Opinion – Abortion Rights Equals Human Rights
The Religious Right has used human rights to bring in converts for a very long time. When segregation failed to bring in enough converts and Jim Crow laws began to be struck down, the Right deliberately decided that abortion rights would bring in more converts. And indeed it did. Hundreds of thousands of converts have rallied around this one cause, abortion rights. In the 1970’s Frank Schaeffer, helped politicize evangelicals around the issue of abortion by making a movie which showed broken dolls scattered on the Dead Sea beach, to show what they believed portrayed abortion victims. That widely shown movie helped politicize evangelicals around the issue of abortion which led to the political mobilization of the religious right. The Right (aka known as Evangelicals or Conservatives) has been heavily funding the cause of banning abortion to gain followers, religious and political, since Roe v Wade became law, nearly 50 years ago.
The Left or Democrats, I believe, failed as a whole to recognize the weight of this. We didn't take it seriously enough or didn't have enough dark money funding like the Right, to combat the steady movement to abolish abortions in the United States. The Right/Conservatives poured money into the election of Trump who as we all know was able to put enough Justices on the Supreme Court, with special help from Mitch McConnell, to begin the overturning of Roe v Wade. This was done all in the pursuit of Power. It is a deliberate use of power to mold society into a type of government with their religious morals. The Right does not care that the Constitution separates Church and State. This is a sad abuse of Human Rights. The Right to Worship or not as each person desires, is fundamental to the founding of the United States. We are a Nation of Immigrants, many of whom have their own cultural religious practices or maybe no affiliation with an established religion at all.
The Conservative Right may have won this battle but we must never give up fighting for Women's Reproductive Rights. Why? Because it is a basic Human Right for half the Citizens of the United States. But even more importantly it is the Pillar of the Conservative Right who are using it to change this Country into their mold of Religion and Government with no separation between Church and State. Without the separation of Church and State, Human Rights in this Country as we know it will be crushed.
Signed,
Susan Holbrook
Board Member, NWPC Sacramento