How Republicans must miss those days before Donald Trump’s freshly seeded right-wing Supreme Court majority spit out its Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade and permanently injected the issue of reproductive rights directly into the heart of this nation’s political discourse.
Back then, Republicans could proudly display their “pro-life” bona fides on the front page of their websites, knowing it really wouldn’t make any difference since, well, abortion was still legal. No exceptions for people raped or maybe impregnated by an abusive relative? Not a problem! Support a 15-week, 10-week, heck, even a six-week ban. It’ll never happen, but sure, Mr. Christian extremist, we’ll take your vote—and your money!
Then the world changed in an instant. Republicans glanced down at their news feeds on June 24, 2022, and politics as they’d known it simply ended.
Many of them didn’t realize it at the time. It took two years of humiliating losses at the ballot box, one after another, as citizens voted to preserve abortion rights in Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, California and Ohio. Then there were the governor’s races in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, as pro-choice candidates kept coming out on top. Pro-choice voters flipped the Wisconsin Supreme Court too, and yanked away Republican legislative majorities in Virginia. Finally it began to sink in for Republicans that they had a big, big problem, and it wasn’t going away.
So, they began to panic, twisting themselves into knots to “reframe” or “modify” their positions. They began furiously scrubbing their websites, mouthing different words, and most of all, hoping no one would notice. But they were wrong.
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