These well-known phrases from Abraham Lincoln within the 1863 Gettysburg Handle throughout the Civil Struggle crammed my head once I heard GOP Sen. Ted Cruz slamming the 2015 US Supreme Court docket resolution that acknowledged same-sex marriage.
It isn’t that Cruz’s phrases alone conjured up Lincoln’s deal with, however that his feedback fueled my rising sense that some Republicans do not simply need pink states however particular person pink nations. I do not imply formal secession. But it surely’s extra akin to sovereign nations the place they will act unrestrained from federal intervention on concern after concern — from voting rights to same-sex marriage and even interracial marriage.
But they nonetheless need all the advantages of being a part of the US, with blue states closely subsidizing some conservative states, as one New York Occasions columnist has famous.
Even earlier than Cruz’s feedback, different conservative leaders have expressed an identical need to present states the correct to deprive residents of basic rights. In his concurring opinion within the Dobbs v. Jackson Girls’s Well being Group ruling that overturned Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court docket “ought to rethink” seminal instances recognizing same-sex marriage, the constitutional proper to contraception and a prohibition on state legal guidelines that criminalized consensual intercourse between same-sex people.
In March, GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee criticized the well-known 1965 Supreme Court docket resolution Griswold v. Connecticut that struck caught down legal guidelines banning contraception entry for married {couples}, calling it “constitutionally unsound.”
Across the similar time, GOP Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana went even additional, declaring that states ought to even be allowed to determine if interracial marriage ought to be banned, as they had been capable of do earlier than the 1967 Supreme Court docket resolution Loving v. Virginia. Braun later walked backed that remark after a firestorm, saying he “misunderstood” a reporter’s query and he condemned “racism in any kind.”
However the reality is Braun was being intellectually in step with this states’ rights argument — as he candidly acknowledged. After expressing his view that every state ought to determine on abortion, Braun was requested by a reporter if that additionally utilized to interracial marriage. The senator responded bluntly: “Sure, I feel that that is one thing that — if you happen to’re not wanting the Supreme Court docket to weigh in on points like that, you are not going to have the ability to have your cake and eat it, too. I feel that is hypocritical.”
The states’ rights argument has lengthy been used to deprive Individuals of basic freedoms in our previous — the obvious instance being earlier than the Civil Struggle by those that enslaved Black individuals.
After the Civil Struggle, some Southern leaders invoked states’ rights to enact Jim Crow-era legal guidelines to deprive Black Individuals of equality. For instance, within the Nineties, Mississippi, South Carolina and Louisiana adopted new state constitutions designed to suppress the Black vote. (These three states have additionally lately sought to limit reproductive freedom.)
The newest model of states’ rights is enjoying out in actual time because the Supreme Court docket lately struck down Roe — ending a constitutional proper to reproductive freedom. In response, some GOP-led states have carried out bans on abortion that start as early as “conception.” A few of these legal guidelines present no exception for rape.
The concept that life begins at a conception is predicated on a spiritual perception held by some conservative Christians. And if lawmakers resembling GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado have their manner, we may even see extra religion-based legal guidelines imposed in Republican-controlled states. Boebert lately instructed the Cornerstone Christian Middle in Basalt, Colorado, that she was “bored with this separation of church and state junk,” arguing, “The church is meant to direct the federal government.”
In response to the GOP’s actions on ladies’s rights, Democratic callers to my SiriusXM present have expressed issues that their federal tax {dollars} can be despatched to states which can be oppressing ladies. I agree 100%. Democrats ought to be championing laws making certain that no federal tax {dollars} be used to deprive ladies of their rights or to punish ladies or well being care professionals — even when it is difficult to move with the present 50-50 Senate. These of us in blue states can’t be compelled to fund the GOP’s oppression of girls.
However the place does this go away our nation?
I am reflecting once more on the Gettysburg Handle — however this time on the ultimate line. That is the place Lincoln said that we should resolve {that a} “authorities of the individuals, by the individuals, for the individuals, shall not perish from the earth.” At this level that sentence could not finish with a interval — however somewhat with a query mark.
