Next Tuesday, House Republicans will be voting on an abortion ban bill. Yes, these are the same Republicans that refuse to discuss any kind of gun control, and in fact planned to push a bill loosening gun silencer restrictions this week until the Las Vegas Strip shooting killed 58 people and wounded over 500.
The Republican federal ban will ban abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization. Â You see, while Republicans refuse to “politicize” gun control by doing, say, their jobs to protect people over profits, they are quite happy to politicize women’s rights.
Why the rush? Probably because the rate of abortions is escalating to crisis level.
Nope. Actually, by 2014, under President Barack Obama, abortions had reached an historic low. “Approximately 926,200 abortions were performed in 2014, down 12% from 1.06 million in 2011. In 2014, some 1.5% of women aged 15–44 had an abortion.”
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Maybe Republican attempts to restrict women’s rights under the guise of “pro-life” concerns is what brought the abortion rate down?
Nope again. Guttmacher determined, “The evidence suggests that contraception and fewer unintended pregnancies played a larger role in these most recent declines than new abortion restrictions. Well over 60% of the decline in the number of abortions occurred in states without new restrictions.”
The bad news just keeps coming. The Supreme Court has been pretty consistent on  prohibiting the banning of abortion before viability, and after viability there must still be exceptions for the life and health of the mother. Bans can’t be done based on a specific gestational age or fetal weight, but by the woman’s doctor.
In past week, “pro-life” Republicans have pretended they can’t do anything about gun control even after 58 people were slaughtered in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history,  tried to kill people by taking away their healthcare, and planned – oopsie!  by mistake, no guarantees after all!- to raise taxes on middle class.
They do have a plan to regulate fetuses, though.
There’s never a good time to “politicize” gun control; that is, to do their jobs and legislate to protect the people. But any time is a good time to politicize women’s rights and public health policies.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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