The last year has not been a good one for choice:
This year's state legislative season draws to a close having produced a near-record number of laws imposing new restrictions on a woman's access to abortion or contraception.
Since January, governors have signed several dozen antiabortion measures ranging from parental consent requirements to an outright ban looming in South Dakota. Not since 1999, when a wave of laws banning late-term abortions swept the legislatures, have states imposed so many and so varied a menu of regulations on reproductive health care.
Three states have passed bills requiring that women seeking an abortion be warned that the fetus will feel pain, despite inconclusive scientific data on the question. West Virginia and Florida approved legislation recognizing a pre-viable fetus, or embryo, as an independent victim of homicide. And in Missouri, Gov. Matt Blunt (R) has summoned lawmakers into special session Sept. 6 to consider three antiabortion proposals.
A special session for antiabortion proposals. Wow. Articles like this make me thankful for Sirota's PLAN and Nathan Newman's Agenda for Justice, our two newest organizations dedicated to pushing progressivism at the local and state level. Liberals, recently, have lost so much ground on the national level that most all the movement's energy has been channeled into macro-resurgence and ideological counterattack. We need to get the House, the Senate, the Presidency -- something! And while that effort has largely failed, it's still sucked attention from the state level, where the Christian Right's decades of conscientious effort have really flowered in a multifaceted, springtime display of antichoice legislation and backlash politics. May a thousand theocrats bloom!
Democrats need to reestablish themselves at the State level to succeed nationally. As the Christian Right used local successes to slowly, methodically build up to national dominance, we can and should do the same. Less politically, state policy making is as important, and maybe more so, than national legislation. If we're losing legislative battles at the local level, it's hurting people. And if we could get some big wins, they'd help people, in addition to serving as an example for national change. One place to start is California, where SB840, a bill that'd institute single-payer health care in the state, has passed the Senate, attracted the support of the state Democratic party and could, if we got a progressive, visionary governor, become law. And if it worked, it could serve as example for the nation and show the way to a Democratic resurgence. This should be as much or more of a priority for progressives than most of the doomed fights we're picking nationally.
