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In my last blog I described the Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade that allows states to require girls as young as ten who have been raped to carry the fetus to term as the moral equivalent of child abuse. 

That abuse is exacerbated by the fact that the rape is often done by the child’s own father, forcing her to give birth to her own sibling.

Well, it has now hit the fan for all the world to see. A ten-year-old girl was raped in Ohio, but was forced to go to Indiana to have an abortion because of Ohio’s new ban on choice. It was headlines in the conservative Indianapolis Star newspaper.

The response of the anti-women’s choice movement tells us all we need to know about just how morally bankrupt they are.

At first they denied the story was true. Fix News, the Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, and Republicans like right wing Ohio Republican Representative Jim Jordan called it a lie, a made-up story by Democrats.

That was until the police in Columbus, Ohio arrested and charged Gerson Fuentes with the rape. Suddenly the right-wing propagandists who insisted the story was made up changed tactics.  They shifted attention by alleging that the rapist is an illegal immigrant. Dismissing the tragedy that happened to this little girl, they focus on immigration.

Far right Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita got into the act saying he would investigate the Indiana doctor who performed the abortion whom he falsely accused of not filing the appropriate paper work.

It is all so predictable and at the same time disgusting. Do these people have no decency at all? Can things get any worse than this?

The answer is yes, it can, for this reason. People for whom truth doesn’t matter have no moral bottom. 

When you lack personal integrity you never admit to being wrong, and you always refuse to work with those with opposing views to find a common ground solution to a problem. Instead, you double down, which is exactly what they have done in regard to this little girl. 

Many of them responded this way because of their politics. They hate Democrats so much they are willing to sacrifice children on the altar of political expediency. Others who are political evangelicals confirmed Barry Goldwater’s description of them years ago as being dangerous because they believe they’re doing the work of God.

Both groups highlight the fact that arrogance and self-righteousness may be among the worst of sins because both of them are avoidable. It only takes a moral conscience to set them aside, but, alas, the anti-women’s choice movement is proving it doesn’t have a conscience.

Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, a political evangelical, is one example of having no conscience, challenging President Biden’s executive order that says the federal mandate for hospitals to provide “stabilizing treatment” in emergency situation may include performing an abortion if the woman’s life is at stake regardless of state law. Paxton’s argument is that the order will turn ERs into “abortion clinics.”

Never mind that the issue is not abortion, but the life of the mother. There is no bridge too far for extremists like Paxton. Preventing an abortion regardless of the circumstances is all that matters.

Those who take this position regularly speak in ways that no reasonable, moral person can even believe. James Bopp, a conservative lawyer who has written model legislation encouraging states to ban abortion, recently characterized a ten-year-old rape victim’s options this way to Politico: “She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child.”

There are no words to describe the level of depravity this kind of attitude reveals, yet at the moment the political and evangelical right seem to be winning the battle over women’s rights.

But I believe the impact of their Supreme Court victory will prove to be too pyrrhic, too abrasive to the nation’s moral conscience to stand for the long term.

Surveys on major issues continue to confirm that the majority of Americans tolerate extremism, but don’t embrace it. In fact, when extremism shapes public policy, resistance among the majority intensifies.

We know the Supreme Court ruling was extreme because we know what the state of the nation was regarding this issue before Roe v. Wade. During the 1960s estimates of annual illegal abortions ranged from 200,000 to as high as 1.2 million.

The situation created such a public health crisis that doctors took the lead in seeking to make abortion legal by leaving the decision to a woman and her doctor. The Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 was a good faith effort to end a nationwide health crisis by establishing a nationwide policy on abortion.

That was a reasonable and balanced decision. Striking it down was not. It was, instead, as extreme as the Supreme Court’s conservative majority could get.  

I predict the majority of American voters will say no to this extremism in November and elect members of Congress who will undo the Supreme Court decision by codifying into law a woman’s right to choose.

All that is needed is for Democrats to hold the House majority and elect an additional two Senators to override the objections of Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to changing the filibuster, something President Biden has said he would support.

This is an achievable goal, one I believe the moral outrage at the anti-women’s choice extremism will make happen. The more stories we read about regarding the impact of the Supreme Court ruling is having on the lives of girls and women and their families, the more a majority of Americans will become in overcoming it.

What is more, by the time sensible political leaders do their job and prevent further damage being done, the anti-choice movement will be viewed as the hypocrites they are for claiming their de facto support of child abuse is morally justified.