For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Sir Isaac Newton
Sometimes, the laws of physics sound political. Never is this more true than with Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
This third law states simply that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is talking about the push-pull of the forces that create motion in pairs of forces.
Think about it.
You use your legs to kick when you are a swimming. Every time you kick, you “push” against the water. But — and here’s the reaction — the water is also pushing back against you. That’s why you can go from one end of the swimming pool to the other. It’s also why you make waves while you’re doing it.
In politics, this action-reaction thing gets a little more vocal. Here’s a for-instance. Pro abortion people managed to get the Supreme Court to legalize all abortions from conception to birth by judicial fiat. Pro life people reacted by pushing back with laws that regulate the abortion industry.
Now, the pro aborts are reacting to that reaction and bringing out laws of their own making the regulations illegal. These laws, which are being introduced at both the state and federal level, put an ironic lie to the old pro abortion claim that they want abortion to be safe, legal and rare.
Pro abortionists consistently oppose any and every law that seeks to regulate the abortion industry. They do this to the point that I have personally seen women who are pro choice — as opposed to pro abortion — begin to get a bit antsy about it.
I’ve even seen pro choice women come out in favor of pro life laws because they see both the sense and need of them. For some reason I don’t quite get, this is not as true of pro choice men. I would guess — don’t know, just guessing — that this difference has something to do with the different perspectives men and women have of abortion.
The all-time King Daddy of this new opposite reaction from the pro abortion people is S 1696. The pro abortion folks have mis-named S 1696 the Women’s Health Protection Act. What makes S 1696 so special is that it’s not a state law. With S 1696, the pro abortion people are, quite literally, making a federal case out of it. They know, to use another tired old canard, that the way to shut down abortion clinic regulation in all 50 states is to use an Act of Congress.
Federal law differs from state law in several ways, but the most obvious is that federal law affects the entire country, while state law affects only the states in which it is enacted. It’s a lot easier to change Congress than it is to change the legislative bodies of all 50 states. Plus — and this is also huge — Federal law seeps into every crack of state governance. The primary method of transmission is federal money.
S 1696 is, as I said, the all-time-King-Daddy of opposite reactions to efforts to regulate the abortion industry on a state-by-state basis. If S 1696 becomes law, and the Court upholds it, it will supersede any and all local authority in the regulation of the abortion industry.
The language of S 1696 is among the most specific I have read in any proposed statute. It reads like a laundry list of thou shalt nots, aimed specifically and without any attempt to hide it, at state statutes that the authors of S 1696 disagree with. As such, it’s not a proposed law as such things are generally regarded. It is, instead, a specific and deliberate overturning of a large number of state regulations in order to protect the laissez faire practices of one industry. It is special interest legislation at its most crude and obvious.
This whole thing is so rife with irony that it is, despite its seriousness, comical.
What we have with this King-Daddy of pro abortion bills are regulation-prone Democrats, fighting to completely deregulate one industry, while deregulation-prone Republicans are fighting to regulate it. To top that off, the bill’s authors have chosen to name this woman-endangering bill the “Women’s Health Care Protection Act.” The irony in that is obvious. This proposed legislation would erase any and all protections for women who undergo abortions and allow corporate, multi-state abortion chains to do with and to women as they please. It’s the opposite of women’s health care protection.
To steal a line from the movie Apocalypse Now, “Sometimes it gets so thick, you need wings to stay above it.”
Right now, S1696, which was authored by Senator Blumenthal, is languishing in the United States Senate, where it’s been since it was first filed in 2013. There are not enough votes to pass it. Even if it got out of the Senate, it would be deep-sixed in the Republican-held House.
That doesn’t mean the bill is doomed. It just means that it’s an idea whose votes have not yet been elected to power. Power goes back and forth in this country. Look at Congress today and know that what you see now will change radically in the future. The Rs may take over for a while, or the Ds may get control of both houses. Whatever is not, or whatever happens next, it will change. Eventually, everybody gets a turn at play.
There is no way this kind of legislation or this fight is going to go away so long as we continue to tolerate the two-party two-step on this issue. We can delay passage of S 1696, but we can’t stop it. Not with the tactics we’ve been using.
I’ve talked about the Republicans and corporatism quite a bit lately, and I’m going to do more of it as time goes by. But for today, let’s look at the Democrats and their love affair with all things libertine. The Democratic Party was once staunchly pro life. In my usual contrarian way, I was pro choice back then. Now that the party is staunchly pro choice, I’m pro life.
Go figure.
But I remember quite clearly when the legislation supporting the pro life cause came from the Ds. The switch began in the 1980s and was fueled, ironically enough, by the Moral Majority and its supporters. For reasons of their own, they decided to demonize the Democratic Party and cast it into the role of pro abortion. They lied — a lot — about Democratic candidates. I’ve seen some of the outrageous lies that were put out against pro life Democrats at that time, claiming they were pro abortion, pro beastiality, Communists and whatever else it took to beat them in elections.
This ended in pro life people leaving the Democratic party and the pro life Democrats who hung on becoming friendless political waifs. They were attacked by the religious right for being pro abortion, even when they weren’t, and shunned by their own party.
The result is the mess we have now: Two polarized parties, elected puppet people that only care about going at one another and carrying water for their party’s special interests, and a badly damaged country.
Senate Bill 1696 and its total subservience to the abortion industry is a symptom of this. The fact that it will, in time — years in the future, but it will — become law is a direct result of this silo approach to the pro life issue.
You can not create a culture of life with half the people.
The solution — and it’s an obvious solution — is to convert the Democratic Party on this issue.
If that sounds tough, it is.
But it’s far from impossible. In fact, based on the scanty attendance at most precinct meetings, it’s highly do-able. It’s been done before.
What’s lacking is the direction. Pro life people are being led to keep on doing what they’ve always been doing. Forty-one years in, maybe we should think about trying something new.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That dictum holds true in physics without us doing anything. But in human relations, especially in politics, we’ve got to supply a bit of the gas to make those equal and opposite reactions happen. We have to be that equal and opposite reaction.
We’re pro life enough to pray Rosaries for Life in front of abortion clinics. We’re pro life enough to go to Washington and San Francisco and points in between to march.
That means we’re pro life enough to go to a precinct meeting. We just need to know how.
Which, my friends, is why I’m here.
Stay tuned. We’re going to talk more.
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