Trump and Lake Try To Put Lipstick on the Pig
But walking back the "Arizona Abortion Atrocity" won't be possible.
As Trump whines his way toward jury selection next Monday in the Stormy Daniels hush money-election interference case, a new disaster stalks the candidate historians call the worst President of the United States ever:
In Arizona last week, the state supreme court ruled that an anti-abortion law passed in 1864—before Arizona became a state—was enforceable. It’ll take effect in less than two weeks. Here’s how it ARS 13-3603 reads:
“A person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years.”
That, will, of course, include a woman who takes a “morning after pill” or mifepristone. It precludes abortions sought when a woman conceives from a rape or incest. The ONLY exception is that a woman’s life is threatened by the pregnancy—and, as we’ve seen in other states, emergency rooms and private physicians are backing off providing life-saving treatment even when it’s clear the woman is in danger, fearing legal assaults—and criminal indictments—stoked by the Christian evangelical Radical Right. …
[Continued below after brief interruption for shameless self-promotion.]
One result of this is that, in Red States, OB-GYNs are fleeing in numbers that constitute a definition of the word exodus. Writes Elizabeth Spencer Spragins for The Washington Post:
Why would any obstetrician want to practice medicine where unfounded accusations might result in fines or jail time? Even physicians who follow antiabortion laws to the letter face the prospect of defending themselves in court. The resulting exodus of reproductive health experts has left hospitals scrambling to fill vacant positions. An article in the Journal of General Internal Medicine stated that 76 percent of physicians surveyed refused to consider working in states with abortion restrictions. As a result, pregnancy has become more dangerous.
In Virginia alone, more than 30% of counties have no hospitals available for deliveries at all. It’s one of the reasons that Spragins’ not that pregnancy has become more dangerous means all pregnancies have become more perilous—for mother and newborn.
Abortion’s Time Bomb for the GOP
There are three levels to this debacle, beginning with 91-count-criminally-indicted Donald Trump, spreading to the craven Kari Lake, and culminated at a doomed GOP.
(1) Slithering Won’t Help Donald Trump Snake His Way Out of This One
As the image above points out, Trump has been bloviating and fawning all over himself with self-congratulation, giving himself sole credit for overturning Roe v. Wade by stacking the U.S. Supreme Court with Christofascist radicals. It’s interesting that Amy Coney Barrett got away with lying to Congress during her senate confirmation hearing—dodging the question of whether she’s overturn abortion rights.
And if Trump appears to be against Arizona’s draconian law, he is not: his response this week on abortion was to support the decision of the states. That means: he supports the Arizona supreme court decision to invoke an 1864 law.
In comparison to his other problems, this one isn’t the largest. But if he manages to slime his way out of a prison sentence, come November, it can cost him the election.
(2) It’s Kryptonite for Kari Lake
Kari Lake—Trump fawner, liar, election denier—has the second biggest problem of all. Lake’s problem is that less than two years ago, she called the 1964 woman-hater statute a “great law.”
Now she’s trying to walk back the pig. As Newsweek reports, after the AZ supremes validated ARS 13-3603, a panicked Lake
released a statement publicly opposing the ruling and calling on state officials to find "an immediate commonsense solution that Arizonans can support."
But an Arizona legislature satured with hardcore, mostly male, right-wing Republicans wouldn’t help her. They affirmed the supreme court’s decision, opening the way for enactment and enforcement of the law within two weeks.
Paul Bentz, senior vice president of research and strategy at Arizona-based public affairs firm HighGround, told Newsweek that Lake's response shows just how big of a “disaster” Tuesday's ruling will be for Republicans, saying, "[Lake] is going to have a very difficult line to walk because electorally, it's a difficult position for her to be in," Bentz said. "Her most conservative base, her hardcore-right base will be celebrating today's decision, and now that this is the playing field, any effort to reinstate abortion is going to be construed as pro-choice or construed as in favor of abortion."
But she’s not going to have the toughest time of all.
(3) Potentially, It’s a Death Knell for the GOP in 2024
Carter Sherman, writing in The Guardian this morning, put it best.
Republicans are trying to slow down the car whose brakes they cut – and to convince voters that, if it crashes, they had nothing to do with it.
All this posturing won’t help them. Newsweek reports Biden ahead in eight of the 12 most recent polls—with Ipsos showing him up by four points. Trump is gaining with men. And why not? He charmed the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and the Oath Keepers, anti-feminist groups all. He also appeals to all male demographics who feel women are gaining on them in the workplace—and therefore in the wallet—and this applies to demographics that are also non-white.
But if women vote, Trump is facing a tidal wave of feminine and feminist rage. Republicans won what is probably the most dangerous Pyrrhic Victory in American politics—EVER. The Guardian:
For 50 years, the GOP became increasingly wedded to the anti-abortion movement, passing restrictions that cut off access to the procedure and littering the courts with lawsuits to overturn Roe. These restrictions won them votes from anti-abortion advocates, as well as cash from influential advocacy groups. But because Roe stopped many of these restrictions from taking effect, it shielded Republicans from reckoning with the real-world consequences of anti-abortion policies – or with the outrage of voters. Since Roe was overturned, and those real-world consequences have come into focus, abortion rights-related ballot measures have succeeded in several Republican strongholds, including Kansas and Kentucky.
Actually, they’ve succeeded every time they’ve made it to the ballot. Now, with the misogyny of the party laid bare in Arizona, we can’t unsee the image of the GOP Dorian Gray that stares at us from the painting that was secreted in the attic, camouflaged by Roe.
It’s a long time coming, but come it has. The GOP is going to fall on this one, and it’s going to fall harder. And no political party ever deserved it more.