Ala-fucking-bama
I’m very upset with the entire state of Alabama. It is interfering with my marriage. My wife is so upset with the newly passed and signed abortion law that she is railing about men interfering with women’s rights to be in control of their own bodies. I have pointed out that it was a female legislator in Alabama that sponsored the bill and a female governor that signed the bill into unconstitutional law. I think that just made her madder about the whole thing. Tonight she has told me that that same 74-year-old governor, Kay Ivey, is pleased to stop the taking of lives, which are gifts from God even though she is happy to also oversee her seventh capital punishment execution in the two years since she took office.
According to Gallup, men and women are not too different in their views of pro-choice or pro-life. The slight bias of women favoring pro-choice is almost statistically insignificant. However, all the other standards that define blue versus red follow into the respective pro-choice and pro-life divide. Democrats, Liberals, east/west coast, young, educated, high-earning, non-religious people favor pro-choice. Men/women and white/non-white are both evenly split between pro-choice and pro-life.
I will openly declare that I have always supported pro-choice, but that I also have always believed that no human has the right to stand in judgement of another and take their life. Incarcerate him/her for life, but take the life and you are playing God. How does that reconcile? It must be that I believe that the fetus viability standard is a fair standard such that before 24 weeks, a woman may choose to abort. Obviously that is a highly contentious and emotional topic for many for a multitude of reasons. This is one of those political issues for which there seems to be no right or wrong, only pain on both sides. That makes me less emotional about my view, but I know many women, including my wife who might take exception with that analysis.
Nonetheless, it is clear that this Alabama law is far more unpopular than popular because it has taken almost all the standards (rape, incest, etc.) and makes them irrelevant to the lawlessness of the abortion. It also makes the physician involved subject to a non-parolable 99 year sentence, a far longer term than that given to most rapists in Alabama. To see Pat Robertson, the 89-year-old televangelist, say that the bill “has gone too far” is an amazing contra-indicator that almost proves the point that this bill was formulated not as a bill, per se, but as a political issue to bring Roe v. Wade in front of the Supreme Court. Wow, you can’t make up this kind of cable news drama.
So, my question is, what’s up with Alabama? When I was a kid, Alabama governor George Wallace was the anti-Christ of Civil Rights. It ended up costing him his mobility when a white man, Arthur Bremer, shot him five times (by the way, Bremer was paroled after serving 35 years for the attempted assassination). Alabama has a flag that’s just a red X on a white background. How many interpretations can one make of that?
And then there’s the whole Judge Roy Moore affair. A disgraced Alabama Supreme Court justice (for defying US Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage and doing something with the Ten Commandments in the State House), he ran and lost for governor twice, but then ran successfully in the Republican primary election for the senate seat vacated by another Alabama favorite son, Jeff Sessions. His campaign was successfully undercut by convincing allegations of statutory rape against him. He lost a shoe-in senatorial race for the Republicans.
Alabama seems to be a cautionary tale against over-zealous conservative thinking. Get too segregationist, become the devil to Americans and get shot five times. Get too anti-gay and misogynistic (are rapists misogynists?) and lose to a Democratic in one of the reddest states. And now, maybe get too pro-life and protect the procreation rights of rapists and incestuous hillbillies and you incur the wrath of evangelicals and maybe screw-up a long-held objective of getting America back from the brink of pro-choice oblivion. Even a proven racist like Jeff Sessions, sitting in the supreme law enforcement role in the nation, couldn’t not step on his own shoelaces repeatedly, catching scorn from both left and right.
I guess Alabama can’t help itself. Wedged in between Georgia and Mississippi must be a hard place to be. No presidents have come out of Alabama. But there is both Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd and Alabama by Neil Young, so there must be something good going on there. Jesse Owens, Willie Mays, Hank Williams and Helen Keller were from Alabama.
But that’s about all I can find to interest me about Alabama and that all doesn’t seem to outweigh the George Wallace, Roy Moore, Kay Ivey legacy of political foot-shooting and general bad-acting. I guess every place has its purpose and Alabama’s would seem to be to remind us that the world is not a perfect place and there will always be flawed people working against the tide of righteousness, even when they proclaim themselves (and maybe especially when they proclaim themselves) God-fearing Bible-thumpers.
Rich,
You may have met Kay Ivey or were surely in her presence at some time as she was the State Treasurer for many years. I recall her as a reserved southern woman. I think she got boxed in by extremists in her party.
Kevin
Not a good excuse for her. Good to har from you, though…..
Two good things about Alabama: Fairhope – a lovely, mostly artists’ colony on Mobile Bay and Muscle Shoals, home of many great R&B and R&B-based songs. The rest of the state can take a flying leap.
Rich,
I am not defending George Wallace but in the late 70s, about 15 years after being removed from the door of the University Of Alabama by Attorney General Robert F Kennedy, he became a born-again Christian. It didn’t undo all the damage he’d done before but he apologized many times for his actions and renounced his former beliefs. In his last term as governor he appointed a record number of blacks to key positions throughout the state. If he can change, maybe the people of Alabama can too. Although I’m not holding my breath.
In the New York Times, humorist Andy Borowitz opined that the legislature effectively killed all future tourism for the state. I actually never even thought of Alabama as a vacation destination before this. In the United States, according to Gallup polls, the pro-choice and pro-life supporters are almost equally divided in percentages. So now what?
The what is that Alabama got what it wanted. A fight to try and reverse Roe vs. Wade. So we will get to watch this morass wend it’s way through the courts until it reaches the Supreme Court. They will have to hear this case and for as long as they take to decide we will all collectively wait it out hoping for the ‘right’ decision depending on which pro- you stand for.
I must admit to being pro-choice but also to being unsure as to my choice of action if the situation had landed on my doorstep. My best friend was getting serious with a young women but she had an abortion without mentioning it to him until later. Needless to say, he immediately broke up with her. He was brought up catholic but I don’t think that was the reason. I believe he felt it was in part his decision. That’s a big part of the rub. Is it? It takes two to make a fetus/baby but one to decide the outcome. It is the females body so I feel the choice is hers. Does she even have to tell the man involved that anything took place at all?
I am in favor of the status quo but the plethora of questions and opinions will go on and on.
Maybe Aldous Huxley’s prediction in ‘Brave New World’ ( a 1931 novel) of citizens being engineered through artificial wombs will make this moot. I would want to be an Alpha.
Sincerely, Donald Lundholm
You are an Alpha
Thank you. Now tell my wife.