The Abortion Rights Election

The Fundamental Freedom of Women, Girls, and Pregnant People is Nonnegotiable. Restoring the Freedoms & Protections of Roe v. Wade Is at the Center of Progressive Movements and Radical Transformation.

Drew Dellinger

Oct 22, 2024

IT’S HERE, PEOPLE — The voting is happening and the “ELECTION DAYS PERIOD ends on

Election Day: Tuesday, November 5.

In the olden days, Election Day was the start of voting; now it is more properly thought of as the last chance.

SO LET’S GET THIS DONE!

Early Voting and Mail-In Voting are invaluable ways to increase TURNOUT and safeguards against unforeseen circumstances on Election Day.

As we all know, the global system of injustice, war, militarism, white supremacy, capitalism, and devastation of nature, the biosphere, and the atmosphere requires urgent and profound transformations…

All of which will be MUCH MORE DIFFICULT, if not impossible, under the regime of an American Dictator, and with RightWingRepublicans controlling the Senate and Supreme Court appointments.

As should be much more obvious to many more people, the Republican Party has repeatedly shown itself incapable of governing and unworthy of power.

Do Not Vote for ANY Republican candidates at any level!

Some of the hashtags I’ve been using for the past decade are:

#VoteAllRepublicansOut

#DefeatRepublicanFascism

#FascismIsFirstAnAssaultOnReality

and #FascismItComesAtYaFast

Now, someone who has been living under an igneous rock for the last thirty years, with no WiFi connection, might ask, ‘Why shouldn’t I vote for a Republican? Aren’t you just revealing your raw partisanship? Isn’t it better to ignore the divisive labels, and evaluate the individual candidate?’

‘Shouldn’t I vote for the person, not the party, if I like the cut of his jib?’

No.

Absolutely the [heck] not.

You should not do that.

To repeat; you should #VoteAllRepublicansOut.

And here’s why:

When you vote for ANY Republican for U.S. Congress you are, MORE THAN ANYTHING, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, voting for the Republican Party to have MAJORITY CONTROL of the House, Senate, or both.

And while many people don’t understand the significance of majority control, it is—especially now, in the Era of the Ruthlessness Gap—everything.

The party in the majority controls the agenda, the schedule, the committees, the investigations, the hearings, which bills ever make it to the floor for a vote, votes on cabinet members, other appointees, judges, and, crucially, the SUPREME COURT APPOINTMENTS.

The same general principle applies to governorships, state legislatures, state judges, etc.:

Voting for any Republican candidate is effectively voting for the Entire RightWingRepublican AGENDA, and for them to have the Power of the Majority with which they can empower, enforce, and execute their fascist, extremist agenda.

So, no, do not under any circumstances vote for insurrection, authoritarianism, voter suppression, gridlock, obstruction, chaos, stolen Supreme Court seats, endless lies, bald-faced corruption, and a new Dept. of Theocratic Menstruation Monitoring.

… one of the many reasons I vote, and VOTE DEMOCRATIC AT ALL LEVELS is to HONOR and PRESERVE the HARD WORK and MOVEMENTS of our ancestors and predecessors in the long-distance marathon for community, justice, love, equality, compassion, creativity, solidarity, and peace.

There is no part of my progressive, radical politics that involves letting Extremist RightWingRepublicans take power and reverse DECADES of PROGRESSIVE / RADICAL VICTORIES.

I think it is much too costly to let that happen, and we can little afford to keep losing and re-taking and losing and re-taking the same terrain for decades.

I believe we can build movements that go Way Beyond Electoral Politics while also building a Progressive-Leaning Electoral Behemoth of Overwhelming Turnout and Enfranchisement whose deluge dilutes the Rule-of-Law-Ending; Violence-As-Politics threats posed by Trumpism and RightWingRepublican fascism.

The Essence of Trumpism

and the Decade-Long Trump Era:

Lies-As-Reality and Violence-As-Politics

Let us be clear, especially if Far-Too-Many of our friends in the “Conspirituality to Alt-Right Pipeline” are unclear:

THE ESSENTIAL FEATURE of Trumpism is the intentional and consistent injection of VIOLENCE into politics.

