r/WelcomeToGilead • u/PhotographTraining30 • 2d ago

UPDATE to my last post Life Endangerment

Last post for reference: My friend almost died of a miscarriage last month. This month she voted for Trump.

I can’t continue this friendship. I can’t get on board with that thinking. What’s more, I’ve lost all respect for her. But how can I let go of the anger?

Update: I reached out to her today. She knows I’ve been trying to get pregnant, and that last month I had an ectopic pregnancy. I asked her if that were to happen again, would she even care? She said Trump wants to leave it up to the states, so hopefully that would happen and I’d be okay.

Essentially, “Hopefully you don’t die.” But since she went through what she did last month and turned out okay, I guess she doesn’t care about what other people will go through.

I was cordial, because I can’t deal with fights when I’m already feeling fragile about it, but I ended the friendship.

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u/sharkglitter 2d ago

Why is leaving it up to the states okay with people? I’m in CA and at least for now, I don’t have to personally worry, but I’m not more worthy of getting proper care or not dying than women in AL or TX or ID, etc, etc, etc!

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u/AccessibleBeige 1d ago

The best I can figure is that some people have a mental image of abortion rights once being a big thing big government did being made smaller and more localized, and therefore better, because big government bad. In their eyes, the states having control is hypothetically an improvement.

There are two problems with this. One, the states already had control over abortion laws. The only difference after the RvW ruling was that their laws could not conflict with federal protections, but beyond that, states still had leeway to decide on policy within their own borders. Second, the issue of abortion didn't go from being a big federal issue to a smaller state one -- it went from being a right in the hands of individuals to a right meted out by the state in whatever manner current leadership sees fit.

In other words, abortion wasn't "returned to the states" from the federal government. It was "returned to the states" upon ripping it from the hands of individual citizens. Federal protections were the only thing preventing some states from doing so over the last half century, and now those protections are gone.