America, Abortion and Grand Canyons

by Simon Lemieux

While much of US politics is dominated by Trump’s love for a wall, his latest threats against Iran and  the fallout from the Mueller Report (or at least the edited highlights), a guerrilla style of warfare is also going on in American politics. It is partly to do with abortion specifically but is also part of the wider culture war more generally. Where do grand canyons fit in, read on….

The background and story thus far

In 1973, the US Supreme Court passed the landmark judgement Roe v Wade which in effect meant all women in the US could access abortion under certain conditions. Not abortion on demand, but certainly enough to ensure that no state could simply outlaw abortion completely. The judges ruled (7-2) that the 14th Amendment “…nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” implicitly contained a privacy right that extended to a woman’s control over her own body. The last word in the debate? Far from it; in recent years a number of states (all Republican controlled) have passed laws that have tightened up and restricted abortion rights, and have in effect carried out a judicial guerrilla war chiselling away at Roe v Wade .

Some states including Texas have chosen to go down the route of imposing tougher rules and regulations on abortion clinics. These state laws are often termed TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers). They include applying the same regulations to abortion clinics as for walk-in medical centres in areas such as corridor width, size of operating theatres and doctors’ consulting rooms. Some of these state laws and clauses have been struck down by the Supreme Court for example in the 2016 Hellerstedt case, but such states have also focused on ‘admitting privileges’ for abortion clinics meaning that their doctors must also have the authority to treat patients at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinics. Some hospitals, however, deny such privileges or authority precisely because they oppose abortion, so it can be a bit of a Catch 22 situation.

In the meantime the number of abortion providers in some states has declined dramatically as the maps below show.

The other approach, the so-called ‘heartbeat bills’ are more upfront about restricting abortions: they aim to reduce the time limit within which a woman can seek and abortion to as little as 6 weeks, a stage when many women might not even be aware they are pregnant. In essence such bills, already by a number of states such as Georgia, Ohio and Missouri are a not too subtle attempt to outlaw abortion altogether. So that, in a nutshell, is the story so far. What’s there to see here?

Red rag to a blue bull

It’s all about picking a fight you think you can win! Firstly, these bills are deliberately designed to provoke and enrage their opponents. Advocates for legal and safer abortion (the pro-choice lobby) understandably see these laws as undermining completely Roe v Wade and as unconstitutional. They will therefore bring them to the Supreme Court in the hope of getting them struck down. So why would the bills’ supporters (the pro-life lobby) knowingly want to provoke a Supreme Court case? In short, because they think this time they will win. Trump’s two nominations to the Court thus far (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) have enabled a tilt to the conservative right. Pro-life Republicans are only too eager to ‘see you in court’. A strange way to do policy in a democracy perhaps, but the US Constitution is famously ‘What the Supreme Court justices say it is’ and if they are speaking your language…..

But the blue bull also waved a red rag at the red bull…..

So are the Republicans and conservatives the only ones to see the Supreme Court as the means to an ends of getting their version of rights imposed across the US? Far from it. A few years back blue states (in the main) were busy passing bills often via ballot initiatives, allowing same sex marriage. Most red states did not. End result, it all ends up in court, and in the 2015 landmark case of Obergefell v Hodges gay marriage became a right across the USA. So, would it be going too far in seeing the current anti-abortion laws as yet another round in the long-running saga aka the culture wars?

The never-ending war

Many would argue that since the 1960s, America has been engaged in a prolonged culture war. In the blue corner are those who are socially liberal, keen on identity politics and a broad interpretation of civil rights. They see healthcare, abortion and living out as LGBTQ etc as inalienable rights, alongside those found in the Constitution (minus the Second Amendment of course). Christianity (of a certain conservative kind) is only one option among several, and an ever more racially diverse USA is to be embraced not feared. Fox News is right wing propaganda and MSNBC tells the true story.

In the red corner, the USA is viewed as being in freefall morally and spiritually since the 1960s and all that pot. Family values, the right to choose your own healthcare and rugged individualism, are all under attack from ‘dirty liberals’. Thank God (quite literally) for the caped crusaders of Reagan and Trump; the latter being a suitable bodyguard if not husband material for the ‘religious right’. His heart is in the right place even if his hands weren’t (around certain women that is). The rights these Americans crave are those of the unborn, the God-fearers and patriotic Americans who work hard, pay their taxes and don’t expect the state to do everything for them. Oh, and the right to own gun(s) in case the government (or illegal immigrants from the south) threaten these liberties. It’s all true, it was on Fox TV only the other night.

Are both of the above caricatures, yes but only up to a point. Politically America has arguably never been so divided since the Civil War, when there really was a war. See the latest instalments in the abortion debate as another round in the battle for the soul and future of America. Yes, at one level it is about deep ethical issues: when does life begin, the clash of rights between a foetus and a mother, but it is also about so much more. Having lost the battle over equal marriage, the ‘turf war’ for the conservative right has now moved on to abortion.

The grand canyons

What the struggle over abortion rights and the culture wars more generally reveal, is an America deeply polarised between red and blue, liberals and conservatives; two tribes going to war. But a grand canyon (The Grand Canyon?) is not only deep it is wide as well. The other and perhaps even more frightening aspect of America is the huge (obscene?) divide between rich and poor. The rich have gotten richer, and the poor have got poorer in recent decades. Nearly 40% of America’s wealth is owned by the wealthiest 1%.  To enter the Forbes 400 in 2018 (the 400 richest people folk in the US) required a fortune of $2.1 billion, over ten times the 1982 figure even allowing for inflation. This unequal share of national wealth has not been seen since the 1920s prior to the 1929 Wall Street Crash. And we all know what happened then….

In the land of self help and the ‘American Dream’, that dream is becoming less and less attainable for many, while the few help themselves very nicely thank you. Now lest I be labelled a Marxist or something similar, I’m not saying wealth differential is automatically bad. Hard work, entrepreneurship and a bit of luck should result in ‘more eligibility’ for life’s luxuries than laziness, risk aversion and a bit of bad luck. Political and economic systems that promise full equality and a workers’ utopia never deliver (ask Venezuela for starters!), and they too have their elites with gold-plated bath taps. The question to ask though is has the depth of the canyon got too deep to climb out of? Can a real ladder of opportunity truly exist in such a society?

Perhaps America’s new Grand Canyon needs both a bridge across the political divide (and the associated culture wars), and some filling in from above to level up the playing field a bit, to make it less deep as well as less wide. The question remains though, whether either of the existing political parties and their array of candidates and personalities, bankrolled on both sides in large part by the alarmingly wealthy, has either the capacity or the will to do just that.