Along with its bigotry, corruption, Flooding-the-Zone-with-Lies, lawlessness and authoritarianism, the essence of Trumpism is Violence-As-Politics.

Above policy, above facts, above reality, above truth, VIOLENCE.

Above Democracy, and the complex and contested American Democratic Experiment-in-progress, VIOLENCE.

Above the Rule of Law; above the Peaceful-Transfer-of-Power; above Consent-of-the-Governed, VIOLENCE.

Mendacity and menace; intimidation and insurrection are the fundamental core of the political movement that has controlled the #RepublicanParty for the last decade.

There is no version of our progressive, radical movements for justice, ecology, liberation, creativity, love, compassion, and nonviolence that can ever join forces with a political movement rooted in racism, fascism, and erasing women’s fundamental freedoms.

The ideal and intention at the center of a political community is the desire to make decisions without violence.

Without that basic, baseline commitment, everything else craters and crumbles.

Thanks for reading Drew Dellinger! This post is public so feel free to share it.

For one of the best sources of news and reporting on abortion rights, democracy and reproductive freedom, see Jessica Valenti’s newsletter, ABORTION, EVERY DAY and her new book, Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win.

The Overturning of Roe v. Wade is One of the Great Political Catastrophes of Our Times

As this report from the Center for American Progress makes clear, for millions of teens, pre-teens, women, and pregnant people, the outrages and oppressions of the Post-Dobbs Era are “not theoretical.”

2024 is the Abortion Rights Election

In 2016, after losing the popular vote, and barely winning the Electoral College1 (which effectively tilts the system in favor of RightWingRepublican Extremism), the worst President in American history was able to nominate and confirm THREE Right-Wing-Extremist justices, creating a MAGA-fied, unconstrained Supreme-Court-Out-of-Control.

THIS IS ONE OF THE GREAT POLITICAL CATASTROPHES OF OUR TIMES

…and NO ONE KNOWS all the various ways, and to what absurd and dangerous extremes, it will play out—for DECADES to come.

In 2022, the Republican-Extremist Supreme Court, with it’s ruling in Dobb’s v. Jackson Women’s Health, overturned a half-century of established legal and constitutional precedent.

Precedent which, I’m sure you will recall, was declared to be “settled law” by each of the Republican nominees for the Court before their confirmation vote. Once confirmed, these Republican justices quickly moved to un-settle it.

(It is hard to see how these nominees’ answers—invoking in reverent tones “stare decisis” and repeating like a mantra “Roe v. Wade is settled law”—and provided under oath to U.S. senators, can be accepted as truthful. Seems pretty perjury-ish.)

Two Weeks from Today…

Two weeks from today is the Abortion Rights Election of our lifetimes, and my fellow white men have a special responsibility to get on the proverbial Right-Side-of-History and show up to smash a little patriarchy.

Two weeks from today will determine the extremes to which an Out-of-Control-Supreme-Court will continue to overrule the Rule of Law itself, block forward movement on urgent issues, and empower a fascist right-wing takeover—for DECADES. (Trust me; you do NOT want to see how bizarre and bad this country could get with an 8-1 RightWingRepublican-majority SCOTUS.)

Two weeks from today will decide how many years it might take to regain foundational freedoms for women, girls, and pregnant people; not to mention prevent further erosion of basic privacy rights and basic personal liberty rights such as access to contraception.

IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT PROGRESSIVE MEN and ALL of US STAND UP TO RIGHT-WING-REPUBLICAN THEOCRATS trying to turn the clock back further on women’s rights and trans rights.

There is no visionary or progressive movement worthy of the name that is unclear on this point.

As progressives and radicals, we can take solace in the conviction that whatever happens on Election Day and in the period after, we will focus our efforts on community, justice, solidarity, and peace-making—as it is given to each of us to discern how best to pursue those in practice in a complex world.

Please do what you can in these next two weeks to mobilize Everyone to TURNOUT and

VOTE ALL REPUBLICANS OUT!

and

ELECT HARRIS PRESIDENT!