The Christian nationalist political and social movement is directed and controlled by a small group of wealthy and powerful but thoughtful and committed individuals who are hell-bent on changing the secular world into a religious world. Tyranny of the minority is possible in America today. -- Political theorist Germaine
The next frontier for the antiabortion movement: A nationwide banAdvocates and some GOP lawmakers have started mobilizing around potential federal legislation to outlaw abortion after six weeks of pregnancyLeading antiabortion groups and their allies in Congress have been meeting behind the scenes to plan a national strategy that would kick in if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights this summer, including a push for a strict nationwide ban on the procedure if Republicans retake power in Washington.
The effort, activists say, is designed to bring a fight that has been playing out largely in the courts and state legislatures to the national political stage — rallying conservatives around the issue in the midterms and pressuring potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates to take a stand.
The discussions reflect what activists describe as an emerging consensus in some corners of the antiabortion movement to push for hard-line measures that will truly end a practice they see as murder while rejecting any proposals seen as half-measures.
Activists say their confidence stems from progress on two fronts: At the Supreme Court, a conservative majority appears ready to weaken or overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that has protected abortion rights for nearly 50 years. And activists argue that in Texas, Republicans have paid no apparent political price for banning abortion after cardiac activity is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy.
While a number of states have recently approved laws to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy — the limit established in the Mississippi legislation at the heart of the case pending before the high court — some activists and Republican lawmakers now say those laws are not ambitious enough for the next phase of the antiabortion movement. Instead, they now see the six-week limit — which they call “heartbeat” legislation — as the preferred strategy because it would prevent far more abortions.
“This is a whole new ballgame,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life Action, one of the country’s biggest antiabortion groups, said in an interview. “The 50 years of standing at the Supreme Court’s door waiting for something to happen is over.”
Assuming the Republican Christian nationalist nationwide abortion ban passes, most women will usually be forced to be much more careful about birth control or be forced to carry a pregnancy to birth. One can reasonably think that in that case, women caught in an abortion will be prosecuted and jailed, maybe executed for 1st degree murder in some states.
Women who have a spontaneous abortion or miscarriage will be grilled by religious zealot Christian inquisitors. Some of those women, especially non-Whites and non-Christians, will be wrongly prosecuted. Some will be wrongly jailed or executed.
The elites vs the rank and file
My estimate is that nearly all (~99% ?) CN elites, e.g., elected Republican politicians, professional Republican propagandists like Faux News and major GOP donors know exactly what they are doing and what they want. By contrast, probably no more than about 30% of the rank and file fully understand what it is they support. The CN movement is deeply mendacious, deceptive and opaque about its real goals.
Once the Republican CN total abortion ban passes, some of the woke rank and file will come to regret their own role in this. Most will rationalize it in the name of God or whatever excuses the GOP and CN propagandists will provide for them to believe.
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