfatal injuries. And a 2019 study found that as many as 21 mass shootings in America could have been prevented by so-called “red flag laws,” that allow police to take firearms away from people who exhibit threatening behavior. If the GOP considers itself “pro life,” why wouldn’t they support these widely popular and commonsense proposals?
Because the Republican Party isn’t “pro life,” it’s pro birth. At the same time Republicans turn a cold heart and a blind eye to the public massacres of innocent black folks and schoolchildren, they are steaming full speed ahead to “politicize” when and how American women choose to become mothers. But their stomach-churning hypocrisy is doubled when one considers that, even as they proudly become the “pro fetus” party, they are simultaneously pursuing laws that disregard the well-being of both new mothers, and those same fetuses, once they’ve become babies.
GOP-led states are passing laws that will increase unplanned pregnancies, while limiting access to healthcare and programs for mothers with babies. The U.S. has the highest maternal death rate in the developed world. But as Republicans gleefully pass legislation to force women to give birth, they are limiting access the very services intended to save or help them. Federal Republicans fought the law requiring health insurers to provide no-cost coverage of FDA-approved contraceptives. They also steadfastly refuse to support efforts to institute paid parental leave, universal prekindergarten, and the Biden administration’s expanded child tax credit to benefit the poorest mothers and their children. And the GOP-governed states that are most radically changing the laws to force women to give birth, are the same states the refuse to expand Medicare coverage, at no cost to them, which is how most low-income moms and their infants stay healthy and alive.
So Republicans tell us that we can’t politicize the pain and loss of the mass murder of little children. But the GOP, at all levels, demands that we politicize some of the most difficult moments in a woman’s life: when she faces a life-threatening pregnancy complication; if she has a miscarriage; when she must decide whether to give up a baby she is unable to support, or even to face having to endure a pregnancy caused by rape or incest.
That is today’s Republican Party. An institution dedicated to protect the freedoms of a potential mass murderer, while actively working to deprive a woman of freedom over her most profound life decisions. An institution that professes concern for a fetus, but callously disregards the life of a little girl in her classroom. An institution that claims to support a ‘culture of life,’ but willfully refuses to act to protect or value human life, once it’s no longer ensconced in a womb.
It is not “politicizing” to strive to use our political institutions to end our horrifying tradition of institutional indifference to the mass slayings of our citizens. It isn’t “politicizing” to insist our political institutions recognize the value of a mother’s life, just as much as we value the life of her child. And it is not “politicizing” to demand our political leaders act to protect the lives and health of all Americans, not just when they exist within another citizen’s body, but when they’re alive and moving around, at the grocery store, or at school. If Republicans refuse to use politics for these basic purposes, then let’s “politicize” them the hell out of office.
The La Mesa Foothills Democratic Club meets the first Wednesday of every month. Join us for our in-person Club meeting on Wednesday, July 6, 6:30 p.m., at Harry Griffith Park in La Mesa, for our annual 4th of July Party in the Park. For more information, visit lamesafoothillsdemocraticclub.com
– Sean Quintal writes on behalf of the La Mesa Foothills Democratic Club.
