If it weren’t for fossil-fuel-Texas’ many disenfranchised people of color, anti-woman and anti-LGBQT agenda, easy access to assault weapons that are constantly being smuggled to cartels below the border, and policy of climate change denial despite a tsunami of evidence to the contrary – all of which impact the rest of the United States, I would most certainly support allowing Texas to secede from the Union. It could return to being the Republic of Texas again. Most of Texas isn’t even on a regional power grid, having opted to go it alone years ago… and having faced a near-total collapse of that system this past winter. But innocent minority groupings of people of color and LGBQT would suffer horribly.
Gerrymandering has given the minority evangelical GOP vote virtually total control of state politics, even on issues that are opposed by a majority of Texans. Most notably Texas’ new statute (SB 8) that bans abortions for any reason (rape and incest included), a law that miraculously was not stopped by the highest court in the land: “S.B. 8, which went into effect Wednesday [9/1] after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block the law, bans abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected, a point that could occur as early as six weeks into pregnancy — before many women even know they are pregnant.
“And unlike other states' anti-abortion laws, Texas’ unique ban is enforced through private citizens' lawsuits against abortion providers, rather than through state government. It includes first-of-its-kind language that allows anyone, even people outside Texas, to sue an abortion provider or anyone else who helped someone get the procedure after the six-week limit and seek damages of $10,000 per defendant.
“Those suits are all but certain to cripple the ability of Texas-based groups — that provide everything from financial help to pay for abortion care, as well as practical support such as transportation, lodging and child care — to operate, because they’ll have to spend their limited time and resources defending themselves against lawsuits. Many stopped seeing patients who were more than six weeks pregnant earlier in August.” NBC News, September 3rd. SB 8 is the product of a male-dominated legislature. Almost 75% of the Texas lawmakers are men!
SB 8 was piled onto a litany of new radical right-wing Texas laws, including the most focused voter suppression law in the United States and a statute that permits most Texas residents to carry a concealed gun without a permit. Texas is a purple state that has been gerrymandered red. Most large Texas cities are helmed by Democratic mayors and city councils (exceptions like Fort Worth exist), but when it comes to voting for House and state legislative seats, Democrats are marginalized. For example, Austin, as blue a city as exists in Texas, sends five representatives to Congress: one blue (concentrated in urban only Austin) and four red (whose districts stretch way into the conservative hinterlands to dilute Democratic votes).
That polls suggest two-thirds of Texans (mirroring national polls) oppose banning abortions is apparently irrelevant, because the Texas votes that matter are relegated disproportionately to white evangelicals in rural districts. The cry of “rigged elections” and “Trump won” – despite a complete lack of proof for either statement (judicially reviewed over 60 times, even by Trump-appointed judges) – still resonates over rural Texas. Conspiracy theories have found particularly fertile soil here, and Governor Greg Abbott’s has dictated that employers may not mandate employee vaccinations and that school districts cannot require that teachers and children must wear masks. The result is one of the highest Delta variant infection and mortality rates, still trailing even redder Florida, in the entire country.
Meanwhile, neighboring New Mexico (a purple-tilting-blue state) prepared for the onslaught of Texas women seeking abortions: “Across New Mexico — where there are few restrictions on abortion — providers, abortion funds and practical support groups are preparing, financially, logistically and emotionally, to help provide care to an anticipated influx of patients from Texas, who will no longer be able to receive it in their home state.
“Experts say Texas State Bill 8, the new anti-abortion law, is the most restrictive one allowed by courts to stand in decades… ‘Every time Texas passes some kind of bill restricting abortion, we see more people seeking care here in New Mexico. And this time, with S.B. 8., the worst, most restrictive we’ve ever seen, we’re definitely preparing to serve a significant number of additional patients seeking refuge from the new Texas law,’ said Joan Lamunyon Sanford, executive director of the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, an Albuquerque-based abortion fund that partners with other funds and networks across Texas and the United States.” NBC News. SB 8 impacts those least financially able to afford to travel out of state for abortion services, which is also that segment of the population least able to afford to care for young children. New Mexico is the closest state to Texas that traditionally honors Roe vs Wade rights.
What is particularly stunning from the Supreme Court decision is that it has practically overturned Roe vs Wade without oral arguments or an official ruling. 85-90% of Texas clinics offering abortion services literally stopped functioning on September 1st when the Court’s ruling took effect. Effectively a decision from the newly configured Trump right-wing activist Supreme Court appointees, the Court just may have gone rogue, rejecting a constitutional precedent that has stood fast for half a century. The Journal of the American Bar Association (September 3rd) reports:
“The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday [9/1] officially denied an emergency request from abortion providers to block a controversial Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks… Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., along with liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, dissented.
“In the 5-4 unsigned decision, the high court’s majority said to prevail in an application for a stay or injunction, the providers must meet several factors, including making a ‘strong showing’ that they are ‘likely to succeed on the merits,’ and that they will be ‘irreparably injured absent a stay.’
“‘The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue,’ the majority wrote. ‘But their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden… The state has represented that neither it nor its executive employees possess the authority to enforce the Texas law either directly or indirectly.’” Is vigilantism the hook for this decision? Seriously?
The dissent called the decision what it obviously was (also from the ABA Journal): “In one of several dissents, Sotomayor called the decision ‘stunning.’ She was joined by Breyer and Kagan… ‘Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand,’ Sotomayor wrote. ‘Last night, the court silently acquiesced in a state’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents. Today, the court belatedly explains that it declined to grant relief because of procedural complexities of the State’s own invention.’
“[George W Bush appointed Chief Justice John] Roberts said in his dissent the court needed more time to consider the law, which he called ‘not only unusual but unprecedented.’ He was also joined by Breyer and Kagan.”
Meanwhile, other red states, noting that vigilante enforcement provision in SB 8 might have given the Supreme Court a basis to sustain abortion bans, are rushing to mirror that Texas law. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem promised her constituents that she would explore parallel abortion legislation for her state. Strange how irate “right to lifers” – cheering at the Supreme Court ruling – still support widespread and mostly-unregulated gun ownership (only one in thirty civilian gun homicides are deemed legally justifiable) and the death penalty.
So, what happens until the Court really hears the full case, possibly years from now? Clinics close. Red states like South Dakota pass new anti-abortion laws that mirror the Texas statute. And the red/blue divide becomes an increasingly unbridgeable chasm.
I’m Peter Dekom, and the rule of law and true democracy seem to have fallen before a right-wing onslaught in red states driven by conspiracy theories, evangelical fundamentalism and the ability of a squeaky wheel minority to marginalize voters who oppose their radical opinions.
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