it works to well as a platform for acquiring votes.

But the GOP uses it as an issue because even when they control the Government, they never actually ban it.

Like Pete Wilson. He wanted the state to pay for it to reduce social services costs, in my opinion.

It's about subjugation of women and disapproval of sexytime outside of their strict boundaries. It's also about the nonsensical religious views of how the universe works.

Nasty women who have sex outside of marriage should suffer the consequences. They go after birth control next.

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Don't forget that in the Bible, life doesn't start until the baby's first breath.


The real problem is that in the 60's there was a slow change to allowing novices to become ministers.

Then, there was a cult of religious types who were pushing Biblical Inerrancy, and it was slowly catching on around that time. After the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was passed, there was a feverish pitch to various churches and religious institutions to force people to subscribe to it. The educated in colleges, fought back and were faced with the ultimatum to either subscribe or lose their professorships. Most resigned because they knew better. The vast majority of educated religious scholars left their churches and universities, and now most are taught by novices, and those self-educated themselves or follow some other pontificator.

There are several hundred errors or conflicts in the Bible, and people go though all kinds of machinations trying to explain away them. This forces them to invent backstories, that they pretty much pull out of their asses. The mental splitting drives a neurosis in the modern Christians, and they are even more susceptible to believing whatever they are told, because they cease to question conflicts in their church.

This is why we are seeing so many charlatans and morons running churches. This is why there are over 4,400 Christian churches in this country, because most of the ministers and pastors want to run their own fiefdom, independent of others. They do not answer to others, and need to create a unique experience to keep their congregation from leaving... including the incorporation of Two-Stage Baptisms.... which is another topic in itself. People speak in tongue and then are told they have the Spirit within them, and they are effectively chosen and sanctioned by God, so no matter what they do, it is blessed. This is why so many crooks and scammers feel entitled, because they convinced themselves that they are better than others. I'm not doing these topics justice, because each would require a 15-page essay just to broach the main points of them.

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Most don't really give a shit, they just want to be better than someone else.

A lot of voters are genuinely and fanatically anti-abortion. For them it's an issue, maybe THE issue. Politicians, on the other hand, might not be so sincere. Some may honestly believe abortion is wrong but I suspect many others are just using it to get the votes of those who are. Racism might have something to do with it for some people but I don't think racism is a cover for opposing abortion - what it is a cover for, is misogyny. There are those who oppose abortion not so much for religious reasons but to punish women for having sex.

Maybe you don't remember the '60s and early '70s, before Roe v. Wade. Abortion was a HUGE issue, then, much more than it is now. I knew a couple of women who had to leave the state to get illegal abortions from a doctor who was providing them on the QT. I also knew women (girls, really) who were "sent away" because they were pregnant and their families were ashamed of them. The controversy was extremely intense but I do not believe racism was a major part of it - then or now.

I think abortion has become a right-wing issue.

It originally wasn't. As a matter of fact I'm old enough (62) to remember that the only people who were exercised bout the abortion issue were conservative Catholics. They decided that the best way to gain power was to make common cause with Evangelicals, and the Evangelicals decided to make it their issue, too. Nowadays, they're both equally incensed and if there is any memory of a time when Evangelicals just didn't care about abortion, it has been consigned to oblivion.

If you think there's something Orwellian about their thinking processes, I'd say you were entirely right (We are at war with East Asia. We have always been at war with East Asia).

As a side-bar, I remember that a lot of right-wingers used to FAVOR abortion rights. That's right, your eyes aren't playing tricks, a lot of right-wingers USED to FAVOR abortion rights. They believed that banning abortion access was government encroachment on the rights of the individual.

Well, you can guess what happened to pro-choice conservatives. The anti-abortion fanatics hunted them down and one by one, two by two, three by three, drove them out of office in primaries and in Republican caucuses. I'm sure the sentiment exists in some right-wing circles, but to be caught saying so or supporting pro-choice legislation or pro-choice organizations has become political suicide for right-wingers. The ones that were left were faced with a choice: retire from politics, or become as rabidly anti-abortion as the anti-abortion fanatics. Most of the ones still politically active are in the second category.

Me, I used to be what was a moderate Republican. A former Cold War supporter, I left the GOP behind me when the Soviet Union collapsed and I realized that the moderate Republicanism I believed in had no real clout left in the Republican Party. I've been a Democrat since then.

All they have to do is talk about it, suggesting to people that they are the most moral people on earth and Democrats are not just political opponents but Satan's minions.

Easiest way on earth to get diehard followers AND their money. People love to sit in judgment, despite Jesus's words against doing just that.

The Republicans get people to act like members of a religious cult through their use of this issue. And, like most cults, the GOP keeps facts out of its arguments and puts their followers' sense of morality on the line. It also bilks them.

Freebies (meaning costing nothing but words): See also Pledge of Allegiance, Prayer in Schools, No Cakes for Gays, etc. All emotional bait to keep the sheep passionate and loyal to the sanctimonious hypocrites running this con.

...but they all have one thing in common: there is Authorized Sex and Unauthorized Sex, and it it is the absolute right of any guy who can get people to show up under a steeple on Sunday to get to pick what's "authorized."

Occasionally except for the guys who choose "wrong," but they have to deviate in non-sexual terms for excoriation on sexual terms to be invoked.

Some oppose Roe as government overreach and want the issue decided by the states.

Some see it as a morality issue; some feel that premarital pregnancy should end in marriage; some truly believe it is murder. Most everyone in these categories is a churchgoer, and that provided the GOP a much needed organizing group in the post Watergate 70s.

They have shown time after time that they care nothing for children. Why would anyone believe they have a genuine concern for unborns...

when pregnant women aren't murdered so much in domestic violence. It can be a very unsafe time for women, so why they pretend to car about a unborn child, ducking blows is fine with them.