There was a scare a few days back when some polls indicated that Biden's support among young voters was eroding badly. Heck, I was scared. I don't know if I should have been, but I was scared. I was going to write an urgent blog about how the 2024 election wasn't about whether Biden is too old, or whether he's boring, or whether he's not far enough to the left. The point is that a Republican president on January 20, 2025, whether it's the Former Guy, or one of his current primary opponents, is the next step toward the end of democracy in America. Anyhow, I was afraid that some low-information voters might stay home because they didn't understand the stakes.
This week's off-year elections heartened me. It's plain that the draconian abortion laws in red states, and the threat of a national law banning abortion, scared Democrats (and some Republican women, too, I shouldn't wonder) to death. I say that guaranteeing women's reproductive freedom in the United States is not only obviously a worthy goal, but that it will bring Democrats to the polls in 2024.
That second paragraph is really all I had to say on the subject, and you could stop there, or you could continue to listening to me babbling a little bit longer. Many opponents to abortion think it's murder, and while I disagree, I can see that most of them are probably sincere in advancing that argument. What really has flabbergasted me is the accompanying attack on birth control. I can see no merit to that position at all, and I really think that it's motivated by religious dogma that seeks to keep women subservient to men. God forbid that women should be free to run their own sex lives.
I know that politicians on the right, including and especially Rick Santorum, would argue that birth control is unnatural and goes against the will of God. Well, Rick, as I've said before, human flight is "unnatural," too, but it doesn't keep our Catholics and evangelicals out of airplanes.
While I'm at it, if anything is unnatural, it is sexual abstinence. Young humans are designed to want to fuck like bunnies. And while I agree that care should be taken about whom one has sex with, and when one should start, the availability of reliable birth control solutions will prevent a lot of the unhappiness that often results from unwanted pregnancy. But I imagine that, for some, the issue is not their children's happiness, but their control over their children's lives.
