The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) launched a $50 million campaign in January to flip a dozen Republican-held state legislative bodies in 13 states. This matters for all kinds of reasons. Kneecapping GOP gerrymandering is a big one. In 2010, right before the decennial redistricting process that followed the census, Republicans won some 700 seats held by Democrats in state legislatures, giving them an edge in realigning districts to their partisan advantage. They used it to the max. Here we are a decade later facing another election in which what happens in the states will, as the DLCC says, “have an outsized impact on governance that will reverberate for years.” Said DLCC President Jessica Post, “We have a generational opportunity to flip state legislatures from red to blue.”
Thanks to the current situation with Republicans having 61 of the 99 state legislative bodies in their pocket, the Koch brothers, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the National Rifle Association, the American Petroleum Council and other fossil fuel mouthpieces, forced-birther crusaders, and other champions of the right wing have imposed terrible laws. None are worse than the efforts to smash women’s fundamental freedoms by undermining reproductive rights. Given successes in 2018 that overturned the Republican majority in six legislative bodies, the DLCC and other activists hope to change this by electing Democratic majorities in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Activists see potential in both state legislatures for transforming relatively small Republican majorities into Democratic ones. In Michigan, the current margin is six in both the state house (58-52) and the senate (22-16), but the senators are not up for election until 2022. In Pennsylvania, the margin in the senate is also six (27-21-1), but in the house it’s a daunting 17 seats (109-92). Both states have Democratic governors.
Although far from the worst state for laws curtailing reproductive freedom, Pennsylvania has plenty on the books in that regard. State-mandated “counseling”—that disinforms about the impacts of abortion—is required of every woman seeking one, and there is a 24-hour waiting period after the counseling. The procedure is only covered in insurance polices under the Affordable Care Act in cases of life endangerment, or of rape or incest, unless individuals purchase an optional rider at an additional cost. Public employees are only covered in cases of life endangerment, rape, or incest—with no optional rider allowed. Parents of minors must consent before an abortion can be provided. Except in cases of life or health endangerment, no abortions can be obtained at 24 or more weeks after the last menstrual period. Abortion clinics are burdened by medically unnecessary and often expensive standards regarding facilities, equipment, and staff.
In Michigan, it’s much the same with counseling, private insurance policies, a 24-hour waiting period, parental consent, and rules affecting each abortion clinic, its equipment, and staff. For public employees, insurance only covers abortions when the woman’s life is endangered, not for rape or incest.
Most of these laws have been enacted since 2011 along with the hundreds of similar laws in 27 other states.
Casey Quinlan at Rewire reports:
Even with pro-choice Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) in office, Michigan Republicans are finding ways to enact additional restrictions. Abortion rights opponents in Michigan are waiting for state elections officials to certify petition signatures for a citizen-led ballot initiative that would ban the dilation and extraction (D&E) procedure, the most common form of second trimester abortion care. If the signatures are valid, anti-choice lawmakers will be able to adopt the measure while skirting a veto from the governor, though pro-choice advocates told Michigan Public Radio they would take legal action if the ban is passed.[...]
In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has hampered anti-choice lawmakers’ efforts to enact abortion restrictions. Pennsylvania’s house passed a fetal burial bill in November: Fifteen Democrats and every Republican voted in favor of the bill, the Associated Press reported. The bill is currently under consideration in the senate, though Wolf has said he would veto the legislation. In 2017, Wolf vetoed a bill that would have banned abortion at 20 weeks and only allowed D&E abortions when there is a risk of death or “substantial and irreversible” loss of certain bodily functions.
There is a nefarious public pretense among forced-birthers that they care about women’s health. But as they have proved repeatedly, they don’t care about women’s well-being at all—they care about control. As my colleague Cara Zelaya recently noted, “If any of these forced-birthers actually cared about the safety of pregnant folks or children they would back universal healthcare, comprehensive sex-education, subsidized birth control, universal education, universal childcare, and be anti-war. But they don’t, and they aren’t. Because it’s all a charade.”
Every state legislature that Democrats capture can help smash that charade. But as activists have been demonstrating for the past few years in a few states, ensuring everyone’s reproductive rights must be more than a defensive fight to keep the forced-birthers from continuing to impose ever-more stringent restrictions on abortion, access to birth control, and information designed to improve sexual health. An offensive is needed to expand access to abortion, birth control, and sex education and to stop treating people who provide or seek abortions as pariahs. No way can that offensive work with Republicans in charge. We should be as eager to boot them out as we are to do the same to Donald Trump.